He knew now what Jones-Sexy-leska had done. They had taken the senior partners of the law firm to a Dallas Cowboys game and the guys had seen the cheerleaders and they'd gone a little bonkers. So they'd hired away a few of the sexiest ones, given them low-cut tops and short skirts, and had them act as receptionists and secretaries. Then they'd taken the sexiest one, put her in expensive, tailored suits, and $300 heels, and told her to pretend that she was a lawyer named Noel Collier. They had tried to call her Noel Coward but they figured that was going a little too far, so they settled.
This was the ULTIMATE cheerleader fantasy. Oh, Lord. Ohmigoodness, yes. Eichord loved everything about women. Their minds, mostly. Yes, he loved the way their minds worked. When others drooled over big boobs or long legs encased in wispy hosiery or bedroom eyes or Lorenesque mouths, he was into minds. He genuinely adored women and the mysterious and loverly way their minds worked.
But—yes, sports fans—next to that he loved the part of the anatomy one sits upon. He was what you call your basic ass-man, or as the feminists would say, your basic ass. He loved the special look and feel of a tight, high, perfect, female derriere. A great-looking ass could, as the expression has it, turn him around.
So by the time Noel Collier had reached the end of the corridor, rounding third and sliding into home, and he'd experienced the profoundly moving experience of following those two little possums wiggling in a gunnysack, he was completely ready to drop to his knees there on her office broadloom and propose marriage right then and there. Seriously, that is. And marriage is the least of it. He was ready to propose a whole lot more.
And when she sat that mouth-watering feast down in her chair and turned her gaze on him again, she was somewhat shocked to see the whole catalog of perversions etched in this cop's face and there was something so ludicrous about it rather than get angry she almost broke up and it was all she could do not to laugh in his face. Eichord was badly shook up by her and he showed it, his face reddening as he introduced himself, “I'm investigating the murders here and since you, that is we'd heard you might be talking to, or that is, uh, you'd been talking with Mr. Hackabee with respect to the possibility—” He kept fumfering around and trying to breathe and think at the same time as he looked at her. Her eyes were so sexy. So hypnotically sexy. He'd never seen any woman quite like her before, even the time he'd worked on a case out in Southern California. Never.
He could not hear what he was saying to her. Only that a babble of words was coming out and that he was not saying to her what he wanted to say. His mind was totally off the case and the business at hand and he was WRECKED by the gorgeous looks of this woman and his immediate, instant, and panting desire for her. The humor of the situation had reached her.
And she was just sitting there watching him make an idiot out of himself as he said, “I was wondering since that's the case if it might not be, uh, possible to go out, and that we could, uh, you know, talk about the thing, the Hackabee situation, and, uh—"
The response was a blink of the eyes. A blink. One, single, enormous, feathery, loud, crashing, slapping, echoing blink of the long and beautiful lashes that protected her movie-star blues.
And he kept talking, “You know, I just thought that...” He trailed off. JEEEzus. What is WRONG with me? Have I gone insane? Have I pickled my damn brains? What is happening to me? He tried to shake himself out of it and he felt like he was so dry he could barely speak, so hot he could scarcely move, and the look of her had taken his breath away, hitting him HARD like a heavyweight's jab to the solar plexus, ooooof!
“I was hoping, uh, that we could, you know...” Yes—she knows what you were hoping, you lummox. She knows all too well what you were hoping. Are you a detective or a sex fiend? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Did they bring you down to Dallas to work on an investigation or to get laid? He tried biting the inside of his lip and pinching his fingers: anything to take his mind off the single train of thought that was inexplicably and suddenly blocking out all images of crime and violence and murder and business and motive and the curious anomalies of the Hackabee case that had brought him out to meet the famous Noel Collier.
The pull had been instant. Chemical. Electrical. Mysterious. Explosive. Unmistakable. And completely one-sided. It was just one of those things. And that's with or without the fucking gossamer wings. Whatever makes things like this happen had Eichord in the palm of its hot wet hand and it was squeezing, slowly, relentlessly, inexorably, and Jack was loving it and letting it do whatever it wanted as long as he could be on the receiving end of it.
He knew about faces. On the surface this was as beautiful a face as he'd seen. Dazzling and heart-troubling beauty. WHAM! It is something you see and you swallow hard and try to recover from. About as close to a religious experience as erotica gets, especially when coupled with hot lust. But Eichord also knew a lot about what Camus calls "le face." About the masks that all of us wear. And he saw exactly what he wanted to see under this woman's perfect mask that was registering only a bemused and chilly disinterest. And so of course.... And so ... And so he asked her out. With no preamble. Not a hint of interest on her part. Never a situation that begged more for rejection, a cop and a famous defense lawyer—for one thing the adversarial position so strong as to professionally prohibit a relationship even if there'd been the basis for one—and he asks her out. He couldn't help himself. The devil made him do it. Whatever.
To her credit she did not say, “No, you jerk,” or “I don't even know you, you presumptuous, repulsive schmuck,” or any of the hundred other rejoinders he supplied for her when he ran the painful humiliation of his astonishingly incompetent and puerile confrontation with her through his mind over and over. But that would be much later. Amazingly, for the longest time, he would not admit the scene of rejection. He simply refused to let it exist. He asked her out and she had neither accepted nor refused.
He would not examine it the way it actually took place. He would not see that she had quickly smiled, almost a laugh, widened her glorious eyes, and just cocked that beautiful head to the side, an eyebrow curving up slightly as more smile lines crinkled, a rejection so absolute and devastating he could not recognize that it really happened. Because her turndown had been as unilaterally absolute as had been his turn-on. And much the same way he wouldn't allow himself to believe he'd been rejected, she wouldn't believe he'd had the balls to ask. Her body language was a point-blank, three-word, candid-gram: “Are ... you ... real?"
Dreamland
He couldn't make himself turn around and leave. He couldn't walk out of her office yet. Her face and fragrance and promise and the whole cheerleader fantasy had him nailed to the spot, riveted in place, and he forced himself to ask questions which she may or may not have answered. It was the weirdest and most uncharacteristic of situations for him. Eichord the cop had taken a cab. It was Jack Eichord, horny citizen, standing there having an audience with her majesty Noel Collier. The famous, the accomplished, the impossibly beautiful Noel Collier.
And beautiful she was indeed. He had only seen three or four breathtakingly ravishing beauties in his life. About one every ten years was the average, he thought. When he, was in the service a quarter-century ago, stationed in Europe, he'd seen Liz. He would never forget it. It was on a public beach in the South of France, and she had come out of the water like whatshername in the Greek legends, running by where he'd been sprawled out on a big beach towel. And she'd been like a vision, running by him suddenly, running and laughing, running toward somebody he never turned to see because the moment he saw the black hair and face he knew it was Elizabeth Taylor, and then, closer, he saw those eyes.