Stone Shadow (9 page)

“I was hoping, uh, that we could, you know...” Yes—she knows what you were hoping, you lummox. She knows all too well what you were hoping. Are you a detective or a sex fiend? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? Did they bring you down to Dallas to work on an investigation or to get laid? He tried biting the inside of his lip and pinching his fingers: anything to take his mind off the single train of thought that was inexplicably and suddenly blocking out all images of crime and violence and murder and business and motive and the curious anomalies of the Hackabee case that had brought him out to meet the famous Noel Collier.

The pull had been instant. Chemical. Electrical. Mysterious. Explosive. Unmistakable. And completely one-sided. It was just one of those things. And that's with or without the fucking gossamer wings. Whatever makes things like this happen had Eichord in the palm of its hot wet hand and it was squeezing, slowly, relentlessly, inexorably, and Jack was loving it and letting it do whatever it wanted as long as he could be on the receiving end of it.

He knew about faces. On the surface this was as beautiful a face as he'd seen. Dazzling and heart-troubling beauty. WHAM! It is something you see and you swallow hard and try to recover from. About as close to a religious experience as erotica gets, especially when coupled with hot lust. But Eichord also knew a lot about what Camus calls
"le face."
About the masks that all of us wear. And he saw exactly what he wanted to see under this woman's perfect mask that was registering only a bemused and chilly disinterest. And so of course.... And so ... And so he asked her out. With no preamble. Not a hint of interest on her part. Never a situation that begged more for rejection, a cop and a famous defense lawyer—for one thing the adversarial position so strong as to professionally prohibit a relationship even if there'd been the basis for one—and he asks her out. He couldn't help himself. The devil made him do it. Whatever.

To her credit she did not say, “No, you jerk,” or “I don't even know you, you presumptuous, repulsive schmuck,” or any of the hundred other rejoinders he supplied for her when he ran the painful humiliation of his astonishingly incompetent and puerile confrontation with her through his mind over and over. But that would be much later. Amazingly, for the longest time, he would not admit the scene of rejection. He simply refused to let it exist. He asked her out and she had neither accepted nor refused.

He would not examine it the way it actually took place. He would not see that she had quickly smiled, almost a laugh, widened her glorious eyes, and just cocked that beautiful head to the side, an eyebrow curving up slightly as more smile lines crinkled, a rejection so absolute and devastating he could not recognize that it really happened. Because her turndown had been as unilaterally absolute as had been his turn-on. And much the same way he wouldn't allow himself to believe he'd been rejected, she wouldn't believe he'd had the balls to ask. Her body language was a point-blank, three-word, candid-gram: “Are ... you ... real?"

H
e couldn't make himself turn around and leave. He couldn't walk out of her office yet. Her face and fragrance and promise and the whole cheerleader fantasy had him nailed to the spot, riveted in place, and he forced himself to ask questions which she may or may not have answered. It was the weirdest and most uncharacteristic of situations for him. Eichord the cop had taken a cab. It was Jack Eichord, horny citizen, standing there having an audience with her majesty Noel Collier. The famous, the accomplished, the impossibly beautiful Noel Collier.

And beautiful she was indeed. He had only seen three or four breathtakingly ravishing beauties in his life. About one every ten years was the average, he thought. When he, was in the service a quarter-century ago, stationed in Europe, he'd seen Liz. He would never forget it. It was on a public beach in the South of France, and she had come out of the water like whatshername in the Greek legends, running by where he'd been sprawled out on a big beach towel. And she'd been like a vision, running by him suddenly, running and laughing, running toward somebody he never turned to see because the moment he saw the black hair and face he knew it was Elizabeth Taylor, and then, closer, he saw those eyes.

The eyes. The young Elizabeth—somewhere in between
National Velvet
and the Burton years. A face of such exquisite beauty even the medium of film, with a vast and sparkling screen blowing that perfection up ten thousand times larger than life, could not amplify the stunning, hammering effect of the eyes. So violet. So uniquely captivating a hue. Almost inhuman in their effect on the viewer. So unmistakably memorable an experience that once, years later, on Catalina, he'd seen a young girt in a bikini the color of those violet eyes and he'd chased her for an hour on principle. The eyes of Liz.

