Death in the Fifth Position Read Online Free PDF Page B

told me very seriously that Ella had been a good actress and a good technician but that she had always been remarkably unmusical and that if she had not been married to the conductor she would probably never have become a star.
    “Did she get on with Louis?” I asked, my lips so close to her cheek that I could feel the warmth of my own breath come back to me.
    “I don’t think he ever let her get away with anything. He’s just as vain as she was only in a nice way. Everybody likes Louis. He pads, you know.”
    “He what?”
    “You know … like a falsie: well, they say he wears one, too, when he’s in tights.”
    “Oh, no, he doesn’t,” I said, remembering my little tussle with the ballet’s glamour boy.
    “You, too?” She sat bolt upright.
    “Me too what?”
    “He didn’t … go after you, too, did he?”
    “Well as a matter of fact he did but I fought him off.” And I told her the story of how I had saved my honor.
    She was very skeptical. “He’s had every boy in the company … even the ones who like girls … I expect he’s irresistible.”
    “I resisted.”
    “Well …” And then it began.
5
    “Jane.” There was no answer. Light streamed into the room but she wore a black mask over her eyes, and nothing else … the sheets lay tangled in a heap upon the floor beside the bed. It was another hot day I could tell. Yawning, I sat up and looked at my watch which I had placed on the night table; I’ve always taken it off, ever since a girl from Vassar complained that it scratched. Ten-thirty.
    I lit a cigarette and studied the body sprawled next to me in a position which, in any other woman, would have been unattractive. In her case, however, she could be suspended from a chandelier and she would look good enough to take home right then and there.
    I leaned over and tickled her smooth belly, like pinkalabaster, to become lyric, warm pink alabaster, gently curved, with hips strong and fatless and lovely breasts tilted neither up nor down nor sagging, but properly centered, the work of a first-rate architect: not one of those slapdash jobs you come across so often in this life. She sighed and moved away, not yet awake. I then tickled the breast nearest me and she said, very clearly, “You cut that out.”
    “That’s not a very romantic way to begin the morning,” I said.
    She pulled off her mask and scowled in the sunlight which streamed into the high-ceilinged dusty room. Then she smiled when she saw me. “I forgot,” she said. She stretched.
    “I’m scared to look at the papers,” I said.
    She groaned. “And I thought it was going to be such a perfect day. It’s so hot,” she added irrelevantly, sitting up. I admired her nonchalance. She was the first girl I had ever known who had been agreeable and affectionate without ever once speaking of love. I decided that I was going to like ballet very much.
    “I have a headache,” she announced, blinking her eyes and pressing her temples with her hands.
    “I got just the cure for it,” I said, rolling toward her.
    She took one look and said, “Not now. It’s too hot.” But her voice lacked conviction and our bodies met as we repeated with even greater intensity the act of the night before, our breath coming in short gasps until, at the climax, there was no one else in the whole world but the two of us on that bed, the sunlight streaming in the window and the springs creaking, our bodies makingfunny wet noises as the bellies pushed one against the other.
    When it was over, Jane went into the bathroom and I lay with my eyes shut, the sweat drying on my body, as blissfully relaxed as that young man in the painting by Michelangelo. But then, in the midst of this euphoria, I decided that I should call Mr. Washburn and get my orders for the day. It was early of course for our business and, in ordinary times, no one would be stirring at this hour during the season but today with a murder on our hands … a murder.… It wasn’t