Case of Lucy Bending (45 page)

He felt that from the "four or five years" mentioned in all those tape recordings, he had zeroed in on one particular night, one particular party. That was no small accomplishment.

The therapist and the patient were a living hourglass. The sand streamed from one to the other. Dr. Theodore Levin really believed the grains were finally coming his way.

He ushered her out, letting his hand brush lightly over her hair, as fine and fragile as spun cotton candy.

"Thank you, Lucy," he said.

Ronald Bending needed women as much as another man might need alcohol, golf, or the Cross. Women were the crutch that supported, the only justification for enduring. Bending was incapable of expressing such sentiments; he only knew that he was a willing slave to his need.

He came from his office to the parking lot and slid into the driver's seat of his silver-gray Porsche 924 Turbo. (His wife's car was a black Volkswagen Rabbit—but that was her choice.) Bending loved this beautiful car, his greatest sorrow being that he couldn't get it into bed.

He sat in the bucket seat of soft glove leather and inhaled deeply. He had owned the Porsche for two years, but it still had a new-car smell, a perfume of money and power. He sat there for almost five minutes, just enjoying. He had no intention of going home; this was the best part of the day.

He finally decided on the Chez When on Commercial Boulevard. The food was so-so, but the bar was the best make-out joint in Fort Lauderdale. Lots of secretaries, schoolteachers, young widows, divorcees. If you couldn't score at the Chez When, Bending figured, you might as well hang up your nuts.

He drove south on Federal, resisting the temptation to let the Porsche run so he could hear that burbling roar. He had never pushed the car to its limit, but he kept vowing: One of these days!

He turned the keys over to Jimbo, the parking valet, who knew him well.

"Any action?" Bending asked.

"Looks good," Jimbo said. "A blonde came in about ten minutes ago. Driving a white LTD. Hair down to her sweet little fanetta. You'll want to catch that."

"I will," Bending assured him. "Don't scratch the paint."

"Have I ever?" Jimbo said, aggrieved.

The barroom was narrow and dark, lined with lighted aquaria of tropical fish. The bar itself was oval-shaped, with three bartenders who always seemed busy at blenders, pureeing banana daiquiris and strawberry margaritas.

Bending waited a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Then he inspected the prospects. It looked good; women outnumbered the men by almost two to one, and not a dog in the lot. Turk took a barstool with empties on both sides; he was in no hurry.

He treated himself to a double Jack Daniel's on the rocks, lighted one of his filter-tips, and looked around casually. He spotted the blonde Jimbo had mentioned. She was a creamer all right, but a guy had already moved in. A guy fifty pounds heavier than Turk and ten years younger. He wasn't about to challenge
that.

Fortunately, there was a lot of movement in the bar. New arrivals. Pickups taking off. People going into the back room for dinner. Bending sipped his drink slowly and relaxed. This was his world. He knew it like a pygmy knew the jungle. He was at home here.

He had just ordered a second drink, was leaning forward, inspecting the display of liqueur bottles on the backbar, when he became conscious of someone sliding onto the stool on his right. He caught a whiff of perfume.
Joy
, he thought. He was a man who could identify women's scents.

He didn't turn to look, but he saw the hands: chubby but beautifully manicured. He waited while those hands flipped a cigarette from a pack. Then Bending was there with his gold lighter.

"Thank you," she said in a low, laughing voice.

Then
he looked at her.

Not fat, exactly, but plumpish. Young. About twenty, he estimated. Cute more than pretty. Pug nose. Eyes with a ton of green shadow. And skin so fine and flawless, it looked like a special honey shade of Ultrasuede. Her features were just a wee bit piggy. Hair cut in a Dutchboy bob: bangs and straight around. A nice, glossy chestnut.

She was wearing a white nylon blouse, no bra, and designer jeans. The body was bountiful. Rubens would have loved that body. It didn't dismay Ronald Bending either.

"I beg your pardon," he said to her, "but I couldn't help admiring your bracelet."

It was his standard opening; if they weren't swift enough to pick up on his tomfoolery, he wanted nothing to do with them.

She looked down at her bare wrist. "Oh, this old thing," she said. "An heirloom. Been in the family for at least a year. I don't even think it's real brass."

He thought she'd do.

"My name is Franklin Pierce," he said.

"Weren't you president?"

"Vice president, actually. I was in charge of vice. What's your name?"

"Florence Nightingale."

"No kidding? Weren't you burned at the stake?"

"No," she said, "but once I was scorched by a hamburger."

They both burst out laughing, then sobered and started in again.

"What do you do for a living?" she asked him.

"I'm a brain surgeon for gerbils. And you?"

"I give high colonics to piranha."

"Ticklish work."

"Oh yes; they're always laughing. Do you live near here?"

"I live
in
here. Men's room. Third stall on your left."

'That's odd," she said. "I've never seen you there."

A half-hour later they were having dinner in the back room. He watched, fascinated, as she demolished a double shrimp cocktail, a one-pound sirloin with side orders of spaghetti and french fried zucchini, a dessert of Bavarian cream pie, and a Brandy Stinger. She had also made three trips to the salad bar.

^u
What refugee camp are you from?" he asked her.

"I just escaped from Dr. Slotkin's Magic Thirty-Day Diet. Are you going to finish your sherbet?"

"Finish," he said, pushing it across to her. "God forbid that you should faint from malnutrition."

"Do you think I'm too fat?" she said, licking her dessert spoon while staring into his eyes.

