The Edge of Honor (54 page)

“You come now.”

“But I have to—”

“You come now.” She tipped her head at the door as if he was being obtuse. What the hell. Might as well go down clean. He walked toward the door, which she opened for him. He walked through and she closed it behind them and then led him down a long, dimly lighted, carpeted hallway. There were doors on either side that gave no hint of where they led. No noises from the street or the dance bar penetrated the hallway.

Brian could not figure out exactly where he was in relationship to the street. They seemed to be going back, away from the street, but the building had not looked that big.

At the end of the hall was another ornate wooden door.

The girl led him through it into a humid wooden-walled and -floored room that had benches on three sides and a metal locker on the fourth. A bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling gave the only illumination. There was a set of metal double doors next to the locker, and the metal was sweating.

“Your clothes,” she said. “I take.” She held out both hands as if to receive an invisible tray. He realized that she wanted him to take his clothes off and give them to her. She stared demurely at the floor.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. He took off his shirt and pants, then his T-shirt. She waited patiently, still looking at the floor. He shucked his underpants awkwardly, wondering whether or not to hand them to her. Finally, she reached for them and nodded with her head at the double doors.

He understood and paraded across the room and through the double doors.

In the next room was a pool of heated greenish water, about fifteen feet on a side, with steps cut into one side.

To his left was another set of double metal doors. There was almost no margin to the pool, only a small apron leading to the steps. He stepped down into the pool, gingerly at first, but found that it was not that hot. He went all the way in and then stretched out on one side, surprised to find a stone bench in the pool wall. Sitting on it put his head just barely above the water, which was roiling gently from unseen pumps. He relaxed in the water and let it extract the sweat and beer and the smell of the town. He had a slight buzz on from the champagne, but the moist, warm air fizzing quietly off the top of the water was soothing.

After ten minutes or so, the servant girl appeared again. She gestured for him to come out of the water.

For some reason, he was no longer embarrassed by his nakedness. He climbed the steps up out of the water and stood obediently before her.

She was tiny, her head coming up only to his chest, and she did not look directly at him. She turned, went through the next set of doors, and he followed her into the room, where there was another pool. The surface of this second pool was roiling more vigorously than the first and there was a good bit of steam in the room.

“Hot,” she said, bowing, and then she was gone.

There was the same arrangement of steps, but this time it took him a few minutes to get into the water. It was almost uncomfortably hot but increasingly relaxing. He found the submerged bench and sat back, his arms stretched out along the rim of the pool, and soaked up heat. The ceiling of the room was in shadow. The only lights came from what looked like fluorescent fixtures embedded high in the walls. The steam was thick enough to obscure the other side of the pool. “Rich,” she had said. Rich indeed. One pool for warm, one for hot. This place must be enormous. He was dozing comfortably in the water when the girl appeared again, beckoning him.

“Follow you anywhere, ma’am,” he said cheerfully when he stood once again on the stone floor. “What’s next?”

She led him through a third set of doors into yet another pool room. In this one, the water was still and there was no steam. When he touched a toe to sample the temperature, he found it to be cool. There seemed to be more light in this room, and this time the girl stayed.

He noticed she was holding a large white towel in her hands. He submerged himself a couple of times to cool off and then, aware that she was waiting, he came out.

She stepped behind him and wrapped his midsection in the towel in three deft movements, then headed for the final set of doors.

They turned right, walked down a small carpeted hallway, and into a square room about the same size as the pool rooms. It had wooden walls and was carpeted in some kind of matting. Two overhead fans turned very slowly above a stainless-steel massage table in the middle of the room.

There was a small tray table on wheels alongside the main table and there were four smoked glass bottles on it. The massage table was padded on the top and had a single white towel rolled into a tight log on one end to serve as a pillow. She indicated that he should get on the table, which he started to do, except that he did not know what to do with the towel. She solved the problem for him by taking it off and, once he was lying facedown on the table, draping it demurely over his buttocks.

He lay there for a few minutes, his muscles relaxing even more, his eyes closed, the light downdraft from the fans drying off his skin. He didn’t hear the girl return until she was standing behind him and opening the bottles.

He had never had a massage in his life and his skin tingled with anticipation. She started on his back, standing by his hips and reaching up to stroke the long muscles of his upper back, then smoothing the skin down along his flanks. Brian wondered what his body looked like. He had done all the compulsory athletics at school yn and had even fooled with weight lifting for a while, but he had not done much since then. If anything, he was probably a little skinny after the long line period out in the Gulf and those torturous midwatches.

Her fingers were piled in a fragrant ointment and they probed deeply, maintaining a sinuous rhythm from his neck down to the small of his back. He put his head to one side on the towel, his arms crossed under his chin.

He felt drowsy but did not want to miss any of the wonderful sensations.

Her hands were competent and strong, much stronger than he would have thought possible from such a tiny thing.

Then she changed position, moving around to the head of the table so that she could reach over his head and down his back. As she reached, he was aware of the warmth of her body inches from his arms and he detected a faint perfume. That perfume, he had smelled it once before. He wondered. Moving very slowly, he tilted his head up slightly and cracked open one eye. A drape of diaphanous white cotton gown filled his vision.

Holy shit.

Definitely not the servant girl. She was too big, too strong. My God, could it be—

“Relax, Brian. The massage does not work if you are tense.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Josie?” he said, his voice slightly strangled because of the position of his head.

“Straighten your neck, Brian.” She took his head in her hands, brought it around so that she was holding him, her fingers against his cheeks.

“Yes, that’s it. Rest your chin on the tips of your fingers. Just so.

That is much better.”

Boy was it. As she reached over and down, the top of her mons rose above the edge of the table, the vision of her nakedness swimming into his face and then away, her creamy skin shimmering through the cotton gown.

