Troyden smiled and sat back. "Good, good," he said to the ceiling with its water stains. "Fine. You know, Mr. Huggerson, for some time now I've been of the opinion that my father was not running things properly here. This house has been losing money for him for some years."

Oh dear,here it comes, thought Mr. Huggerson.

"So I've been intending to do something about the status quo here at Troyden's, ever since father died.

It's unfortunate that my father had to fall down those stairs, but we must take these things philosophically, eh?"

Mr. Huggerson nodded, confused. This did not seem the proper tone to use when raising a man's rent.

"So." Omar spoke the word as a proclamation. "So! What I would like you to do, Mr. Huggerson, and I know this is an imposition, but I felt sure I could ask you, seeing as how you've been here the longest of anyone, what I wanted to ask you is if you would consider managing this place for me."

He waited a second. Mr. Huggerson blew air between his thin, strained lips. "I - I -"

"Yes, I imagined it might be a shock, but you know how it is. I have a great many other interests uptown, and can't be here as my father was. I know you would have only the best interests of the place at heart, seeing as how you live here yourself. So, I wondered if you would consider taking the job. Now, I can't pay much, but aside from well, say, thirty dollars a week, I can guarantee you a room here free of cost.

How does that sound?"

"I - I -".

"The work won't be hard." Omar pressed onward, undaunted, seemingly unaware of Mr. Huggerson's consternation. "We have a janitorial service I'm engaging that will tend to all the cleaning-up ch.o.r.es, and all you'll have to do, really, is make sure the rents are paid on time, and no one gets into trouble."

He spoke on at some length, as though he felt he had to sell the job to Mr. Huggerson. Mr. Huggerson, on the other hand, had been sold from the outset. He was, simply, caught with his throat locked in shock, forced to listen to the beauty of it all being poured out by the son of the man he had killed.

Finally, be agreed and it was done.

Omar Troyden even shook Mr. Huggerson's hand.

Later that day, when news had gone through the rest of the establishment, and the twenty-seven tenants knew Mr. Huggerson was to be manager of the flophouse, Mr. Huggerson felt impelled to speak to Mr.

Zeckhauser.

He drew the stout man aside near the desk, and said, "Mr. Zeckhauser, you have been with us for a good many years, and though we are most happy to have you remain with us, I'm afraid the status quohere at Troyden's is not quite satisfactory.

"Now there is no reason to be alarmed, but I wanted to speak to you about -"

It was only fair; a man of responsibility should not be compelled to live in a single, ten-dollar-a-week room. It was more fitting, therefore more logical, for a man of Mr. Huggerson's position to occupy a larger room. A fourteen-dollar room, with private bath.

Besides, he had never liked "Under The Tonto Rim."

Four.

Nedra at :5.6 (AN HOMMAGE TO FRITZ LEIBER).

I'm looking at the pictures, but I don't believe it. I may just go have my eyes examined, or trade in that G.o.dd.a.m.ned Leica and be done with it, but I don't - doubly donot - believe it. Listen: it's so weird, I didn't simply trust the raw negatives ... I actually developed the b.l.o.o.d.y things, every frame.

Nedra's asleep in the bedroom, and well sheshould be after the monumental bout we staged tonight, and I'm almost afraid to go in and wake her. Oh, h.e.l.l, it's just a trick of lighting, that's all, or something wrong with that d.a.m.ned Leica, or some c.r.a.p got into the developer. But still ...

Central Park uptown can be a strange and wonderful thing on an early spring day, but today wasn't a spring day. This was the middle of October, overcast, with the gra.s.s frantically struggling to stay green as it was trampled; with the trees whispering how clever they were to be dumping their leaves; with the sky siphoning down from a watery blue to a washed-out orange near the horizon. It was the Park on a day when all the nannies would have rather been in the apartments, with their white shoes off, drinking Pimms Cups pilfered from their employer's larders, and watchingThe Edge of Night instead of perambulating their charges' perambulators. A week after the World Series, when the wormy t.i.ttle bookies who had lost their shirts when the Dodgers folded in five had crawled back into the topsoil till football season was under way. A sort of day that idles along, like a rolling hoop, just lightly jouncing over troublesome things like the canine Twinkies on the paths and the creepy gang kids looking for someone to mug; just going its way with an occasional shove or two.

