Dangerous Women

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  I stretched out on one of the padded benches opposite my ticket counter and essayed a little catnap, but some old guy was pushing a vacuum cleaner right next to my head, which seemed a little hostile. Still, I closed my eyes and tried not to think of what I was missing in Boston. The guys would probably be at a bar by now, kicking back some beers. At least I’d make it to the major festivities the next night. It hadn’t been a complete lie, the wedding thing. I was going to a friend’s bachelor party, even though I wasn’t invited to the wedding proper, but that’s just because there’s bad blood between the bride and me. She tells Bruce I’m a moron, but the truth is we had a little thing, when they were sorta broken up junior year, and she’s terrified I’m going to tell him. And, also, I think, because she liked it, enjoyed ol’ Andy, who brought a lot more to the enterprise than Bruce ever could. I’m not slagging my friend, but I lived with the guy for four years. I know the hand he was dealt, physiologically.

  Behind my closed eyes, I thought about that week two years ago, how she had come to my room when she knew Bruce was at work, and locked the door behind her, and, without any preamble, just got down on her knees, and-

  “Are you stranded?”

  I sat up with a start, feeling as if I had been caught at something, but luckily I wasn’t too disarranged down there. There was a woman standing over me, older, somewhere between thirty and forty, in one of those no-nonsense suits and smoothed-back hairdos, toting a small rolling suitcase. From my low vantage point, I couldn’t help noticing she had nice legs, at least from ankle to knee. But the overall effect was prim, preternaturally old-ladyish.

  “Yeah. They overbooked my flight, and I can’t get another one until morning, but home’s too far.”

  “No one should have to sleep on a bench. A single night could throw your back out of alignment for life. Do you need money? You probably could get a room in one of the airport motels for as little as fifty dollars. The Sleep-Inn is cheap.”

  She fished a wallet out of her bag, and while I’m not strong on these kind of details, it looked like an expensive purse to me, and the billfold was thick with cash. Most of the time, I don’t angst over money-I’m just twenty-three, getting started in the world, I’ll make my bundle soon enough-but it was hard, looking at all those bills, and thinking about the gap between us. Why shouldn’t I take fifty dollars? She clearly wouldn’t feel it.

  But, for some reason, I couldn’t. “Naw. Because I’d never repay you. I mean, I could, I’ve got a job. But I know myself. I’ll lose your address or something, never get it back to you.”

  She smiled, which transformed her features. Definitely between thirty and forty, but closer to the thirty end now that I studied her. Her eyes were gray, her mouth big and curvy, fuller on top than on the bottom, so her teeth poked out just a little. I go for that overbite thing. And the suit was a kind of camouflage, I realized, in a good way. Most women dress to hide their flaws, but a few use clothes to cover up their virtues. She was trying to hide her best qualities, but I could see the swells beneath her outfit-both on top, and in the back, where her ass rose up almost in defiance of the tailored jacket and straight skirt. You can’t keep a good ass down.

  “Don’t be so gallant,” she said. “I’m not offering a loan. I’m doing a good deed. I like to do good deeds.”

  “It just doesn’t seem right.” I don’t know why I was so firm on this, but I think it was because she was basically sweet. I couldn’t help thinking we’d meet again, and I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the guy who took fifty dollars from her.

  “Well-” that smile again, bigger this time. “We have a stand-off.”

  “Guess so. But you better get down to that taxi stand if you want to get home tonight. The line’s twenty-deep.” We glanced out the windows, down to the level below, which was just chaos. Up here, however, it was quiet and private, the man with the vacuum cleaner having finally moved on, the counters all closed.

  “I’m lucky. I have my own car.”

  “I think the lucky person is the man who’s waiting at home for you.”

  “Oh.” She was flustered, which just made her sexier. “There’s no one-I mean-well, I’m single.”

  “That’s hard to believe.” The automatic bullshit thing to say, yet I was sincere. How could someone like that ticket-clerk crone have a ring on her finger, while this woman was running around loose?

