Pohl turned his head away and saw a man standing on the opposite side of the room, watching Angela. He couldn’t see the features of the man’s face, the light was behind him, but it was the silhouette of a man wearing a neat, dark suit. He stood with his legs apart and his feet firmly planted on the floor, his hands lost in the pockets of his trousers. Then his voice came out in a gasp. “That’s enough,” he said. “Now, come here.”
Angela went willingly. She pushed off the wall with the back of her head, she edged forward on her knees. Her distorted mouth, a wide, perverted grin, pleased the observing man. A squeaking noise came from her bare knees moving across the polished floor. The man stepped out of the light to let the full force of it wash over her. She was more breathtaking now than any other time Pohl had seen her. He quickly forgot about the other man and spent a long time looking at the woman he loved.
The man in the neat, dark suit sneezed, then wiped his nose with a handkerchief. Pohl’s eyes snapped off Angela and switched to the man. But there was still a humming sound coming from the thing inside her, the muscles held it snugly in place, and he turned his head again to look at her. She strained her neck and her head and body went from side to side as she advanced toward the man. A thread of saliva hung from the corner of her mouth. It swung outward, then attached itself to her chin and hung down from there. Pohl liked the look of it.
Angela lost her balance. She fell over on her side, her face turned toward Pohl. The strap of the ball-gag came loose and the ball, wet and shiny, popped out of her mouth when she hit the floor. Her hands weren’t tied behind her back, she’d just kept them there obediently. She didn’t see Pohl. She started to laugh, the laughter built into a roar, and the man giggled like a twelve-year-old girl. It was the sort of laugh that made Pohl bite his lower lip. He didn’t like it, and he didn’t like the man who didn’t try to stifle it because it was really painful to see Angela doing what she was doing with a man who laughed like that. He groaned, let the latchkey fall from his hand. It made a light ringing sound on the floor that got Angela’s attention. She raised her head, saw him, and her eyes blinked, startled. Her hands went forward, bracing herself to stand up. The vibrator fell out of her pussy and spun in circles on the floor. Pohl turned, ran out of the apartment. He took the stairs two at a time, going down.
[ 4 ]
Lew Burnett pulled on his trousers over a pair of silk socks, tucked in his shirt, fastened his belt, and tied the knot of his tie with an expression on his face that suggested the tie was going to be used to hang him. Angela wanted something from him and he didn’t know what it was going to be. She wouldn’t have said yes to what she’d been saying no to for so long if she didn’t want to get something out of him. He picked out a pair of low, black leather boots. He cleaned them with a soft cloth and a horsehair brush, slipped them on and tied them up. He combed his hair straight back and sprayed himself with an earthy scent. He laughed softly. It was the laugh of a twelve-yearold girl. The face in the mirror laughed with him, gave him a generous look and smiled.
He switched off the lights in each room as he made his way to the front door, gathered up his keys, a handful of coins from the entrance table. He made a loose fist around the coins, shook them in his hand like dice. Folding the raincoat over his arm, he went out the door and locked it behind him.
Twenty minutes later he pulled over to the curb on Birch Street and cut the engine. He sat behind the wheel thinking although he knew that thinking wasn’t going to give him any clue what she was up to. But he knew what he was going to do with her. He figured that she didn’t have any experience with what he wanted from her. Doing it with a kind of amateur made it more exciting. He felt the blood pulse in his veins. He stared through the light rain sprinkling the windshield at the entrance to Angela’s building on Lake Street. No matter what she wanted from him it was going to be worth it. The thought of her doing what he told her to do enveloped him like a warm bath, and he lounged back in the leather upholstered seat and allowed the undulating waters to cover him.
He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke swirl up and out and break like a wave against the dashboard. When he finished the cigarette he tossed it out the window. Burnett looked at himself in the rearview mirror, put the tip of his finger in his mouth, moistened it, then reached up to smooth his eyebrows. He got out of the car with the raincoat in his hand.
[ 5 ]
Aquarter moon rode high over the buildings of the downtown district sliced down the middle by a black river faintly colored by pale moonlight and spanned by bridges lit by sodium-vapor lamps. Rows of streetlights stretched off in all directions, and to the southeast, parts of the surface of the 22,400-square-mile lake shrugged its whitecapped shoulders in gusts of wind.
Clouds gathered in the sky above the lake and it looked like rain. They moved slowly in from the north, becoming thick and dark, traveling low and grazing the tops of tall buildings, and in a little while a mistlike rain blew between the buildings.
The streetlights and neon signs on Jackson Street made crazy swirling patterns of color on the sidewalk and the roofs and hoods and windshields of cars parked the length of the street. Then the rain began to fall in sheets, flattening discarded newspapers against the sides of buildings and on the sidewalk. The wind blew plastic cups and empty beer and soda cans in the gutter, making a racket with the sound of bouncing hollow aluminum containers, a racket almost but not quite drowned out by the steady pounding of the downpour.
The wind died down but the rain fell continuously all over the night city: on the brick façade of the huge brewery where a nightshift was working, a disused appliance manufacturer at the edge of the city limit and a suburb, the expensive apartment buildings overlooking the lake on the Eastside, a tool and die factory, a tractor assembly plant, the taverns and modest dirty, cream-colored brick houses on the Southside, the warehouses along the river where all the windows had been dark for hours, and the wealthy suburban areas to the north and east.
The rain began to slacken, and a heavy silence filled the vacancy the rain had left in the city.
[ 6 ]
Angela pressed the button next to the intercom to let Lew Burnett into the building. She was thirty years old. She wore a short black skirt and an emerald silk blouse. Her pale skin was as smooth as the skin of an eighteen-year-old. Her reddish-brown hair was cut at a slight angle to her shoulders. She swung the door open with enthusiasm. Burnett walked in wet with a raincoat over his arm. She started to say something, but stopped herself at the moment he turned to look at her. Her hands were a delicate gesture, and her sea-blue eyes were like the sun on a lake.
He handed her his raincoat, then went straight to the living room, sat down in a chair, threw one leg over the other, dangling a boot that kicked out gently at the air. She went to the bathroom and came back with a towel. She handed it to him. He rubbed his hair with it, then combed his hair back with his hands. Angela slanted her eyes down at him and the smile on her mouth was the way he wanted a woman to smile at him. He giggled. She turned around and went out of the room. He stood up, looking at the furniture, walls and floor. Angela came back an instant later. Burnett looked up, glanced around from wall to wall, then the ceiling again and then the floor.