In the very small reception room of the Ben Franklyn Friend Service, the young-middle-aged, distinguished-looking woman gave Fletch the once-over from behind her small wooden desk.
“If you take your left here at the corner,” she said, pointing a manicured hand, “and left again in the middle of the block, you’ll find yourself in the alley.”
“Ecstatic!”
“Our delivery door is about halfway down, on the left.” Over her pink sweatsuit she wore a long rope of pearls. “The door is clearly marked.”
“Pure ecstasy!”
The woman frowned. “You are making a delivery, aren’t you?” She looked more the type to be sitting at a checkout desk in a public library.
“What am I delivering?” Fletch asked.
“Linens. Towels.”
“Me.”
“You?”
“Me. In all my parts. Head, shoulder, hips, and knee joints, right down to the ankles. And everything in between.” Fletch swallowed hard.
“Do you have an appointment?” She opened a desk calendar. “You’re just not the sort…”
“Sort of what?”
Her eyes confirmed that he was wearing a T-shirt, faded jeans, and very white, new sneakers. “… the sort we usually see.”
“I was welcomed by the museum dressed this way.”
“Your name?”
“Jaffe.”
“Ah, yes: Fletcher Jaffe.” She made a pencil check in the IN box beside his name.
“You’ve heard the name before?”
“We don’t pay that much attention to names.”
“Jaffe is a name to which you should pay attention.”
“That will be one hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Good! I’ll pay it!” He dropped seven twenties and a ten on the desk. “Make sure I get a receipt.”
She looked quizzically at him. “Our clients don’t usually ask for receipts.”
“I do.”
“I’ll make out a receipt for you before you leave.”
“Why not now?”
“Well, you might want to add on some extras.”
“Extra whats?”
The woman seemed embarrassed. “Tips. Whatever.”
“I see.”
“You’re not married, are you?”
Fletch shook his head. “No, ma’am. No one goes through my pockets.”
“Diseases?” Her eyes enlarged as she looked at him. “Are you willing to swear you have no diseases?”
“This place is harder to get into than a New England prep school.”
“Chicken pox.”
“Chicken pox!”
“When I was nine.” Fletch pointed out a pockmark on his left elbow. “I’m better now, thank you.”
The woman sighed. She pressed a button on the desk intercom. “Cindy? Someone’s here to see you.”
“Ah, Cindy!” exclaimed Fletch. “I was hoping for a Cindy. Nobody wants a Zza-zza, Queenie, or Bobo this hour of the day.”
“I’ve seen you somewhere before,” the woman said, almost to herself. “Recently.”
“I’m around town,” Fletch said breezily. “A bit of a boulevardier.”
“Oh, Cindy,” said the woman. “This is Fletcher Jaffe.”
In the door stood a woman in her early twenties. She was dressed only in well-cut nylon gym shorts, sneakers, and footies. Her shoulders were lightly muscled. Her perky breasts were tanned in the round identically with the rest of her body. Muscles were visible in her stomach. Her black hair and wide-set eyes matched perfectly and had the same sparkle.
Looking at Fletch, she wrinkled her nose.
“Good morning, Cindy.” Fletch again swallowed hard. “Glad you came to work early today.”
Through the street door came another young woman. She was wearing white jeans and a loose red shirt. She had fly-away blond hair.
Approaching the desk, she openly studied the scene: Fletch standing in the middle of the small reception room; Cindy presenting herself in the doorway.
“Marta!” she whimpered to the woman at the desk.
“I can’t help it, Carla,” Marta answered.
“You told me I should sleep in, this morning!”
“I also told you,” Marta said forcefully, “never to wear that color red. It doesn’t go with your hair coloring.”
“I know.” Carla giggled. “It makes men in the street look away.”
In the interior doorway, Cindy tossed her head. Fletch followed her.
He followed her down a paneled, carpeted corridor.
“You a cop?” she asked.
“No.”
“I hope you are,” Cindy muttered. “Time this place got busted.” She slowed her walk. “Do me a favor, though, will you?”
“Anything.”
“Bust this place if you want. See where it will get you. But don’t bust me personally, okay?”
“What makes you think I’m a cop?”
“I’m splitting the end of this week. I swear to you. I don’t want the hassle.”
“If I’m a cop, you’re ugly.”
Even in the dark corridor, her skin had a lovely sheen.
She smiled at the compliment.
She opened a heavy drawer built into the wall, and pulled out another pair of well-cut nylon shorts. “These about right? Waist thirty?”
She tossed them to him.
“Sure.”
She led him into a brightly lit room to the left off the corridor.
In the room was a single-frame exercise rig.
The walls were covered with mirrors. Mirrors hung from the ceiling. At one place there was even a mirror on the floor, inset into the carpet.
Fletch stood on the floor mirror and looked up and around. Through the angled ceiling mirrors he saw himself from directions he had never seen himself before. In the mirrors on the four walls he saw his body replicated to infinity.
