That was one sentence I never finished. Probably I never will. There was Miss Weiner stepping daintily out of those tall clogs, those delicious breasts bared to the warm sun by the little bra she was engaged in folding and dropping softly on the blanket. As I watched, her hands went to the side-straps of her Lilliputian bikini pants and shoved them down... all the way down to her ankles.
And damned if she wasn’t a real blonde after all.
I looked up and caught her eyes on me. They were sea-green, humorous, self-assured. The red lips on the wide, witty mouth smiled mockingly at me. “Well, Mr. Archer?” she said. “This is France, you know. Surely you’re not shocked.” She sank down on the blanket, sitting crosslegged like a yogi.
“Come, join me, Mr. Archer,” she said. “And what part of the United States did you say you were from? Iowa? Kansas?”
“I didn’t say,” I said. I sat down beside her, dug into the bag again, and found the opener this time. I cracked the pilsner caps and handed her a beer. I won’t say I didn’t get an eyeful. That golden body just jumped out and socked you a good one. I don’t think even Philippe, with his distinct disinclination going for him, could have looked away from her right then. She touched her bottle to mine with a tiny clink. “Prost,” she said.
“Votre santé,” I said. “I have here one paté sandwich, I think, and one... hmmm...”
She saved me the trouble; she grabbed the second one and sank strong white teeth into it. She smiled at me, chewing. I shrugged and bit in. It was pate, and it was excellent. The sun, the cool breeze, the food, the beer, and the beautiful woman stark naked beside me on the beach blanket on this utterly deserted beach... I was beginning to like this leg of the trip, even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea where it all was leading.
“You,” she said. “You... read the stars?”
I had another sip of beer. “Well, yes. I...”
“And you believe that these little dots up in the sky affect our lives?” Her smile was mocking as ever. “That in alignment of the planets can make this man rich, this man poor?”
That wasn’t my favorite subject, really. I wanted to change it somehow. “Well,” I said, “the contemporary astrologer doesn’t tend to speak of these things in terms of cause and effect any more, you know. The concept of synchronicity...”
“Oh, no matter,” she said. “Mr. Archer, I think you are a phony. That is the word, right? Phony?”
“What do you mean?” The alarm bell went off. Quietly.
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t expose you. Ah... at least not that way.” She smiled, not so mockingly this time, and reached both golden arms over to pull the zipper of my wind-breaker down slowly, all the way. Then her hands pulled it gently away from my chest.
She stopped when she saw the bandage — but only for a moment. Her lips made a sympathetic moue. “Oh, you’re hurt. Here, let me...” And this time she was a little gentler with me, taking the coat the rest of the way off.
“I see,” I said, “that I’m going to have another one of those weird suntans.”
“My... how did you do that?” she said. I’d debated doing something with body makeup about the bruises that stuck out from under the bandages all around — dark blue-black bruises on shoulders and arms and kidneys — but had given up on it An integrated excuse was best all around.
“Auto accident,” I lied. “I... ah... rolled an Aston Martin near Carmel. That’s how I lost my last job. The employer was in the back.”
“Remind me not to ride with you,” she said. “What happened? Had he found you out?”
“What makes you think I’m a phony?” I said. “You...”
“Oh, that,” she said. She waved one tanned hand at me, up and down. “Astrologers are unhealthy little men who look like night clerks at some dingy off-season hotel,” she pronounced it clark; British education, then. I was still working on the accent. Not French, German or Italian. Three down. “You, on the other hand, weigh perhaps...”
“One eighty,” I said. “That’s pounds. I wouldn’t know how many kilos offhand.”
“Yes, and you are athletic. No. I would not buy you for a star-gazer, Mr. Archer. I do not know what your game is, but...”
“I haven’t got any game,” I said, biting down hard on the sandwich again. “I’m just earning a living.”
“Oh, come now,” she said. One brown hand was on my thigh. “You don’t have to hide it from me, just Alexandra. And perhaps Elsa, and Boris, and Michel. All the rest of us are phonies just like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take Philippe. He is supposed to be La Komarova’s personal secretary. He is not. He is her hashish connection. I, I am supposed to be her hairdresser. Hal Alexandra does not need a hairdresser. She...”
“I’ve never seen her,” I said. That part was the truth, anyhow.
“I’ll point her out. If, indeed, you do not know her immediately from her manner. She is a rich father’s brat. She is all the brats of all rich fathers rolled into one. But hairdresser? Bah! I am a painter, Mr. Archer, and a good one. I am here because she wants her portrait done. Not once but many times. Always when she is on drugs. All...” She did not blush, after all, but she did stop and start again. “All nudes. She has terrible taste. The intention is always erotic. She will bring a lover in and pose, ostensibly for me, actually for him. She will talk — bed talk — to him as I paint her. You realize she is very high during all this. For her I hardly exist any more. All the better. If she is concentrating on her lover of the moment I hardly have to go through the motions of painting her. She never asks to see the portrait, anyhow. All the better, I say. As long as her lovers keep her busy she does not grow amorous toward me. I remember once...” But she shuddered here. She looked at me again. “You, Mr. Archer. Who hired you?”
“Why, I suppose Philippe did. He handled the application I sent in with my photographs.”
She shuddered again. “You see? You’re a phony too. If you cast so much as a single horoscope while you are on board the Vulcan it will be a miracle.” Her mouth shut tight in a wry smile; the brown hand gripped my leg hard. “I... I’m sorry...” The green eyes, looking up at me, were penitent. Were something else, too; she was near tears. There were goosebumps on her naked shoulders.
And there was a moment there when my lovely, blonde, naked blanket partner nearly melted into my arms... and it passed. She picked up my jacket and threw it over her shoulders; her gaze, pointed out to sea, was full of self-loathing. The green eyes brimmed with bitter tears.
“If you don’t like it,” I said, “why don’t you leave?”
She looked at me oddly. “Yes,” she said. “Why don’t I?” But she didn’t answer me. She bit her lip and shook the jacket off her body and lay back, taking the sun. She forced all expression off her lovely face, looking up at the sun like that, and only then put on a pair of dark glasses from the beach bag. She didn’t say anything more.
“I gather,” I said, “we’re going on a cruise shortly.”
“Yes,” she said at last. “The Vulcan is due in port tomorrow. It will lie off Nice at anchor; we will go out in a motor launch.”
“Where’s it coming from?” I said. “Philippe didn’t tell me.”
“Oh... outside Gibraltar, I think. The Canaries, perhaps. The African coast. I’m not sure. Does it matter?”
“I guess not. Where’s it going?”
“Greece. Cyprus. The Levant.”
I’ll bet, I thought. I didn’t believe that business about the Canaries, either. Not with Angola on the way. I couldn’t wait to start finding out what the devil was going on. Anyhow, I would have put a month’s pay, right then, on the incidence of another Middle Eastern outbreak before the year was out. That orientation Hawk had given me on Komaroff’s arms operation had been enough to raise the hair on my head every time I thought hard about it. Where Komaroff trod, the grass died and would grow no more. It was as simple as that. “Do you ever see much of Mr. Komaroff?” I said. “I mean, I understand he and Alexandra Komarova have their own different worlds.”