"It's easy with my Slick Shave." Randy flashed thirty-two blinding teeth at her. "I'm smooth all the time."
"C'mon in here and prove it. What the hell, I'm just what the man said. A simple down-home girl living the American Dream."
"Love to." Randy slipped out of his briefs and into the whirlpool. Charity snuggled up to him.
"Already been damned," she murmured woozily, "and I got change coming."
19 -Money can't buy happiness, but why not be miserable in comfort?
Charity opened her eyes to sunlight and strange sounds. Feeling delicious, she yawned and squirmed contentedly between the blue silk sheets. Hell could be a lot worse.
A series of grunts issued from an angle of the bedroom beyond her vision. She turned over to see Randy Colorad laboring with a Nautilus weight machine like a guillotine, muscles rippling, glistening with sweat.
"Twenty-three - huh. Twenty-four - agh. Twenty-fi-i-ve - URKK!"
"For God's sake, you'll rupture something!" "When the going gets tough ..." A last herculean effort. Randy lowered the weights and sat up, favoring Charity with a charming smile, no tooth uncapped. He sprang up, beautiful above the neck and all a girl could wish below. "Now for that morning shower that gives all-day protection." Charity draped herself on one elbow, feeling sultry. "Hurry back." Randy came out of the shower carrying a spray deodorant.
"Here." He slipped under the sheets. "It's strong enough for me but made for you."
"So are you." Charity attacked him joyfully.
The ensuing two hours demonstrated that she really ought to work out more herself. In the bookstore back home, voyeuristic peeks into The Joy of Sex (when nobody was looking) dazzled her with possibilities that seemed languorous only in theory. In practice they required a certain facility and a great deal of limberness. Silk sheets were great to dream about but always slidey when you needed four-wheel traction, and the damn water mattress made her almost seasick, zigging when it should zag. Nevertheless, her climaxes were symphonic. She never thought she was that kind of girl; now she knew there wasn't any other.
In the brief respites between onslaughts, by way of critique Charity could wish now and then for the poetry that turned Dane's passion tender (God, he could suffer!) and even once, in an athletic moment, for the pungent honesty of Jake. She closed her eyes over Randy's shoulder and thought of him. That helped her get there, but it was Woody's face she saw at the end. That was strange; she felt treacherous and terribly fallen. Anyway, Randy never said anything she hadn't heard on TV before.
When she was gasping with surfeit and yearning seriously for a little rest, Randy bounced out of bed with the same energy that propelled him into it.
"Hey, kid." The white smile flashed like a bathroom light at 4 A.M."Gotta go to work. Got a shoot later."
Charity picked up on that much from TV. "You in a movie?"
"No." Randy flexed his shoulders and trotted into the bathroom. "Gotta shoot someone. But first - that all-day protection again with a man's kind of soap."
"You just took a shower."
"Yeah, but then we screwed for a while."
"Don't talk dirty. All that washing's not good for your skin."
From the depths of the thundering shower: "I'm Beautiful People!"
"Yeah, but are you gonna itch." Charity yawned. "Idiot."
With the detachment of a definitely slaked thirst, she watched with decreasing interest as Randy trotted out of the bathroom in pale blue one-piece underwear, slipped into slacks and a Members Only jacket and placed his Foster Grants with the care of a coronation. Again the measured, roguish grin. "See you later."
"Sure. It was real nice."
"That's what friends are for." Another devilish grin and Randy was gone. Charity drowsed a while before plumping the pillows to sit up against. She touched the call button, only to find Simnel in the doorway.
"You rang, mum?"
"Breakfast would be nice. Not that I'm hungry but, you know, a change. Oh, how about the phone?"
"Still out, I'm afraid. They are working on it."
"Honest to Pete, you'd think once a girl dies she wouldn't have to hassle stuff like this."
"No, mum. The upwardly mobile concept is a Christian notion. We have our problems." The mild little butler withdrew.
"Even dead the phone company gets you." Charity turned on the wall TV, quickly adjusting the volume as the fifty-inch screen roared to furious life across the bedroom.
" - can feel that these are indeed the last days of a dying regime. Here in the teeming downtown streets, a drama is being enacted, one that may be fraught with significance for Below Stairs tomorrow - indeed, may be that tomorrow."
Music up with telegraphic urgency as the news continued with voice-over. A street, soldiers in White Paladin fatigues and swastika armbands straining to hold back the screaming crowds.
"We're here in the main thoroughfare, which you can see is packed with the largest crowd since the arrival of Lord Byron. In a moment - yes, here they come! - in a moment we'll see the massed demonstration and its dynamic new leader, Roy Stride. This demonstration follows by less than twenty-four hours the threat of a raid on black and Jewish homes by Paladin squads. The government's failure to make any effective answer to this threat may be seen as a death rattle. There's our camera truck."
The open truck came into shot and passed beyond; as it did, the view on Charity's set cut to a dolly from the truck itself. She sat bolt upright. "Hey-y."
There was Roy striding along in precise step with the ranks of Paladins behind him, head high, confident and flushed, the star of his own drama at last.
"Roy!" Charity bounced up and down with delight. "Roy!"
ROY! STRIDE! ROY! STRIDE! ROY! STRIDE!.
". . . and here he comes. Roy Stride, the youngest political contender in the long history of Below Stairs. An American from the Heartland, the first candidate to be endorsed by the Prince and Topside alike. Even as we speak, the messengers from Topside are said to be on their way with formal ratification."
"Gol-lee, Roy." Charity melted back on her pillow. "Even angels. Oh, wow!"
"We're trying to reach Judas Iscariot for comment," the telereporter informed her. "The most reclusive of all Below Stairs citizens, Judas has always been distrusted by the popular vote, particularly the Christian Identity groups and the Paladins, who consider him a dangerous adversary. Certainly he has never allied himself with any party."
"Well, he shouldn't." Charity put the TV on hold as Simnel entered with a bed tray bearing champagne, coffee, strawberries and whipped cream, setting it across her with a flourish.
"Strawberry Decadence, mum. One of my specialties."
"Super." Charity dipped a plump berry in the mound of whipped cream and munched it. "Mmm ... Do you know Judas?"
"Quite well," Simnel said.
"No, I mean the man who - "
"I'm familiar with the case." Simnel poured her coffee. "Very good company, Judas. Sharp mind. Mean chess player."
Charity frowned over her coffee. "You could like a person like that?"
"One man's meat, you know. There are celebrities I avoid out of self-preservation. Beethoven, for example. The personality of a chain saw. Yes, I like Judas for an evenings chat now and then. When he condescends. Not very gregarious."
Charity turned on the TV again. The same reporter had just poked his microphone in the face of a clearly disinterested man leaning against a car door, cigarette dangling from lips curled with an ancient, bitter joke. As the camera went to close-up, Charity choked on a swallow of champagne.