Read Online Please Write for Details by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online

Kilmer and John Kemp were sharing the same airliner over the barren lands some four hundred miles north of Mexico City, and while Fidelio was lying on the grass, giggling, and while Felipe Cedro and Rosalinda Gomez were having a deadly quarrel in the kitchen over the split of the morning kickback, and while Miles Drummond was sitting at the table in his apartment, adding up figures, and while Agnes Partridge Keeley was doing an opaque water color of Popocatepetl, managing to make it look like a huge oversweet vanilla cookie, and while Gloria Garvey was drinking beer at her table in front of the Marik, and while Esperanza Clueca sat in the sun behind the staff quarters studying and while Alberto Buceada was asleep in the shade, and while Pepe was abusing a stray puppy, and while Harvey Ardos was buying a straw sombrero in the public market, and while Paul Klauss was lounging grimly on his bed … Margarita Esponjar came into Klauss’s room without knocking, carrying a pile of folded sleazy towels.
    Paul Klauss stared at her for a frozen moment and then came lithely to his feet.
    “Buenos días, señor,”
Margarita said in her joyous andpiercing voice.
“Dispénsame, pero quiere dos de estas limpias? ¿Dónde están las sucias?”
    Paul gave her expert inspection. Young, possibly too young. Gay and confident. Something pathetic about the unsuitable, slutty red dress and those too-large shoes. At her throat was a cross on a chain that could mean trouble. And, of course, there was a language barrier. The figure was pert and exquisite. The youthful joy of living made her very enticing. She would respond most quickly to a gay approach. So he smiled broadly and shrugged with a charming helplessness, and with his eyes squinched up, he said, “I’m sorry. I speak no Spanish. I haven’t seen you before.”
    She returned his smile and clomped over to the bureau and put two towels on top of it. She took his two dirty towels from the back of his chair and started toward the door. He moved over and blocked her way and made himself tall and smiled down at her. He pointed at his chest and said, “Paul.”
    “Ball,” she repeated, smilingly, dutifully. He pointed at her chest. “Margarita,” she said in her loud, clear, penetrating voice. He winced inwardly. Drop the rating from nine to eight.
    “You are very pretty, Margarita,” he said softly.
    She moistened heavy lips and looked at him with a smile of empty good will, of almost idiotic pleasure.
    “¿Qué quiere?”
she said.
    “I do not understand,” he said, and he was so encouraged by her smile that he reached out a wary hand and clasped her waist, narrow and supple under the sleazy red rayon, warm to his touch.
    She looked quite startled for a moment, and then a broader smile of complete comprehension lit up her rather heavy face. She turned and put the towels on the chair and stepped out of her red shoes and, in front of Paul’s horrified eyes, made a series of gestures so unmistakably specific, so unbelievably crude, that Paul felt his cheeks grow hot with the first blush since childhood. Despite the range and diversity of his amatory conquests, Paul Klauss was, in his heart of hearts, a prude. During her gestures and gyrations, Margarita had not lost her broad delighted smile of inquiry.
    “Sí
?
”
she said.
“Sí? ’Stá bien, horita, Señor Ball.”
    And she reached down and grabbed the bottom of the red dress and started to yank it up off over her head. Paul lungedtoward her and pawed the dress back down and said, “No! No!”
    She tilted her head onto the side and looked at him in confusion,
“¿No?”
    “No.”
    “Ah! Más tarde, creo?”
    “I don’t know what you mean. But no.”
    “¿Esta noche? ¿Después de la comida? ¿A las once horas?”
    “No.”
    “¿Qué falta, Señor Ball? ¿No le gusta amor? ¿Entonces, por qué las mano aquí?”
She touched her waist where his hand had rested, her dark brows knotted in bafflement. Her voice was so