Chapter 1: Intimate Encounter
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I was still staring at the hot black eyes when a door opened far back under the stairs. It wasn't the butler droid coming back. It was a girl. She looked twenty, although that means nothing these days, small and delicately put together. She wore nothing at all and walked as if she was floating. Her hair was a fine tawny wave. Her eyes were slate-grey, and had almost no expression when they looked at me. She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin taut lips. "Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on this short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her. "Handsome too," she said, "And I bet you know it." I grunted. "What's your name?" "Rogers," I said, "Doghouse Rogers." "That's a funny name." She licked her lips and turned her head a little and looked at me. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a retro theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air. "Are you a prize-fighter?" she asked, when I didn't. "Not exactly, I'm a sleuth." "You're making fun of me."
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Part 1