The door opened immediately, but cautiously, just a crack at first, while identification was established, and then, after a moment of hesitation, it swung open.
"Hi, Clarence," the girl in the doorway said speaking directly to Moon Dog and ignoring Caleb. She had a sort of quizzical look on her face, and her eyes were reddened, like she had been crying, which Caleb suspected was the case given all that she had been through in the preceding few hours.
"Miss Noble," Moon Dog began a little self-consciously, and, summoning his manners, he placed his ham hand on Caleb's shoulder as though singling him out of a crowd, and continued, "May I present Judge Caleb Montcastle?"
Anne's head whipped toward Caleb, and her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"Oh!" she gasped, and she covered her lips with her fingers in an attempt to mask her astonishment.
Oh, shit, what's wrong, Caleb thought in a panic, and, as he fought the impulse to recoil, he glanced down to check his fly and then looked toward Moon Dog.
"Is something wrong, Miss?" Moon Dog asked solicitously, and he looked Caleb over out of the corner of his eye just to be sure the young fellow hadn't sprouted horns and a tail.
"I, I, uh, no, no, of course not," the girl stammered, recovering from her initial shock with a crimson flush in her cheeks, and extending her hand toward Caleb with an embarrassed grin, she explained, "I just expected you to be much older."
He shook her hand and obvious signs of relief spread across his face despite his best efforts to conceal them. The firmness of her grip amazed him nearly as much as the steady, level gaze she sized him up with as their handshake proceeded through casual to friendly and then to engaged. He pumped her hand with boyish eagerness, recognizing instantly the gravity of the injustice that had been done to her by comparing her looks to Gweneth Paltrow.
"Hi," she said, tugging her arm gently to extract her hand from his.
"Hello, Miss Noble," he replied seriously, but then, he wowed her with a grin that she guessed could charm the panties off any girl in his hometown, and said, "If you prefer, I'll leave and come back in twenty years or so."
A smile flickered across her lips and she shook her head. "That won't be necessary, Judge, just step into my room; it must have something to do with the décor, but I get the feeling I've been aging at the rate of about two years an hour in here. Come on in, and you'll catch up to expectations in twenty minutes or so."
She stepped back into the room, and he bent forward at the waist sort of reluctantly leaning through the threshold, and looked around. The furnishings were sparse in the extreme. The double bed was covered in a frayed, cotton chenille spread that sagged in the middle like the back of a broken down plow horse, and an open, but neatly packed suitcase was sitting on the foot. There was a cheap, motel-grade nightstand that was missing most of its veneer beside the bed, and it was supporting a lamp that was wearing, crookedly, a shade that looked to have been flattened and straightened about twice every week since Lee's surrender at Appomattox. A rickety looking desk with the center drawer missing was leaning against the wall in the far corner, and above it hung one of those God-awful paint on velvet paintings of Elvis Presley, the sort that you could buy all over Juarez for a quarter apiece, and, for another quarter, you could screw the vendor while she held the painting over her head so The King could watch while you did your thing. The carpet, which he speculated might have been shag at some point in the distant past, was worn clear through to the concrete flooring from the doorway to the foot of the bed, and, between the bed and the front wall, it was ripped for about three feet as though a previous tenants had tried to wrestle a three thousand pound safe into the bed.
"I was wondering about the "décor" at the Acock," he muttered shaking his head.
"Don't even go there," Anne moaned. "Your buddy, Clarence, here, said we were on a tight budget, so I've spent the last three nights rappelling just to get from one side of the bed to the other."
"Dog, this flea bag looks like a three dollar special in Saigon back in the old days," he complained. "I thought the budget could handle something a little better than this."
"Security, Judge, couldn't beat it," Moon Dog replied with an air of authority. "One way in; one way out. Eight rooms, none facing the street, and a ten foot security fence at both ends of the parking lot."
"Sounds like you boys were just lucky the State legislature wasn't in town this week," Anne interjected.
Caleb's eyebrows lifted, and he looked at her questioningly. Moon Dog peeked around the doorframe and asked, "How's that, Miss?"
"'Cause," she grinned impishly, "the clerk said this room goes for three hundred a night when the legislature's in town, but that I could make two thousand a night, easy, if I wanted to."
"You mean legislators actually stay HERE?" Caleb gasped incredulously. He didn't hear Moon Dog's cough or his feet scuffling on the walk outside the room, because the Dog had turned his back to him and was bending over looking at his shoes.
"Well, no," she replied without a hint of humor except for a twinkle in her eyes which Caleb failed to notice, "Actually, I didn't mean that at all."
"Well, wha…" Caleb began, but Moon Dog had managed to right himself and yanked on his arm to get his attention.
"Judge!" he gasped, sucking in air and nearly choking on the word. His face was beet red, and Caleb could have sworn there were tears welling up in the corners of the tough old warrior's eyes.
"What, Dog?" he asked, forgetting for the present his curiosity about legislative sleeping accommodations.
"We've got to check out of here, or we'll owe another night's rent on the whole place."
"Jesus Christ, right; when's checkout?"
"He gave me till two thirty for an extra fifty."
"Must be his off-season rate," Caleb grumbled. "What time is it, now?"
"Two twenty-one and thirty seconds."
"Damn," Caleb grumbled, "I thought Miss Noble and I would have more than nine and a half minutes to talk."
"Nine minutes, now, Judge, and counting down fast," Moon Dog responded glancing at his watch, "But take as long as you want, another thirty minutes'll only cost you fifty more."
"That's OK, Judge Montcastle," Anne said, "I'm all packed and ready to go."
She turned and leaned over the end of the bed to close her bag, and it was then that he noticed her legs. Her skirt was short, almost too short for the season, and it rode up her bare thighs as she bent. Her shoes were low healed, red pumps with sling backs that exposed her heels, and she wore a tiny gold ankle bracelet around one ankle. Her movements stretched her legs and her toned, athletic muscles rippled as she worked the clasps to secure the suitcase. Her skirt pulled tightly across her butt and revealed the prominent rounded globes of her firm cheeks. In his mind, erotic visions of those cheeks, bared, parting, warmed from within, began lifting off the pages of Moon Dog's report to dance like children around his stirring maypole.
"I'll take that, Miss," he heard Moon Dog say behind him, and he blinked to chase the images away.
