Free Prosecution: A Legal Thriller by D.W. Buffa Page A

year since Alexandra left me, I had begun to
keep occasional company with a woman for whom sex was too exciting
ever to be diluted by anything as generous as love. A tall, lanky
blonde with a shallow chest, she once told me that from the time
she entered college until the day she filed for her third divorce,
she had slept with hundreds of different men and had found none of
them entirely satisfactory. We used each other for pleasure, and
because there were never any expectations, there were never any
disappointments. We became, in our fashion, something more than
casual acquaintances and something less than good friends.
     
    Lounging on the hotel bed, a sheet pulled up to my
chest, I listened to the shower running in the bathroom. She came
out with nothing on but a towel wrapped around her hair and sat
down next to me.
     
    "I don't have long, Joe." A trace of some indefinable
regret curved along her wide, full mouth, and she leaned toward me
and gave me a perfunctory kiss. Perhaps because she had to go, I
wanted her to stay.
     
    "We have the room. We could spend the night."
     
    She rolled forward on her hip until I was looking
straight up into her brown lucent eyes. The scent of her breath
reminded me of a girl I could not remember, someone I had known as
a boy during a season of weekend evenings spent parked in a car.
Her fingers touched my forehead and then my hair. "You'd really
like to spend the night?" Her voice was a whisper.
     
    "We could have dinner... "
     
    She put her hand over my mouth and shook her head,
her eyes full of teasing skepticism as she crawled next to me under
the thin white sheet.
     
    We lost ourselves in the trancelike delirium of sex.
When it was over I listened again to the sound of the shower, and
as I watched her get dressed never thought about asking her to
stay. She intrigued me with the way she moved—everything was
accomplished with almost mechanical efficiency. She looked at me
while she put on her clothes, her hands and legs in constant
movement.
     
    "We could spend the night sometime," she said, as she
buttoned her blouse. "But not tonight. I have a date."
     
    My hands locked behind my head, I asked, "Is it
serious?"
     
    She turned away from me and, using the mirror above
the small desk, started to put on her lipstick.
     
    "He wants to get married," she explained
indifferently.
     
    "Is that what you want?"
     
    She snapped the cap back on top of the lipstick and
then smacked her lips together. "I like being married," she said,
as she wheeled around, as if presenting herself for inspection.
     
    "How do I look?" she asked, a doubtful expression on
her face. She was attractive and I told her so.
     
    "You're sweet," she said, as she bent down and,
careful not to smear her lipstick, gave me a kiss on the cheek.
"Don't get up." She laughed as she moved away. When she got to the
door, she looked back. "Call me next week?"
     
    After the door shut behind her, I lay there, staring
at the ceiling, without energy, without desire, lost in a vast
emptiness. After a while, I dragged myself off the bed and took a
long, hot shower.
     
    Dressed, I tossed the room key on the small desk
below the mirror and took one last look around. Crumpled pillows
and wrinkled sheets covered the bed, and every towel in the
bathroom had ended up on the floor. The room reeked of sex. In two
hours we had turned one of the most expensive hotel rooms in the
city into a scene from a cheap motel.
     
    As I was leaving the hotel, I changed my mind and
dropped in at the bar. It was small, with a few tables scattered
along the wall. I sat down on a leather bar stool and ordered a
scotch and soda. Through the glass window in front, lettered with
the name of the bar, the blue and red neon lights from a movie
theater down the street smeared the rain-slick pavement with their
own reflection.
     
    At the far end, pictures flashed on a television set.
Nursing my drink, I watched for a while, amused at the