Strip for Murder

by Richard S. Prather

  The bed was mussed but empty, as if Laurel had lain there for a while and then left. I was sweating.

  As I turned out the light I noticed a glow through the rear window of the bedroom. I walked to the window and looked out. There were lights in another cabin a few yards behind this one; from what Laurel had told me this afternoon, it was probably my cabin. I turned off the front-room light, went out, and trotted around the cabin to the one where the light was showing.

  I didn't even stop to look through the window in front, just twisted open the door and went inside. This cabin was an exact counterpart of the other one, and I hot-footed it across to the bedroom and went in.

  She was on the bed. I walked over and looked down at her. The light filtering in from the front room was barely bright enough so that I could see it was Laurel. She lay on her side, but twisted so that her shoulders were almost flat on the bed, the light-blue spread pulled partly across her body. She was breathing deeply in her sleep. I stood over her for a while, letting my own breathing become more normal, oddly surprised to find that all my muscles had been tense, my nerves tight. The roof of my mouth was dry.

  In the soft light, her features relaxed in sleep, she looked even lovelier than she had in daylight, and younger, more defenseless. The blue spread covered her hips and thighs, leaving her lower legs bare, and only half covered the full globes of her breasts.

  Right then I knew that whether I liked it or not, I was getting involved, emotionally involved, with this lovely. During the afternoon thoughts of her had come into my mind often, but I'd pushed them away, telling myself that she'd be all right, there was no reason really to worry about her. But these last minutes had been bad ones for me; it had frightened me to find her cabin empty, frightened, me more than I cared to admit to myself, and then seeing her had been a relief that was almost a shock. I didn't stop to ask myself why she was here; it was enough that she was safe, warm and alive.

  I stared down at her, feeling the tension and tightness drain from me. Then her breathing stopped. I saw her move slightly, convulsively, and her eyes were open wide. She gasped, rolled away from me, and scrambled off the foot of the bed, jumping toward the door.

  “Laurel!” I yelled.

  She stopped, one hand against the doorframe. “Shell?”

  “Yeah, honey. What's the matter?”

  Her shoulders sagged a little, then straightened. She turned. “I didn't know it was you. I thought—I was asleep, and...” She didn't finish it.

  “Relax,” I said. “It's only me, the—the confused health director. Remember?”

  She laughed softly, nervously, and said, “You startled me, Shell. Let me get hold of myself.”

  “I'll tell you what, Laurel. You'd better go wrap yourself in the bedspread again, or both of us will get hold of yourself. Or ourselves. I mean, I have just come from the outside world, where everybody—”

  She laughed, more naturally and freely this time, and walked away from the door to the bed. She walked right past me, too, within inches of me, while I made faint, unintelligible sounds.

  “Sit down, Shell,” she said. “I'm all right now.”

  “You bet you're all right.” I looked around for a chair. No chair.

  “Sit on the bed,” she said. “I won't bite you.”

  I said, “All right for you, then; I won't bite you, either,” and sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Laurel threw a bit of the bedspread over her. It was just a little bit of the spread, draped with almost studied, and certainly artistic, casualness. Draped far more casually than I.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess, ah, I'd better get back to my place. Ha-ha. This is my place, isn't it? Nice having your place in my place. I mean, you in my place. Yes.”

  “I'm sorry I acted like such a fool, Shell. I woke up and saw you there, only I didn't know it was you.” Her voice was soft and warm, as if that wind outside had come sighing into the bedroom. “You see, what startled me so much was that you had your clothes on.”

  “It was? Well, that's, uh—” I cleared my throat. “We can fix that, all right.”

  She went on: “That's the last thing you expect to see here in Fairview, a man standing over your bed with his clothes on.”

  “Yeah. Guess I should have turned the lights on, what? Still can, you know.” I sped on. “Shall we get a little light on the subject—in the place—in the house? This chatting away in blackness is for the birds.” My voice sounded like an old man's, but I didn't feel very old. I felt full of youth, full of beans, full of wild, red-hot corpuscles that were scorching my brain and everything. “Laurel,” I said in a cracked voice, “Laurel, do you remember when we met? I mean, how I explained that I'm all full of beans—ah, that I am not used to—”

  She leaned forward and pressed two soft fingers momentarily against my lips. “Don't go on so,” she said. “What's the matter with you?”

