The Man Who Killed (12 page)

“Why are you here if you dislike it so much?” she asked.

“War in heaven, evolution—take your pick.”

I was perched on the edge of my seat, a dry vermouth in a cool glass in my dirty hands.

“Clever fellow, aren't you?” she mocked.

“I failed charm school,” I said, and lit a smoke.

She touched her hair. A tell, primping for me? Or was she on the job, signalling a watcher? What we had here was no randy young widow looking for kicks, that was for certain. She drew on her long, thin, perfumed cigarette. I became interested.

“And a lovely young lady such as yourself, what brings you unchaperoned to this church bee?”

She laughed and threw her head back. Her bosom swelled.

“I'm working.”

My eyebrow raised itself.

“No, not like that. I'm in town for a show at the Palace,” she said.

“Which one?”

“So This Is Paris.
We're here 'til next Thursday.”

“And they put you up in this dump? Why not somewhere decent, like the Windsor?”

“This isn't such a bad place. You're staying here, aren't you?”

“How'd you know that?” I asked.

“It's raining out. You're dry. Besides, staying here I can save a little money and get away from the rest of the company. When you travel in a group it's nice to be on your own once in awhile.”

“And no show tonight?” I asked.

“The house is dark on Monday.”

“Well then. Do you know Montreal?”

“A little. I've been here on other tours. It's changed. New buildings, new life.”

“It's all the liquor money. Do you like jazz?”

“I play a character who does,” she said.

“My name's Michael, by the way, but for some reason everyone calls me Mick.”

My hand moved to hers. The bar was now deserted. A moustached bartender wiped a glass with a white cloth. It could be anywhere on earth.

“Lilyan,” she said. “Lilyan Tashman.”

“Charmed,” I replied.

“Enchantée,”
she returned.

“So your character likes jazz but you don't?”

“No. I mean, yes, I do, of course, but not as much. She's a flapper, a real minx.”

“That must be quite a stretch for you.”

She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose fetchingly. “Sauce. Buy me another drink and you can get away with that.”

I bought her a drink and sat with her in our cozy nook, drawing in hints of her perfume. The low light favoured her features and I pegged her in her late twenties, early thirties. She was well put together and smiled ever so slightly as her eyes met mine—blue-green, I could now see, flecked with flaws. There was an amber spark as one facet refracted a mote of light. Lilyan opened her soft scarlet lips.

“Michael, what type of business are you in?”

“Wholesale freight.”

“Meaning what?”

“Export trade, mostly.”

“Anything in particular?”

“This and that. What the market wants.”

“How evasive,” she said.

“Do you like to dance?” I asked.

“I sing and dance for a living.”

“I mean for your own amusement.”

“From time to time.”

“What's your next stop?”

“Detroit.”

The minion poured another drink, and I purchased Sportsmans off a young girl walking past our table. Lilyan had slipped one shoe off and had her stockinged foot resting on a seat. I began to tingle.

“There's more to you than you're letting on. You're being disingenuous,” she said.

“We've just met,” I said.

“Don't you trust me?”

“My amah taught me never to speak with strangers.”

“What a thoughtful woman.”

“My mother died when I was born,” I said.

“How sad.”

“So you'd think. Say, what's that scent you're wearing?” I asked.

“Lavender.”

“It's lovely.”

“Listen, Michael. Are you going to invite me up to your room now or later?”

“Now, I suppose.”

“Bring a bottle,” she said.

I waved the hovering waiter over to settle the bill and ordered booze be sent up on my tab. I crushed a ten into his hand to grease the gears. Miss or Mistress or Madame Tashman gathered her things and walked to the lift without turning to see if I'd follow. I made haste to join her and we were pulled up to my floor by the machine. In the hallway she curled her arm through mine and leaned into me, her walk a trifle unsteady. Who knew how long she'd been at the bar before I arrived. I unlocked the door to my room and turned to kiss her. She responded, putting her arms around my neck, returning my embrace with sweet slow kisses. I felt her warmth and tasted her painted lips. We broke apart.

“Not bad,” she said.

She walked to the stuffed chair, trailing her fur over its shoulder, and curled up into the cushions like a little cat, her shoes kicked off to the floor.

“Music?” she asked.

I wrestled with the wireless to find some pleasant sounds. There was a knock at the door. My senses became alert. Perhaps it was the copy of
Black Mask
I'd been reading or just a general fear spooking me but in this part of the story the hero's distracted by a conniving female and doesn't keep his wits about him. It's always a set-up, and the next thing he knows he wakes up tied to a chair, seeing stars. I took my revolver out of the dresser drawer and held a towel over it. Lilyan's eyes widened but she sat perfectly
still. I opened the door to a service cart loaded with iced Champagne and a pair of goblets. I signed for the goods and tipped the teenage porter a quarter-dollar in relief, then pulled the cart in and uncorked the wine.

“Export trade, my foot,” Lilyan said. “Who are you really?”

“I'm nobody,” I say.

“You act like a gangster. All jumpy. That's what I said to myself when I saw you downstairs.”

“But you still approached me. What kind of dame are you? Are you on the make?”

“Would I have kissed you like that if I was a working girl?”

“Good point.”

My hands poured wine and I passed her a glass. I tossed Jack's hat across the room and made to sit on the bed. My life had become a series of encounters with people in taverns, movie houses, hotel lobbies, and at ball games. Don't you have anyone of your own? Laura. No, to hell with her. Christ knew who she was with right now, frequent speculation. What had Jack said about seeing her at a dance? For that matter, where was Jack? The Mount Royal Club, the mayor's house, a gambling den, or penthouse suite? His course was impossible to imagine. Same as mine. Who was this woman sitting opposite? What was I doing?