Cindy closed the door to the corridor. “Where did you get your tan?”
“On my face.”
“Anywhere else?” She crossed the room, went through a door to a bathroom, came back immediately, and tossed him a towel.
Standing on the mirror, looking around at himself everywhere, Fletch said, “Me, me, me.”
“You got it, honey.”
He held the towel and the shorts in his hand.
“Take a shower,” she said. “Use the soap. Change into just the shorts, and come back.”
Fletch held the shorts up. “These shorts ain’t got nothin’ in them.”
“They will have,” she said. “I expect.”
The shower soap stung.
When he reentered the room, Cindy was at a small, recessed bar mixing a drink.
She glanced at him. “I thought so.”
“You thought what?”
She was bringing him the drink. “What vitamins do you take?”
“P.”
“Never heard of it.”
“All the best beers have it.”
She handed him the drink. Her other hand dropped five stuffed olives into his hand.
He sniffed the drink. “What’s in it?”
“Orange juice.”
“Okay.” He munched the olives.
“Some protein powder.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“A little yeast.”
“Sounds explosive.”
“And some ground elk’s horn.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“An aphrodisiac, you know?”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Specialty of the house?”
“Drink it, honey. Perfectly safe.”
He sipped it. “Yummy.”
“Chug-a-lug,” she said.
“Really,” he said, choking a little. “You thought of marketing this stuff?” Even while drinking it, his throat felt dusty. “Elixir of Ben Franklyn.”
“Come on.” She took the empty glass from him and put it on the recessed bar.
Then she took his hand and led him to the exercise machine.
“You know how to use these things? Of course you do. Lie down on your back. You’re going to do bench presses. I have it set for one hundred and twenty pounds. That about right?”
“We’ll see.”
He lay down on his back on the bench. His knees were bent, his feet on the floor.
Looking up, he saw himself and the top of Cindy’s head, and her shoulders, in the mirror.
“Lift,” she said.
He lifted.
“That’s about right,” she said. “Feel good?”
“Like ice cream on a hot summer’s day.”
“Do eight in a row, slowly.”
She sat on him, straddling his thighs. She spread her hands on his lower stomach, thumbs touching.
As he lifted, she pressed her hands into his stomach muscles.
He felt a sensation such as he had never felt before.
He groaned.
“Don’t drop it,” she said. “Makes a loud noise.”
He let the weights down quietly and looked into her eyes.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re going to do eight of them in a row. I’m giving you every motive. Breathe.”
He breathed and lifted.
On the third lift, he found his legs straightening, his heels sliding along the rug.
She did not fall off his thighs. Through the mirror he saw that she had hooked the calves of her legs around the legs of the bench. At each lift she pressed the palms of her hands into his stomach muscles.
“Breathe,” she said.
“That, too?”
After he did eight lifts, she flicked the front of his shorts with her fingernails. “You’re healthy enough. I thought so.”
He raised his knees.
“I’ll take your sweat,” she said.
She leaned forward and put her breasts, her stomach on his. She raised her legs and put her thighs on his. She rolled on him, just a little.
As soon as he gave in to irresistible impulse and put his arms around her back, she was up and away.
She stood under the chin-up grips. “Come on.”
“Who said exercise has to be boring?”
As they moved in the brightly lit room, their infinite reflections in mirrors on all sides made it seem as if each were a legion moving with martial precision.
“Put your hands on the back of the grips.”
Standing on his toes, he stretched totally and put his hands around the grips.
“No,” she said. “Put your hands further back on the grips.” He did so. “Now do a chin-up.” He did so while she watched. “Again,” she said.
While he was lifting himself a second time Cindy jumped up and grabbed the grips just in front of his hands. Her body knocked against his.
She lifted herself with him, their bodies just brushing. She stared into his eyes as they lifted themselves slowly, together, lowered themselves to full stretch, up again.
“Now, stay up,” Cindy said.
“As if I had a choice.”
She wrapped her legs around his hips.
Slowly she relaxed her hands on the grips.
His body took her weight.
She wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Now let us down slowly.”
She opened her mouth and put her teeth hard against his taut neck muscles.
As he lowered them, every muscle, ligament, tissue, and piece of skin in his body above his waist was stretched to its maximum.
There was a delirious crackling up his spine, a small explosion in the back of his head.
As his feet settled on the floor, his knees buckled.
Tangled, they both fell on the mat.
Cindy laughed. “Not everybody can do that.”
Their legs were tangled. He put his arms around her. His shoulder muscles felt inflamed, inflated.
She kissed his neck, where she had bitten him.
Then he felt her tongue licking around where she had kissed him.
“I’m lapping up blood,” she giggled.
“Gym class was never like this.”
“You went to the wrong school.”
“I always suspected that.”
“We’ve got lots to do yet,” she said.
“Will I be up for it?”
“I’ll see to that.”
Cindy had not yet untangled herself from him when the door to the corridor opened.
She jumped. She looked up at the doorway in genuine surprise.