Free The Sandman by Robert Ward

carnivorous, and she realized that to Peter her intelligence was a measure of her sensuality. He could never go for a dumb broad just for the sex. And she found herself wanting to be as smart as he wanted her to be.
    “There is a kind of sensuality to everything Poe writes,” she said, sipping her wine and smiling at him. “I know that was mixed up with it … the tremendous excitement I felt as a child reading his stories. It was an excitement that seemed to come from deep inside of me.”
    “Yes,” Peter said. “Yes … that’s exactly how I saw it.”
    He was excited now … he couldn’t help himself. Here was a girl—no, a woman with brains—and the sensitivity to understand his feelings toward Poe. She had the same feelings herself … God, he wanted to blurt things out to her as she sat across from him looking so fresh and perfect. The way the candlelight danced over her skin. Such soft skin … he wanted to put his hand across the table and touch her face, but he had to control himself. Still, she was smiling now … and his eyes dropped to her full breasts, which were made all the more appealing by her tight sweater. But it wasn’t merely physical—no, it was that she understood, she really did … he could teach her the rest … maybe he would risk it …
    “You have experienced him,” Peter said. “You’ve really felt what’s there … the way I used to feel it when I read the stories to my mother …”
    He stopped. He had never told anyone about that. He knew he shouldn’t go on. But perhaps she could understand, and he stared at her breasts again … until he became embarrassed by the length of his silence.
    “Tell me about your mother,” she said.
    “Well … we lived in this row house in Baltimore. My father had a sign company … he wanted to be an artist … and my mother acted for a while … she was quite beautiful, actually … I mean she was a beautiful person … not merely physically beautiful … she read and wrote poetry … but they had very little money … and then she got sick … cancer. She was only in her early forties, but she looked much younger. She seemed as young … and as fresh … as you. I mean that’s how I remember her …”
    She smiled and drank her wine. Her face reflected in the crystal, and then he was talking, talking compulsively … she had such luminous blue eyes … he thought that Poe himself would have loved to see such eyes … and it had been so long since he talked to anyone about anything that mattered.
    And when he was finished, Debby was smiling at him so warmly that he found himself basking in her friendliness, her loveliness, and he placed his hand on hers.
    “Peter,” she said softly. “I feel very close to you … very close … Oh, I shouldn’t say that.”
    “No,” he said. “It’s all right. I understand. I feel … the same way.”
    “It’s just that I’ve been so lonely,” she said. “I’ve met so many people like … like that imbecile Harry Gardner … I know what you mean. It is almost as if they have had something cut out of them. All they can respond to are bright colors … football games … comic books … they seem all lively on the outside, but underneath you can see them.”
    “The dead soul beneath the living skin,” Peter said.
    “Yes,” Debby said. “But you’re not like that. You’re an extraordinary person.”
    He found himself drawn to her so overwhelmingly that he wanted to hug her right across the table. Then he felt fear, but he told himself that it was all right … she was exquisite … perhaps since he had finished with Lorraine Bell he was more in tune with others who could share his own unique way of life. But he would have to take her along slowly—very slowly. Still, God, she was there, smiling at him, almost begging him.
    “You live nearby?”
    “Yes, Peter.”
    “I wish … the night didn’t have to end,” he said.
    “It doesn’t,” Debby said, taking his hand as they got up