The city outside was a whirl of lights and the lights hypnotized him with their magic. Soon he was in the streets.
There were cabs and scenes: laughter, love, death, passion—everything rolled into a capsule bundle for him. The city spread out below in a fabric of light, the hazy blue of cigar smoke closely pressing sweaty bodies, laughing mouths. A swirl of sensations.
"Somewhere else!" he cried madly to a driver.
China Town, The International Settlement, Fisherman's Wharf.... The cabbies knew a tourist.
He had been moving for hours, and now he was tired and lost, and he could not find a cab to get back to the Sir Francis Drake.
A girl and a sailor passed. A tall lithe blonde with a pert nose and high cheek bones and brown eyes, heavy lips and free hips ... a ... blonde.
The Oholo ... Lauri ... was a blonde.
He began to cast up memories of her, sickeningly, making his fists clench.
He wanted a blonde to smile at him, unsuspecting. A blonde with honey colored hair and a long, slim throat with a blue vein in it, so he could watch the heart beat. He wanted to hurt the blonde, and hold her, and caress her softly, and ... most of all, hurt her.