“Throw me my robe, dear.”
He balled it up and threw it to her. He got up and hobbled to the bed and sat down. She came around the foot of the bed and sat beside him. The robe, belted in a new way, covered her.
“Poor Kirby,” she said.
“Sure.”
She patted his arm. She chuckled. “I’ve never been undressed quite that fast before.”
“Very hilarious,” he said.
She touched his chin, turned his head so that he looked down into her eyes. For the moment she looked very sad. “You do tempt me, dear. Because you are so very sweet and nice. Too many charades these days. And too many men who are not like you in any respect.”
“If they were all like me, the survival of the race would be in doubt.”
She pulled him closer. He kissed her, abashedly at first and then with mounting enthusiasm. When he toppled her back, she wiggled free and shook her head and made a face at him. “No, dear. Joseph and I are very fond of you. And you have had a ghastly time. And Joseph told me to care for you. Now hop into bed like a sweet lamb, and take off the top of the pretty pyjamas and lay face down and I shall make you feel very, very good.”
“But—”
“Darling, don’t be a bore, please. I don’t want to change our friendship so soon, do you?”
“If you’re asking me—”
“Hush. Some day, soon maybe, you will become my lover. Who can tell? Is it not more fun to guess? Be a good boy.”
He stretched out as instructed. She came back after turning out all the lights but one. She poured something cool and aromatic onto his back and began to knead the muscles of his back and shoulders and the nape of his neck with clever fingers.
“My word, you have lovely muscles, dear,” she said.
“Dynamic tension.”
“What?”
“Exercises anyone can do.”
“Oh. Now just let everything fall away. Slide down into the darkness, sweet Kirby. Abandon yourself to pure sensation.”
“Um.”
“Rest, my dear. Rest.”
Her soothing hands stroked the tension out of him. He was so completely exhausted he could have fallen into sleep like falling ten thousand feet into a midnight swamp. But her touch, her gentle teasing voice, the awareness of her fragrant and erotic presence kept him suspended, floating on the surface of sleep. She hummed and the tune seemed familiar, as though he had heard it in a foreign movie.
He reached back through time to the previous Wednesday, at midnight. Fifty-seven hours ago? That was when the word had reached him at his hotel in Montevideo. The old man was dead. Omar Krepps. Uncle Omar. It was shocking to think that even death itself had the power to reach out and take that strange, invulnerable little man.
As he thought of the return trip he sank deeper in the pool of sleep and his images became confused, changed by Charla. The breast-nosed jet took off down a pale silken runway of tenderest flesh while the nude and shadowy hostesses gathered close around him, humming to him. In the midst of this half-sleep he was vaguely aware of Charla turning him, helping him into the pyjama top. Her mouth came down upon his, sweet, deft and heavy, and as he tried to lift leaden arms to hold her close, she was gone. He thought he heard her say, “I’m so sorry, dear.” He wondered what she felt sorry about. The other light went off. The latch clicked. He fell off the edge of the world.
Chapter Two
Kirby was hauled up out of sleep by a rangy young girl he had never seen before. She shook him awake. All the lights in the room were on. He braced himself up on his elbows. She was pacing around the bed so rapidly it was difficult to keep her in focus. She was yelling at him, and the words made no sense. She had a wildly cropped mop of palomino hair, fierce green eyes bulging with fury, a lean face dark with rage. She wore a coral shirt, striped stretch pants, and waved a straw purse the size of a snare drum.
It took him long dull seconds to realize she was yelling in a language he did not understand.
When she paused for breath, he said faintly, “No comprendo, Señorita.”
She switched immediately into a torrent of fluent Spanish. He spoke it reasonably well, but not that well. He caught just enough to realize it was idiomatic, graphic and probably would have sent a Mexico City cab driver running for shelter, his hands clapped over his ears.
“Mas despacio, por favor,” he pleaded when she paused for the next breath.
She looked at him narrowly. “Will English do?”
“Do what?”
“Where is my goddam aunt, and what the hell right does she think she has pulling one of her cute tricks and getting me thrown the hell off the first decent television script I’ve seen in a year? She can’t call me down here like I’m some kind of a slave. Where’s that spooky Joseph, buddy? Don’t you dare try to cover for either one of them, buster. I’ve handled her sniveling little secretarial types before. I want the facts, and I want them right now!”
She put a small nose with abruptly flared nostrils five inches from his and glared directly into his eyes. “Well?” she said.
“Facts?”
“Facts, fellow.”
She had an almost imperceptible accent, but there was an illusive familiarity about it.
“I think you’re in the wrong room.”
“I know I’m in the wrong room. The other rooms in the suite are empty. That’s why I’m in this room. Don’t stall.”
“The suite?”
She stamped her foot. “The suite! Yes, the suite! My God, start tracking, fellow. Hook up with reality. This big lush suite in the Hotel Elise, eighth floor, Miami Beach, ten o’clock on this gaudy Saturday night in April, in this suite registered in the name of Charla Maria Markopoulo O’Rourke, buster, my unsainted aunt, this suite it cost me a twenty-buck bribe to get into after steaming all the way from the Coast on a jet.”
“Charla!” he said. And knew where he was, and why the girl’s accent, though less than Charla’s, had seemed familiar. Up until that moment he had thought himself in Montevideo. “Uncle Omar is dead,” he said.
“Don’t waste those sick codes on me, buster. I unjoined Charla’s wolf pack ages ago. Little Filiatra changed her name and her outlook and her habits because she got sick up to here of all the cute, dirty, sick little tricks. I’m Betsy Alden now, by choice, and I’m a citizen and a good actress, and she gets me reinstated fast or I’m going to belt her loose from her cunning little brain.”
“If you’d back away a little, I could think better.”
She went to the foot of the bed and glowered at him. “Where is she?”
“Look. You seem to have the idea I work for her.”
“Please don’t try to be cute, friend.”
“Honest to God, my name is Kirby Winter. I had a terrible day yesterday. I got drunk. I never met Charla until late yesterday some time. I didn’t even know the rest of her name. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where she is. I don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”
The girl stared at him, biting her lip. He saw the suspicion and the anger slowly fade away. And then she looked at him with cold, mocking contempt.
“So terribly, terribly sorry, Mr. Winter. I guess I just wasn’t thinking. I should have guessed you wouldn’t be on the team. You don’t look bright enough. You do look more the fun and games type. Muscled and clean and earnest. But not even knowing her right name? My word! Charla must be getting really hasty and desperate. Isn’t she a little elderly for you?”