7
By eight-thirty that evening, I was becoming uneasy. I had had an evening full of impatient waiting and the strain was telling on my nerves. I was beginning to feel like a man with a cold or some other rare disease, shunned and avoided. I kept rising and going to the windows to peer out, expecting each time to see Laurie Hendricks just turning up the walk. Each time I was disappointed.
I don't know what I had actually expected to happen when she came. I had told myself that the reason for asking her was clear: she was suspect. Even if I didn't think she was guilty I had to make sure, and the opportunity to meet her privately had been easy to create. But there was another reason. My self-imposed isolation had had a number of draw-backs. When I thought of the clean limbs I had seen so often displayed in the front row of that eleven o'clock English class, when I remembered the way her sweaters were pulled taut across her chest, I felt a different shakiness that made my throat dry and my palms moist.
The wall clock kept changing numbers, approaching nine, and still she didn't arrive. I began to question the eagerness with which she had accepted the suggestion of meeting me at my trailer. Had it all been an act to lull any suspicions I might have? Set him up for it. Make him jumpy. Dull his mind with a little sex play. Then arrange a convenient accident. Easy. He's ripe for it. He hadn't had a woman in over two years. He won't be thinking of anything else. He'll never believe that a young, beautiful girl could be a—
The rap on the door was so light that for a moment I wasn't sure I had actually heard a sound. Then it came again, a gentle rapping, clearly audible. I stared at the door and all of a sudden my palms were clammy again, and I didn't know if the reaction was from desire or fear.
She was standing on the step just outside the door, looking up. When I didn't say anything, she smiled apologetically, the curve of her lips tentative and strongly appealing.
"I'm sorry I'm late, Mr. Cameron. I was—held up."
"Come in," I said stiffly. "It doesn't matter."
She stepped up into the small living room. The moment she entered the room it seemed to shrink, filled with the physical fact of her presence. I closed the door, feeling self-conscious about the action as if it were overtly aggressive. I stared at her. She wore one of the popular one-piece coveralls knitted of a chemical fiber in a red-and-white diamond pattern. The clinging suit was not exactly the usual costume for a student visiting her instructor.
She glanced curiously around the room. "This is nice," she said.
"It's not exactly spacious but I get by. And the view is good."
I indicated the glittering panorama visible through the window in the end wall. She moved closer to it and looked out into the night. I suddenly wondered if someone else was outside waiting for her signal. The other alien. I made a conscious effort of concentration, listening with my mind. I seemed to have a strange sensation of hearing the world's slow murmur like the distant sounds of traffic on a road far, far below you. But nothing else.
Something made me glance out the side window. I was just in time to see the face of the girl next door, set and unsmiling, before her blinds snapped shut. I closed my own draperies, feeling the tension easing in me. So my neighbor wasn't above doing a little window watching of her own, I thought, half-smiling.
"I meant to be here on time," Laurie said, still staring out the window. "But Bob dropped in and—and sometimes he's difficult."
"Jenkins?"
"Yes. We were supposed to have a date tonight."
I looked at the line of the zipper that traced the curving column of her spine, realizing how easily the clinging suit could be shed and acutely aware that she wore nothing underneath it.
"I don't blame him," I said. "I'd be jealous, too."
She pivoted slowly, pleasure glowing in her striking green eyes. And I realized how young she really was. Twenty at most, I thought. Her skin was flawlessly smooth, clear and unlined. Her every movement had the supple grace and vitality of youth. Yet she was a woman, already wise in the way of women.
I caught myself. What did I really know of her? How could I know the mind which controlled this youthful animal beauty? And I thought of a cunning super-intelligence watching me from behind the cool green of her eyes, amused, toying with me. Or did they have a sense of humor? I had caught nothing humorous in the words I had overheard. I had sensed something infinitely cold, completely emotionless.
"Daddy says I'm spoiled," Laurie Hendricks said abruptly.
"Daddy?" I repeated stupidly.