That sort of day. And the people on the benches were nothing spectacular. Mostly old men and women, taking the sun - what there was of it - and proud young mamas, showing their offspring to the folks.

It didn't look like the sort of day to be getting any good photos, but I decided to leg it around a few blocks of park and snap what there was. Overcast, just right, can get you some good candid color stuff.

Sometimes.

Well, I was skirting the benches along in the Sixties, snapping one here and one there; catching a kid trying to stomp a dirty pigeon; catching a woman watching the sky to see if rain was coming and picking her nose at the same time; catching a b.u.m twisted like a foetus on a bench, with a copy of theWall Street Journal over him for warmth. Nothing spectacular, but maybe it would look good in the darkroom.

It was just as I was pa.s.sing the 79th Street underpa.s.s - you know, the part that takes you down to the boat basin - with the October wind snapping up off the Hudson, tossing my hair around my head, making me wish I'd worn my Aquascutum, when I spotted her.Now let me get this straight with you for a second. I've been a professional photographer for twelve years now. I'm thirty-five years old, and I've snapped some of the wildest-looking women in the game.

I've had Valerie Perrine and Ann-Margret up on kitchen stools in front of a white cyclorama sheet; I've posed Victoria Vetri and Claudia Jennings and Charlotte Rampling and Elsa Martinelli with and without their undies; I've done fashion layouts with everycourant breathtaker from The Shrimp to Farrah Fawcett; even worked with the mythic l.u.s.t-dreams like Bettie Page and June Wilkinson and Irish McCalla and Anita Ekberg and Vikki Dougan right at the end of their popularity, before they vanished to wherever the great beauties vanish to; I've seen more hundreds of women in the bare, with their vitals exposed, than any other dude with a planar I can think of, excluding maybe Haskins, Avedon, de Dienes, Rotsler, Casilli and a couple of others. So stunning women aren't anything that special to me, except maybe something to make a buck off, if I can develop a set on them. What I'm saying is that Lauren Hutton isn't a coronary arrest where I'm concerned if, as they say, you get my drift.

I've made my living at cheesecake, when there weren't "art" jobs or fashion layouts handy, and I know d.a.m.ned well what.i.t looks like from every crotch-crazy angle you can think of. So I should have known better ... it shouldn't have stopped me.

But that's just what she did. She stopped me flat.

I just stared at her, sitting there in the afternoon, with the feeble sun breaking through overhead, and the bench cool and green under her round bottom, and the skirt up just a bit so I could see her knees didn't show bones, but were smooth and firm and flesh-colored.

She was like nothing I'd ever seen before. She was the answer to every cheesecaker's dream.

She just looked like she wanted to lie down on the gra.s.s.

With me. With the Good Humor Man. With the park attendant. With anybody.

You've probably seen pictures in magazines of girls like that. They just look more natural p.r.o.ne than vertical. They seem to be saying with their eyes and their mouths and the lines of their bodies, "Let me lie down ... I want to be horizontal." Well, she was like that, only more so, only much more so. She looked ... well ... the only word I could come up with washungry . Yeah, that was it,hungry . She looked like she hadn't had a certain kind of meal in a h.e.l.luva long time.

She was about five-feet-six, with hair that sent back the weak rays of the sun in a brilliant red explosion.

Her hair wasn't the bra.s.sy, carroty red so many women think is hotcha; it was a delicate sort of amber, with highlights of black and streakers of deep crimson in it. It was hair that came down around her shoulders; and she tossed it out of her face with an eloquent twist of her shoulders.

I couldn't see what color her eyes were, because they were closed. She was sitting there with her hands in her lap, and her head tilted back and to the side slightly, as though she was sleeping.

It was a nippy day, and yet she wore no coat. She had on a dark charcoal skirt and a pale blue poorboy jersey that stopped short of her upper arms. She must have been chilly as h.e.l.l, but she wasn't shivering.

I was glad she hadn't worn that coat, because it gave me an uninterrupted view of her body. Now, ordinarily, in most women, no matter how skimpy or thin the clothing, there's still a portion of the anatomy you can't quite shape out in your mind. The under-b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the joint of the legs, the slide of the belly to the hips. But this girl was the next best thing to naked. Voluptuous. That was another word for her. Hungrily voluptuous. Voluptuously hungry. Either way, I could see the sharp molding of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the front of the jersey. I could see the sharp lines of indentation as the legs raced up to wide, rounded thighs, and plunged out of sight beneath her stomach. I could see her all, all of her, and it mademe dizzy.

