I reached down, took the halter top in one hand and pulled her to her feet.
Instantly, her eyes showed fear.
“You promised no rough stuff,” she said.
“Who said anything about rough stuff?” I asked. “I want to help your memory along. Maybe reminding you of him will do it.”
I leaned down and kissed her, opening her lips with my tongue.
She didn’t move her body but her lips worked against mine, responding at once.
“Is that what you miss?” I murmured, not taking my lips from hers, still holding her by the front of the halter.
“Bastard,” she murmured back.
I let my tongue reach deep down into her, flicking back and forth, and I felt her body quiver.
“Hows the memory?” I breathed, still holding my mouth on hers. “Getting better?”
“Bastard!” she said, trying to tear away but clutching at me at the same time. “Stop it. That’s not fair.”
I let my hands drop down to press across the halter and rest on her two high, round breasts.
She threw her head back and a half-sobbing cry escaped her. Her hands still clutched at my arms.
“Do you remember being held this way?” I asked. “Remember?”
“Oh, Christ!” she cried. “Cut it out. I can’t stand it. Stop playing with me this way.”
I stopped playing with her. I slid ray hand under the halter to seize one softly firm, young breast.
Aggie almost screamed and threw her body against me. Her hips were making round motions, churning against my groin. She reached back and undid the halter top and it fell off to free my hand around her breast.
I ran my thumb across the small, pink, almost recessed tip, and she began to feverishly rub her body up and down against mine. Her breasts were indeed round and full and very youthful, and she pressed them into my hands, and her mouth against my neck was taking small bites.
I held her back for a moment and looked at her straining face, eyes tightly shut. She was nearly mad with desire, this unsubtle, simple little creature, delirious with unbridled, naked, raw desire.
I thought of how Marina, too, had been a creature of raw desire.
One was overheated from not having, the other from having. For a fleeting moment I found myself admiring this Karminian. In his own way, he was playing quite a game.
But then Aggie’s fervid desire shut all else out. Her shoulders were moving in a circular, rotating motion and I felt her breasts grinding into my palms, her hips moving against my stomach.
I was experiencing a close-up version of her dance. I reached down, put one arm between her legs and lifted her from the floor to carry her into the bedroom.
She had the pajama bottoms nearly off by the time I put her down on the bed and as she tossed and writhed I took in her firm, young, full figure. She was compact, and every motion of her body implored, begged, entreated.
I undressed and laid my chest atop hers.
Aggie began to twist and turn and moan, small, happy sounds coming from her lips, more than gasps and not quite words. Unlike Marina, there was nothing languorous, nothing subtle, nothing refined about Aggie Foster’s lovemaking. The exotic dancer was still basically a Midwest, small-town girl, and her lovemaking was blunt, a driving, uncontrollable force.
Aggie clutched me to her and rolled over atop me, her firm, compact body pumping and thrusting and driving.
I seized her shoulders and began to match the harsh, demanding movements.
She flung herself backward and cried out for me to do more. She didn’t want brutality, and masochism wasn’t part of her. She was merely totally caught up in raw passion.
As I made love to her, Aggie lifted her torso from the bed with each driving thrust, higher and higher, astonishing me with the strength of her small form. As I matched her every pushing, pumping movement, she cried out for more until suddenly she almost leaped into the air and clasped me to her with a wriggling, hip-grinding cry of ecstasy, and it was over and done with.
We lay side by side with only the bittersweet ecstasy left, the almost painful sensitivity of two spent bodies.
After a while, Aggie raised her head and I saw her eyes begin to focus, to return to earth as it were, and she looked at me as if coming out of a dream, her voice strained, hoarse.
“Christ,” she breathed. “Oh, Christ, I’d never have believed it. I didn’t think anyone could be better than Anton.”
“You shouldn’t make comparisons,” I chided.
“I’m not,” she breathed, resting her cheek on my chest. “I’m just saying what’s true.”
Once again, as I had with Marina, I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of her warm, unguarded mood, of this brief period when she was emotionally my captive.
“Did you ever hear him mention someone called Rashid the Rif?” I asked softly. I saw her head nod.
“Just before he disappeared,” she answered. “He told me he was afraid of someone called Rashid.”
I grimaced to myself. The old bastard had lied, as I felt certain he had.
“Did Karminian take you to his apartment often?”
I asked, tossing out another one.
The whole tiling was being made up of unexplainable bits and pieces. It was becoming a game of how many more contradictions I could uncover.
“Never,” Aggie murmured. “We either came here or went out.”
“He smoked, didn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Horrible, strong Turkish cigarettes. Nothing else but and he chain-smoked them.”
Contradictions, contradictions and more of the same. I let Aggie cling to me a few minutes longer and then I moved out from beneath her. I had to get away and review this puzzle of contrasts but first I was going to pay another visit to Rashid the Rif.
Karminian had dealt with him and recently. It was the one solid bit of information I had, confirmed by both Marina and Aggie.
This time Rashid would talk. I looked forward to another meeting with the evil, falcon-eyed Rif.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Aggie said as I finished putting on my clothes. “I meant that about wanting you to paint me.”
“Of course,” I said, taking in the compact, earthy sexiness of her body as she lay looking up at me. “I’ll stop by after you get back from the club... or perhaps just before you go. I’ll see you.”
“I like you,” she said unexpectedly. “I mean, I think you’re a nice person.”
I smiled down at her.
The remark was so like her, simple, direct, uncomplicated. I put one hand upon her round breast and she held it there. I suddenly felt very sorry for Aggie Foster. She ought to have been back in Akron, Ohio, bedding down with some nice, simple, uncomplicated guy.
“I’ll be back,” I promised, and she let my hand go and turned over to snooze some more.
I left her that way and started down the street. It would be dark before I reached the medina, but I didn’t hurry.
I was deep in thought, trying to unravel a mystery called Karminian, a paragon of contradictions, a split personality to end all split personalities. What solid information I’d uncovered only served to make the overall picture of the man more puzzling. But it wasn’t just that, merely puzzling, I realized. The whole damned thing was somehow out of shape, a picture out *of focus.
Aggie Foster described a man who was a wild swinger, a big drinker, an extrovert who loved crowds.
Marina told of a shy man who hardly ever drank, an introvert who hated crowds.
Aggie knew a jazz nut who knew the styles and habits of all the jazz greats, a real jazz buff who could dig it for hours.
Marina knew a lover of Scarlatti and Palestrina and poetry.
With Aggie he smoked only strong, Turkish cigarettes.
With Marina, never anything but his pipes.