  “Don't you know?” My voice went way up.

  She chuckled softly, “Yes. Of course I know.” She paused. “Shell, I came here because I was ... frightened. There alone in my cabin, and not knowing when you'd come back. Or even if you would. So I came here and waited and fell asleep. I was afraid to be alone. I feel better now, but I'm still afraid ... to be alone.”

  She had risen up on one elbow to press her fingers against my mouth, and now she still held herself partly off the bed. Light from the front room, seeming brighter now, cast a silvery mistiness over her bare shoulders, and over proud breasts that looked smoother than ivory, softer than down.

  She was looking at my face, her long-lashed eyes almost closed, lips parted. “You won't be alone,” I said. I leaned closer to her and she tilted her head slightly, and I saw the tip of her tongue flick against her lips just before they parted even more. Then they were against my mouth. At first her lips were softer than the whispering wind outside the cabin, but then they writhed and curled against mine, and her tongue flicked against them again as we both moved closer together and our arms went around each other.

  Her lips clung to mine for a long time, her hands against my back, fingers curling, then her lips went slack and her head rolled to one side. I kissed her throat, the curve of her shoulder, the soft warmness of her breasts, and she breathed rapidly, making small sounds deep in her throat. Then I felt her move against me; her lips traced my cheek and touched my ear as she whispered to me.

  I got up. When I slid into bed beside her again, barely touching her, she was lying motionless on her back. For long seconds she lay that way, unmoving. Then slowly she turned toward me, pressed her lovely soft body deliberately against me.

  I said her name once, and once she said mine, but that was all. There were no more words after that. No more words except that, some time later, Laurel said in a thick, sleepy voice, “Night, Shell, darling,” and I said to her, “Good night.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up suddenly in the morning. I woke up suddenly because Laurel was wallowing all over me, shaking my head and saying, “Get up. Wake up, Shell. It's time to get up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said sleepily. “Call me in a couple of hours or so.” Here was this beautiful naked babe wallowing about, and I tell her to call me in a couple of hours. I'm just not myself in the morning.

  The wench said, laughing, “You've got to get up. You have to lead the membership in calisthenics.”

  It hit me all of a sudden. I grabbed the covers and threw them away from me, burying Laurel under a sheet and blanket, and sprang clear out into the middle of the room. “What!” I shouted.

  There was a flurry of bedclothes and Laurel's tousled hair and beautiful face emerged from them. She was grinning.

  “Calisthenics,” she said. “You remember.” Then she stifled a delicate yawn and stretched, arching her back and thrusting with small, tightly closed fists at the ceiling. The covers slid down. And down.

  Now that I was about an eighth awake, this was an entirely different proposition than that earlier wallowing had
been. I sprang back onto the bed. “Ah, yes! I remember! Calisthenics!” I grabbed her.

  She squirmed briefly, laughing, then slid out of my clutches. “You got away,” I said dismally. “I guess I'm still not awake. Not enough. Come on. It was your idea, remember.”

  “Oh, you're crazy! Look, there are a hundred people you've got to lead in calisthenics.”

  “Say that again. I never heard of such a— A hundred? Hellfire, woman, I didn't even know it was possible with more than one or two. How am I—”

  She had scooted off the foot of the bed and now she interrupted me. “Shell. Listen carefully. Every morning before breakfast the health director leads all members of Fairview in calisthenics. It gets the blood circulating, stimulates you, wakes you up, gives you an appetite.”

  “Not me, it doesn't.”

  “It's for health. Tones the body and blood, gets oxygen into the lungs. And you're the health director. Pretty soon the bell will ring. There it goes.”

  She was right. There it went. It sounded like somebody beating on a metal triangle with a sledgehammer, and a horrible sound it was.

