I wrapped one hand in her hair and jerked back her head. Her hands ripped open my shirt as I mashed my lips against hers.
Finally, I picked her up and carried her across the room. She kicked open the closed door.
It was dark in the room and hot. My body was wet with sweat. Edie stirred beside me.
“Cigarette?” she said, and her voice cracked.
I felt her groping toward the table beside the bed. She sat up and a moment later a match flared. She had two cigarettes in her mouth. I watched her light them and then she flicked out the match and stretched out beside me, putting an ashtray on her flat stomach.
We smoked in silence.
After a long while she said, “Tell me all about you, Matt.”
I told her. And later, when I had finished, she sucked in a deep breath and said, “Will you stay with me all week end? We won’t even have to go out of the house.”
I put one arm around her shoulders and squeezed her. “You’ll have to blast me out to get rid of me, baby.”
She laughed softly then and sat up straight, spilling the ashtray. She reached for a lamp and turned it on, and then brushed the ashes out of the bed and looked down at me. She was smiling.
“I’ve got a secret,” she said slyly.
“Yeah?”
She turned away from me and leaned over the side of the bed. I heard metal clicking against metal and I started to shove up on one elbow.
“No,” she said without looking at me. “Just stay where you are.”
I heard a sharp click then, and a whirring noise. After that her soft laughter. Then her voice: Talk dirty to me, Matt. I love it.
A shiver went up my back as I heard my own voice. The things I said almost made me sick.
Her voice came on again. Beautiful, Matt. More. Tell me more.
My voice was hardly more than a harsh, rasping whisper, but it was clear and audible.
Edie dropped one arm over the side of the bed and I heard a click. It became ominously silent in the room. I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do. And then I was on her fast, my balled fist pounding viciously into her belly. A hard object smashed against my head, stopping me.
I flopped back on the bed as I clutched my head. Edie leaned over me; there was a glass ashtray in her hand. Her face was not a good thing to see.
“Don’t ever do that again!” she shouted.
“You dirty, rotten—” The words flowed out of my mouth. Some of them I’d never used before in my life.
“You know all of the dirty names, don’t you?”
I stared up at her. “Why, Edie? Why a tape recording?”
“It’s a hobby,” she said, grinning nastily. “A profitable hobby.”
Quite a few things drifted into place then. And all of a sudden I thought I understood why she had been waiting for me outside of Joe’s. Or did I?
“There’s no rich hither in New Orleans, is there, Edie?”
“My old man was a seaman. I never saw him in my life.”
“And I guess you never lived in New Orleans. But... but why’d you pick me. A college boy. I haven’t got a hundred bucks to my name.”
I got to her with that. She frowned down at me and shook her head. Then, “I don’t know. I don’t really know why you. I guess maybe it was the way you looked at me in the library.”
“Sweet Jesus!”
“I know you don’t have money. Not my kind of money. But—”
She let it hang there, searching for words.
“I won’t give you a dime, Edie.”
“I don’t want a dime — from you.”
I pushed her away and sat up. “Okay, it’s been fun. You’ve had your kicks. Now give me that tape.”
She sat up on the edge of the bed and reached toward the floor. I turned my back to her and started to scoot out of the bed.
“Matt?”
I twisted around. She was up on one knee on the bed, leaning toward me. Her arm was raised high above her head. There was a spike-heeled shoe in her hand. I wasn’t fast enough. The heel crashed down on my head. Blackness hit me fast. I didn’t even have the sensation of sinking into the bed.
I wasn’t sure how long I was out. When I came around I was only sure of the sharp pains, like shooting needles, stabbing my mind. I opened my eyes, blinked, and closed them.
“Headache, Matt?”
Her voice came from above me. I opened my eyes again. She was sitting on the edge of the bed beside me, smoking a cigarette. She had put on a white gown. It was diaphanous and under it every flowing curve of her tanned body was visible and beautiful.
“I’m sorry I had to do that,” she said. “But I had to hide the tape.”
“You bitch!”
She smiled. Calmly, she butted her cigarette in an ashtray on her lap and put the ashtray on the floor. Turning slightly, she leaned over me. The front of her gown parted and the ring dropped on my chest. I looked down at it. It was a plain gold ring, no stones, just a gold band. And it was looped in a heavy gold chain around her neck.
It was my wedding ring.
I reached for it and started to jerk the chain from her neck, but her hand covered mine, stopping me.
“I want it, Matt. At least for this week end.” Her eyes bored into mine.
“For God’s sake, why?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a tiny smile curving her mouth. “I don’t really know.”
My hand with the ring in it flinched and her grip tightened. “I said I want it, Matt. Now please be a good boy. Don’t be difficult. Don’t force me to mail our little tape to Morgansville.”
“Morgansville?” I said in surprise.
“That’s where your wife is, isn’t it? Mrs. Matt Lane, care of T. M. Morrow, Morgansville, Illinois.”
I loosened my grip on the ring gradually. Then, “Has it ever occurred to you, baby, that I might be quite capable of killing you?”
“Yes. Yes, it has. But if you stop and think about it, Matt, killing me will only make things worse for you. You’d be wanted for murder then. As it is, you’re not wanted for anything — by the police. Right now all you have to do is be a real nice boy for one week end. Real nice to me. And then you get your ring back and a tape recording and a nice neat return to a dull life.”
I heard it, but I couldn’t believe it. People like Edie just didn’t exist.
I said, “You’re crazy, Edie.”
She shook her head slowly, her face tight. “No, not crazy. Maybe sick, but not crazy.”
“Sick?”
“Some doctors say nymphomania is a sickness. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. All I know is, I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Even when I was a little girl...”
There was a long silence and I didn’t break it.
Finally, she said, “The only difference between me and most of the other girls like me, I’m cashing in on it.”
“Okay,” I said wearily. “I might have sixty-eight bucks in the bank. I’m not sure. But whatever is there, you can have. Just give me my ring and that tape and—”
She was shaking her head. “No. I told you, Matt, I don’t want a dime from you.”
“Well, my God, what do you want?”
“Just you, for the next two days and nights.”
I could hardly believe what my ears had heard.