Wolfed
Tanith Lee
UNDER THE GLITTERING CLIFFS of skyscrapers, in the tangled night wood of neon, concrete, glass, and steel that calls itself New York City, he strayed from the path, and went into a little bar.
He was twenty-six years old, six foot four in height, and he weighed around one hundred and seventy-two pounds. He had the kind of face sometimes seen on celluloid, but once, that very year he thought he might make it as an actor, the middle-aged woman in the casting office had said to him, “Oh, honey. You’re just too good-looking. That blond hair and those black eyes — be warned. You’ll have a bad time here.” She then suggested something else. And when he did that, she was very generous, both with her surprisingly pretty body, and with the wad of bills he found later in his car. It was this that started him on his present career, the one he should have been pursuing right now, since he was down to his last twenty. So maybe the bar was a fine idea … or not. Really, it was the girl. She was the reason he came in. And she was not the sort of girl to be of any use. Because she wouldn’t need him, not at all.
As he sat down on the chromium stool at her side, practiced, he took her in, through the low, cave-dim light. But practice had not prepared him. He liked women a lot. Their voices, their bodies — oh, yes, those — their clothes and how they wore them. Their cosmetics even, jewelry, lingerie — everything about them. And this one—
She had a burnished hood of claret-red hair, matched neatly by her velvet gown, which being tight, backless, and nearly frontless, gave him an exquisite view of several rich curves, and a faultless pearl-cream skin. Then, imagine a deer in the wood who is truly a wicked — but beautiful — witch in disguise. That was her face. She had no makeup but for the black kohl around her eyes and on her lashes, that looked real and a full inch long, and the ripe scarlet on her full, smooth lips. No jewelry, good or cheap, on her slim arms, at her long, delicious neck, or in the lobes of her alabaster ears. However, where her shorter-than-short skirt rode up, just above the black lace of her long-legged stocking-tops, he noted a garter with a golden rose. And five years of having to do with gold, though seldom in the way of ownership, suggested the golden rose, like her lashes, was quite real.