Read Online Perchance to Dream by Robert B. Parker - Free Book Online

white-"why not get over here under the umbrella?"
        She poured some champagne and handed it to me. I took it and turned the glass slowly in my hands. I watched her face closely.
        "Know anyone named Simpson?" I said.
        She didn't choke on the champagne, but it was only ten generations of iron breeding that saved her. For a moment her face fell apart, and then she got it back together again and said very casually, "No, I don't believe I do."
        I nodded, as if I believed her.
        "Why do you ask?" she said even more casually than she had spoken before.
        "I have information that Carmen may be with him."
        Vivian drank some champagne, maybe a little more quickly than she had previously.
        "What was the name?" she said as if she were asking the time of day.
        "Simpson," I said.
        Vivian shook her head vaguely and patted the upholstered chaise beside her.
        "Come and sit over here and stop sweating so much," she said.
        I got up and moved into the shade and sat on the chaise. Vivian poured more champagne into my glass and some into hers. She drank. With one bright red fingernail she traced the outlines of my gun in its holster.
        "Frightening things," she said. "But somehow fascinating."
        She moved the tracing finger up from the gun, along my shoulder line and along the edge of my jaw.
        "Like you," she said, "a dark deadly brute of a thing."
        "You should see me in my teal robe," I said.
        Her lipstick was brilliant red and made a wide bright slash across her evenly tanned face. Her black eyes seemed hotter at close range. She rolled onto her side and put her arms around me. The champagne glass had disappeared somewhere on her side of the chaise. She slid her hands up my back and riffled the hair at the back of my neck. We were pressed together from knee to forehead.
        "There's not much between us," she said with her lips fluttering against mine as she spoke.
        "In a manner of speaking," I said. I was doing everything I could not to whinny like a stallion.
        "Just a thin layer of bathing suit," she whispered, "that zips down the back."
        I slid my hand down the line of her zipper. She arched her body hard against me and pressed her mouth against mine. We hung that way, balanced on the edge of the chaise, and of God knows what else. Finally she pulled her head back. Her lipstick was smeared.
        "The zipper." Her voice was hoarse.
        I shook my head.
        "Not like this," I said. "Like a clotheshorse towel boy on the chaise by the pool. Do I get a tip afterwards?"
        Her eyes widened.
        "You don't want me?" she said.
        "I want you, but when it's me and you, not you trying to distract me so I won't keep asking about a guy named Simpson who may have your baby sister."
        Tears welled into her eyes. We were both sitting up on the chaise now, though in truth I couldn't remember changing position. Her fists clenched.
        "You terrible son of a bitch, Marlowe. You arrogant bastard. My baby sister. God, how can you know. How can you even imagine what it's like to have to be in charge of that baby sister?"
        "I've had a taste of it," I said.
        "A taste. I've had a lifetime. And now I have her alone. My father's gone, which is just as well. She would break his heart if he were here."
        "Or she were," I said.
        Vivian seemed to be really crying now.
        "You don't know, Marlowe, what it is like, a woman alone, trying to manage Carmen, trying to keep the General's memory so that his name isn't dishonored, so that he can sleep in peace."
        "When I mentioned Simpson," I said, "you acted like you'd swallowed a mouse."
        Vivian put her face in her hands and began to sob, her honey-colored shoulders hunched. Her whole body shook with the crying.
        "Damn you, Marlowe, why can't you leave me