"What do you mean? I smell like a fish?"
"No, you smell like good cologne. Probably . . . Hermes? Hermes or Romeo Gigli. You smell great. I don't mean that."
I signaled to the waiter. "Time for another drink."
To my surprise, she leaned forward and took firm hold of my elbow. "Listen, I'm just a fan. I'm nobody. The last thing in the world I want to do is offend you. Your face says I just pissed you off, big-time. Please know I didn't mean to. Should I leave? Shit. I'm so sorry."
She slid her chair back. I grabbed it. "Veronica, I just drove two hours to New York. Four minutes into our conversation you say I'm a fish and now you're leaving? I think we should run our tape back a ways and start again. What do you think?"
"I think I'm scared to open my mouth."
"Don't be; I like your honesty. You asked what I was working on. Let's start there." I let go of her chair and sat back. She stared at me and didn't move.
"When I was fifteen, I found the body of a girl who had been murdered."
Telling the whole story took only a few minutes. When I was finished, she sat silently looking at the table. Only after a good long pause did she raise her eyes and look at me. Her expression said she had figured something out. "Pauline Ostrova was your dead mermaid. The end of childhood. All those impossible combinations we can only know and accept when we're young, you know? Woman and fish. Young and dead. Sex and murder . . ."
"Oxymoron."
She nodded slowly. "Precisely. Childhood is all opposites. You're either too hot or too cold. It's hate or love, nothing else, and it shifts back and forth in a second. What you had in that fifteen-year-old minute was all of 'em together in one. Right then in your life, a dead girl ivas sexy. Of course you wanted to stare at her underpants. That .makes sense to me."
"You mean I wasn't a burgeoning fifteen-year-old necrophiliac?"
"I don't know about you, Sam, but at fifteen I would have had sex with anything. You have a wonderful mouth, you know. I think I will have a drink."
She had vodka with ice. Her large hand with its salmon-colored fingernails wrapped around that glass of clear liquid was somehow so alluring that I sighed. When I looked at her, she was looking at me. She smiled guiltily, as if I'd caught her at something. She began talking quickly.
"I heard an interesting story today. A friend of mine owns a restaurant up on Sixty-eighth Street. A few months ago, a man came in and ordered filet mignon. My friend prides himself on buying the absolute best and freshest meat every day. I don't know anything about it, but the food tastes pretty good to me. So the customer had the filet and when he was done, said it was the best steak he'd ever eaten. The place is expensive, but every day for the next week he comes in and orders another filet. Big tipper, completely satisfied, always full of compliments.
"One day my friend didn't get to the market, or something went wrong, whatever, they didn't buy fresh meat. It was like from yesterday, but who cares, right? The customer comes in for his filet. When it's served, instead of taking a bite, he immediately bends over and sniffs it. Then he cuts a tiny piece, tastes it, and puts down his silver. 'This meat isn't fresh.' Calls for the bill and walks out. They never see him again. My grandmother used to say, 'Love and eggs must be fresh to be enjoyed.' What I can't understand is why they didn't just tell the man the steak isn't fresh today – have something else."
"Come on, Veronica, you don't lie at all?"
She emptied her drink. " 'It's easy to believe in yourself when you're lying, because you're talking about someone else.' You wrote that. I have it stuck above my desk."
I put up both hands in surrender. "But writers are notorious liars. You have to be."
"Could I ask you not to lie to me? I promise I can take a punch. You don't have to impress me because I already am. I like what you look like, and I swear to God it doesn't matter to me if you were on the varsity football team or know aikido."
"What if I tell you I was married three times and all my exwives think I'm a dog?"
"I knew about the wives because I read all the articles I could find about you. I don't care about them because they're them and I'm different. Give me a chance and I'll show you."
"Boy, you really take it to the hoop, don't you?"
"The day we met, at your book signing? I was dying to talk to you. But when we did, I chickened out. I wanted to tell you . . . No, I can't do it even now. I'm afraid."
"What about the truth you were talking about?"
"Okay. I guess there's no difference between chickening out and lying. I want to go out with you, I want to be with you."
"No boyfriend?"
"No boyfriend. No AIDS. I'm not a feminist and I'm not promiscuous, but sitting here with you this close, I just want to kiss your mouth for a long time."
She sang in her sleep. It was only one of a number of unanticipated discoveries I was to make that eventful night. We went back to her apartment, but everything happened so fast after we got there that I forgot to look around the place to see how she lived.
We walked in the door, she kicked it shut with her foot – boom! – and took me straight into the bedroom. No matter how much experience you've had, no matter how cool or worldly you think you are, nothing prepares you for a woman who leads you into the bedroom two seconds after you've entered her apartment on the first date. I felt twelve again and as innocent as a member of the Mickey Mouse Club. She took off her clothes first while staring at me the whole time. Shoes first in the most impossibly erotic way I had ever seen. Then the white shirt fell open more and more as she undid the buttons until there were none left. She hitched her shoulders and it fell off. No bra. Breasts worth fighting a war for.
A thick silver belt buckle that she unhitched with a couple of quick movements of her hand – right, left, open. The khakis were open as quickly and then that sound any man will remember when he's old and horizontal and gasping for his last breath – the hiss of a zipper going down. Black panties. Off.
"Come here."
I'd been sitting on the bed but stood quickly and went over to her. She wouldn't let me touch her until she'd undressed me. "Not yet. Enjoy no for a few minutes."
Unlike her own strip, she undid the buttons on my shirt very slowly, stopping frequently to look at me and smile. I could smell her hair. It was some innocent child's shampoo. She had broad shoulders but her arms were thin and denned.
When my shirt was on the floor, she ran her fingertips across my chest, shoulders, down my arms and across my hands. She came in close and her hands went up my back. When I bent to kiss her, she shook her head no and turned away, although her hands continued to move.
"Veronica?"
Her hands stopped and she pulled back.
"I don't have a condom."
She bent down, reached into the pocket of her trousers and brought out a handful.
"How could you know?" I tried to sound lighthearted and skeptical in one.
"I didn't. I hoped."
Although my novels are much too full of sleazy sex, I won't even attempt to describe what it was like to sleep with Veronica Lake. Translating sex into words is not meant to be. Sure, you can whip up all sorts of steam and whipped cream for dummies by verbally throwing body parts together, but it's so far from the real thing that it's like saying a picture postcard looks like the place itself.
Much of what she knew and did I had experienced before, but what thrilled me was the combination of her fluidity and ardor. Like being out on the floor with a superb dancer who knew every step, never wanted to sit down and made you feel like you were Fred Astaire.