Have you ever experienced anything comparable? A roller coaster, doing forty push-ups, running a mile and a half in eleven minutes? All of them and others. This girl was the original Circe, the dyed-in-the-cotton-jersey siren.

Ihad to pose her.

I'm not bashful around women - my studio apartment has resounded long and loud to the outraged squeals of outraged models - but there was something about her that made me walk softly, on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet, toward her.

Almost as though I'd tripped an electric eye as I approached, she sat up, and stared at me openly. I was stopped cold again. Her eyes were the most fantastic things I'd ever seen. They were like the first movement of Rimsky-Korsakov'sLe Coq D'or transposed from sound to solid. They were like two green-hot chunks of emerald, bathed by the heat of an exploding sun, and smoldering, smoldering. They were all the invitations and all the ecstasies and all the open accusations of a woman who wants to make love no matter what the cost. They were alone in their category. They were more than merely eyes. Eyes see ... these spoke.

"h.e.l.lo," she said.

The voice couldn't have been more right for her had it been taped and recorded in the Muscle Shoals sound studios, with all the acoustical tricks of an echo chamber built into her vocal cords. The voice came at me and cracked me across the mouth. When that girl said h.e.l.lo, so help me G.o.d, I bit my lip.

"Hi ... I'm, uh, my name is Paul Sh.o.r.es. I'm a, uh, photographer, and I'm, uh, I was watching you. Has anyone ever -"

She smiled, and it was the oddest smile I'd ever seen; working up from one corner of her very red mouth, and abruptly splitting at me, showing two rows of perfectly white teeth, with the little canines peeking out sharp and pointy. The smile brought two spots of color to her cheeks, and they looked almost unnatural in the setting of fine alabaster flesh. Her face was a study-composite in red and pale pink. The kind of complexion they meant when they said peaches-and-cream, with none of the sick look of soggy peaches.

She finished my sentence for me. "Has anyone ever told me I was pretty enough to be a model? Yes, Mr. Sh.o.r.es, any number of times, and any number of people."

The smile continued, as though she were mocking me, and I was so embarra.s.sed I turned to leave, without even excusing myself.

I got one step away, and I felt her hand slip through my arm. "I'd love to pose for you," she said. I looked down at her.

She was serious, G.o.ddammit! Absolutely serious about posing for a total stranger.

"But why?" I asked. "You don't know me from Ad -"

"Adam was much fatter than you," she replied with a pixie grin replacing the smile. "And besides, I think I can trust you. Any man who can afford a Leica doesn't have to pick up girls in the park."

I was surprised that she recognized my camera, and even more surprised at her logic which, crazy as it was in an era when you can buy a hot Ha.s.selblad on most street corners for sixty bucks, sounded logical.Nuts, but logical.

So we were off. In a little while most of my tongue-tootled att.i.tude wore off, and I found I could speak almost coherently. I posed her in front of a statue of Pulaski; I posed her on a bench with her skirt up a bit; I posed her playing with two little children and their b.a.s.t.a.r.d-hound; I must have taken ten rolls of color on her before she took my hand and led me out of the park.

"Where are we going?" I asked, feeling foolish as h.e.l.l. A man is supposed to be master of these situations, and I felt like a Pekingese on a leash.

"You have a studio, don't you?" she inquired demurely.

I guess I hobbled my head stupidly in agreement, because the next time I took a breath, we were leaving the cab in front of my building, downtown, and the doorman was holding open the door for us, staring at her, just staring.

The minute she got inside the door to my studio, the first thing she said was, "My name is Nedra. May I take off my clothes?"

What the h.e.l.l do you say? Sure you can take off your clothes.

So she did. Or she started to, anyhow. "Let me take some snaps of you undressing," I said, knowing d.a.m.ned well few girls who aren't pro models will let you shoot that kind of thing; don't ask me why; maybe because they're the s.e.xiest shots in the world.

"Okay," she said, and started in.

She stepped up onto the model's pedestal I have in the studio, and began taking off that pale blue poorboy jersey. Now, hold it a second.

You'd better understand this.

