Read Online Girl Watcher's Funeral by Hugh Pentecost - Free Book Online Page B

finish what we were talking about, Mark.”
    I ordered my Jack Daniels and steak sandwich.
    â€œYou were asking me who was thinking of lining up with another team when we were interrupted,” Jan said.
    â€œWho was thinking of lining up with another team?”
    â€œI haven’t any idea,” she said.
    â€œYou came looking for me to tell me that?” I sounded angry. In spite of myself I was angry.
    Her brown eyes were wide, but fixed very intently on me. “I came looking for you because I knew I’d hurt your feelings. I don’t like to hurt someone.”
    â€œWhat makes you think you hurt my feelings?”
    She reached out and touched my hand. Her fingers were warm. I felt like a seventeen-year-old adolescent out with his first “fast” woman. There were suddenly butterflies in my stomach. I told myself, “React your age, Bud!”
    â€œYou don’t have control over everything, even if you’d like to,” she said. “Mike Faraday sends me, Mark.”
    â€œI noticed you weren’t wearing those track shoes you mentioned,” I said.
    Her body moved inside the raspberry wool, as though she was in pain. “I can’t help myself with Mike. It’s like I can’t kick it. I want to but I can’t.”
    â€œLook, Doll,” I said, emphasizing his name for her, “I can’t help you with your little problem. You said Nikos would have been angry if Tim Gallivan made a pass at you. How did he feel about Faraday?”
    The brown eyes were wide, disturbingly honest. “He didn’t know about Mike. Do you know, that was the first time Mike ever touched me in public? That moment in my room? It was because he didn’t have to be afraid anyone would mention it to Nikos.”
    â€œA lot of people do know about it, I hear,” I said.
    â€œIf anybody told Nikos, he would have asked me and I would have lied to him.”
    â€œBecause you didn’t want to lose a very secure future.”
    â€œBecause I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him,” Jan said.
    A waiter brought my Jack Daniels and I took a solid swig of it.
    â€œHe used to cry sometimes,” Jan said.
    â€œWho used to cry?”
    â€œNikos. He used to cry because he wasn’t a man any more. He used to cry because he couldn’t make love to me. Oh, I would have if he’d asked. I really loved him, Mark. I wouldn’t have hurt him for anything. I know what it was like for him, feeling he wasn’t a man any more. That’s why I felt so badly about you.”
    â€œNon sequitur,” I said.
    â€œI made you feel you weren’t a man,” she said. “Suddenly everything was turned on for Mike and you might like not have been there. It was an awful thing to do to you.”
    â€œI’ll live,” I said. “Everyone said she wasn’t terribly bright, but she’d hit the bull’s-eye. That was exactly why I’d been burning for the last hour—because she’d put my masculinity in doubt.
    â€œSome people think you have to have love and respect and all like that with sex,” she said. “To me it’s just something you’ve got, and you give it because it’s all you’ve got to give. So if you feel like giving something to someone, why, you give the only thing you’ve got.”
    â€œMakes it all very simple,” I said. My mouth felt suddenly dry.
    â€œSo if it would help you to get over being hurt,” she said, the wide brown eyes leveled at me without a suggestion of coquettishness, “and it would give you any pleasure—”
    Someone was tugging at my coat sleeve and I tried to shake it off. Stupid waiter, I thought. Something about the steak sandwich at a moment like this.
    â€œSorry to interrupt,” a familiar voice said. It was Jerry Dodd, the Beaumont’s security officer. Jerry is a thin, wiry man with a professional smile that does nothing to hide