Read Peaceable Kingdom (mobi) for Free Online

or something, with good hips and very good legs—and for now that was all he could see. Her back was still to him.

    He was already wishing for a close-up.

    Howard didn’t know why but he had the feeling the girl was going to be a looker.

    They led her to the far side of the bed and sat her down. She slumped to the pillow immediately, buried her head in it while one of the bruisers reached around in front of her and unbuttoned her blouse, laughing—the soundtrack muddy, garbled, not nearly as good as the picture—saying something to his buddy while he tugged the blouse out of her skirtwaist and then lifted it off first one arm and then the other.

    She wore a sheer white silk bra and her breasts were modest and pointed. Just the way he liked them.

    Tricky Dick One turned her over on her belly so Dickie Two could get at the zipper in the back of her skirt. The girl was wearing heels. He took them off slowly, one by one, and then unzipped the skirt, lifted her a little from the waist and pulled it off her. He patted her behind and laughed. Then drew her slip down over her legs.

    Her panties were cut high, to the hip.

    For the first time the girl resisted slightly, waving at him as though shooing away an annoying pet, a cat or a dog bothering her on the bed.

    “Nooo,” she mumbled.

    “Yeees,” he laughed.

    And turned her over.

    As he did, her face came fully into frame for the very first time.

    And Howard froze.

    He knew her!

    He was ninety-nine percent sure he did! It had been just a glimpse God knows, she was turned away again, but now that he looked at her even the body looked familiar. The legs, the breasts, the willowy arms, the short blond hair.

    It had been a hell of a long time and he couldn’t even remember her first name at first, Ella or Etta—no, Greta—of course! He’d dated her back in college for a few months and finally dumped her after all kinds of messy shit betweenthem and he remembered that at the time she had wanted to be . . .

    (. . . my God . . .)

    . . . she’d wanted to be . . .

    . . . an actress.

    Jesus! My God, he remembered her now. Remembered her perfectly. They’d seen a revival of
Night of the Living Dead
together. Greta liked this stuff too. It was one thing they had in common. Spent God knows how many nights curled up on his Boston sofa watching exactly this sort of slasher, body-count stuff—simulated, of course.

    And now they were . . .

    Jesus Christ!

    And now they were going to do her!

    Right in front of him!

    Or were they?

    He supposed it depended entirely on whether the film actually delivered what the ad had promised him.

    Bored with the same-old-same-old?

    Care to experience the real thing?

    Try our video! We guarantee—

    OFFED delivers! You’ll never

    need another violence fix again

    in your life, Bunky. We swear it!

    On our mothers’ graves!

    $39.95

    What if it
did?

    He pushed
rewind
. Reran the scene. Reran it again. The girl’s head, turning.

    It sure as hell looked like Greta.

    He suddenly, desperately, needed a drink.

    He pushed pause. The image froze and flickered, shot with horizontal lines.

    He walked to the bar and poured himself a scotch. Downed it and poured himself another.

    He thought about her.

    She’d liked her sex hard, no doubt about that. Though Jesus, never this hard. He used to kid her that she wore bite-marks the way some women wore jewelry.

    And she was kinky. He’d even taped a few things on his own now-primitive camcorder with her, nothing too heavy, and she’d stolen the tapes eventually.

    Too bad.

    The woman had been damned attractive and an absolute slugger in bed but there was an edge to her he’d never really cared for. Something rough-cut and slightly lower-class in the Jersey accent, in her off-the-rack taste in clothing.

    He doubted she’d ever make it in the movies.

    And he knew from day one that it wasn’t going to last between them.

    Of course he hadn’t told her that. Not with her