The Shell Scott Sampler Read Online Free PDF Page B

sober?”
    â€œI hadn’t thought about it.”
    â€œNeither had I. Now you mention it, I need a drink. Why don’t I put my pants wherever the hell I was putting them, and come over, and we’ll go out into this warm September madness and —”
    â€œFine —”
    â€œI haven’t yet told you what I have in mind, dear —”
    â€œWhat shall I wear?”
    â€œWell, pants, of course. Antonia, forget I said that, will you?”
    â€œForget my pants?”
    â€œI don’t know why I am suddenly so obsessed with pa—skip it. Wear one of your—I’ve got it. Remember that slinky black contraption you wore two weeks ago? The one that goes clear up to your neck in front and is cut way down in back?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWear that one backwards.”
    â€œShell! I won’t, either. I’ll surprise you.”
    â€œThat would surprise me. And seven thousand other —”
    â€œWhy don’t you pick me up here?”
    â€œOK.”
    â€œWhat time will you be over, Shell?”
    â€œAbout two minutes before you finish dressing, if you’ll take it easy.”
    â€œSevenish?”
    I glanced at my watch. Six thirty p.m. on this wild September evening. “Sure.”
    â€œI’d better hurry, then.”
    â€œYeah, you’d better.”
    We hung up.
    I did a little hop and skip into the bedroom. I felt good. Life was good. Antonia was good. Actually, just between you and me, she was sensational.
    Holding my pants in one hand and shorts in the other, I stood in the bedroom, thinking: Antonia, darling!
    I could see her in my mind’s eye: a long, luscious Italian tomato with thick amber-colored hair; dangerous heavy-lidded eyes, passionate plump lips, breasts like twin Vesuviuses momentarily dormant, white skin smooth as ice but warm enough to melt the wax in your ears, a 37-ah, 22-oh, 36-wow steamy Italian pizza fresh from the Mediterranean oven, still cooking.
    Better get cooking myself, I thought. Four minutes later my six feet, two inches and two hundred and six pounds were draped in a lightweight blue-gray suit, unstarched white-silk shirt—Italian silk, just for Antonia—splendidly bright Windsor-knotted tie, and gleaming Cordovans on my big feet.
    I looked in the full-length mirror.
    â€œHot dog,” I said—but not because I was impressed with myself; I was still thinking about Antonia. Then, however, I took a good look in the mirror.
    My short-cropped white hair was still combed straight up into the air, just as the barber had left it three days ago. I waggled the sharply angled white brows, twitched my slightly bent nose, stuck out my tongue.
    Well, that’s life, I thought, that’s what thirty years of smog will do to a man. Nothing I could do about any of it. But my tongue looked great. Probably my best feature, I thought philosophically. Which put me in the same class as the guy with perfect feet.
    I glanced at my short-barreled revolver and harness on the dresser, wondering if I should wear it. There are, strange to relate, numerous guys in Southern California who would like to kill me, for one reason or another, and I almost never go out among my enemies, men, without the heater handy. But I figured I wouldn’t need it tonight. Not with Antonia.
    The phone rang again. I hopped to it, but this time it wasn’t Antonia. It was a guy named G. Raney Madison.
    I had heard of G. Raney Madison; everybody except the newborn in Somaliland had heard of G. Raney Madison. But I not only hadn’t met him, I’d never seen him—except on the covers of Fortune, Time, and the local newspapers. He’d made millions in real estate, doubled his money in oil, plunged into and out of the stock market, endowed foundations, collected old masters and new Impressionists, and published a best-selling book, The Magnificent Leonardo, which even I had read and greatly enjoyed. He was worth at least