  “It’s a chicken-or-egg problem.”

  “Huh?”

  “Am I single because I’m a workaholic, or am I a workaholic because I’m single?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. It’s the first one. No contest.”

  Her faced seemed to light up and I swear I saw her eyes go filmy, as if she were about to cry. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  “You need to hang out with better people, then.”

  “Look-” She put her hand on mine, and it was cool and soft, the kind of hand that gets slathered in cream on a regular basis, the hand of a woman who’s taking care of every part of herself. I knew she’d be waxed to a fine finish beneath that conservative little suit, with painted toenails and nothing but good smells. “I have a two-bedroom apartment on the south side of the city, just a few blocks from the big hotels. You can spend the night in my guest room, catch the first airport shuttle from the Hyatt at five. It’s only fifteen dollars, and you’ll get where you’re going rested and unkinked.”

  Funny, but I felt protective of her. It was almost as if I were two people-a guy who wanted to keep her from a guy like me, the guy who wanted to get inside her apartment and rip that suit off, see what she was keeping from the rest of the world.

  “I couldn’t do that. That’s an even bigger favor than giving me fifty dollars for a hotel room.”

  “I don’t know. It seems to me there are ways you could pay me back, if you put your mind to it.”

  She didn’t smile, or arch an eyebrow, or do a single thing with her face to acknowledge what she had just offered. She simply turned and began pulling her bag toward the sliding glass doors. But I was never more certain in my life that a woman wanted me. I got up, grabbed my own suitcase, and followed her, our wheels thrumming in unison. She led me to a black BMW in the short-term lot. Neither one of us said a word, we could barely look at each other, but I had her skirt halfway up her thigh even as she handed the parking lot attendant two bucks. He never even bothered to look down, just handed her the change, bored with his life. It’s amazing what people don’t see, but after all-people didn’t see her, this amazing woman. Because she was small and modest, she passed through the world without acknowledgment. I was glad I hadn’t made the mistake of not seeing what was there.

  Her apartment was only twenty minutes away, and if it had been twenty-five, I think I would have made her pull over to the side of the road or risked bursting. I had her skirt above her waist now, yet she kept control of the car and leveled her eyes straight ahead, which just made me wilder for her. Once she parked, she didn’t bother to pop the trunk, and by that time I wasn’t too worried about my suitcase. I wasn’t going to need any clothes until the morning. She ran up the stairs and I followed.

  The apartment building was a little shabby, and in an iffier neighborhood than I expected, but those warehouse lofts usually are in odd parts of town. She pulled me into the dark living room and locked the door behind me, throwing on the dead bolt as if I might change my mind, but there was no risk of that. I didn’t have the time or the inclination to take in my surroundings, although I did notice that the room was sparsely furnished-nothing more than a sofa, a desk with an open laptop, and this huge credenza of jars with gleaming gold tops, which looked sort of like those big things of peppers you see at some delis, although not quite the same. I couldn’t help thinking it was a project of hers, that maybe they were vases distorted by the moonlight.

  “You an artist?” I asked as she backed away and began pulling her clothes off, revealing a body that was even better than I had hoped.
r />   “I’m in business.”

  “I mean, as a hobby?” I inclined my head toward the credenza, as I was trying to get my trousers off without tripping.

  “I’m a pickler.”

  “What?” Not that I really cared about the answer, as I had my hands on her now. She let me kiss and touch what I could reach, then sank to her knees, as if all she cared about was pleasing me. Well, she had said she was into good deeds, and I had done pretty well by her in the car.

  “A pickler,” she said, her breath warm and moist. “I put up fruits and vegetables and other things as well, so I can enjoy I hem all winter long.” And then she stopped talking because she had-

  Maureen stops, frowning at what she has written. Has she mastered the genre? This is her sixth letter, and while the pickups are getting easier, the prose is becoming harder. Part of the problem is that the men bring so little variation to their end of the bargain, forcing her to be ever more inventive about their lives and their missions. Even when they do tell her little pieces of their back stories, like this one, Andy, it’s so boring, so banal. Late to the airport, a missed connection, not enough money to do anything but sleep on a bench, blah, blah, blah. Ah, but she doesn’t have the luxury of picking them for material. She has to find the raw stuff and mold it to her needs.

