Mark Cannon sipped at his third cup of coffee. He always enjoyed one before breakfast, one during, and then any number after. He smoked a cigarette and stared toward where he knew the window was. He was still not convinced that he ought to use her. She could be vulnerable as hell, especially against the likes of the people he wanted. But … but where did his loyalty lie? What did he know about her? Supposing she was just another neighborhood hooker with a more refined approach? Maybe she was hung-up, too. These bitches had habits they'd kill for. He ought to know that! Yeah … you ought to know that, Mr. Cannon! You've got no eyes, remember? And it was just one such darling little bitch who had thrown the acid that destroyed them!
Mark sighed and drew at his cigarette. He hadn't slept worth a damn, his brain working overtime trying desperately to form an image of what Carol Dorsett looked like. He knew she was tall from where her voice had sounded when she walked beside him. He doubted that she was heavy because of her light footfalls and smooth, measured step. But such things as facial features, body contours, short or long-hair, blonde, brunette, redhead, or … or bald, dammit to hell … those were the things that drove him damned near mad!
A man didn't forget what female beauty was like in three years, especially such a lusty bird-watcher as he'd been. Christ, if he'd ever known that this affliction had been headed his way he would have stocked in a mental library of female pulchritude! To look at a beautiful face again, heavy young breasts, the rounded curves of touchable hips and buttocks, a well-turned calf and trim ankles … God, what he wouldn't give! He shook his head in the inner anguish eating at him.
Nancy had been a beautiful girl, Mark remembered, not wanting to but unable to help himself. A man denied sex as long as he had been was apt to think of the young, curvaceous wife he had enjoyed it with so much. Oh, there were plenty of whores around he could have for the going price, cheap enough too in the crummy neighborhood, some of them mighty cute little bitches, he'd wager, but his years in the department, to say nothing of the teenage hooker who had blinded him, had left him cold and bitter toward them. Their calloused commodity destroyed any beauty they might possess … and like everything else, a man could learn to live without it … up until the point where a sultry voice like Carol Dorsett's made all his red corpuscles stand up and nudge each other. Dammit!
He thought of Nancy again, visualizing her naked beauty, her long chestnut hair streaming down her tapered, white back … the full up- thrust of her perfect, dark-nippled breasts. God, what a slender waist she'd had, and the sweeping flare of those hips and voluptuously rounded buttocks! He remembered her long legs, the fullness of her white thighs … and the vee-shaped mass of dark pubic curls up between! Son-of-a-bitch … he was going to drive himself right up the frigging wall!
He tried to put her out of his mind, not a difficult task when it came to any sense of feeling for her, because that was long dead, but from the standpoint of sex … yeah, there was the rub! Damn, how she'd loved to fuck … or suck … or anything else that had to do with a man's cock! He doubted that he would ever come across another like her, not with her beauty and insatiable hunger for bed romping. Oh, somewhere she had sisters-in-kind running free no doubt, but they weren't for the likes of a blind-man … anymore than she had been, once he'd gotten out of the hospital and come home to sit in a chair and stare in numbed bitterness at a wall he couldn't see.
Maybe he shouldn't blame her. What a hell of a life to offer a girl of twenty-eight, a handicapped husband of the same age, with nothing to look forward to but a paltry police pension for the rest of their life. It was no damned wonder she'd wanted to get out and go to work, the way he had sat around for an entire year feeling sorry for himself … but on the other hand, she could have waited a little longer for the adjustment period to run its course, too. Instead, she'd started moving out on him, going by herself to parties when he refused, and finding male escorts from the office where she worked.
At first, it hadn't bothered him too much; he'd been so goddamned concerned with his own self-pity, but sitting alone two and three nights a week had given him long, lonesome hours in which to think, and what he'd begun to conclude wasn't good. The loss of one sense makes the others keener, including that of character insight. He'd seen it coming. In bed, on those rare occasions when he'd begun to feel like it again, she had turned into a dead-assed log … no response … nothing there. It wasn't hard to figure: She was fucking someone else, one of her office friends … maybe all of them!
One of the boys in the department, Mark had known he could confide in had chased it down for him. Of course, he'd been right … except there hadn't been any office, or «friends,» just a simple long list of «johns!» Sweet Nancy had joined the ranks of bitches fucking for gain! She'd become a whore!
The day he'd filed divorce papers, he had also left for New Jersey and a seeing-eye dog school, the one move that had saved him from losing his buttons altogether. Thinking about it now, he reached down and petted the big, faithful animal at his feet, a feeling of warm affection flowing through him.
«Well, at least we've got each other, Queenie,» the handsome, thirty- one year old man smiled at his inseparable companion and guide. «And that's more than a lot of people have. But … I'll be honest with you, girl, I wouldn't be the one to kick a luscious young lady out of bed, should such a creature happen along.» He rubbed the big German shepherd's ears, the way he knew she liked it. «Man, how I wish you could talk, Queenie; then you could tell me with detail exactly what our charming Miss Dorsett looks like. Well … we'll make it a point to find out more tonight, eh? In the meantime, let's heat up the coffee again. I can use another cup before we head out after our bottle of wine … And what does one drink with meatloaf, girl … white or red …?»