Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire (16 page)

That night the cold spell broke. A warm front swept in from the south, brushing away the chill like a cobweb. In his sleep Linderstadt unbuttoned his coat and pulled off his scarf. He dreamed of summer, flying a kite with his mother at the beach. When he woke, it was almost noon. The room was thick with heat. A crowd had gathered outside the salon for the opening. The wasp was gone.

In a panic he searched the workshops, the stockroom, the dressing rooms and the offices. He looked in the basement and the boiler room. He climbed to the roof and swept his eyes across the sky. It was nowhere to be found.

In shock he returned to the salon.

Near where it had been he noticed a paper sphere the size of a pot-bellied stove. One side of it was open, and inside were multiple tiers of hexagonal cells, all composed of the same papery material as the outside of the sphere. Linderstadt had a glimmer of understanding, and when he discovered that his gowns had also vanished—every one of them—he realized his mistake. The wasp was not a Sphecida at all, but a Vespida, a paper wasp. Its diet consisted of wood, leaves and other natural fibers. It had eaten the collection.

Numbly, Linderstadt surveyed the remains of his work. The nest had a delicate beauty of its own, and briefly he considered showing it in lieu of the collection. Then he spied a bit of undigested material peeking out from behind the papery sphere. It was the bridal veil, and it stood on the floor like a fountain of steam frozen in air. No dress, no train, only this, the filmy, translucent veil. Meant to hide the bride until that moment it was lifted and she emerged, in all her newness, freshness, and radiance.

Outside, the crowd clamored to be let in. Linderstadt hesitated for a minute, then drew back the heavy curtains and lifted the gossamer veil. The sun seemed to set it aflame. His heart quickened, and the tiny hairs on his neck and his arms stood on end as he placed it on his head. With everything gone there was nothing left to lose or conceal. A single thread would have sufficed. Raising his face, throwing his shoulders back, standing proud and erect, he opened the doors.

Men were watching her. She could tell, she could always tell. Their gazes fell on her and warmed the skin where they touched her.

Lawrence Block

Some days were easy. She would go to work and return home without once feeling the invasion of men’s eyes. She might take her lunch and eat it in the park. She might stop on the way home at the library for a book, at the deli for a barbecued chicken, at the cleaner’s, at the drugstore. On those days she could move coolly and crisply through space and time, untouched by the stares of men.

Doubtless they looked at her on those days, as on the more difficult days. She was the sort men looked at, and she had learned that early on—when her legs first began to lengthen and take shape, when her breasts began to bud. Later, as the legs grew longer and the breasts fuller, and as her face lost its youthful plumpness and was sculpted by time into beauty, the stares increased. She was attractive, she was beautiful, she was—curious phrase—easy on the eyes. So men looked at her, and on the easy days she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t let their rude stares penetrate the invisible shield that guarded her.

But this was not one of those days.

It started in the morning. She was waiting for the bus when she first felt the heat of a man’s eyes upon her. At first she willed herself to ignore the feeling, wished the bus would come and whisk her away from it, but the bus did not come and she could not ignore what she felt and, inevitably, she turned from the street to look at the source of the feeling.

There was a man leaning against a red brick building not twenty yards from her. He was perhaps thirty-five, unshaven, and his clothes looked as though he’d slept in them. When she turned to glance at him his lips curled slightly, and his eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, moved first to her face, then drifted insolently the length of her body. She could feel their heat; it leaped from the eyes to her breasts and loins like an electric charge bridging a gap.

He placed his hand deliberately upon his crotch and rubbed himself. His smile widened.

She turned from him, drew a breath, let it out, wished the bus would come. Even now, with her back to him, she could feel the embrace of his eyes. They were like hot hands upon her buttocks and the backs of her thighs.

The bus came, neither early nor late, and she mounted the steps and dropped her fare in the box. The usual driver, a middle-aged fatherly type gave her his usual smile and wished her his usual good morning. His eyes were an innocent watery blue behind thicklensed spectacles.

