She broke the kiss so she could whisper into his mouth. “I wondered whether I would wish we’d saved time for it. Now I’m glad we didn’t.” She suddenly giggled. “I’m probably syphed up again.”
“Robin, there’s still time to call it off...”
She didn’t bother to reject his plea. She began softly humming a dance tune. To a few bars of it they actually danced, a dream-like waltz step from a long time before. Docker’s limp was not apparent in their slow matched movements. They were graceful together.
“Remember?”
Docker nodded. “Twelve, thirteen years ago. The grand ballroom of the St Francis.”
She stopped dancing.
“Miss Stayton was the hit of the Cotillion. She was stunning in her cerement and shroud.”
“For God’s sake, Robin—”
“Twelve, thirteen centuries ago, baby. I’m old. Ancient. Burned out. Time?”
Before he could check, she twisted his thick wrist so they could read his watch together.
“Two-thirty-three,” she said.
She walked away from him without a tremor of hesitation, pulled open the dresser drawer which contained her treasures. She set aside the handkerchief-wrapped syringe very gingerly, as if it were fragile crystal. Then she quickly and efficiently arranged her matches, her candle, her bent tablespoon. These defined her physical world, these were her Shakespeare folio, her Gauguin original, her Hope Diamond.
Without being bidden, Docker got the baggie of heroin and the syringe from the bed. He set the attaché case on the floor.
Robin heaped the tablespoon three-fourths full of the terrific jolt of white powder. She added water at the sink, returned to move it gently over the candle flame. As she worked, she talked, her voice almost sprightly, snatches of poetry, the Shakespeare line about motive and cue for passion.
In a suddenly flat rational tone, she demanded, “How pure?”
“Ninety-five percent.”
A shiver ran through her, whether from anticipation or fear or merely from bare feet on cold linoleum was impossible to tell. She tipped up the spoon, filled the opened ten-cc syringe.
“The hottest shot in the world. The ultimate flash. My usual is five percent.” Her eyes glittered. She was sweating badly, pouring sweat; great moons of dampness had appeared under the arms of the flannel nightgown.
“Be by me, darling,” she said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the hypo in her left hand as her right delicately began working to bring up the veins. She was so totally absorbed in this that it was obvious her absorption was spurious, or rather was intensified so as to shut out all other thought.
Docker had no such anaesthesia. Sweat poured off him to equal hers. In a hoarse voice he said, “Robin...”
She shook her head. Her tongue came out one corner of her mouth in concentration. She switched the syringe to her right hand, then, with the suddenness of a fisherman gaffing a shark, she rammed the needle into her arm.
“Got it, first try!” she exclaimed.
She did not yet depress the plunger. She laid back on the balled-up pillow and looked at Docker almost joyfully. In her movements had been none of the hesitation which had seduced Kolinski into injecting her that morning.
“Two months I pretended to dislike the needle. A lot of hypes really do, you know.” She met his eyes almost mockingly. “Darling, I’d do it if you were here or not. Accept that. The only difference is that it’d be wasted.” She drew a deep breath. “Time?”
Docker had been sidling closer. Unthinking, concealed desperation glinted in his eyes. He turned the action of checking his watch into a sudden lunge for the syringe. His hand was still a dozen inches from it when her thumb rammed the plunger home. Her body arched slightly.
“Are you in such a hurry for me to... oh! Oh, Jesus Christ! It’s beautiful! It’s pure... pure...”
Her face now wore a look of utter ecstasy. Her hand was already relaxing on the syringe. Her feet were drooping outward as the muscles of her calves and ankles relaxed.
“So... so sleepy-tired!”
“Robin. Oh, Jesus, Robin...”
Her face was relaxing, smoothing out. Her eyes under suddenly sleepy lids were now very clear. The angles of her face were elegant and fine and altogether lovely.
“Shleepy,” she said gaily. “Sh-h-h...” She raised her head with an effort. “I don’t love you, you know, darling. Not anymore. We just... You...” She stopped as if she would not be able to speak again. Then she said in an abrupt clear surprised voice, “Who would have believed it’d all... all shlip... all... away...”
Her head rolled sideways on the pillow. Her right hand fell laxly away from the hypo, so it flopped over against her arm, the needle still sticking in her vein and raising a long narrow ugly blue-looking welt of flesh with its imbedded length. Her breathing was regular but already growing shallow.
Docker stared down at her with a shocked look on his face, as if he could not believe the speed with which the deadly infusion was working. In a tight, agonized voice, he said, “Jesus, oh, Jesus, Robin, what have we... Wasn’t there any...”
His voice died away. There was no response, no movement from the girl on the bed. Her breathing had lengthened further, was becoming labored. At that instant the needle, responding to gravity and its own weight, slid from her arm. It fell past the edge of the bed.
Docker moved with dazzling speed, his hand shooting down and out and snapping shut around it just as it touched the floor. It had no chance to break. He straightened slowly with it clutched in his gloved fingers. He was breathing heavily. His eyes looked as if he wanted to scream. Yet by catching the hypo before it could smash on the floor he seemed to have made his ultimate acceptance.
For some minutes he stood unmoving above her, watching her chest continue to stir under the faded flannel. He stooped, laid a hand on her ribs, pressed delicately up under the meager flaccid globe of her left breast.
“Presque morte,” he said in soft sorrow. The two isolated French words had a finality that their English equivalents lacked. Nearly dead. He seemed to be searching for the hard edge of that finality.
Docker drew a deep breath that was also a sob, came erect, then bent once more to touch his lips to hers. They were warm and yielding, as if she were dropping into sleep instead of death.
He said, “Goodbye, Robin.”
He crossed quickly to the dresser, picked up the handkerchief and its burden the way he would have picked up a primed charge of plastique. He held it beside her left elbow, then let the handkerchief drop open so the syringe fell on the floor where the other would have struck if he had not intercepted it.
Docker stepped back, regarded the scene critically, then carefully toed the syringe a little further under the bed where it would not be instantly apparent to anyone entering the room. He was working with fine tolerances now.
Docker opened his attaché case without lifting it from the floor, put in the hypo which had killed her, withdrew a banded sheaf of bills. They were hundreds, fifty of them. His gloved fingers laid them on the corner of the dresser.
One last quick look around the room.
Breeze gently stirring the dirty lace curtains, very slightly guttering the candle on the dresser top. Sunlight gone from the mellowed brick wall opposite. Spoon. Ripped baggie which had brought her the death she sought.
He looked at his watch. He touched nothing except his attaché case and the doorknob going out. He left the room, the building, by the same route he had entered, like a cloud passing from the pale face of the moon. The goose-plump black girl using the pay phone at the far end of the hall did not see him go. No one saw him go.