A few years back there'd been the showgirl on her way to the Coast. He'd seen her in an airport. A heart-stopper. Then, during her television reign as Wonder Woman, he'd been working in California and his path had crossed that of Lynda Carter. The legs, the upper chest, the carriage—just beyond anything he'd ever experienced. Only a fuzzy and vague distortion of that look ever found its way onto the small TV screens. But to see her up close, in person, the body of that woman was like a sunset or a perfect landscape. It was a thing to be painted, captured, hung in the Louvre or the Prado for all to admire. Proof that humanity could look that good.

Now this blonde. His pubescent Dallas Cowgirls fantasy vivified, animated, switched on, keyed to his frequency and harmonics, made real by some mad Dr. Frankensex. All just a wet dream. All of Dallas but a dream designed to frame the Noel Collier sex fantasy. And the experience was a heady, blurring, brain-smashing intoxication more disorienting and traumatizing than the worst binge he could remember. It was a slick, dangerous slide and when he grabbed for a railing to keep from going over the high side he dreamed he missed the rail and caught the brass ring instead.

Later when he would be cursed with total retentivity of the dream he could redden over and over again at the detail of the imagined dialogue. Jeeeezzzzus, was there going to be no mercy? he would think. But that would come much later. The fantasy would come first. In two parts. First would come the seduction and the sex. Every detail from the spaghetti to the drive out to her palatial home in Highland Park, which he'd read about in a local newspaper profile, to the humiliating dream of the morning after when he confessed about his love for TV dinners, it would be crystal-clear.

“Do you like spaghetti?” she asked, lighting two white candles on the table.

“Wonderful.” He could not begin to tell her the wonderfulness of spaghetti. He was no longer able to answer in complete sentences.

“Good,” she said, “because that's dinner. Just good old spaghetti and a green salad. Is that okay?"

“Sounds great,” he intoned.

She poured something into a glass and handed it to him. “And chilled red wine. You like?"

“I like,” he breathed as their fingers touched and the hot flames danced between them and he took a sip of the something and tasted only his desire and said, “Yeah. I do like.” And they smiled at each other. He was gone. Over the edge.

She was rich, he supposed. She lived in North Dallas. A place in Highland Park. She had told him she owned it, or her corporation did ... something. He couldn't remember. There had been jokes about the ritzy residential section. He had told her some old stale gag about how he'd been given to understand that the Highland Park area was so exclusive that the fire department had an unlisted number, and she roared with a warmth and lack of restraint that he dreamed would be typical of all her actions.

He dreamed ultra-realistically. Imagining conversation. He made obligatory probes about how she happened to get involved in the defense; she parried gently, telling him less than nothing, inferring that nothing was solidified at all. Still a good possibility they wouldn't get together. He hoped she wouldn't she semiagreed but it was her job after all. Eichord dreamed that she told him, “I'm a defense attorney, Jack. That's what I do. I provide half of the necessary counsel to make our adversary system of justice work. I have to defend people accused of heinous crimes. And this individual, like any other, irrespective of the horror of the crimes he might be accused of, deserves and will get that same measure of fair representation under the law."

“I agree. I just hate to see you be the one that's having to be anywhere near something like this. This has a very bad feel."

“I'm not a virgin,” she had told him. It was not a flirtatious or sexy statement. She meant it as a declaration.

They talked about her career a bit. Noel Collier wasn't as driven as he thought she might be. She had other goals.

Unblushingly, he dreamed that she said, “Sometime. I don't know how far down the road. But someday I hope I'll find a good guy and I'll probably opt to stay home a few years and make babies. Right now that seems far away but nobody knows what the future holds. I just know I'm not going to be centered on my career as the be-all end-all of my life. I'm a family lady. I want all the goodies—the hearthside, the guy, the kids."

“It sounds nice. I hope you get it all.” There was a time when he had wanted all these things too. It was so long ago and far, now.

