Timber Line

"I was expecting you," she said.

"I know," said Remo. He watched as Cicely Winston-Alright stood and stretched herself. She was wearing a tight T-shirt and skin-tight slacks.

She showed him a lot of teeth in a milk-white face. "Can I give you something? Anything?"

"Everything," Remo said and waited for her to put down her martini glass, before lifting her in his arms and carrying her over to the waiting bed.

There were thirty-seven steps in bringing a woman to total sexual ecstasy, and Remo had learned them many years before, back when he had been normal and sex had been a pleasure and not just another technique to learn perfectly or face Chiun's wrath.

But only once before had Remo ever found a woman who could manage to outlast step thirteen, even though Chiun regularly insisted that all Korean women progressed through each of the preliminary thirty-six steps before enjoying — if that was a strong enough word — the mind-numbing, soul-shattering release of the final, thirty-seventh step. Remo had seen women of Chiun's village, though, and he suspected that carrying off the thirty-seven steps might be the only way for a man to stay awake during the act.

But Cicely Winston-Alright was something else — Remo was up to step twenty-two. He had thought he could break down the woman's reserve, that knot of hardness that kept her mid-section stiff and unyielding, but he might as well have been making love to a log.

He moved to step twenty-three. Cicely smiled at him. Step twenty-four, and she allowed that it was nice.

It was only at step twenty-seven when she began to react. She started moaning, alternating short, biting screams with the tearful crying of his name and insistent demands for more.

Remo gave her more. He had gotten her halfway through step twenty-eight when she gulped two large drafts of air and tensed her body.

It was the right time, Remo decided. He smiled and lowered his face to her ear. "Who's doing the killings at the Tulsa Torrent Camp?"

"Oh, Remo, darling," she said softly. "You're a wonderful lover. Really wonderful."

"Thanks," he said. She shouldn't have been able to do that. She should have been putty in his hands, ready to answer anything he asked.

Step twenty-nine. Another smile, another approach toward her ear, another question.

"What is the Association?" he asked.

"It hasn't been this good in years," she said. "Not since him." She waved vaguely in the direction of a box on top of her small night table.

"The Association," Remo repeated.

"Must we talk now?" she said. "Can you do some more of that stuff with the back of the left knee?"

"No," said Remo. "Definitely not. That was step eighteen and I'm up to step twenty-nine. If I go back to step eighteen, I'll have to start up all over again from there. I might be here all night."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Not if we had something to talk about," Remo said. "Like the Association. Who's the Association? What is it?"

"It's our national group to preserve the environment," she said. "Keep going."

Step thirty.

"Then why would they want to kill anybody?" Remo asked.

"Kill? Them? Remo, stop it. They can't even fuck. How can they kill?"

"Well, who's doing all the killing down at the Tulsa Torrent project?"

"Got me," Cicely Winston-Alright said.

"What a waste of time," Remo said. He pulled back from the woman.

"Remo," she said, "would you do me a favor?"

"A small one," Remo said.

"Take me outside and do it in the snow, under the trees. I love doing it amid nature. It feels so good, so natural. Please."

"I guess so," Remo said.

"I like trees," she said. "They're so... so... symbolic," she said.

"Terrific," he said. Thirty steps wasted and he hadn't found anything out, and this woman was still as stiff from hip to knee as she had been when he had first seen her.

He lifted her up and carried her out the back door of the trailer. He dumped her roughly on the ground. For the first time she squealed, and it was an honest squeal of passion.

"Just jump on me and bang away," she said. "Forget technique."

Remo followed her instructions, landing on her roughly, pushing her arms far apart, pi

She lay still under him, her shoulders trembling slightly against the snow.

"That was marvelous," she said.

"Why didn't you tell me you liked rough stuff?" he said. "I could have saved a lot of time."

"I like rough stuff. Save time."

So they did it again. And again.

The third time, Remo asked her again: "Who's behind the killings?"

"I don't know," she said.

"What's the Association?"

"Ecology group. Pays our bills."

"Swell," Remo growled. He stood up and-looked down at her. "You better get inside before you catch cold."

She nodded. "Will you come and keep me warm again?"

"Absolutely," he said. "On June 17th, I'm free from eight till nine in the morning."

"I'll wait," she said, as Remo crunched off through the snow, leaving her lying on the ground.

Cicely Winston-Alright went back into her trailer and closed the door behind her, then leaned up against it. God, she thought, at last a man... someone who wasn't put off by her money or her beauty and wasn't afraid just to take her like an animal in the woods. She could feel a shiver down her back. She was still throbbing down there, for the first time in years. Only one other man had ever... it was just like in the movies... like the books she sneaked out of her mother's closet...

She sighed and wondered if Remo had left yet. She ran to the front window of the trailer and looked out into the clearing, but he had gone.

She smiled and ran her fingers over her body. He would be back, she thought. She would make sure that he came back. If only men knew that she wanted them to be men, that she wanted them to take her, to force her, to bend her to their will, to hurt her. Why didn't men ever realize?

She walked to her bed and put on a flimsy black peignoir. Then she heard a sound in her kitchen, at the other end of the trailer behind a thin plywood door.

It was short, dark, and pretty Ararat Carpathian. God, how she hated Armenians, she thought. Not that she knew that many. In fact, Carpathian was the only one she knew, but she hated him enough to make up for all the rest. If they could only find some way of boiling down those people, she thought, America could solve its oil problems by breeding Armenians.

She smiled at him and let her gown slip open slightly, making sure he got a good view of her front, then slowly pulled it closed.

"Why, Ari," she said. "How nice to see you."

"I've been waiting quite a while," Carpathian said. "But you were busy."

"Oh, you noticed," she said. "Yes. Quite busy."

"Your friend seemed to want to talk," Carpathian said.

"Men always do," she said. She busied herself at the stove, making a cup of hot chocolate. She did not offer him any. When she turned to come and join him at the kitchen table, she noticed for the first time that he had a lumberjack's double-bladed axe leaning up against the wall behind his seat.

"Well, what is on your mind, Ari?" she asked.

"Tonight's demonstration," he said.

"Ah, yes. The demonstration. We seem to live and die by our demonstrations, don't we, Ari?"

She noticed him smirking under the thin line of his mustache.

"You could say that, Cicely," he said.

She wondered why he was carrying that axe around.

"Our people are begi