Read Online Kolchak The Night Strangler by Richard Matheson, Jeff Rice - Free Book Online

love affairs (but no marriages) had not dampened her basic optimism or enthusiasm for life. She moved about as her whims instructed her and wherever she settled down she pursued a college degree, although her major kept changing as often as her residences. She’d been in Seattle over a year and was seriously thinking of staying long enough to finish her studies.
    “Why me, Lou? What is there about this battered visage that attracts you?”
    “I think it’s your Bogart impressions.”
    “Be serious.”
    “I am.” She started soaping my back. “You came on all businesslike and didn’t even try to make a pass. Not a pinch. But I could see you were interested. At your age…”
    “Watch it, shweetheart. You might get a fat lip.”
    Her hands moved lower and around my chest, soaping, soaping. “At your age, most men are pretty blunt about what they want. The successful ones are smoother, but they all come on with that funny-pathetic mixture of desperation and bravado that just turns me off. In case you haven’t heard about women’s lib, let me set you straight. Sometimes the girl likes to decide who she wants to bed down with. More often than you think. And when a girl gets hold of a good thing…”
    “Hey, watch it! Gently. It’s the only one I have.”
    “And a very serviceable one it is, too.”
    “Shall we, Miss H?”
    “We shall, Mr. K. But first, I think a rinse is in order. Suds on sheets don’t make it. Anyhow, when one gets hold of a good thing… raise your arms… then one is inclined to see if it has any lasting qualities.”
    “And I am the most promising specimen to date? Come on. I’ve never amounted to a hill of beans in my whole life. I’m two steps away from being a confirmed alcoholic…”
    “Frustration.”
    “… and I’m nearly 18 years older than you are…”
    “Not mentally. And emotionally I don’t think you’ve ever gotten out of your teens.”
    “… and I’m almost flat broke. I’m not a very good prospect as a husband.”
    She stood up and lifted one lovely leg from the tub. I kissed whatever areas were available until she almost slipped back in.
    “So who…” she pulled me up from the water “… who said anything about marriage? That’s your generation talking, Carl. Contracts. Plights of troth and all that nonsense. I’ve been through the roll-in-the-hay bit and it’s not for me. But I’m not at all sure that marriage is either. I’m not planning to have any kids because I haven’t got any maternal instincts whatsoever.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” I said as I gently toweled her. “You’ve done very nicely by me so far.”
    “That, lover, is something else altogether.” She began to towel me. “You exhibit all the over-40 signs. Uptight about marriage. Afraid of it, yet feeling it’s only right that you go through with all of society’s stupid little shopworn conventions because of what you probably think of as morality.”
    “Hey. I’ve been knocking around quite a few years and I’ve managed to avoid matrimony very nicely up to now… without going in for abstinence. I’ve gotten by.”
    “But I’ll bet you’ve had guilty twinges all along the way.”
    She was right. But that’s another story.
    “And you’ve picked up and run away every time you thought you were falling in love, or done some outrageous thing to drive away the girl, right?”
    “What are you? My head shrinker?”
”Answer the lady? Am I right or am I right?”
    The question was rhetorical. She already knew the answer. She looked down at her handiwork. “I should say, “she began in a mock-aristocratic British Horse Guards accent, “that Mr. Kolchak is ready for action.”
    She was right again. And I had no ideas about driving her away.
    “Just a sec…” She reached for a bottle of Shalimar.
    “Uh, uh. I like you with just you. Come, woman, your master awaits.” I picked her up and bumped my way clumsily into the bedroom. We fell together on her bed in a tangle