Was it only her imagination that his eyes swept her body all the while? But she could feel them on her breasts, could feel too her own nipples hardening in response to their palpable touch.

She walked the length of the aisle to the first available seat. Male eyes tracked her every step of the way.

The day went on like that. This did not surprise her, although she had hoped it would be otherwise, had prayed during the bus ride that eyes would cease to bother her when she left the bus. She had learned, though, that once a day began in this fashion its pattern was set, unchangeable.

Was it something she did? Did she invite their hungry stares?

She certainly didn’t do anything with the intention of provoking male lust. Her dress was conservative enough, her makeup subtle and unremarkable. Did she swing her hips when she walked? Did she wet her lips and pout like a sullen sexpot? She was positive she did nothing of the sort, and it often seemed to her that she could cloak herself in a nun’s habit and the results would be the same. Men’s eyes would lift the black skirts and strip away the veil.

At the office building where she worked, the elevator starter glanced at her legs, then favored her with a knowing, wet-lipped smile. One of the office boys, a rabbity youth with unfortunate skin, stared at her breasts, then flushed scarlet when she caught him at it. Two older men gazed at her from the water cooler. One leaned over to murmur something to the other. They both chuckled and went on looking at her.

She went to her desk and tried to concentrate on her work. It was difficult, because intermittently she felt eves brushing her body, moving across her like searchlight beams scanning the yard in a prison movie. There were moments when she wanted to scream, moments when she wanted to spin around in her chair and hurl something. But she remained in control of herself and did none of these things. She had survived days of this sort often enough in the past. She would survive this one as well.

The weather was good, but today she spent her lunch hour at her desk rather than risk the park. Several times during the afternoon the sensation of being watched was unbearable and she retreated to the ladies’ room. She endured the final hours a minute at a time, and finally it was five o’clock and she straightened her desk and left.

The descent on the elevator was unbearable. She bore it. The bus ride home, the walk from the bus stop to her apartment building, were unendurable. She endured them.

In her apartment, with the door locked and bolted, she stripped off her clothes and hurled them into a corner of the room as if they were unclean, as if the day had irrevocably soiled them. She stayed a long while under the shower, washed her hair, blow-dried it, then returned to her bedroom and stood nude before the full-length mirror on the closet door. She studied herself at some length, and intermittently her hands would move to cup a breast or trace the swell of a thigh, not to arouse but to assess, to chart the dimensions of her physical self.

And now? A meal alone? A few hours with a book? A lazy night in front of the television set?

She closed her eves, and at once she felt other eyes upon her, felt them as she had been feeling them, all day. She knew that she was alone, that now no one was watching her, but this knowledge did nothing to dispel the feeling.

She sighed.

She would not, could not, stay home tonight.

When she left the building, stepping out into the cool of dusk, her appearance was very different. Her tawny hair, which she’d worn pinned up earlier, hung free. Her makeup was overdone, with an excess of mascara and a deep blush of rouge in the hollows of her checks. During the day she’d worn no scent beyond a touch of Jean Naté applied after her morning shower; now she dashed on an abundance of the perfume she wore only on nights like this one, a strident scent redolent of musk. Her dress was close-fitting and revealing, the skirt slit oriental-fashion high on one thigh, the neckline low to display her décolletage. She strode purposefully on her high-heeled shoes, her buttocks swaying as she walked.

She looked sluttish and she knew it, and gloried in the knowledge. She’d checked the mirror carefully before leaving the apartment and she liked what she saw, Now walking down the street with her handbag bouncing against her swinging hip, she could feel the heat building up within her flesh. She could also feel the eyes of the men she passed, men who sat on stoops or loitered in doorways, men walking with purpose who stopped for a glance in her direction. But there was a difference. Now she relished those glances. She fed on the heat in those eyes, and the fire within her burned hotter in response.

