She was beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, he thought.
Her dark Mediterranean face was framed by long black hair cut in straight bangs. Her skin was uniformly fine, her figure was Olympian, but her every move betrayed a total lack of sensuality and her overall demeanor was singularly unattractive. As she sat down at her vanity table, Baxter could see in the reflection of its mirror her haunted humorless brown eyes, and he turned his gaze away, regretting that this woman would soon be sleeping fitfully beside him.
She never knew how to have fun. Everything she did was work. Every amusement that her companions enjoyed was a waste of precious time to her. Baxter's only reason for committing a crime was that it was "Fun". Sandy had been horrified by the idea and described in agonizing detail all that she thought every professional criminal must be and what she hoped Baxter would soon become. Now, he sat in bed and saw himself as he had always been: easy-going, eager-to-please, slow-to-anger, Baxter, unchanged by his entrance into the dark new world around him.
And yet, his wife had become the very monster she had feared would appear in him; because she came to see the most barbaric criminal as the most efficient criminal. She never felt the thrill of the game -- only anger, resentment and guilt, and, above all, a savage dissatisfaction and a hunger for more. He could have forgiven anything she'd ever done, or at least, pretended to, if only she hadn't been so damned efficient, and still so hungry.