The curve of her hips filled his peripheral vision and he felt himself stirring under the towel. Then she started working the back of his neck, stepping back slightly from the table and giving him a fuller view of her lush body, lovingly enfolded, in the gossamer embrace of the gown, tantalizing him as the translucent material gathered and relaxed with her efforts. Then she took his right arm in her left hand, held it straight out, and turned herself around so that she could pull the muscles in his arm, stroking them from the shoulder to his fingertips with her right hand, pressing her buttocks against the edge of the table, letting his forearm barely brush against her right breast. By the time she had repeated the procedure with his left arm, he had to restrain himself from touching her, but he sensed that, whatever was going on here, it was not yet time for touching.

She folded his arm back under his chin and walked around to the tray table, where she replenished the oils on her hands. Then she moved to the opposite end of the table, where she began to massage his feet, left first, then right, gripping and smoothing. He wanted to see her, wanted to turn around, roll over, and look at her, but he knew he couldn’t, not yet. And he suddenly realized that rolling over was going to be a protuberant maneuver, a fact that probably was not going to come as a surprise to the lady. She started on his legs, reaching up his calves, rolling her hands on the back of his knees, and then higher, strong fingers searching out the major muscles, holding, weighing, and then pressing down and along the full length of his limbs. Then she was moving again, back to the tray table and then back to the head of the table.

She stood before him once again, took his hands in hers, and indicated that he should roll over. He complied, the towel deserting him. With his hands tightly held in hers, he was not embarrassed. She made an “mmm” of appreciation and then placed his hands flat under his hips. She poured warm oil on his chest and began to stroke the front of his body, leaning over him farther and farther, her breasts heavy beneath the fabric, settling lower and lower to envelop his face and barely brush his chest.

His lungs were filled with the scents of her, her perfume, the salty tang of perspiration, and something far more elemental. When he thought he couldn’t stand another minute, she stepped back, shed the gown, and then came around to the side of the table and mounted him, taking him inside in one smooth, exquisite movement that brought him immediately to climax. As the breath shuddered out of him, he reached for her, but she put his arms back, pinning them under his hips again.

When he was finally still, she began to move her hips, gradually restoring him while lifting her weight from his body until their only contact was where their cores connected, a continuation of the massage by a less familiar but no less effective channel, until he sensed that her control was finally beginning to slip. He opened his eyes and looked at her face, her eyes opened but unseeing, her mouth parted, and her breathing quickening. He recognized the moment, and this time his arms came out and would not be denied. He pulled her face down to his and kissed her lips and her mouth while taking over control of the movement, moving harder and faster now, pulling her down and into him, his lips glued to her mouth. As he felt her going over the edge, he arched his back and doubled the rhythm until she cried out and collapsed on top of him, her breath coming in great heaving sobs as her limbs dissolved and she seemed to melt.

Afterward, they lay entwined on the table for some time, he stroking her back and calming her, both of them trying to regain their breath. For the first time on the cruise, Brian’s mind was perfectly clear, the pumice of fatigue gone from those seemingly permanent pockets behind his eyes, all of his apprehensions about career and promotion kicked into a mental corner, where right now they seemed to belong. He searched his heart for the expected strands of guilt over betraying his wife and found none. Maybe later, but not now. Not during this perfect here and now, joined with this exquisite woman who had coiled him up like a spring with just her hands, released him, and then done it again long enough and well enough for him to be able to send her over the mountain when her time came. He had never known what satisfaction could be had from bringing a woman to such pleasure. Maddy in all her days with him had never come like that, and a part of him wondered why that was so.

But she was moving again and he closed his eyes and stopped thinking about Maddy.

San Diego The afternoon after the aborted phone call from Subic, she came home from the bank an hour early, just to get out of there. The accounting department was so dreadfully dull, she thought she would scream by 3:00 p. m., so she had just gathered up her purse and left.

The supervisor had been in a meeting that was supposed to last until 5:00 p. m.; Maddy hoped that it would—she had been pushing the limits of that nice lady’s patience. Once home, she looked through the mail, found a letter from Brian, and, for once, didn’t open it at the front door.

After talking to him last night, this morning, whenever the hell it was, whatever was in the letter would be very definitely old news. She decided to save it, an unopened treat, for a day when she hadn’t had mail for a while.

She went into the bedroom, shucked her clothes, and got out her tennis outfit. It was a one-piece short white skirt and halter top number with a built-in bra, under which she wore cotton underwear and white tennis panties.

The skirt was pleated and was probably about two inches shorter than it had looked when she bought it.

White tennis shoes and short white socks completed her outfit, along with a bag for her Kramer and a couple of cans of tennis balls and a towel.

She played just about every day at the public courts in the park across the street from the apartment. She could usually rustle up a set with one of the women who showed up every day around five. She deflected the male mashers by pretending that she couldn’t keep up with men players and was waiting for a girlfriend. She had one other tennis dress, which Brian had bought her in the Exchange, but the color was a vile lime green. She wore it only if he was joining her on the courts, and there wasn’t much chance of that these days, was there?

She glanced at her watch. It was a little early, but then again, the end of daylight saving time was darkening the days about an hour sooner, so a little more daylight wouldn’t hurt. There was always the backboard until someone showed for a game. She tied her hair back with a large barrette, grabbed her keys, and started out the door, when the phone rang. She put her stuff down and answered it. It was the exec’s wife, Barbara Mains.

“Maddy, I’m putting together a scratch potluck for tonight. We’ve got most of the wives who can come, or at least those who can get baby-sitters. Honestly, that’s a real chore these days—you don’t know of a good one, do you? But of course, you don’t live near me. What am I thinking. Anyway, my house, sevenish?”