She was wearing a white garter belt she’d taken from her mother’s lingerie drawer, sheer white nylon stockings, red patent-leather, ankle-strapped, outrageously high-heeled pumps, also her mother’s. She looked like a recklessly disheveled nurse wearing chorus-girl shoes designed by the devil. The shoes lifted her buttocks, raised them to his probing cock. She hoped he wouldn’t try to...
“Bend over,” he said.
“Listen, I don’t want you to...”
“Hands flat against the mirror.”
She leaned into the mirror, obeying him, palms flat against it, face turned, cheek against the reflecting glass. She was truly frightened now, there was something about him that was sometimes terrifying.
“Lift it to me,” he said.
“Please don’t,” she said.
And felt him probing her nether lips, felt him sliding familiarly into her wetness below, and lifted herself to him in gratitude and relief. Standing taller in her mother’s heels, she accepted him deeper inside her, and began throbbing almost at once, wave after wave of uncontrollable spasm seizing her as she strained against him, gasping, accepting him completely, melting against him, dizzy with pleasure, flush and faint and “Fuck me,” she said, “fuck me, oh fuck me...”
She lay beside him on her mother’s bed. His eyes were closed. He looked utterly peaceful and relaxed. She wondered if he’d learned to do all those things in medical school. The things he did to her. Did they teach you that in medical school?
“How many girls have you done this to?” she asked.
“Done what to?”
“What we just did.”
“Thousands,” he said.
“I’m serious,” she said. “How many?”
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine,” he said.
He was kidding, of course.
Wasn’t he?
“No, seriously,” she said.
“Why do you want to know?”
His eyes were still closed. With her forefinger, she began tracing the green scimitar tattoo on the underside of his left pectoral.
“I want to be special,” she said.
“You are special.”
“How am I special?”
“You’re passionate, and...”
“Well, anyone can be passion...”
“And responsive, and inventive, and...”
“How am I inventive?”
“You have a lively, inquisitive...”
“Mind? Give me a break.”
“Cunt, I was about to say.”
She fell silent. Finger still idly tracing the tattoo, wondering if she could dare...
She decided to risk it.
“I don’t like that word,” she said.
“Oh?” he said, and seemed to go suddenly tense beside her.
Immediately she said, “I didn’t mean...”
“That’s okay,” he said, and sat up. He turned to her, smiled in polite dismissal, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and began walking toward where he’d draped his clothes over her mother’s chaise lounge.
“Sonny?” she said.
“Yes?”
“What’d I say?”
“Nothing,” he said, and pulled on his Jockey shorts.
“Where... where are you going?”
“Home,” he said.
She was off the bed in an instant, rushing naked to him. He was reaching for his trousers. “No, don’t go,” she said, and hurled herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“Let go,” he said.
“Sonny, please, I didn’t mean to...”
“I said let go.”
“Please, I’m sorry, please don’t...”
The telephone rang.
“Answer your phone,” he said.
“Sonny, I don’t want you to...”
“Answer it,” he said.
She went back to her mother’s bed, lifted the receiver on the bedside phone, said “Hello” dully, and watched him as he pulled on his trousers and reached for his shirt.
“Miss Randall?”
“Yes, who...?”
And recognized his voice. The jerk from the British consulate.
“This is Geoffrey Turner,” he said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“As a matter of fact...”
“I’ve run your friend’s name through the computer,” he said. “I’m happy to say...”
“I’ve already found him,” she said. “Thanks, anyway.”
“Well, good,” he said. “If I can be of any...”
She covered the mouthpiece.
“Sonny, wait,” she said.
“... further assistance...”
“Thank you,” she said, “I appreciate...”
And covered the mouthpiece again.
“Sonny, please!”
“Miss Randall...”
“Please, I’m very busy just...”
“I was wondering if you might be free for...”
“Thank you,” she said again, and hastily put the receiver back onto its cradle and hurried across the room to where Sonny was sitting on her mother’s plush velvet ottoman now, putting on his loafers. She forced herself onto his lap, threw her arms around his neck, lifted her lips to his face, tried to kiss him on the mouth, but he twisted away from her. She kissed his cheeks instead, his nose, his forehead, showered his face with kisses, murmuring “Please, Sonny, I love you, please, oh please...”
His voice low and steady, the words measured, he said, “Don’t ever tell me what you don’t like.”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Ever,” he said.
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Now get over there,” he said.
She looked bewildered for a moment. Where did he want her? In front of the mirror again? Or was he...?
“The bed.”
Fearful she would anger him again, terrified she would lose him completely, she moved swiftly to the bed and sat on its edge.
“Lie down,” he said.
She nodded obediently. Swung her legs onto the bed. Raised herself on her elbows to look toward where he was still standing motionless near the ottoman. Her heart was pounding, she could scarcely breathe.
She now knew that she would do whatever he asked her to do.
Whenever.
Forever.
The story was on page eight of that afternoon’s New York Post. Santorini easily could have missed it, especially since he was eating a meatball grinder while reading the paper and was concentrating on not getting tomato sauce all over himself.
The story said that Margaret Thatcher would be here on the first of July, to attend a Canada Day celebration at the Plaza Hotel.
Santorini looked at his calendar.
The first was a Wednesday.
Four days from now.
Only yesterday, the FBI nemesis of Eastern cattle rustlers had briefed him on the counter-intelligence panic that had followed the 1986 bombing of Tripoli. At the time, the CIA, the FBI, and Britain’s counter-intelligence people were all convinced that the Libyan leader had dispatched hit teams to kill Ronald Reagan for having ordered the raid, and Margaret Thatcher for having allowed the American bombers to overfly her country. Only after months had gone by without any actual assassination attempts were the concerned agencies able to relax their vigilance.
“But green is Libya’s color,” Grant had told him.
“Green, huh?” Santorini said.
“Green. Their flag used to be red, white and black with a little gold eagle on it...”
“Little gold eagle, huh?”
“Yes, but Quaddafi changed it to solid green. The whole thing’s green. Just this big solid green flag.”
“Solid green, huh?”
“Green, right. Now your scimitar, come to think of it, is on the Saudi Arabian flag, with some squiggly Arab writing above it, probably means Allah be praised or some such shit. And that’s a green flag, too, though not solid green like the Libyan one.”