"Yes. I do have one, you know." She shrugged and the gesture caused a wonderful interplay of movement under the tight coverall. "But he's the one who spoiled me, so he shouldn't complain. He thinks I just amuse myself with men and he doesn't like it."
"Do you?"
She laughed, the warm rippling sound making my skin tingle like an electric current. "Of course," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"
"I suspect you're rich," I said. "It's funny, I hadn't thought of you that way."
"Have you thought about me very much?" Her face sobered and her voice became huskier. "I've thought about you. A lot. I guess that's pretty standard procedure, isn't it? Schoolgirl gets crush on handsome teacher."
I swallowed with difficulty. The conversation was getting out of hand. I wasn't controlling it at all.
"We'd better get down to work," I said. "Have you thought about a subject for your term paper?"
She appraised the couch under the long window, seemed satisfied, and settled onto it with a relaxed ease and grace of movement. "Well, if we must work—" she murmured. "No, I haven't thought about it. Did you have any suggestions for me?"
"You might be interested in medieval romances," I offered, struggling to keep my mind on what I was saying. "You could do something on the tradition of courtly love."
She smiled suddenly. "I think I'd like that. Maybe you should tell me about it, Professor."
"No. That'll be your project for research."
"I have a better idea," she said softly. "I bet you know a lot about it. You could just show me."
I shifted uncomfortably on my feet. The floor of the trailer creaked audibly. Betraying me, I thought. The clumsy male shuffling his feet in embarrassment. "Laurie, I—"
"Professor, you didn't really want me to come up here to talk about a term paper, did you?"
I started at her in confusion, thrown off balance by her directness. Slowly everything came into focus. This was a strange creature, all right. But nothing other-worldly. She might be dangerous but not in the way I had feared. She was simply a sensuous, desirable woman. The feelings she inspired could hardly have been more human.
"Well, if you won't come to me," she said, "I guess I'll have to come to you."
She uncurled deliberately from the couch and swayed toward me, her body as sleek and graceful as a cat's. Even the rippling movement of flesh and muscle under the tight coverall reminded me of a cat's powerful rhythm of motion. She stopped very close to me. There was laughter in the green eyes, but as I stared into them, their shading changed, deepened. Her fingers ran up my chest to my shoulders and paused there.
"How many times do I have to ask you?" she breathed.
Control snapped like a taut wire breaking. Our lips and our bodies met, adjusting and fitting together with an instinctive familiarity. She was not one of those women who are awkward to kiss, who seem made of separate parts joined together, whose bodies never lose an indefinable tension. Her body was a single, marvelously mobile unit and it seemed made expressly for mine, at once fluid and firm, swelling and yielding, excitingly strong and meltingly soft. I felt reason sliding swiftly away from me into a crimson pool of sensation.
She pulled away from me with a violent twist. We eyed each other warily, like enemies. I felt the heavy pounding of my heart and tasted the long unfamiliar sweetness of lipstick.
"Well, Professor! I never would have thought it. Or maybe I did."
"Perhaps we should try that again," I said. "For verification."
Her eyes sparkled. "I love to be made love to in an erudite way," she said. "Make love to me, Professor."
This time she didn't have to ask twice. I reached for her but she slipped away, backing toward the couch. I caught her. For a moment she struggled and I heard breathless laughter. Then she was in my arms again, her red mouth warm and alive, and my fingers found the zipper on her suit, pulled it down the long, supple line of her back—
A pounding penetrated the haze in my brain. At first I thought it was the blood pumping furiously through my own veins but suddenly I wasn't holding her any more and she was staring beyond me toward the door.
The loud, officious knock came again.
"My God, who would that be?" she whispered.
"I don't know."
"Oh, damn, damn damn!" She jerked angrily at the zipper. "Just when my professor was warming to his subject."
I grinned and the laughter spread through me, silent, exhilarating. Fear and danger seemed very remote.
"I'll tell the man to go away," I said.
I was still grinning broadly when I pulled open the door. Two uniformed policemen confronted me, their faces hard and unsmiling.