“You came up so quietly, Mr. McQuade,” she said, letting out her breath.
He glanced around the office quickly. “All alone, Marge?”
“Yes,” she said, thankful for his presence. “Isn’t it a drudge?”
“I suppose it can be,” McQuade said. He walked over to the windows and looked out over the surrounding rooftops. She wondered what time it was, and glanced at her watch swiftly. Three-thirty. Romeo and Juliet would have gone back to work long ago. She found herself sighing with relief, and she wondered abruptly if she were really thankful for McQuade’s presence. There was something frightening about him, oh, not his power, not that, so he was from Titanic, so what, that had nothing whatever to do with it. If Titanic didn’t like the way she worked, they could fire her. She’d certainly have no trouble getting a job elsewhere. But there was something too masculine about him, something animalistic almost, something almost supernaturally animal, like a prime gorilla specimen. She could visualize him in a museum someplace, tagged like the other animals as a superexample of Homo sapiens. And this was what frightened her. She had never known anyone quite so handsome. The other men she’d known had all possessed their own personal flaws, but she searched in vain for a flaw in McQuade’s physical appearance. However, this perfection — rather than elevating him above other men, as a man among lesser men — had somehow lowered him to the status of animal, pure animal. He was the golden dream of every adolescent American girl, bulging with impossible muscles, grinning with impossible smiles. She could smell manhood on him. She could smell masculinity, the way a cow in heat can smell a bull, and in much the same way the smell frightened her. He was too much a man, and so he had been labeled with scientific precision: Gorilla. Ox. Man.
She did not pretend that he was unstimulating. The first time he had walked into the office, she had been completely overwhelmed. That first day — she could still remember it clearly — she had involuntarily lifted her skirts for him, showing her legs, pretending she was worried about a run, but not pretending the way she did with Aaron and Griff, pretending in a compulsive way, a startling reflexive way that urged her to lift her skirts, forced her to show her legs to this superior being. She had been ashamed immediately afterward, but she could still remember the way she wiggled her backside on the way out of the office, even with the shame still upon her, even then, as if she had to show this man that somehow she too possessed a beauty, as if she were offering her very small beauty before the shining altar of his magnificent splendor.
He had not seemed to notice. She knew there were many men who only pretended indifference, but she suspected McQuade’s attitude was not a pose.
She had diligently fought the compulsion ever since. When McQuade was in the office, the skirts of Marge Gannon were tucked demurely about her legs. She sat upon them like a prim spinster. But she could not kid herself into thinking the compulsion was not there. She was always aware of him physically, aware in a painfully curious female way, mystified by her own chemical reaction to his maleness.
“I’ve heard fantastic things about our neighboring rooftops,” McQuade said drily.
“Have you?” she said. She automatically tucked her skirts tighter under her, and then began typing.
“Yes.” He dismissed the topic with that single word and turned from the windows. “So what is our pretty little typist working on today?” he asked; smiling.
“Toil, toil, labor and toil,” she chanted. In truth, she hadn’t been working on a hell of a lot since long before lunchtime.
“I’ve always envied people who could type,” McQuade said. “The typewriter will always be a maliciously complex instrument, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Can’t you type?” Marge asked.
McQuade shook his head. “I should learn, I know.” He paused. “What are you doing hidden away in this malodorous factory, anyway, Marge?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. McQuade,” she said archly. She was aware that her foot had begun swinging under her desk. She did not stop its swing.
“You’re too pretty for this smelly dump,” he said vehemently.
He surprised her. She had honestly believed she’d made no more impression upon him than one of the desks. Faced with the newly gained knowledge that he had noticed her, the old panic returned, and with it a strange sort of excitement flowed through her veins. She swung her chair around, her foot swinging. She wore a gold ankle bracelet, and it caught the rays of the sun now, reflecting dizzily.
“Why, thank you,” she said. Her hand dropped to her skirt. She fought to put her hand back on the desk top, but it would not obey the command of her mind.
“You should quit,” he said. His eyes dropped to the swinging foot. “You should use those legs for modeling stockings or something.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked. She could feel the excitement raging within her now, and she sought to put it out, but the compulsive blanket she used only fanned the flames higher. She was unconsciously aware of her hand, and she knew that hand was flat on her thigh now, and she could feel the pressure of it as it pulled the skirt back over her knee, but she could do nothing to stop it.
“Yes,” McQuade said slowly. “I think so.”
He stopped before her desk, hulking over it, seeming bigger than he really was with the sunlight behind him. She looked up at him, and again her hand moved, a fraction of an inch, a tiny barely perceptible fraction of an inch, raising her skirt over her knee now, and then just a little bit higher, the foot jiggling, the ankle bracelet catching the feeble rays of the March sun.
She was very frightened. She was terribly frightened now, but she could do nothing to stop the motion of her hand or the jiggling of her foot. She wanted him to look at her legs. She wanted him to stare at her legs with those hooded gray eyes of his. She wanted to see some response in those eyes. She wanted terribly to feel like a Woman in the presence of this Man. She wanted to feel like all women, like Everywoman. And beneath this desire, her conscious mind told her that he was a man who could help her model, and her hand moved higher, carrying the skirt with it.
McQuade sat on the edge of her desk. His eyes did not leave her face. He glanced at her legs only once, before she had begun raising her skirt. The skirt was quite high now, no higher than she raised it whenever she searched for a run, but high in a different way now, high in a way that burned her flesh. She could feel her cheeks flaming. She felt wanton and cheap, and most of all she felt this sick panic inside her, this panic that screamed for her to stop, stop, but she would not stop.
She knew the skirt was past the ribbings of her stockings now. She knew her legs were good, and she knew they looked better in the high-heeled pumps she was wearing. Why wouldn’t he look down at her legs, why wouldn’t he, what kind of man was he, why, why? Look at me, you louse, look at me, look at me, let me see some life in those eyes of yours, let me see you looking at me, let me…
“What does a girl like you want here, anyway?” McQuade asked gently.
The words came to her lips before she could stop them. “A girl like me wants to model at the Guild Week showing,” she said.
McQuade smiled. His eyes did not leave her face. His hand moved effortlessly, almost gracefully, dropping to her thigh. His fingers tightened on her flesh, tightened like a vise, gripping the nylon and the skin until she wanted to scream in pain.
“That might be arranged,” he said.
He released her suddenly and slid off the desk. He walked to the door and out into the corridor without looking back at her.
She could see the bruise marks his fingers had left on her thigh. She stared at them, and then she shuddered and pulled down her skirt. When she began trembling, she really did not know how frightened she was. She took her purse from the desk drawer and went to the ladies’ room.