She wasn't doing a strip. None of that chubby housewife trying to hold onto her fat-a.s.sed hubby by learning to belly dance or excite him with "imaginative s.e.x" fantasies bulls.h.i.t.

She was doing itfor me, of course; I'd asked her if I could take the shots, for G.o.d's sake! But she wasn't trying to do itto me; do you know what I'm saying here? There's nothing more cornball than some female trying to pull a Theda Bara, batting her eyelashes and all turkey-flapping with what "family programmed" television and s.e.xploitation films have conned her into believing is a turn-on. Jesus, it's a puker.

No, there wasn't any of that going down. She was justdoing it ... for me ...at me ... but not purposely to me ...

Click!

The sweater was stuck in the top of her skirt. She yanked at it, and it came loose, dragging up the top of her black lace panties, too. My eyes had trouble focusing on the camera. She pulled the sweater off, letting her arms go back and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s jut out at me, and the sweater fell down behind her, off the pedestal, onto the floor. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were just as I'd imagined them in the sweater.

Click!

They were large and round, and they stayed where they were. But then, they must have been where theywere all the time, because, you see, she didn't have on a bra.s.siere. Then she unfastened the catch on the side of the skirt.

Click!

I watched her, and the thought that this girl was going a lot further than was expected for just a little modeling hit me right in the head. Was she a nympho, who let every guy pick her up? Was she a psycho?

What was the score?

To h.e.l.l with Click!

I dumped the camera and moved toward her. She stood there, naked but for the black lace panties, and her breath was coming with difficulty, rasping in and out faintly. Her hands were quivering. Then I was beside her, and I slid my arms around her. She was on the pedestal, and I locked hands behind her, the smooth curve of her back strange and wonderful to me. I let my hands slide up to the small of her back, down to the indentations where her legs joined her trunk. Was this girl real? Was all this happening to me? Then she bent, and she kissed me.

Then she bit my lip. She bit me right where I'd bitten myself, and I felt the trickle of salty warmth, and her tongue smoothed over it, and I felt her shudder.

I stood up, from where I'd slumped against the pedestal, and let one hand slide under her legs at the knees, the other behind her back, turning her to me, lifting her, cradling her in my arms.

Then we were in the bedroom, and she was on the white sheets, whiter than they could ever hope to be, with that flame hair and those h.e.l.l-green eyes staring at me.

Without movement, without time, without the feeling of penetration, it was done, her voice dying stillborn, and her hands sc.r.a.ping terribly at my back.

My G.o.d! It was unbelievable.

Neither one of us thought about rest, or food, or anything else, much less photography, till an hour ago. I woke up and looked across at her. Even after the pa.s.sion-effort I'd expended, and the fatigue coursing through me, she still looked untouched and magnificent; her hair an amber aurora sprayed out across the rumpled pillow, her eyes closed, and her breath shallow. I felt weak in every muscle, every joint. My back was ripped from the sharp ness of her nails, and my lips were raw. It had been so unlike any other thing I knew, I couldn't let her go. I had to have Nedra around all the time.

I lay there for a few minutes, and then the excitement of those films I'd taken earlier sent me out of the bed. I grabbed my bathrobe and got the rolls of film from my case, flipped the last one out of the camera, and made for the darkroom.

They developed nicely, and they were clear as h.e.l.l. Some of the best shots I'd ever taken. I'm standing here looking at them now.

There's just one thing wrong with them. It must be a trick of the light, or something ... or something ...

But here are the pictures I took in the Park. Here's the fountain, and the two children with the hound, and the bench, and the trees and the sky and the river and the gra.s.s, and everything ...

But no Nedra.

Yeah. That's right. Everything else in perfect focus, but there isn't a sign of her in any of the shots. I'vegot the pedestal, and the backdrop and the apartment and the shadows, but no shadow of Nedra. In fact, no Nedra at all.

But she's no figment of my imagination. That's for sure. A girl with a horizontal mind like thatcouldn't be imaginary. I just don't believe in anything like that.

Well, when she wakes up, I'll go in and just ask her what she's ... oh, hi!

I was just coming in to wake you. Say, look at these crazy pix I shot of you today. Aren't they screwy?

Yon just didn't photograph. You know, I was thinking all sorts of crazy stuff, and listen to this, this is the craziest thing yet.