  So far, the editors of Penthouse haven’t printed any of her letters-too much buildup, she supposes, which is like too much foreplay as far as she’s concerned. Ah, but that’s the difference between men and women, the unbridgeable gap. One wants seduction, the other wants action. It’s why her scripts never sell, either. Too much buildup, too much narrative. And, frankly, she knows her sex scenes suck. Part of the problem is that in real life Maureen almost never completes the act she’s trying to describe in her fiction; she’s too eager to get to her favorite part. So, yes, she has her own foreplay issues.

  No, she definitely has voice problems in this piece. Would a young man remember that whistling sound that braces make, or is she simply giving too much away about her own awkward years? Would a twenty-three-year-old man recognize an expensive purse? Or use the word “preternatural”? Also, she probably should be careful about being too factual.

  The two-dollar parking fee-a more astute person, someone who didn’t have his hand up a woman’s skirt, fumbling around as if he’s looking for spare change beneath a sofa cushion, might wonder why someone returning from a business trip paid for only an hour of parking. She should recast her apartment as well, make it more glamorous, the same way she upgraded her Nissan Sentra to a gleaming black BMW. Speaking of which, she needs to get the car to Wax Works, just in case, and change Andy’s name in the subsequent drafts. She doesn’t worry that homicide detectives read Penthouse Forum for clues to open cases, but they almost certainly read it. Meanwhile, his suitcase is gone, tossed in a Dumpster behind the Sleep-Inn near the airport, and Andy’s long gone, too.

  Well-she looks up at the row of gleaming jars, which she needs to lock away again behind the credenza’s cupboards, but they’re so pretty in the moonlight, almost like homemade lava lamps. Well, she reminds herself. Most of Andy is long gone.

  Dangerous Women - Penzler, Otto Ed v1.rtf

  RENDEZVOUS

  NELSON DEMILLE

  A

  s I learned in high school biology, the female of the species is often more dangerous than the male. Maybe that was true in the animal kingdom, I remember thinking, but with human beings, the male was more dangerous.

  I changed my mind about this when I crossed paths with a very deadly lady with a rifle, who was intent on killing me and everyone around me.

  I was a young infantry officer doing a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1971-72. After a few months of combat, I mistakenly volunteered for a crappy job. I found myself leading a ten-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, known as the Lurps.

  I was near the end of my tour, with twelve patrols under my belt, and all I could think about was getting home alive.

  We were patrolling near the Laotian border west of Khe Sanh, a hilly area of dense, semitropical rainforest broken up now and then by expanses of head-high elephant grass and bamboo thickets. The local population of indigenous Montagnard tribespeople had long since fled this free-fire zone for the safety of fortified compounds to the west.

  I had the feeling-which was total illusion-that I and my nine men were the only human beings in this Godforsaken place. The reality was that there were thousands of enemy soldiers moving around us, but we hadn’t seen them, and they hadn’t seen us, which was the name of the game.

  Our mission was not to engage the enemy, but to find and map the elusive Ho Chi Minh Trail-actually a network of narrow roads used by the enemy to infiltrate troops and supplies into South Vietnam. We were also to report such movements via radio so that American artillery, helicopter gunships, and fighter bombers could deliver appropriate disincentive to the enemy.

  It was July, it was hot, humid, and buggy. Snakes and mosquitoes loved the weather. At night, we could hear the chattering of monkeys and the growl of tigers.

  Long-range reconnaissance patrols usually lasted about two weeks. Beyond two weeks, the carried rations ran low and the patrol’s nerve ran out. You can only take so much time in the jungle, deep in enemy-controlled territory, outnumbered by hostile forces, who could snuff out a ten-man patrol in a heartbeat if they discovered you.