  “Come on,” she cried, and spun around.

  “Wait. Where you going?”

  “We're going to the front of the Council Building. You're supposed to be there already. At the bell, everybody runs out there and lines up. Then you face them and tell them what to do.”

  “I'll tell them what to do, all right,” I grumbled. “But as for facing a hundred crazy—”

  “Come on!”

  “Wait! Suppose I should get out there. What do I do?”

  “Calisthenics!” she cried, then sped out the front door.

  I ran out after her, but at that point I didn't really intend to lead those nudists in calisthenics, I was just running after Laurel. I honestly didn't know quite where I was yet, and Laurel looked like a rambling aphrodisiac that was rambling away from me. I could see her fairly well, flying ahead there, because the sun was just coming up, casting a cold light over everything. Cold. It was pretty cold. All over me it was cold.

  I stopped. “Wait!” I shouted. “I forgot my pants!”

  She stopped, too, ran back to me, and grabbed my hand. “I'll not stand for any more of this nonsense. You—”

  “Nonsense, fooey. I'm serious. I forgot my—”

  “Come along with me. Please, Shell, please, hurry, please.”

  She was tugging me after her, and when she said please that way, a man would do almost anything. I went along with her, trotting just behind her, and then she let go of my hand and rambled ahead again. I will never know quite how it happened. I only know that I was intent on Laurel's fanny, which was about a yard ahead of me, and then suddenly it was gone. In its place was something I shall not even tell you about, much less describe.

  I realized that Laurel and her gorgeous fanny had tricked me. They had lured me out here onto an open plain in front of a hundred naked people. They all looked at me. I looked at them. This went on for an eternity, and during all those years I kept trying, fruitlessly, to think of possible means of escape, ways I could get out of here without anybody being the wiser. I couldn't think of any.

  I could see Laurel again now. She was a short distance to my right, in the center of a row of about a dozen people. And seven or eight more rows of people were lined up behind that front row. I backed away from them as the sun seemed to spring up over the horizon as if the fool thing thought it was high noon. When I was maybe twenty feet from the front row I overcame the impulse to wheel and run into the woods and got control of myself.

  I was stuck with this. I had to lead these characters in calisthenics; I was the health director, even though there had probably never been a health director who felt more nauseated than I did, and by God I would show them a thing or two. Ha-ha, I thought sadly, as if I haven't.

  I plunged into it. “Go-ood morning, everybody,” I said. Suddenly my voice was thin and fluting. Everybody chorused, “Good morning.” Those hundred voices boomed out over the hills.

  “Here we go,” I shouted. “Fall out.”

  Nobody moved. They didn't understand. Hell, that was nothing. I didn't understand, either. “Well, fall in,” I said. One guy clear over at the end of the last row, next to the pool, made a splash. There was a titter of laughter.

  I couldn't fool around any longer. But then I noticed something strange. All hundred or SQ of them were standing scrunched over in a very damned peculiar position, with one leg lifted, bent at the knee, and held before them in a protectively coy gesture. I thought they had all gone nuts, but then I understood.

  I let out a hollow laugh and straightened up. The hell with them. “All right now, men,” I shouted. “And women. Let's ah, allez oop. Here we go.” I sprang into the air clapping my hands, and I never felt sillier in my life.

  Talk about silly—you should have seen those nudists. They went up into the air like small fizzled rockets, and came down bouncing, and then popped into the air again. I was springing up and down like mad, clapping my hands like a 205-pound Nijinsky, and they were trying to keep up with me. I tried to think of something else to do, some other goddamn calisthenic, but it's pretty hard to think of anything sensible when you're leaping about clapping your hands, so I just kept on.

  I had, until now, thought I knew something about calisthenics. I had known nothing about calisthenics. I was looking at the world through rose-colored people and I was, as they say, all shook up. Besides which, I was getting pooped.

  So I stopped. Everybody stopped.

  From there on everything happened in a kind of a daze. I ran in one spot for a while, then I spun about, and then I did numerous other things, and finally some deep knee bends with my hands on my hips, all of which those people did, and it was that last one that finished me. I knew I couldn't go on.