Lilyan smiled and waggled her glass. When I came over with the bottle she reached up and pulled me to her. The lovely creature kissed me, and I kissed back. Softly she pushed me away to pull off her hat. I lifted her up while she peeled away her gloves. We locked together, swaying and turning with the music from the wireless, a low piano rag. She kissed me in the French fashion and stuttering black-and-white Nickelodeon images played out on the screen of my mind's eye. Lilyan moved in just such a way as to reacquaint me with the erotic reality behind feeble half-remembered pornography.

She anticipated me and somehow floated us elegantly to the bed and onto it, so easily, so smoothly, unfreighted with hesitations or fears. This was the modern age of love as finally revealed to me, with a modern woman who knew what it was she wanted. She had none of the inhibitions of others I'd known. Lilyan pulled herself back by her elbows and propped herself up on the bolster, looking at me with sleepy blue eyes, her hair a dark blond unpinned and falling around her face, her full bosom respiring and breathing deeply, her throat flushed hot and pink. That black ribbon with a charm on it tied around her supple, delicious neck.

“Do you have a French letter?” she asked.

“I grec,”
I said.

“Ha-ha.”

“I confess I don't normally carry a prophylactic on my person. I know I should. I was a medical man, after all.”

“Were?” she asked.

“Not anymore.”

“And what are you now?”

“I'm currently without portfolio.”

“You're strange,” she said. “But I like it.”

“If you want I'll go out and see if there's a chemist's or barbershop open. There must be somewhere.”

“Why don't you hand me my purse?” she interrupted.

“You've done this before.”

“Why not? It's legal and it's free.”

Rummaging through her handbag Lilyan found a tin disc, a Merry Widow. A black bottle dropped to the floor and I picked it up.

“What's this?”

“You'll never believe it,” she said.

“Try me.”

“Belladonna.”

“Nightshade? What on earth do you need that for?” I asked.

“Trick of the trade. We put a little white make-up at the corners of our eyes and a few drops of the stuff in. Makes your peepers look bigger and brighter.”

“You'll go blind. It's poison.”

“So's everything,” she laughed. “Come on.”

My boots were off and I poured more cold Champagne. The radio played a peppy number by the Happiness Boys about a man and a canoe and a cherry phosphate and what was the girl's name in the refrain?

Laura. I froze solid.

“What is it?” Lilyan asked.

“Nothing.”

She drank my proffered cup of cheer and coaxed another kiss, more deeply now. She was right. We were two taxpaying adults of voting age. Together, with eager fingers, we unbuttoned my shirtfront, unhooked her corsetry, her tresses loose and tangling between our lips as we kissed, our lips together, mouths open, her tongue darting hot and wet into me and then she slipped from her underclothes like a hand from a muff and I felt her warm powdered skin beneath my hands as I caressed her. Her fingers were toying with me. There were light brown freckles on her heavy, swollen breasts. Her warm breath, her wet lips, her tongue again, lavender and wine. She looked at me with kind, amused eyes. I was rusty, out of practice, but she guided me out of my clothes and under the covers, teasing me, laughing, whispering in my ear: “Where's your gun, Michael?”

The wireless played a tone and retreated to a sea roar. A shaded electric light burned over the dresser. Lilyan helped the preventative device onto me and we began to fuck. I didn't care if it was going to cost me or not. I closed my eyes and got lost in her for as long as I could.

“So this is Paris,” I said.

She laughed softly and sighed.

AFTERWARDS, SHE TOLD ME about her life.

“I'm from a small town in Illinois. Everything was peaches and cream growing up. We're Episcopalians and I remember church socials and watermelon and cake on the Fourth of July. I knew I wanted to be an actress after we did the manger scene one Christmas when I was ten. I was the Virgin Mary, if you can believe it. Well, since then I've done everything short of murder to keep clear of the life my parents were preparing for me. We were quality people, respectable, you know? There was a sweet boy they wanted me to marry, he's a dentist now, but I convinced them to let me go to a finishing school in Chicago first and live with my aunt. When I got there I was your standard moonstruck small-town girl milling around the stage door, desperately trying to get noticed. I sang, I danced, I did anything I could. After awhile my folks became suspicious and demanded I come home. Of course I couldn't. For them an actress was little better than a prostitute and in those days, well, anyhow, maybe they were right. But I stuck with it, and eventually I started to get a few small parts and my name in reviews. Just Vaudeville turns, but I wanted to be a real actress, like Sarah Bernhardt or Lynn Fontanne, you know, cosmopolitan, sophisticated. I made a little money in a couple of revues and got by teaching singing and the piano to rich little boys and girls. But it was a hard life, oh boy. And the men, well, they thought the same thing as my parents, that we were all just roundheels. This was before the war. That changed everything. My little brother was killed in France and I think it broke my folks. Then I told them the truth, that I was going to try my luck in New York and that was it. They told me they never wanted to see me again. Oh, but I had stars in my eyes back then, I doubt I'd recognize myself now if I climbed into Mr. Wells's time machine. I wish I could too, sometimes. Do you know New York? It's no place at all to be broke and alone so I got married! He was a swell fellow, a songwriter and we lived in a little apartment and I went out for auditions and honestly I don't know what happened. One play after another and parties and gossip and out-of-town revues and somehow ten years went by and here I am on the road again, babbling away. We're divorced now and I don't know how long I can hold down parts with all the young girls coming up to take the ingénue roles and soon enough I'll be playing mothers and spinsters and then what?”