The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker Page B

behind his big masculine desk, trying to feel like a man."
    "Does he know Terry's gone?"
    "Yes. That's why he went to the office. It makes him feel better about himself. All he can cope with is stocks and bonds. People, and daughters and wives, scare hell out of him."
    She finished the drink, took mine, which was still half-full, and made two fresh ones.
    "Something scares hell out of everybody," I said. "Have you any thoughts on where I should look for Terry?"
    "What scares hell out of you?" she asked.
    The bourbon was making a lot of headway against the coffee. I felt a lot better than I had when I came in. The line of Marion Orchard's thigh was tight against the blue robe as she sat with her legs tucked up under her on the couch.
    "The things people do to one another," I answered. "That scares hell out of me."
    She drank some more. "Wrong," she said. "That engages your sympathy. It doesn't scare you. I'm an expert on what scares men. I've lived with a scared man for twenty-two years. I left college in my sophomore year to marry him, and I never finished. I was an English major. I wrote poetry. I don't anymore."
    I waited. She didn't really seem to be talking to me anymore.
    "About Terry?" I prodded softly.
    "Screw Terry," she said, and finished her drink. "When I was her age I was marrying her father and nobody with wide shoulders came around and got me out of that mess."
    She was busy making us two more drinks as she talked. Her voice was showing the liquor. She was talking with extra-careful enunciation-the way I was. She handed me the drink and then put her hand on my upper arm and squeezed it.
    "How much do you weigh?" she asked.
    "One ninety-five."
    "You work out, don't you? How much can you lift?"
    "I can bench press two-fifty ten times," I said.
    "How'd you get the broken nose?" She bent over very carefully and examined my face from about two inches away. Her hair smelled like herbs.
    "I fought a ranked heavyweight once."
    She stayed bent over, her face two inches away, her fragrant hair tumbling forward, one hand still squeezing my arm, the other holding the drink. I put my left hand behind her head and kissed her. She folded up into my lap and kissed back. It wasn't eager. It was ferocious. She let the glass drop from her hand onto the floor, where I assume it tipped and spilled. Under the blue robe she was wearing nothing at all, and she was nowhere near as sinewy as she had looked to me the first time I saw her. Making love in a chair is heavy work. The only other time I'd attempted, I'd gotten a charley horse that damn near ruined the event. With one arm around her back I managed to slip the other one under her knees and pick her up, which is not easy from a sitting position in a soft chair. Her mouth never left mine, nor did the fierceness abate as I carried her to the couch. She bit me and scratched me, and at climax she pounded me on the back with her clenched fist as hard as she could. At the time I barely noticed. But when it was over, I felt as if I'd been in a fight, and maybe in some sense I had.
    She had shed the robe during our encounter and now she walked naked over to the bar to make another drink for each of us. She had a fine body, tanned all over except for the stark whiteness of her buttocks and the thin line her bra strap had made. She returned with a drink in each hand. Gave one to me and then stroked my cheek once, quite gently. She drank half her drink, still standing naked in front of me, and lit a cigarette, took in a long lungful of smoke, let it out, picked up her robe, and slipped into it. There we were, all together again, neat, orderly, employee and employer. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson.
    "I think Terry is with a group in Cambridge that calls itself the Ceremony of Moloch. In the past, when she would get in trouble or be freaked out on drugs or have a fight with her father, she'd run off there, and they let her stay. One of her friends told me about it."
    She'd known that when she'd