The Specialists by Lawrence Block Page B

sir.”
    “Yes,” Cross said. “It is. Let’s get back to your drawings now, Frank.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jordie, oh, Jesus, I never thought——”
    “Me, too, Pat. It happened.”
    “I’d hate for you to think——”
    “Don’t say it.”
    “Because you know, a divorcee, some people think——”
    “Don’t even say it.”
    “They figure just because a woman was married once——”
    “Pat,” he said. He put a hand on her shoulder, ran it slowly down the side of her body. She had too much flesh on her and Giordano didn’t like that, but her skin was wonderful, soft and smooth and perfect in texture. “Pat, it happened. It was clean and natural and good and I’m glad it happened. We’re a couple of lonely people, Pat. We needed each other and we found each other and it was good.”
    “Oh.”
    “It was good for you, wasn’t it, baby?”
    “It was so good I’m ashamed, that’s how good it was.”
    “Don’t be ashamed. You’re a healthy woman, Pat. Patricia.”
    “I never liked that name.”
    “You mean Patricia?”
    “I never cared for it. It sounded, you know, prissy.”
    “Listen, how’d you like to grow up with a handle like Jordan?”
    “Oh, it’s got character, it’s very strong and dignified both at once. Jordan. It’s a fine name.”
    “Character and dignified isn’t such a bargain when you’re a skinny kid.”
    “Don’t say skinny.” She touched him. “I wish I was built like you.”
    “That’s a hell of a thought. You wouldn’t have these.”
    “Oh, I didn’t mean. Oh. Oh, Jesus, don’t. Oh, I don’t think——”
    He kissed her, and she resisted for just an instant and then responded wildly, her arms tight around him, her tongue urgent in his mouth. He moved over her and her full thighs parted for him and he entered her at once, slipped softly home, and she lay back, eyes closed and teeth clenched, and moaned once and then sighed in the sweet luxury of orgasm.
    He moved within her, slowly, stroking, stroking, and twice more he made her gasp and cry out until at last he felt that precious tickle in his loins. And then, as it came upon him, he was clinging to her breasts and hammering his loins into hers and crying out, shouting “Yes, yes, now, now, yes! ”
    As he drove her home she told him that he made her feel like a goddess. “Never like this, never before. Oh, Jordan.”
    She looked prettier now. Good medicine, he thought. Not so much the sex, that wasn’t what did it or else every jerkoff kid would be Mr. America. It was the romance that did it. Caring, feeling, relating, it all made her look more like a woman and less like Elsie Borden.
    “You turn right at the next corner. I wish I didn’t have to go home. That house. I wish we could have slept together all night long. Oh, listen to me, just listen, I sound like a whore.”
    “Not you. Not my Patricia.”
    “The way you say it I like my name. You make it sound like I’m a queen.”
    “Did I, uh, make you happy?”
    “God, yes. I didn’t, I haven’t, I’m not, oh——”
    “Don’t talk.”
    “It’s the next right and then a left.”
    “I know.”
    She settled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. This was the difficult part for him largely, because it was a departure from the normal course of events. Ordinarily now he would be trying to cool it with her, to set her up gently so that she would not be inordinately surprised when he didn’t call her again. And, ordinarily, he certainly wouldn’t call her again. She wasn’t bad in bed but then she wasn’t very good either, long on passion and short on technique. He knew, too, that she would improve even while he was losing interest. Her marriage had probably been less than spectacular in the hay—he would be hearing all about it before long, he supposed—and since then she had probably had a half dozen unsatisfying tumbles with no love lost on either side.
    Men were stupid, he thought. They read books and learned