The Spiked Heel

“Do you really think so?” she asked. She could feel the excitement raging within her now, and she sought to put it out, but the compulsive blanket she used only fanned the flames higher. She was unconsciously aware of her hand, and she knew that hand was flat on her thigh now, and she could feel the pressure of it as it pulled the skirt back over her knee, but she could do nothing to stop it.

“Yes,” McQuade said slowly. “I think so.”

He stopped before her desk, hulking over it, seeming bigger than he really was with the sunlight behind him. She looked up at him, and again her hand moved, a fraction of an inch, a tiny barely perceptible fraction of an inch, raising her skirt over her knee now, and then just a little bit higher, the foot jiggling, the ankle bracelet catching the feeble rays of the March sun.

She was very frightened. She was terribly frightened now, but she could do nothing to stop the motion of her hand or the jiggling of her foot. She wanted him to look at her legs. She wanted him to stare at her legs with those hooded gray eyes of his. She wanted to see some response in those eyes. She wanted terribly to feel like a Woman in the presence of this Man. She wanted to feel like all women, like Everywoman. And beneath this desire, her conscious mind told her that he was a man who could help her model, and her hand moved higher, carrying the skirt with it.

McQuade sat on the edge of her desk. His eyes did not leave her face. He glanced at her legs only once, before she had begun raising her skirt. The skirt was quite high now, no higher than she raised it whenever she searched for a run, but high in a different way now, high in a way that burned her flesh. She could feel her cheeks flaming. She felt wanton and cheap, and most of all she felt this sick panic inside her, this panic that screamed for her to stop, stop, but she would not stop.

She knew the skirt was past the ribbings of her stockings now. She knew her legs were good, and she knew they looked better in the high-heeled pumps she was wearing. Why wouldn’t he look down at her legs, why wouldn’t he, what kind of man was he, why, why? Look at me, you louse, look at me, look at me, let me see some life in those eyes of yours, let me see you looking at me, let me…

“What does a girl like you want here, anyway?” McQuade asked gently.

The words came to her lips before she could stop them. “A girl like me wants to model at the Guild Week showing,” she said.

McQuade smiled. His eyes did not leave her face. His hand moved effortlessly, almost gracefully, dropping to her thigh. His fingers tightened on her flesh, tightened like a vise, gripping the nylon and the skin until she wanted to scream in pain.

“That might be arranged,” he said.

He released her suddenly and slid off the desk. He walked to the door and out into the corridor without looking back at her.

She could see the bruise marks his fingers had left on her thigh. She stared at them, and then she shuddered and pulled down her skirt. When she began trembling, she really did not know how frightened she was. She took her purse from the desk drawer and went to the ladies’ room.

She began sobbing quietly then.

Another Friday rolled around.

And another head rolled…

Friday had become a dreaded day. Six men had been dropped from the Lasting Department on the Friday before, and two from Heeling on the Friday before that, and no one could forget the initial Friday firing in the IBM Room. Griff had been aware of the firings, of course, but he had been aware of them in a curiously detached way. After the IBM Room axing, the rest did not really concern him too much. Six men from Lasting. Six nameless, faceless men. What did they have to do with Raymond Griffin? Two men from Heeling, two names dropped from the payroll, two men he probably didn’t even know. It was all very far away and alien, and, whereas the firings made him vaguely uncomfortable, he more or less discounted them in favor of some of the things that had struck closer to home — like the hosing he’d witnessed in the Cutting Room, or the inquisition of Maria Theresa Diaz in Manelli’s office.

But the firing on that Friday of March 26 struck very close to home, very close to home indeed.

When Griff had been in the Army, he had always felt guilty when a-soldier standing beside him took a bullet between the eyes. He had always felt guilty, but he had also felt relieved. Since his discharge, he had read many fictional accounts of the war, and each account never failed to relate this strangely mixed feeling of guilt and relief, guilt because a buddy had been killed, relief because you yourself were still alive. He had accepted it as a statement of fact. He had experienced it, and apparently a good many other people had experienced it, too.

He did not feel any relief at all when Danny Quinn was fired.

He met Danny down at the lunch counter, and for some strange reason the twinkle in Danny’s eye seemed to have been extinguished.