"Pretty isn't she?" Renée asked.
"A mouth waiting to be kissed," I said.
"Dewey seems pretty capable."
"Ever since he's been colonialized," I told her.
"Colonialize me," Renée said. A little half laugh played around her mouth and her eyes were full of sparkles.
"Now?"
She lifted her glass in a challenge, the big black pupils inside all those gold flecks watching me closely. Carelessly, she said, "Why not?"
I let my hand run up the bare leg that was crossed over the other one until my fingers had the top of her bikini pants under their tips and said, "Ready?"
Her glass went back to the bar top very slowly, every movement deliberate and slow to make sure nobody was watching. Even the smile was unsure of itself. "You're crazy, Mike."
"I could have told you that."
"Take your hand out of my pants."
"I'm not done yet," I said. I took a drink of my highball. Janie grinned and turned away to serve another customer. At least she knew what was happening.
Almost pathetically, Renée said, "Please?"
"You wanted to be colonialized," I told her.
"But not in front of all these people."
"Tough," I said. She felt my fingers curling around that silly little hem they build into bikini pants. I wondered what color they were.
"I know a better place to find out," Renée told me.
I'm an old soldier. I grew up watching Georgia Sothern, Gypsy Rose Lee, Ann Corio and the rest on the stage of the old Apollo and Eltinge theaters and got my lessons in basic female anatomy from the best of them. There's never been a shape or size I couldn't slam into one category or another no matter what part I was looking at and get clinical about it at the same time. Women are women. The female counterpart. They're supposed to be
something special, intelligent, loving, pneumatic, sexy as hell, incredibly beautiful, with that little thing they're instinctively supposed to do that can make a man turn inside out. Hardly any fit the pattern. Oh, I knew some.
Now I knew another.
She just stood there in the middle of the room and let the funny little smile do the teasing while she unzipped slowly and let the dress fall in a heap around her feet.
"Better?" Renée asked.
I nodded. But casually, because she still hadn't caught up to Georgia Sothern. That one could really take off her clothes. She used to do it to "Hold that Tiger," but that music would sound silly these days. "You're doing fine," I told her.
"Can I have a drink?"
I tasted my own highball and loosened my tie. "If that's what you need to uninhibit yourself, baby, the bar's right behind you."
She lifted herself on tiptoe, nothing on but a flesh-colored bra and bikini pants with other colors dominating the sheer mesh, and grinned at me like she was running all the plays. "Like?"
"I like," I said.
She hooked her thumb in the top of those bikini pants and pulled them down a bare inch. A little tumble of dark hair spilled out over the top. "Like?" Her voice was provocatively inquisitive.
"I like," I said again.
She took off her bra. She spilled out there too, full and high, heavy breasted with round, square-tipped, demanding nipples emerging from their even darker cores.
"Still like?" she asked. I watched her eyes drift down me, all stretched out on my own damn couch. For a second she was puzzled.
I said, "I'm a leg man, kid."
Then she grinned again and took off those flesh-colored bikini pants.
Naked women are pretty. Damn, but they're pretty. Any size, any shape you look, and when they're built like all those pinups we used to have on the inside of locker doors and the kind they plaster up in garages to keep your mind off the repair bills, they can con you into anything.
And Renée knew what I was thinking. "For real?" she asked.
"You must be one hell of a business asset," I said.
"William never saw me like this."
"Why not?"
She twirled around, picked the drinks off the bar and handed me another one. "He never put his hands inside my pants," she said.
"Stop being vulgar," I told her.
"Ho . . . yeah. Keep talking, fingers."
"I barely touched you."
"Except in the right spot," Renée said.
"Sorry about that."
"Yes, you are. Little scarred feathers extending from your wrist, delicate, woman-killing tentacles that touch and excite. Look at me, totally bare and throwing it at you, and you lying there with a drink in your hand and all you have off is your top collar button because your tie is too tight."
"Like?" I said.
"Like, you dumbhead," Renée smiled. "I often wondered what I could do to a nasty slob like you." She took a big sip of her drink, put it back on the bar and walked toward me, the fingers of her hand spread out over the delicious swell of those sleek, wide hips.
"I think you're impotent," she said.
The laugh stayed behind my lips. I put my drink down and looked at her, big and naked and lovely, all nice high titties and a dark curly snatch, her smile almost a sneer, and I said very softly, "Oh, brother."
"What?"
"In the Army we said you were ready to be rued, screwed, blued and tattooed."
"You're not doing anything."
"I'm wondering why I should."
"Perhaps you can't."
As carefully as I could I slid off the couch and shrugged my coat off. I picked the .45 out of the shoulder holster and laid the leather on the floor. Then I picked off my tie, unbuttoned my shirt and flicked the belt out of its restraints. My pants were only a hindrance. I let them go around my feet and kicked them aside.
"So you're not impotent," she said after a long, hungry glance.
I sat down on the couch again and picked up my drink. All I had was ice left. "I could have told you that."
"Talking isn't proving."
"Sugar," I told her, "you're forgetting something. There's nothing I have to prove. I get what I want whenever I want it. I can name the time, place and position. Twenty years ago I would have hosed a snake if somebody held it down for me, but now I'm selective. It's
still a man's world, baby, but you have to be a man to live in it. Then again, I'm still curious."
Her forehead wrinkled inquisitively. "Curious? About what? There's nothing more to show you unless I turn inside out."
"Don't do that. I just had the rug cleaned." I grinned at her.
Then she laughed, picked up her drink and sat down in my Naugahyde relincer like she was at a presidential reception. "Curious," she said again. Her eyes went up and down me twice, her smile getting broader. "We make a great couple. Naked six feet apart. What can be more curious than that?"
I got up, mixed another drink and went back to the couch again. "Why you came on so strong. This is our second time out, kid. Two hellos and you're ready to go fifteen rounds in the hay. You're class, big business and big money with enough style to snag any guy you want ..." I held up my hand to cut off her interruption ". .. and suddenly you get the hots for a lousy beat-up old soldier in the shadow police business."
Renée's teeth glistened in her smile and she raised her glass in a mock toast to me. "Crude, but very astute, Mike. But I told you I was going to cultivate you, didn't I?"
I nodded.
"And I told you it would be hard, didn't I?"
I grinned back and adjusted my position. There were times when a guy could be quite uncomfortable.
"So the answer should be obvious," she said. "I enjoy my position, I enjoy my wealth, I take pleasure from my social obligations, but oh, they're so damned dull." She nodded toward the window. "There aren't any challenges left out there. I operate on a man's level, but they won't let me get in there and swing. Everybody's so hellishly condescending and polite, patting my head because I did my homework and came up with the right answers. Then when nobody's looking they try to pat my fanny and always seem to miss. Sometimes I wish one of them would get me alone in the stockroom or something."