Dinner was a lingering and long affair. The red wine and the candles had produced a glow that he couldn't remember feeling. There was an intensity and a magnitude of desire that was overwhelming both of them, coming out of nowhere as it had, and under such improbable circumstances, and they were on the sofa, primly side by side, each smiling at nothing, not talking, and then his little finger brushed against hers. He was holding her hand gently, letting his fingers caress hers very lightly, barely touching, just the slightest imperceptible movement, looking at the fineness of her glowing skin and the almost invisible trace of hairs on her arm, everything about her fine and delicate and feminine.

“What?” she said, quizzically, when he gazed steadily into her eyes, saying nothing. And he smiled and they each drew closer until their mouths were almost touching and he breathed in essence of woman and his other hand touched the back of her lovely head and she relaxed, letting herself lay back slightly, her head leaning back into his cupped hand, neither of them kissing but their mouths still very close and her lips full and parted and both of them savoring the moment.

She smelled so clean so...

He couldn't name it. He told her, “I'm good at colognes, perfumes, fragrances"—his voice coming out a little hoarse unexpectedly as he whispered to her mouth, still locked on those gorgeous eyes—"and I'm trying to isolate the scent. It's not Chanel. It's not newly mown springtime Bermuda. It's not fresh bread. It's not Obsession. It's not musk—"

She laughed.

“It's not Anais Anais, either.” Her dialogue was so real to him.

“Well, I should say not.” Their mouths so close. “I ain't wearin’ nothin, mister.” Nothin’ on but the radio. Marilyn revisited.

“I thought as much all along. Essence of girl."

“Pure eau de Noel,” she tried to say but during the long o sound of Noel their hungry mouths finally met and the tongues lashed out in an explosion of liquid fire and it was a long time before they came up for air, strands of her hair plastered across his face, her arms on him, his hands caressing her, breathing in her soft warmth and the femininity of her, both of them breathing hard against each other and their mouths coming together again his fingers moving seeking zippers and both of them knowing then that there would be only one way to put out this fire that was consuming them.

There are ice-cream concoctions so sweetly delicious that you know you will regret eating them, the hot-fudge cherry-topped decadence of the Supreme Banana Split Special with the ice cream that has the unpronounceable name being so good that all ice-cream dishes will forever taste flat and mediocre by comparison. Furs exist so sexually and viscerally exciting that to touch one against the cheek is to be ruined for the affordable and the mundane. But sometimes the lure of the forbidden sweetness and the invitation of the rich and inaccessible are so strong they cannot be denied and you feast and touch and savor, the tactile senses taking over where reason and logic are abandoned. And the touch is a touch you feel deep within your soul and the taste is so hot and indescribable and satisfying that you abandon all caution and eat as if there will be no tomorrow.

Eichord was not an inexperienced man. He had dreamed many times before. He had dreamed of hot and fantastic sex. But he had never dreamed like this. His climax was not the end. There would be no end for this dream. He would waken and then later, when he surrendered to sleep once more, he would be welcomed back into the unending humiliation that his subconscious had constructed for him, to help him atone for his sins.

T
he pathway is very dark but not so dark you are unable to see. You can see shapes there along the pathway. It would appear differently to each person. To the frightened man it exists in his mind as a literal path that becomes a room (it is often seen as a dark room by those who can see it), and the room becomes a series of rooms like a maze, with the rooms interlocked by an illogical but nevertheless real-appearing set of circular corridors. All of the walls are of gray stone and the floors and ceilings are cold and featureless concrete. The light comes from bare bulbs which hang from the concrete ceilings every fifty yards or so. In between the bulbs the ever-curving corridors of stone are mostly in black shadow.

It is cold and still along the pathway and the man is so afraid of what he knows is coming that he must suddenly urinate and his bladder and prostate problems cause a spreading wetness even as he is unzipping his trousers as quickly as he can, and he cannot get it out in time and soaks the front of his pants as he feels a not-unpleasant warmth drench his front, and finally he finishes urinating along the wall of the corridor, pissing in the darkest part so nobody will see it, and he goes ahead moving down the ever-curving concrete pathway under the glare of the raw light, moving through pools of strong, harsh light and puddles of scary darkness, moving closer to the thing that he knows is coming for him.