Talk about ambivalent feelings! Standing there with her hand on her hip and her balloon-like bosom bobbling towards the ceiling as if filled with helium, Françoise Laval seemed as appetizing to me as a sizzling shiskebab set before a starving Armenian. Still, I managed to force myself to set aside the skewer in favor of my real business with her. “ Françoise,” I began, “I understand that you have spent some time in London where—” For the second time that night, a knocking at the door interrupted my inquiries.
“Pierre!” She shrank back against the wall. “If he finds me here, he will kill me! He will kill us both! I must hide!" She started toward the bathroom door.
“Not there!” I remembered that I already had one naked Françoise Laval in the bathroom. “In here, quick!” I held open the door to the clothes closet and then closed it behind her. I started for the door to the room, and then noticed the model's clothing strewn on the bed. I grabbed it up and threw it under the bed. Then, just as the knuckles rat-a-tatted off the door again, I opened it.
The girl standing there looked like a refugee from a Ziegfeld version of a French Apache dance. Her skirt was slit to the thigh to reveal black net stockings hugging shapely legs. The red sweater she wore was at least three sizes too small, and her overlarge bosom seemed sure to burst the wool with her very next inhalation. A beret was perched atop brassy, obviously dyed blonde hair, and it was tilted at a brazen angle which matched the purse of her lips and the invitation in her blue eyes. Only her lack of make-up seemed out of character, but it was compensated for by a naturally flawless complexion.
“Who the hell are you?” I blurted out.
“ Françoise Laval.” Her husky voice made it sound as if she were telling me I’d just won first prize—a 1973 Cadillac limousine5 at the very least—in a raffle.
“How—?”
“Lucky Pierre sent me. He said you’d be delighted to see me. He said you would be most generous. Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
Dazed, I automatically held the door open for her.
“He said all I had to do was tell you my name,” she informed me. “It’s Françoise Laval,” she repeated, as if addressing a retarded child. “I think it’s a pretty name. Do you like it?”
“So much that I’m becoming a collector,” I told her.
“I beg your pardon, M’sieur?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Dizzily, I glanced from the bathroom door to the closet door and back to her. “So Lucky Pierre sent you,” I said helplessly.
“Oui. He is a friend of my man, whose name is also Pierre.”
“And I suppose your Pierre is a pimp?”
“That is a cruel term. But perhaps it is deserved. Alas, my Pierre is a most cruel man.”
“I see. And did he and Lucky Pierre arrive at a price for your services this evening?”
“Oh, no! He does not know I am here! He would be most angry. You see, while Lucky Pierre is a friend of his, they are also competitors. If he knew that Lucky Pierre had set up this trick for me, he would carve me up. And he would carve Lucky Pierre up. And he would surely carve you up. Or maybe he would just kill us with his hands. He is very big and strong, my Pierre. And very jealous when it comes to his property, which he considers me to be. Yes, very jealous!”
“Aren’t they all,” I sighed.
“So perhaps we should not waste any time!” She tossed her beret on the bureau and began disrobing.
“I don't think that right now—-” I began to protest.
But I stopped protesting as she discarded her bra, and my eyes fastened on a fantastically large bosom which looked even larger rising up from her petite figure. Once again I was seeing charms which fit the description of the ones for which I was looking. Despite the confused situation, my curiosity got the better of me. She was a speedy undresser, and I held my tongue to seek even more pertinent evidence.
When she removed her skirt, I saw it. There, sticking out of the top of her stocking, was a comb! And as she arranged herself provocatively on the bed, I spied a touch of auburn at the roots of the golden curls forming a triangle at the juncture of her beautifully molded legs.
“Hurry, chéri!” she wriggled. “I am so eager for you. Come! What are you waiting for?"
“ Françoise, will you answer a few-—” A third time I was interrupted. This time the knocking at the door was loud and insistent. I felt like a movie actor caught in a strip of film which has become jammed in the projector and forced to repeat the same scene over and over again.
“What’s that!” Françoise Laval jumped to her feet.
“Someone at the door,” I parrotted wearily.
“Oui. But who? Are you expecting someone?”
“No.”
“Then it must be Pierre! He must have followed me! Where can I hide?” She darted toward the clothes closet.
“Not there!” I told her. “That’s the first place he’ll look.”
She ran to the bathroom door.
“Not there, either. Too obvious. Here. Quick. Get behind the drapes.”
She did as I told her. I scooped up her clothes and threw them under the bed with the clothing of Françoise Laval the model and Françoise Laval the strip-teaser. Then I crossed over to open the door, lulled by now into expecting nothing more than another sex-hungry Françoise Laval. My expectations were misplaced. It wasn’t a girl, but a man who stood there. And what a man! Almost seven feet tall and all muscle. So much muscle that it overflowed the doorway. In one hand he held a wicked-looking bludgeon, an outsize blackjack that looked as if it had been designed to split skulls the way a nutcracker splits walnuts. The other hand, large as an elephant hoof, shot forward like a cannonball and sent me spinning back into the room. He followed, gorilla-like, his large, ugly facet filled with rage, wrestler-like grunts snarling from between fang-filled lips as he came.
I started to pick myself up, and thought better of it. “What can I do for you?" I asked in a tone which was meant to be conciliatory, but emerged more as a frightened squeak.
“I am Pierre!” he announced.
Which Pierre? I wondered.
“I am looking for Françoise Laval!”
Which Françoise Laval?
“I know she is here!”
Which was likely.
“When I find her, I kill her! And I kill you!”
Which figured!
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I WILL kill you!” The rumbling echo of the threat hung ominously in the air. Looking at this rampaging behemoth of a man, I didn’t have a doubt in the world that he could and would do exactly as he threatened. Perhaps it might be a fitting end for the man from O.R.G.Y., but that didn’t make it any more palatable to me.
“Can’t we discuss this calmly?” I suggested.
“Where is she?” He ignored my offer. “Where are you hiding her?”
“I’m not hiding anyone,” I lied desperately.
“There is no woman here, eh?” He looked at me as if I was a bug he was about to squash.
“N-no.”
“Then how do you explain this?!” he roared. Somehow I’d overlooked a bra when hiding the clothes under the bed, and now he was shaking it under my nose. “It is hers without a doubt!” he shouted. “The size is unmistakable!”
“All right,” I told him, my mind racing. “You’re right. I do have a woman here. But she isn’t the woman you’re looking for!” Which Pierre was he? And which Françoise Laval was he after? If I only knew that, I might be able to steer him to the wrong one.
“Aha! Do you admit it! Where is she?” He started for the drapes behind which my Françoise-come-lately was hiding.
He had no beard! That gave me hope. I remembered Lucky Pierre telling me that the artist Pierre had a beard. So this intruder wouldn’t be looking for Françoise Laval the model. Quickly, I intercepted him before he could reach the drapes. “She’s not in there,” I told him. “She’s in the closet.”