Case of Lucy Bending Read Free

overall tan?" he asked her.
She lifted onto her side, stretched across him for the cigarette pack. Ribs pressed glossy skin.
"You've asked me that before," she said. "Several times."
"And you've refused to answer—several times. I tell you things."
"Nothing important," she said. She rolled onto her back, blew a plume of smoke at the cracked ceiling.
"Tacky dump," she said.
"You picked it," he said mildly. "It doesn't make any difference, does it?"
"No."
The mildewed walls were a map of strange worlds. Every flat surface in the room bore a tattoo of cigarette burns. In the bathroom, a vending machine dispensed condoms in three colors. The sheets were stiff as sacking, the towels lacy from years of laundering.
From outside came the grind of a powered lawnmower and the whiz of traffic on 1-95. They heard the crunch of steps on the gravel parking lot and a woman's high-pitched giggle. A radio was playing somewhere, too faintly to distinguish the song, but they could hear the driving pulse.
"What about the all-over tan?" Bending asked again.
She turned her head to stare at him. "Persistent bugger, aren't you?" "Just envious. I'll tell you something important if you'll tell me how you get the tan. Deal?"
"Depends. Let's hear your news first."
"Well ..." Bending said, lighting his own cigarette, "Grace and I finally went to a psychiatrist in Fort Liquordale this morning. About Lucy."
"You should have gone years ago."
"I suppose."
"Is he going to take her?"
"He wants to talk to her first."
"That figures. What's he like?"
"The shrink? Seems like a no-nonsense guy."
"Young? Old?"
"About my age," Bending said. "Maybe a few years older. Short. Stocky. Beard and thick glasses. Young Doctor Freud. He's supposed to be a good man."
"How much, Turk?" she asked curiously.
"Hundred bucks an hour. Which is forty-five minutes."
"Jesus. He better be a good man."
"All right, that's my trade. Now how about your tan?"
She touched the indentation of her waist, pressed the hardness of her thigh. She felt the flatness of her abdomen, stroked her shoulder. He waited patiently. Finally she said:
"I have a friend in Plantation with a roof terrace above everything around. I suntan in the nude up there a couple times a week. No one can see me."
"Except helicopter pilots and the people in the Goodyear blimp. Who's the friend?"
She didn't answer.
"Man or woman?" he asked.
"Man."
"Do I know him?"
"I don't think so."
"What's his first name? You can tell me that, can't you?"
She considered a moment. "His first name is Randolph," she said.
He looked at her, blinking.
"My God!" he said. "Not the senator?"
"Ex-senator."
"Whatever. Jane, he's got to be eighty!"
"Pushing."
"What does he do—beat you with his truss?"
She showed her teeth. "Nothing like that. He's never touched me."
"Then what does he doT'
"Just looks. Looking can be a pleasure, too, you know. I see you staring at the creamers on the beach in their string bikinis."
"Yes," he said, nodding, "that's true. And he's never touched you?"
"Never."
"What do you get out of it?"
"A perfect tan. Some good stock tips. Ripe gossip about local political bigwigs. Who's doing what to whom. Did you know there's a pillar of the community, who shall be nameless, who gets it off with little black sambos?"
"Big deal," he said. "I know a pillar of the community who gets it off with alligators."
She struck him on the shoulder with a clenched fist. "You're impossible."
He agreed.
He swung his legs out of bed, padded to the dresser. He took two Cokes from an insulated bag, just large enough to hold a six-pack. He popped the tabs, came back to bed.
Ronald Bending was a stretched, farmerish man. Hair sun-bleached brown. Ruddy complexion. Laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. A voice curdled with irony. Outsize gestures, almost theatrical. Eyes of faded blue. His body was all angles and edges. Skin a bronzy red above and below the white outlines of his swimming trunks.
He put one of the cold cans of Coke atop her stomach. She