  “That's it,” I said. “That's all. You're dismissed. Go away!”

  The gathering broke up. People tottered off in all directions; others just sank to the ground where they were. Tired, huh? I'd sure fixed them. Healthy, hah, some healthy bunch. I began to feel faint.

  I sat down on the grass, the landscape reeling. Somebody reeled toward me, then plopped at my feet. It was Laurel. She glared stonily at me, chest heaving, and when that chest heaved, it heaved. Finally she gasped, “What happened to you? You trying to kill everybody? Woo. You must have pranced around out there for an hour. Woo. I think everybody's going back to bed. Woo.”

  “Woo, that's a fine idea. Let's go back to bed. Woo. Get it? We'll—”

  “Oh, shut up.” Laurel was all out of sorts. “You'd think you were training us for the front lines. All we needed was guns and packs on our backs. You're not still in the Marines, you know.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Well, if you did it on purpose, I hope you're satisfied. But I'm proud of everybody at Fairview. Nobody quit. Nobody fell out. Nobody had a stroke.”

  “Honey, I didn't do anything on purpose. This is part of some dark fate that pursues me. But, by George, you're right.” I thought about it a minute, then looked around. Unbelievable as it was to what was left of me, there was already a game of volleyball in progress. Half a dozen people were splashing in the pool. And I lay here quaking in every limb. Even Laurel's breathing was almost back to normal, and I was snorting like a male ape downwind from Tarzan and Jane. “Hey,” I said, “maybe there's something to this health kick after all.”

  “Of course there is,” she said.

  “I could sure use a smoke,” I said, feeling for one. Naturally I had no goddamn smokes. I was sprawled there on the grass in the sunlight, in just my skin. “Guess I better not smoke, anyway,” I said. “Wind's bad enough as it is.”

  I had thought I was in pretty good condition. But I felt no great pride in that thought at the moment. Of all those people who had been sprawled on the grass, only two besides Laurel and me were left. A man and a woman. Memory came slowly back to me. During a particularly strenuous conniption I had seen one o
f them reel, stagger about, and then fall like a stone. The other had gone into an almost identical routine shortly afterward. At the time I hadn't thought about it, but now that the frenzy had passed I began to worry about them.

  I got up, and it was a long way up; then I walked over to them. They lay as if dead. I poked the man with my toe and he grunted. Then his eyes opened. He said, “You sonofa—”

  “Ah, ah,” I said. Good, he was half alive. “You all right?” I asked him.

  “You sonofa—”

  “Hold it, my friend. A lady is present.”

  He stirred himself. “Fran? Where's—” Then he got his head craned around and lamped her. “You've killed her!” he shouted. “You've killed Fran! You sonofa—”

  But then the babe let out a long moan. He patted her face, then looked up at me and grinned, a slim-faced guy with brown hair and lots of teeth showing. “Sorry,” he said. His grin went away, then he put it on again. “I'd like to be excused from calisthenics tomorrow morning, dear director.” He was either grinning or snarling.

  “Sure.” I grinned back at him. “You're both excused. All three of us are—”

  The gal let out another moan and sat up, wobbling her head. She was a nice-looking babe about twenty-five or so, whose shape appeared to be in better shape than she was. She had long black hair and deep, dark unfocused eyes. “What happened?” she said.

  Laurel came up alongside me then and after a few more words the two revived characters got up and walked away. “No casualties after all,” I said to Laurel. “They must be new here. Like me.”

  “Not quite. That's Mr. and Mrs. Brown. They've only been here a few weeks. I think it was mean of you—”

  “Hey, get it through your head I was out of my head. Brown, huh? Everybody's Brown here.”

  “There are only four sets of Browns, and I don't like your insinuation. Shell, you don't seem to understand that almost everybody here stays at Fairview because they like the life—and I don't mean that in any smutty or cheap way at all. Bob and Mary are wonderful people, and so are all the rest. It's a healthful way of living here, healthful physically and mentally, and—”