The Spiked Heel

He did not believe in umbrellas or hats. He turned up the collar of his raincoat, checked the address she had given him, and then stepped out into the rain. He was beginning to feel a little better. He’d be seeing Cara soon, and everything would be all right. He quickened his step and then abruptly glanced at his wrist watch. It was only seven forty-five, and he’d told her eight o’clock. He looked around hastily, spotting a bar and heading for it. He shook off his coat when he was inside and then found a stool at the bar and ordered a whisky sour. A blonde was seated alone at the far end of the bar. She was not pretty, but she received the automatic attention any blonde in a bar receives. He was surprised when she looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back courteously and then sipped at his drink, pleased she had noticed him, more convinced than ever that the evening would make up for the day. Something stupid was on the television set. He watched it for a moment, identifying Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, and Hoot Gibson. What did they call Maynard’s horse? Trigger? Champion? Oh hell. It annoyed him. He kept watching the movie and sipping at his drink, and he finally called over the bartender and asked, “What’s his horses’s name?”

The bartender stared at him as if he were drunk, and he found this amusing.

“Whose horse?” the bartender asked.

“Ken Maynard’s.”

The bartender fixed him with a contemptuous stare. “Tarzan!”

Griff snapped his fingers. “Tarzan! Of course.” The “of course” suddenly reminded him of McQuade. Of course, of course. Pee on McQuade, he thought, both barrels.

He left the bar at seven fifty-five, imagining the blonde sighed wistfully as he went to the door. The rain had let up a little, and he walked up the Concourse cheerfully, thinking of the games he’d seen at the Stadium, wondering if Cara liked baseball, wondering what he would do if she didn’t like baseball. He was twenty-nine years old, and the idea of changing his ways did not particularly appeal to him, especially if it meant forsaking baseball. Well, she probably did like baseball. He would ask her.

He found the address easily enough and stepped into the well-kept foyer of the building. He examined the bell buttons in the foyer, saw she was on the ground floor, and then walked into the lobby, looking for the apartment number. He saw the white letters on the small black shingle immediately: FREDERICK KNOWLES, D.D.S.

A dentist. Well now! He remembered the old joke, is he a doctor doctor? No, he’s a doctor dentist. Smiling, he pushed the chime panel set in the door jamb. He waited patiently, and then he heard footsteps and a voice coming from somewhere in the depths of the apartment. “Just a moment.” He realized abruptly that he had used the office entrance, and that there probably was another entrance to the apartment, and he felt somewhat foolish.

He heard the peephole flap swing back and then fall again, and then the door was opened, and he stared into the darkness of the waiting room.

“Hi,” Cara said. “Do you have a toothache?” She said it almost automatically, and he sensed it was a gag line she’d used before whenever a calling swain had made the same mistake. The knowledge that he was getting secondhand humor annoyed him. He forgot his annoyance and said, “Yes, a bicuspid at the back of my mouth. Can you fix it?”

“Come on in,” Cara said. “I won’t be a moment.”

He stepped into the waiting room, and she threw on a light and said, “Do you want to wait here, or do you prefer the comforts of the living room? I’d introduce you to the family, but only the dog is home.”

“I’ll wait here,” Griff said.

“Fine.” She looked at him and said, “You look nice.”

He felt suddenly embarrassed. She had beat him to the punch, and now anything he said about her appearance would seem like a bald-faced return of her compliment. He tried to gag it through.

“You look ravished,” he said, and then he snapped his fingers in seeming Freudian-slip annoyance. “Ravishing, I mean.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cara said, and then she fled into the depths of the apartment.

Actually, he had been a little disappointed with her appearance. He had expected something gayer, he supposed, but she was wearing a black silk dress with a rather high throat, a string of pearls at the neck. He had noticed the Julien Kahn suede pumps almost instantly, and had begun to price them automatically before he’d caught himself. He realized with a start that he’d been disappointed because the dress did not reveal the tiny beauty spot in the hollow of her throat, and he smiled at his own fetish. He found a chair in the waiting room, picked up a copy of Life, and began to feel as if he were really waiting to have a tooth extracted. This is psychologically bad, he thought. I must tell Cara she shouldn’t make her beaus feel as if they have a dental appointment.

Next time, use the right door, stupid, he further thought.