I was suddenly a different guy. I wasn’t teaching physical education to a bunch of kids at a small midwest college. I didn’t have a wife named Anne. And I didn’t have a nice, warm, little apartment two blocks off the campus.
And all because that girl was burned in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
After my final class Friday afternoon, I went straight from the gymnasium to the library. But the girl wasn’t there. Nervous and sweating, I hung around for over an hour, waiting.
The girl didn’t show. My disappointment was so bitter I walked downtown to Joe’s to drown it. An icy wind seeped right through my coat and crept into my bones, and the first snow of the season was coming down. It was a lousy day. Gray, cold, snowing, and no girl. I had to get the girl out of my system, but I didn’t know how. I had another beer. Drinking didn’t help. I walked out of Joe’s at ten minutes after nine.
I saw the convertible as I hit the street. It was parked at the curb right in front of me. There was a shadow slumped behind the steering wheel and I saw a red cigarette glow in the dark. Then the shadow moved and the car door in front of me opened.
“Get in, Matt,” the soft voice of the girl said.
I got in without saying anything. It was a neat car, new, with safety belts and all the trimmings. The girl dropped her cigarette out of the wing window, kicked over the motor of the convertible and pulled away from the curb into the line of traffic. At the first stop light she said, “I’ve been waiting over an hour.”
“How did you know I was at Joe’s?”
She laughed softly. “I know plenty about you, Matt Lane — now. I’ve made inquiries.”
I twisted on the seat, opened my coat, and purposely put one knee against her thigh.
She didn’t even give me a glance. “My name is Edie Jackson,” she said. “My home is in New Orleans. I came up here to school because I wanted to be out on my own.”
The windshield wipers whisking the snow from the window made the only sound in the car.
I got out a cigarette and fired my lighter.
“Light two,” she said.
She didn’t ask me to light two cigarettes. She didn’t say please. She just said, “Light two.”
I lit two and gave one to her. She glanced at me then and smiled.
“Do you always get what you want?” I asked.
“Almost always. My father is a very wealthy man. And he dotes on me.”
“Other than your father?”
“Almost always.”
“Like now?”
I saw her frown. “What do you mean?” she said.
“You saw me looking at you in the library yesterday afternoon and for some reason you decided I was for you.”
She laughed softly.
“You’ve got it twisted, haven’t you, Matt?” she asked. “Turn it around. You want me.”
I didn’t say anything then. I couldn’t.
“Do I shock you, Matt? If I do, you’ll have to get used to it. I’m like that. I say what I think, and I do what I want to do.”
“I’m not sure I like you,” I said slowly.
“But you want me. And that’s what counts.”
She turned the car off of the main thoroughfare onto a sidestreet. We eased along another block, and then she turned into a driveway. I had a look at the house as the headlights swept over it. It was a small place with an attached single car garage. She drove the convertible into the garage and switched off the lights. A light in the back seat popped on when she opened her door.
I reached out suddenly and grabbed her wrist. She had one long leg out of the car. Twisting in the seat, she looked at me and I saw her tiny mocking smile.
“You’re taking a lot for granted, aren’t you, Miss Jackson?”
“Am I?”
We sat there a long time without moving, measuring each other with our eyes. And then she said, “I live here Matt — alone. Your wife is out of town. Now, do you want to come in for a drink?”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You’re jailbait. I’m twenty-four.”
Her face clouded and she gently twisted her arm out of my grasp. “That’s something else you should know about me, Matt. I’m a woman. I’m eighteen in years, but I’m twice that age otherwise. I’ve had men, plenty of men. Not boys still wet behind the ears, Matt. I hate fumbling, sniveling boys. When I want somebody, he is a man!”
She got out of the car then and stood beside the open door, looking in at me. “Coming?”
We went into the house through a kitchen. She pulled the drapes across the windows in the front room before turning on a pair of lamps. I looked around. The room was expensively furnished. There was a fireplace in one wall; three logs were burning slowly. To my left was an open room that had been furnished as a study and behind me was the kitchen. To my right was a closed door.
“The bedroom,” Edie said, following the line of my eyes. She smiled then and slipped out of her fur coat. Whisking the green beret off of her head, she said, “Your coat.”
I shrugged out of it and she put it with hers in a small closet near the front door.
I looked her up and down then, making no attempt to hide the fact that I was taking a surface inventory. She was wearing slacks; they were dark green and showed off her figure.
My hands felt damp. I wiped them on my thighs.
She smiled and waved her arm toward a low sofa in front of the fireplace. “Make yourself at home, Matt. What’ll you have to drink?”
“Anything.”
She went into the kitchen. A moment later I heard the slam of a refrigerator door and then the crack of an ice cube tray being opened. I walked to the kitchen entry and stood there looking at her.
“Bourbon?” she said over her shoulder.
“With something sweet.”
She mixed the drinks and we went to the sofa in front of the fireplace. I sat down.
“Do you like music?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I like the classics,” she said.
There was a record player beside the sofa with a record on it. She clicked a switch on the player and music, low and soft, filled the room. Then she sat down beside me and put her leg against mine all the way up.
I looked at her.
“Why do you want me?” she asked over the rim of her glass, her eyes probing mine.
“Why does a man want any woman?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I want you to tell me.”
I thought about it. Why did I want her? What crazy thing was it that had me sitting with her in the front room of her place? Me, a guy with a helluva sweet wife and a decent future. Why the hell was I here? Why was I jeopardizing everything I had and everything I might have? There didn’t seem to be a logical answer.
“You can’t tell me?” she said softly.
I stared at my feet. “No.”
I felt her hand crawl over my thigh then. “Don’t let it bother you, Matt,” she said. “I’ve never had a satisfactory answer either.”
I gulped my drink and put the glass on the floor.
“Matt?”
Twisting, I looked up at her. She was smiling cozily.
“I want to dance for you,” she said.
“Dance?”
“You’ll like it,” she said softly.
Too puzzled to move, I sat there on the sofa watching her. She began to sway with the music coming from the record player. Her mouth was fixed in a half-smile, lips open, straight white teeth gleaming. Her eyes became slits. She whirled around the room, head high, breasts straining. I watched her, fascinated. And then she was back in front of me, her body swaying suggestively. I saw her hand go to the buttons on the front of her blouse. The buttons came open and in one swirling motion she stripped out of the blouse and flung it away from her. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The naked half of her body was a honey-colored sheen in the lamplight, breasts tip-tilted. She turned her back to me. One hand opened the slacks above her hip and the slacks inched down. Suddenly she whirled around and the slacks dropped to the floor. She stepped out of them and danced forward and into my arms.