The Spiked Heel

“Am… am I?” she said, and she hoped her voice had not trembled.

His arms were around her suddenly, swiftly, roughly. They closed like the steel jaws of a trap, and she felt the fierceness of his lips on her throat, smothering the small beauty spot, and then his mouth found hers, and he drank from it wildly, twisting his head and his lips.

She thought only of escape. She had to get away from him, had to get away before he possessed her, had to get away before Cara Knowles vanished, before Cara Knowles became nothing, nothing. She twisted away from him and he yanked her back, and then he was lifting her, lifting her, and she felt the cold wind on her legs, felt the sinewy strength of his arms, felt the jostle of each long step he took toward the blanket.

She began to struggle. She felt as if she were being sucked into a deep black whirlpool, and she knew that if she succumbed to this man it would be the end for her. This was the end of the road: Jefferson McQuade. She sensed this with the violent purity of sudden truth, and so she struggled when he threw her harshly onto the sandy blanket, struggled against the big hands pinning her shoulders, struggled against the immense figure towering above her.

The pattern, she thought wildly, the familiar pattern, but this time there was a quietly shrieking terror behind it. He must not have me! The pattern of water rushing against sand, a sky wheeling overhead, I’m frightened, good Lord I’m frightened, good Lord help me, the roughness of the blanket, the harsh uneven breathing of the man above her, stop, stop, please stop, the ragged breath merging with the roar of the surf until they were one, crashing against the lonely spit of sand, the stars pinwheeling overhead, the wind on her legs, and on her naked thighs, a cold cold, wind, naked, naked, please, please, the wind rushing up to embrace her, and his fingers following the wind, strong demanding fingers, cold fingers of fire, and the violation of her breasts, and the violation of her mouth, his hand forcing her lips open, helpless in the grip of his hands and the grip of his body, pain darting into her face where his fingers clenched her tightly, pain, pain and the knowledge that this was the end for her, that this was the final and complete act from which there was no turning, fighting it, fighting as he forced her legs, forced her mouth, and then weary at last, and sad, so tired, so tiredly parting her lips and drawing him into her with her kisses, and knowing, knowing that under the hands of Jefferson McQuade she would at last know utter and absolute degradation.

15

McQuade was not smiling.

Manelli was smiling, but McQuade was not. McQuade looked as if he had never smiled in his life. Griff sat in the easy chair and watched both men. The office was very hot, and a large electric fan in the corner did not reduce the heat; it only rearranged it. He could see the droplets of sweat on Manelli’s nose, and above that the round circles of his eyeglasses, and below that the small circle of his mouth, opening, opening.

“Mac’s had an interesting idea,” the mouth was saying.

Griff said nothing.

Manelli shrugged, as if the idea were simply too fantastic, something unheard of. “He thinks we can do without a Cost Department.”

The sound of the electric fan was suddenly very loud, and the room seemed hotter all at once. Griff looked at Manelli, and then at McQuade. McQuade raised his head, but his eyes were hooded with a thin layer of ice, and when he spoke he did not address Griff. He spoke to the wall behind Griff.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with the Titanic Shoe setup, Griff,” he said.

He calls me Griff. The son of a bitch hates me, and he has the gall to call me Griff, the way my friends do.

“Not very,” he replied.

“No, I didn’t think you were,” McQuade said. He cleared his throat. “We’ve found, over the years, that once an average cost has been established for a pair of shoes, that cost — with slight variations — can serve as the basis of our operation thereafter.”

“I don’t understand,” Griff said.

McQuade flicked sweat from his brow. He moved majestically, almost as if he first shoved back his crown before performing the simple earthy task of pushing the sweat away.

“It’s really quite simple,” he said. “Let us assume the average cost of a pair of shoes has been calculated to be… oh, four dollars. Using that average cost as our basis, Titanic can estimate its future budget fairly accurately. At least, that’s the way it’s worked for us in our other factories.”

“I see,” Griff said. The room was oppressively hot. He wanted to get out of that room and away from McQuade.

“Oh,” McQuade went on, “the cost may vary five or six cents in any given year, but it still serves as a good starting point, and the five or six cents is really negligible in a large-scale operation.”