Free So Nude, So Dead by Ed McBain Page A

with a dog and an accordion, and a drunken woman with sagging stockings and hennaed hair lying in the doorway of a photographer’s shop.
    Ray walked, and his eyes were bright with anticipation. One hour and thirty minutes. He wet his lips. He could almost feel the needle sinking into his arm, see the veins bulging eagerly. And then the warm spread, the sudden sock! and then everything would be all right. He’d be straight again.
    He sighed deeply, breathing in the warm night air, feeling the breeze fresh against his face. It was spring, all right.
    “Some people need so much, Ray. All I need is springtime, and dusk, and you.”
    The words rushed back involuntarily, leaping up from some shadowed corner of his mind. He could almost hear her voice, almost see the breathless way her lips had parted when she spoke the words. She had squeezed his hand tightly, and her eyes had met his for an instant. There had been honesty in those eyes, open and frank. And love. They had reached across to each other with their eyes, and their eyes alone had said everything there was to say, said it for all time.
    He shook his head violently, trying to clear it of the memory. Times, had changed, things were different. There was no place for Jeannie anymore. It was over, finished.
    But the memory persisted, and he couldn’t remove it by shaking his head. The blue eyes were still there, and the auburn hair, soft and silky under his fingers. His mind raced back over the years—was it really years?—remembering settings, half-forgotten snatches of melodies, Jeannie in an evening gown, Jeannie in a bathing suit, Jeannie in paint-streaked dungarees, Jeannie in bed. He passed a hand over his eyes. It was no good. No good at all.
    But when had he met her? His mind skirted the years. Back to a girl in a white piqué dress, with hair like living flame, and tanned legs, and blue eyes that gave a radiant look to her oval face.
    She stood by the bandstand, leaning against the rail, her breasts pressed against her folded arms. They were playing “Stardust,” he remembered, and the muted trumpets had pushed their lilting melody out onto the night air, there in the small park, with the dancers milling around on the concrete, and the stars wheeling overhead like a million diamonds on black velvet.
    He had glanced up, seen her there, seen the look in her eyes. And later, when the set ended, he’d walked over, offered her a cigarette. Her voice was young, but it came from deep within her, as if speaking were a vital part of her, the way everything about her seemed to be.
    They’d talked a little, and when the dance broke up she was waiting for him.
    “I don’t usually do this,” she’d said. She glanced at him hurriedly, anxious for a sign that he believed her.
    “I know. I can tell.”
    They’d walked through the park, the moon sifting its pale light down through the interlaced branches of the trees, and he’d joked about how nice it was to be a piano player, no instrument to carry, and she said it would have been simply awful if he played the double bass.
    And then they had passed a dark spot beneath the trees, and his hand had tightened on hers, and he felt the responding warmth. She was against him then, her young body trembling, the smell of her hair in his nostrils, fresh with the fragrance of soap. His lips touched her cheek, and it was incredibly smooth and soft. And all at once her lips were on his.
    It had been a tender kiss. Their lips clung for a moment, moist against each other. She let out her breath swiftly, and her fingers tightened on his arm. Wildly she lifted her head, tossing her hair back. Her lips parted, and he drew her to him.
    Somehow, in a city of ten million, quite by accident, they’d found each other.
    He would always remember that first kiss. He’d kissed many girls since, but it would never be the same.
    He gulped hard, shaking his head again. Maybe he should go back to her. Now, tonight. Maybe he should get his shot,