Chapter 14

Lynn arrived at 'the little bar, in an alcove off the broad hall leading to the dining room, promptly at seven. Curt was there ahead of her, sitting at a corner table in the protective curve of the elbow of a red-upholstered banquette.

There was a large martini in front of him, straight up in a stemmed frosty glass, and it was brimming, untouched. Either it had been served him in the second before she'd arrived or he was ignoring it. He was smiling broadly at her as she slid in beside him, evidently in high spirits about something.

"I've found a place," he said, finessing a hello, as if they were very old friends. Or new friends who'd taken a cram course and knew each other very well.

"When can you move in?" She felt a tiny twinge of something like disappointment. An anticipation of some kind of personal loss.

"Next week," he said, and either he read her mind or he had the same feeling himself. "It isn't far from here. Walking distance, if you happen to be some kind of walking nut."

"That's good," she said, trying to read his eyes. "What's it like?"

"Too good for the poor people. White stucco, a hundred feet from the water. All you can see from the porch is sea and sky, different shades of blue. Three rooms. What are you drinking? Martini?"

"Scotch and water," she said, repressing a shudder. She remembered the last time she'd drunk Scotch.

Curt motioned for the waiter and gave her order.

"Now I have only one problem," he said, "and once I've settled that, I've got the world by the you knows."

"What's that?"

"A piano. I have to try to find a used piano some-where in southern Spain. A spinet, or an old upright The place I'm renting isn't very big."

"Don't fret," she said. "You'll find a piano. I have a feeling that once you put your mind to something, you can do anything you want to do."

"Thanks," he said. "I hope you're right What's a piano player without a piano? Or a composer? I can't very well compose something like the Grand Canyon Suite on a Jew's harp."

"Might be interesting. The Jewish Grand Canyon Suite."

"That's not a bad idea," he said, if you stop to think about it"

"Oh, stop it. Are you really thinking of doing something that ambitious?"

"I hope so." He was keyed up. "I'm pretty sick of doing musical commercials exactly sixty seconds long."

"And sentimental ballads? Like Up to. My Ass, et cetera?"

"Them I still like."

Her drink came, and she raised it in a toast.

"Here's to whatever it is you're going to do," she said. "And to your piano, wherever it is."

They sipped, and he smiled at her.

'Enough about me and my fantasized triumphs," he said. "What kind of afternoon did you have?"

"Just the beach, after a nap. With the two people I met on the plane, Rita and Chris Coombs. They're going to join us in a little while, for dinner. I hope you don't mind."

"Sure I mind," he said, but he didn't look as if he did. "Chris Coombs? I know that name from some-where."

"He's an art director with an advertising agency in New York. He says he knows you. You did some TV commercials or something with him."

"Long drink of water, kind of funky?"

"That's him."

"Sure, I know him. I used to call him the Dishonest Abe Lincoln. He didn't seem to mind. But in his heart, he's a hair-splitter, not a rail-splitter."

She choked back the first comment that came to mind.

"That's him, all right," she said.

Rita and Chris arrived at the same time as Lynn's second Scotch and Curt's second martini. The martini must have looked good to them. They ordered two for themselves without sitting down, before the waiter had a chance to get away.

She introduced Rita to Curt, but Chris appeared to be an old friend. Apparently, the stresses of Madison Avenue welded people close in short stretches of time.

"The guy at your agency whose name I'm trying to remember," Curt said, as the new martinis were set on the table, "is that account executive. The one with the paunch and the pin stripes."

"Harold Baum."

"That's him. He's all the account executives I've ever met rolled into one. A liaison man who's lost contact at both ends."

"You put your finger on it," Chris said. "He approaches every problem with an open mouth, Harold does."

"I've met him," Rita said, and shuddered visibly. "They should have rolled that rock back, quick."

"Did I ever tell you about the great idea Harold had for the Revel account?" Chris asked Curt.

"No. I don't think so. I didn't know he ever had any great ideas."

"Well, he does," Chris said, settling into .his chair and his martini. "Fortunately, they dissipate fast, or someone shoots them down, and then he sulks for a week. Anyway, the Revel people came up with a new reducing pill, guaranteed to work, and of course they wanted the lucky public to know about it. And Harold had his big idea. At the time, he knew a kind of fat has-been actress in New York who could lose weight at will, get as gaunt as she wanted to, any time she wanted to. So Harold suggested they put her on Revel's weekly quiz show, weighing her every week to show her steady weight loss with the use of Revel's new pill. He suggested test markets first, of course--Miami, Sioux City, East Pelvis--where they would have a lot of local flap with posters and spot announcements on radio, and air-planes with streamers, telling everybody to tune in for the weigh-in.' "

Lynn could almost hear the quotation marks. The story fascinated her.

