The Long Wait by Mickey Spillane

they never live long enough for me to enjoy.”
    â€œYou tried it already?”
    â€œThat’s telling.”
    â€œYour boss isn’t a good guy to kick the crap outa, huh?”
    â€œNope.”
    I lit a butt and threw a shaft of smoke around the glass in front of me. “I hear he’s a ladies man.”
    â€œNuts. He’s a male nympho, whatever that is.”
    â€œA saytr. Who’s his current?”
    â€œSome hot number from upstate who knows that the best way to his heart isn’t through his stomach. He keeps her in nylons in his apartment.”
    â€œLook,” I said, “what do you think will happen to me?”
    A frown flitted across her face. “I ... don’t know, really. Somebody ...”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œThings just happen, that’s all. Don’t ask me questions like that. If I were you I’d take the first train out of here.” Her fingers closed over mine. “Do me a favor... leave.”
    â€œI like it here.”
    The glass sat on the edge of her lip a moment, then tipped sharply as she drained it. The bartender came over and made her another one without asking. It was on the house. “You would,” she said, then knocked that drink off too. When she turned around her mouth was pulled down wryly. “Damn all big guys. Come on, take me home.”
    When she got off the stool she almost went on her nose. I got her outside, whistled down a cab and shoved her in. By the time we reached her apartment she was all giggles and insisted on me seeing her to the door.
    The only trouble was, she fell asleep in the elevator and I had to carry her from door to door looking for Shay on a nameplate until I found it, then fish out a key from the bottom of her handbag to get in.
    It was a tricky little three-room apartment with the bedroom opening off one corner of the living room. I kicked the door open, dumped her on the bed and tossed her bag on the dresser.
    I started to leave when she said plaintively, “You forgot to undress me.”
    And there she was grinning at me, her eyes swimming through the blur of the Manhattans, but still very much awake.
    â€œThe zipper runs all the way down the back,” she said.
    â€œI know. And there’s only one hook on the gimmick and your stockings are held up by adhesive tape.”
    She giggled again and raised one leg up slowly. Her dress fell back as far as it could ever get until she was all nice bare skin and sheer nylon that sent fingers crawling up the back of my neck. “You’re so right,” she said. “Now unzip me.”
    I stuck two cigarettes in my mouth, lit them and tossed one on the bed beside her. “Some other time.”
    She sure knew how to pout. She let her leg fall and picked up the butt from the spread. “You’re mean.”
    â€œYeah, a real killer.” I grinned again and walked out.
    She let me get as far as the front door. “If you want, you can come back here and hide from Lenny. Forever.”
    Nice kid. Obliging.
    â€œMaybe I will,” I called back. I stepped outside, tried the door to make sure it was locked and got in the elevator.
    I was all the way down on the street when I remembered that I’d wanted to ask her if that peroxide didn’t sting like hell.
    I expected an ultra-modern apartment house with a door-man. I got a six-story affair with self-service elevator. I expected a bronze doorknocker shaped like a roulette wheel. I got a brass push button. I expected a name embossed in gold and got a plain printed card in a metal frame.
    I expected anybody to open the door but a sleepy-eyed vixen with flaming red hair who offered me a drink out of her glass before she said hello. I took the drink because it seemed like the polite thing to do.
    When I finished half of it I handed it back. “You always answer the door like that?”
    â€œI like to be naked,” she purred.
    â€œDoesn’t anybody ever