  We carried two radios-PRC-25s, called Prick Two Fives-so that we could keep in contact with our headquarters far, far away, to make reports, call in artillery or bombs, and ultimately arrange our extraction by helicopter when the mission was completed, or when the mission was compromised, i.e., if and when Charlie was breathing down our necks.

  Radios sometimes fail. Or get damaged. Radio frequencies sometimes don’t work. Sometimes Charlie is listening to you on his radio, so there is a contingency plan if the radios are no longer an option. There were three prearranged pickup sites marked on my terrain map, with three prearranged times of helicopter rendezvous. These are called Rendezvous Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. If you don’t see your helicopter at Alpha at the designated time, you move to Bravo, and if that meeting fails, you move to Charlie. If that fails, you move back to Alpha. Then you’re on your own. And as our Viet friends say, Xin Loi. Good luck.

  Things that caused a missed prearranged rendezvous were weather and enemy activity in the area. So far, the weather was clear, and we hadn’t seen or heard the enemy. But he was there. We saw fresh ruts and footprints in the network of trails, and we came upon recently abandoned camps, and we smelled cooking fires at night. He was all around us, but he was invisible, and so, too, I hoped, were we.

  That all changed on Day Ten.

  We were patrolling an area that gave me some concern; it was a place that had once been lush woodland, but was now an expanse of napalm-charred tree trunks, compliments of the U.S. Air Force. Our job here was to report on the effects of the recent air strike, and I was trying to comprehend and evaluate what I was seeing: black ash, charred trucks, and dozens of grotesquely contorted and incinerated bodies, white teeth protruding from charcoal faces. We needed to do a vehicle and body count.

  The problem with this place, other than the obvious, was that it offered little or no cover and concealment to me and my men.

  I spoke in a whisper to my radio operator behind me, a guy named Alf Muller. “Radio.” I put my hand out behind me to take the radiophone, but it wasn’t slapped into my hand as it should have been.

  I turned to see Alf lying facedown in the black ash, his radio strapped to his back and his arms thrown out from his sides, one hand holding the phone at the end of the wire.

  It took me half a second to realize he’d been hit.

  I yelled “Sniper!” and dove to the ground and did a roll in the ash with everyone else. We lay there, hoping to look like something inanimate among the blackened debris of the blasted earth.

  Sniper. The scariest thing on the battlefield, where scary things abound. I hadn’t he
ard the shot, and I wouldn’t hear the next one either. Nor would I see the sniper even if I was still alive after the next shot. The sniper operates from a long distance-about a hundred or two hundred meters-and he has a very good rifle, equipped with a telescopic sight, a silencer, and a flash suppressor. He wears camouflage clothing and his face is blackened like the ash I was lying in. He is the Grim Reaper who harvests the living.

  No one moved, because movement meant death.

  There was no way to tell where the shot had come from, so we couldn’t get behind something because we could actually be putting ourselves in the direct line of fire. We couldn’t run because we could be running right toward the sniper.

  I turned my head slowly toward Alf. His face lay in the ash, and there was no sign of breathing.

  To the extent that I had any thoughts at all except terror, I wondered why the sniper had taken Alf, the radio man, rather than me; the guy next to the radio man is the officer or the sergeant, who is the prime target in combat, like taking out the quarterback. Strange. But I wasn’t complaining.

  There is no best thing to do in this situation, but the second best thing to do is nothing. My guys were trained, and they knew to keep their nerve and stay motionless. If the sniper fired again, and someone got hit-assuming we knew someone was hit-then we’d have no choice but to scatter and take a chance that the sniper could only hit so many moving targets before some of us were out of range.

  I get paid to make decisions, so I decided that the sniper was too far off to hear us. I needed a head count, and I called out, “Dawson. Report.”

  My patrol sergeant, Phil Dawson, called back, “Landon is hit. He was moving, but I think he’s dead.”