"While Harold was telling me this," Chris continued, "I had a mental picture of the poor woman running around all week in the hot sun, wearing a rubber suit, with Harold keeping her going with a whip. Anyway, after he'd made this suggestion to the client, saying that after the test markets they'd go on full network with the weigh ins, the client said, 'Oh, you mean we'd get another overweight woman?' Harold said, "Hell, no. We'll fatten her up again. She likes to eat."

Lynn almost spilled her drink. Curt only grinned. Apparently, he was inured to that kind of lunacy.

"They shot his idea down?" he asked.

"Yeah, after a couple of upper-echelon meetings. Harold sulked for two weeks that time."

They drank and laughed steadily for almost two hours, until it appeared that they might miss dinner.

As they entered the dining room, Larry and the three girls Lynn had met at breakfast were leaving, along with-two older men. They all nodded and smiled at Curt, and he nodded and smiled back, but no one said anything. Lynn was very curious.

"Aren't your friends a little mad at you?" she asked Curt as they were sitting down at a freshly laid table. "For cutting out on them most of today?"

"Not a bit," Curt said. "Nobody owns anybody's time over here. What you do and who you do it with is strictly your own business. You don't get tangled up with anybody unless you want to." He looked at her steadily and she looked right back. They both smiled, almost imperceptibly, but Rita noticed it. Rita noticed everything.

"Well," she said, scanning a menu the size of a billboard, "the most important thing about dinner is the wine."

They consulted the wine list, much smaller and easier to handle than the menu, and ordered white wine to go with the paella.

All through dinner the talk and laughter went on, but the laughter was not as easy as it had been earlier in the cozier surroundings of the bar.

"Let's all go back to our room," Rita said, when they were drinking their coffee. "Chris bought a bottle of Spanish brandy today at a market here in town, for about half the price of a bottle of cheap gin, back home."

"I don't know," Lynn said. She'd been vaguely afraid of this. "I don't really feel like drinking any more."

Curt had looked as if he'd been ready to say it was a good idea. Maybe he suspected what Rita had on her mind. Lynn knew. After all, Rita had every-thing to gain, nothing to lose. So had Curt, in spades. But Lynn had the feeling that she did have something to lose. For one thing, she didn't want Curt to know about her and Chris and Rita and the episodes yesterday. For no good reason, she told herself, she didn't want him to know.

"You don't have to drink," Rita said. "We'll all take up the slack for you."

"I'm tired," Lynn said.

For once, Chris became the diplomat, instead of Rita. But then, Chris had something to lose, too. He just didn't want to share anything with his good friend Curt. Not Rita, and not Lynn either.

"We can use a good night's sleep, hon," he said to Rita. "The brandy and conversation will keep till another night."

"Well," Rita said. The poor little girl wasn't going to the circus tonight, after all. And she'd had her heart set on it.

Moments later, Chris signed their check and stood up. Rita stood too, but slowly, reluctantly. Chris bent and kissed Lynn on the cheek. So tender, she thought. Dishonest Abe Lincoln. The hair-splitter.

"Maybe after dinner settles down you'd like to take a dip," Curt said, after they'd left. "It'll brighten you up if ?you're feeling tired. Moonlight swims in southern Spain are the best thing in the world for tired blood."

"I wasn't--really tired," she said. "I just didn't want to go with them. Not tonight."

"Me either." She was sure he was lying, especially if he'd noticed Rita getting horny. But it was nice of him to lie.

They walked along the beach in the bright moon-light, staying close to the water, where the sand was damp and firm. They walked almost a mile from the hotel before they turned around. On the way back, Curt took her hand. They didn't talk at all.

"We could go for a swim right now," Curt said, when they were back at the beach by the hotel.

"Have to get into suits," Lynn said.

"What for? There's nobody here."

She looked around. There was not a soul in sight.

"I don't really feel like swimming tonight," she said. "I just want to sleep." God, she thought, what a prude I must sound like to him. She was sure nobody'd ever thought of her as a prude before.

"All right," he said. "Whatever you want to do."

He walked with her, slowly, to the door of her room, still holding her hand. She found her key and opened the door and turned to him. He looked puzzled.

"Aren't you going to ask me in?"

"Not tonight, Curt," she heard herself saying. She wanted to ask him in, right then, more than any-thing in the world. "I want to think a little. All by myself."

"All right," he said, not smiling, but not mad, either. He bent and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

"See you tomorrow," he said. "Breakfast?"

"Or sometime," she said vaguely, and closed the door behind her.

She moved absent-mindedly across the room and opened the doors to the little balcony outside and stepped out, into the soft, warm night breeze. From somewhere the sound of flamenco music drifted up to her--a strangely sensuous, insistent, insinuating beat. And all at once she wasn't the hand-holding, beach-walking prude of only minutes before.

She was all horny, and a yard wide. The tingling started in her pussy, spread upward, and came right down again, the cunt-core of all pleasure.

And she'd let Curt get away, only minutes before. She came back into the room from the balcony, closed the doors, and crossed the room and went out.

Headed for that insistent, beating, sexy sound.

Headed for what she needed.