Crossing the bed-sitting room, I swung the door wide.
Rachie Cameron was standing in the gloomy hallway. She was wearing a skirt, and a blouse cut in straight lines like a short smock with a loose drawstring neck. The smoothness of her tanned cheeks was flushed. Her short, dark hair was a little disheveled.
“Hi, ugly man.”
“What brings you to this neighborhood?”
For answer, she looked me up and down, little pinpoints of light sparking in her eyes.
Her grin was more a sullen pout. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“Sure.”
She let her loose, careless walk carry her into the apartment. As she passed close, I inhaled a deep breath. If she’d been drinking, I couldn’t smell it.
I closed the door and watched her survey the apartment. “Just like I pictured it,” she said, as if something had pleased her.
She was carrying a large straw handbag. She took out a cigarette, lighted it, and dropped the handbag on the day bed.
Her passage to the kitchenette doorway was leisurely. “I’m starved,” she said.
“Sit down and help yourself.”
She got acquainted with the kitchenette quickly, filling a plate and sitting across the table from me.
“Beer?” I asked.
“Uh huh.”
I got her a can of beer, opened it, and handed it to her.
“I’m glad you didn’t put it in a glass,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“It would have been out of character. I’ll bet you don’t act out of character often.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t spend much time analyzing myself.”
“It’s because you’re not all mixed up. You know who you are.”
She ate quickly, hungrily. With a crust of bread she scooped bean sauce from her plate.
When she had gone through the rough grub, she lit another cigarette, propped her elbows on the table, and sat sipping her beer and smoking. “Can I fix you something else, Ed?”
“No, thanks. How about yourself?”
“Had plenty.”
I shoved the chair back and started to pick up the dishes.
“You’re not going to bother with those now, are you?” she asked.
“I’d thought about it.”
“Let them go. A few dirty dishes won’t hurt anything.”
She stood up, gathered the things, and made a piled-up mess of the sink. Then she went into the bed-sitting room and sat on the day bed with her feet tucked under her. She smoked and let the ashes dribble on the floor. With a contented stretch, she leaned the back of her head and shoulders against the wall.
She acted as if the apartment were a natural habitat where she had been a long time and which she had no intention of leaving.
“You’re a long way from Davis Islands,” I said.
“Those damned prisses!”
“Your father know where you are?”
“Why should he? I’m a quarter-century old, ugly man. I quit taking orders from that jerk a long time ago.”
“You’re a very good-looking girl.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that most girls of your age and looks are married.”
“Ninnies,” she said.
I moved near the day bed, to the table that held the telephone. She uncoiled and stood up.
I picked up the phone, and she said, “What are you doing?”
“I think your father should know where you are.”
“I won’t have him coming here after me! I won’t!”
I had the phone half-raised to my ear. She grabbed the cord and jerked the phone out of my hand. It struck the floor. When I bent and reached for it, she tried to beat me to it.
I shoved her back a couple of feet and tried to hold her off with my free hand.
She uttered an unladylike word, freed herself, and made another try at the phone. She got her hands on it and tried to yank it from my ear.
Her hand slipped. Her nails left a stinging red furrow down the side of my face. As I put the phone down slowly, she backed off a step or two.
All the boredom was gone from her now. The vacant film had vanished from the surface of her dark eyes. Her breath quickened.
“You’re bleeding, Ed.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean to do it. Let me fix it up for you.”
She darted into the bathroom, clicked the light on. I heard her rummaging in the medicine cabinet. She sounded as if she were taking stuff out at random, making a mess, putting nothing back.
She came out carrying a bottle of after-shave lotion.
“The Merthiolate would leave your face all marked. This will do just as well.”
She stood close to me, pouring a few drops of the lotion in her hand. She patted the fingernail marks.
“Does it sting, Ed?”
“A little.”
“You wouldn’t mind a little hurt like that. It would take a real hurt to flatten a man like you, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ve been flattened,” I said.
The movement of her fingers slowed. They rested, lingering against my cheek.
She dropped the shave-lotion bottle on the table. Her other hand rose. The back of her knuckles brushed the hard, late-in-the-day stubble on my jowl.
“Don’t throw me out, Ed,” she pleaded softly. “I’ve thought of nothing but you since you came to the house. You don’t know what it’s like, the dullness, the monotony, the boredom that strangles you until you think you’ll scream.”
She was young and beautiful. I’m a man and therefore not immune. Then I saw the receding depths of her eyes and unpleasant, tiny spider feet slipped up and down my spine.
I gripped her wrists and pushed her away from me.
“You don’t need me,” I said. “What you need is a good spanking or something to interest you enough to cause you to put in a few hard days of work.”
“Go ahead and be mean to me,” she said, suddenly sullen.
“I think you’d enjoy it if I did,” I told her. “But get one thing straight, Rachie. You’re no dice with me.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Good night, Rachie.”
“I won’t go home!” she threatened. “I’ll go out and do something desperate.”
“Maybe your father will pick up the pieces.”
“You wouldn’t care a bit, would you?”
“Well, you’re a quarter-century old.”
Her demeanor and voice underwent another of those quick changes. “Couldn’t I make you care just a little, Ed? You’re being mean and brutal, you know.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re treating me like this because you know I can’t strike back.”
“And you’re having fun, a break in that streak of boredom. But I haven’t any more time. I’ve got work to do.”
Chapter 9
“Work?” she said.
“That’s right. You can look the word up in the dictionary sometime.”
“Are you still fooling around with that Yamashita thing?”
“Still trying, Rachie.”
“They were icky” — she curled her nose—” except for Ichiro.”
I didn’t permit myself to glance at her. “I guess you miss the good times you and Ichiro had.”
“I said he was passable. I didn’t say he was charged.”
“Still, he’s gone.”
“Everything ends,” she said. “Why think about it?”
“I imagine your father would have wanted someone more stable for you.”
“Ordinarily he’d have given a cat like Ichiro the boot.”
“Ordinarily?”
“He didn’t try to examine Ichiro too closely.” A sneer touched her voice. “Money involved, you know. Yamashita had the controlling interest in the firm.”
“When did you last see Ichiro?”
“The day that he died.” She grinned at me. “That gave you a start, didn’t it?”