"Absolutely not," he said honestly. "I would term your body, ah, generous. But fat? No. I see you as all luscious hillocks and tender, shadowed valleys."

"That's beautiful," she said. "Are you older than forty-five?" "Of course I'm not older than forty-five," he said indignantly.

"Good," she said. "I never screw anyone over forty-five until I've checked his EKG."

So that was all right; he paid the bill happily.

When Jimbo brought the Porsche around, she looked at it and said, "Gol
-lee!
Is this your car?"

"Mine and the bank's. We're partners."

"I think I'll have my* hair done that shade."

"Good idea," he said. "And while you're at it, get power windows."

She lived in the same condo as Dr. Levin, but Bending didn't know that. Her apartment was the usual Florida Renaissance: vaguely Louis XIV with a lot of gilt, scrolled table legs, and satyrs chasing nymphs all over the wallpaper.

The place looked too big and expensive for just one occupant. He wondered if she was a pro.

"Got a roommate?" he asked casually.

"I do now," she said, and poured him something green.

"What's this?"

"Melon liqueur."

"Oh God," he said, and tried a sip.

"Like it?"

"Well . . ." he said.

The air conditioning in the bedroom was going full blast. You could have hung sides of beef in that room.

"What do you like to do?" she inquired as they undressed.

"Everything."

"Me, too," she said. "Except standing up in a hammock." When he was naked, she examined him critically. "Not bad."

"It's not the size that counts," he told her, "it's the ferocity."

He looked at her admiringly, delighted with what he saw. He had been right; she was a superbutterball. All rose and cream. Pastel. Not a blemish on that perfect hide. Full, jouncy curves. She was bursting with juice.

"Prick you," he said, "and you'd squirt."

"Prick me," she said.

She was not one of the silent ones. She moaned, yelped, raved, bleated. Nor did she go gentle into that good night, but bucked, reared, rolled, thrashed. Bending hung on and gave it his best shot. It must have been sufficient because when they were finished, she kissed his cheek and said, "There goes four hundred calories."

She padded naked into the kitchen and came back with two cans of icy Michelob.

"Plasma," Bending said gratefully.

"How long do I have to wait for an encore?" she demanded.

"After what we just did? About four years."

She laughed and went to work on him with a right good will.

She might not have been as skilled as Jane Holloway, but what she lacked in expertise she made up in youth and enthusiasm. Her ministrations succeeded. Twenty minutes.

"I want to sit on you," she announced.

"Be my guest," he said, thinking of it as the Ms-sionary Position.

This one took longer and lacked the frantic acrobatics of their first combat. It was slow, thoughtful, deliberate, more of a dance than a struggle.

Finally, she slumped over, drowning him in her fragrant flesh. He felt her heart pound against his chest. Her skin was as fevered as his, as moist. He was still rigid within her.

They were lying thus when he heard the unmistakable sounds of the front door being unlocked and opened. The superbutterball raised her head.

"My God," she said, unwittingly quoting from a Feydeau farce Bending had seen on Broadway twenty years ago, "it's my husband."

His physiological reaction was immediate; he shriveled within her.

I'm dead, he thought.

He rolled her off him, then rolled out of bed himself, landing on hands and knees. He scrambled for his nylon briefs. He got them on, had one trouser leg pulled up when he raised his eyes and there, in the bedroom doorway, was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

She was staring at the naked girl on the rumpled bed.

"You bitch!" she said savagely. "You're at it again."

Superbutterball wailed. "You weren't supposed to be home till tomorrow."

Bending grabbed his clothes. Hopping, holding up his pants on one leg, he tried to slink past the furious woman who was now inside the room.

She twisted from the waist, then came around with the back of her hand against his face. It made his ears ring. He dropped his clothes.

"Hey," he said. "Now just wait one—"

Then she was all over him, claws and knees. He pushed her and she sat down hard on the floor.

"You cocksucker!" the naked girl cried, bouncing out of bed. "Don't you dare touch her!"

Then they both swarmed over him, scratching, pounding on his head, trying to kick his family jewels to dust. He defended himself as best he could, shoving, pulling. He knew his face was bleeding, and a punch on his Adam's apple made it difficult to swallow.

He finally took them on one at a time. He flung the naked girl toward the bed. She went windmilling, then sprawled on her back, legs spread wide.

The "husband" he tripped with a heel behind her ankle. She went down in a bundle of brilliant couturier fashion. In the brief moment both women lay dazed, Bending scooped up his clothing and shoes and went hobbling for the front door, still wrestling up his pants.

He slammed the door behind him, ignored the elevator, and stumbled to the fire exit. He almost fell down two flights of concrete steps before he paused to listen for sounds of pursuit. Nothing.

He dressed hurriedly with trembling fingers. He realized he had left his Countess Mara tie behind. Screw the tie. He pounded the rest of the way down and came out a steel fire door into the parking lot. He found his Porsche and gunned the hell out of there.

By the time he hit Federal Highway, he had stopped hyperventilating and his sweaty hands were relaxing on the wheel. At the first red light he inspected his face in the rearview mirror. A mess. Scratches. Dried blood and one deeper gouge still oozing. A bruise on his cheekbone, already purpling.

Sighing, he took out his handkerchief, spat on it, and, as he drove with one hand, tried to wipe his face clean. He hoped to God that Grace was already in bed and asleep. But in case she wasn't, he began to frame a cover story to account for his appearance.