A car slowed. The driver leaned across the seat, called to her. She missed the words but felt the touch of his eyes. A pulse throbbed insistently throughout her entire body now. She was frightened— of her own feelings, of the real dangers she faced—but at the same time she was alive, gloriously alive, as she had not been in far too long. Before she had walked through the day. Now the blood was singing in her veins.

She passed several bars before finding the cocktail lounge she wanted. The interior was dimly lit, the floor soft with carpeting. An overactive air conditioner had lowered the temperature to an almost uncomfortable level. She walked bravely into the room. There were several empty tables along the wall but she passed them by, walking her swivel-hipped walk to the bar and taking a stool at the far end.

The cold air was stimulating against her warm skin. The bartender gave her a minute, then ambled over and leaned against the bar in front of her. He looked at once knowing and disinterested, his heavy lids shading his dark brown eves and giving them a sleepy look.

“Stinger,” she said.

While he was building the drink she drew her handbag into her lap and groped within it for her billfold. She found a ten and set it on top of the bar, then fumbled reflexively within her bag for another moment, checking its contents. The bartender placed the drink on the bar in front of her, took her money, and returned with her change. She looked at her drink, then at her reflection in the back bar mirror.

Men were watching her.

She could tell, she could always tell. Their gazes fell on her and warmed the skin where they touched her. Odd, she thought, how the same sensation that had been so disturbing and unpleasant all day long was so desirable and exciting now.

She raised her glass, sipped her drink. The combined flavor of cognac and crème de menthe was at once warm and cold upon her lips and tongue. She swallowed, sipped again.

“That a stinger?”

He was at her elbow and she flicked her eyes in his direction while continuing to face forward. A small man, stockily built, balding, tanned, with a dusting of freckles across his high forehead. He wore a navy blue Quiana shirt open at the throat, and his dark chest hair was beginning to go gray.

“Drink up,” he suggested. “Let me buy you another.”

She turned now, looked levelly at him. He had small eyes. Their whites showed a tracery of blue veins at the outer corners, and the black pupils, hugely dilated in the bar’s dim interior, covered most of the irises.

“I haven’t seen you here,” he said, hoisting himself onto the seat beside her.” I usually drop in around this time, have a couple, see my friends. Not new the neighborhood, are you?”

Calculating eyes, she thought. Curiously passionless eyes, for all their cool intensity. Worst of all, they were small eyes, almost beady eyes.

“I don’t want company,” she said.

“Hey, how do you know you don’t like me if you don’t give me a chance?” He was grinning, but there was no humor in it. “You don’t even know my name, lady. How can you despise a total stranger?”

“Please leave me alone.”

“What are you, Greta Garbo?” He got up from his stool, took a half step away from her, gave her a glare and a curled lip. “You want to drink alone,” he said, “why don’t you just buy a bottle and take it home with you? You can take it to bed and suck on it, honey.”

He had ruined the bar for her. She scooped up her change, left her drink unfinished. Two blocks down and one block over she found a second cocktail lounge virtually indistinguishable from the first one. Perhaps the lighting was a little softer, the background music the slightest bit lower in pitch. Again she passed up the row of tables and seated herself at the bar. Again she ordered a stinger and let it rest on the bar top for a moment before taking the first exquisite sip.

Again she felt male eyes upon her, and again they gave her the same hot-cold sensation as the combination of brandy and crème de menthe.

This time when a man approached her she sensed his presence for a long moment before he spoke. She studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was tall and lean, she noted, and there was a self-contained air about him, a sense of considerable self-assurance. She wanted to turn, to look directly into his eves, but instead she raised her glass to her lips and waited for him to make a move.

“You’re a few minutes late,” he said.

She turned, looked at him. There was a weathered, rawboned look to him that matched the western-style clothes he wore—the faded chambray shirt, the skin-tight denim jeans. Without glancing down she knew he’d be wearing boots and that they would be good ones.

“I’m late?”

He nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you for close to an hour. Of course it wasn’t until you walked in that I knew it was you I was waiting for, but one look was all it took. My name’s Harley.”