Freddy never stopped smiling, but his smile had nuances, cadences almost. Sometimes he smiled the smile of the inscrutable Oriental, at other times the smile an old Princetonian might adopt when confiding in a slightly doltish friend.
"Is there a price?” I asked.
"The price is four million," Freddy said. "I think when you've seen the baskets you'll find it a bargain."
I could easily believe that, since one really good American Indian basket, from almost any tribe, will bring anywhere between $1,500 and $10,000 these days.
"Are you interested?" Freddy asked.
"Yes," I said, reduced to a monosyllable by the audacity of it all.
Of course even my monosyllable was a bluff. I didn't have $4 million, or even a significant fraction thereof.
Besides that, I didn't have any place to put 190,000 baskets. The volume buy had never been my style. It was Big John's style. My style was to buy the solitaries, such as the single best Sung vase in the '77-'78 auction season, for example. Or the only known Brancusi hood ornament. Or, possibly, the boots of Billy the Kid.
Nonetheless Freddy had just offered me an opportunity to fulfill one of the great scouting fantasies: getting inside the Smithsonian warehouses. It was a chance not to be missed.
"How do I get a look at them?" I asked.
"You want to see a man named Hobart Cawdrey," he said. "He's in the Department of Transportation, extension 1000. Easy to remember. I suggest you call him tomorrow. Things are beginning to move."
It seemed odd to me that a man responsible for the fate of 190,000 baskets would be in the Department of Transportation, but then what did I know?
"I'll call him tomorrow," I promised.
Freddy shook my hand again, still smiling. "I hope it works out," he said.
It had all seemed kind of odd. We had stood there surrounded by some of the most famous journalists in America and talked openly about the sale of part of a great national institution. Any passing journalist could have heard us—even a deranged stringer like Eviste. And there was another thing to consider: what my purchase would do to the basket market.
That question at least had an obvious answer. The basket market would be finished for a generation. It would suffer the fate the Boy Scout knife market had^uffered when Big John bought the warehouse in Poughkeepsie. All the basket scouts I knew, and I knew some good ones, would have to find new careers.
It was a sad thought. As people tend to resemble their pets, so scouts come to resemble the objects they scout for. Basket scouts are among the nicest people I know. They tend to be simple, spare, graceful, unaggressive. They have a kind of dry quiet humor that I like.
"You better watch out," Boss said. She had come up behind me and seemed to be regarding me with a motherly eye. It annoyed me a little, that she was looking so motherly.
"I'm watching out," I said.
Boss smiled. Worse still, she ruffled my hair.
"You're cute when you're huffy," she said. "What time does Cindy let you out in the morning?"
"I do as I please," I said, wishing I could think of something wittier or more original to say.
"I don't know who you think you're fooling, but it ain't me you're fooling," she said. "I'm going out to see Cyrus in the morning. He's selling his second-best horse farm. You could come if you can talk Cindy into letting you out."
Boss was a master of the taunt. It is not exactly a rare skill, among women, but she had developed it to a very high level of subtlety. At times I tended to forget that she employed both of my former wives, and thus knew more than most about my behavior with women.
"Did you mean Cyrus Folmsbee?" I asked, remembering that he was supposed to be the power behind the sale of the Smithsonian.
"Yeah, Cyrus," Boss said. "You better come and meet him before you let Boog and Freddy get you in trouble. Cyrus is no one to fuck around with. Come by about nine, if you can get loose."
"I can get loose," I said.
Boss looked amused. "We'll see about that," she said.
Chapter XI
Bravado always backfires, with me. Every time I make a bold claim, particularly if I make it with a woman, fate blows it back in my face like a piece of wet newspaper.
The fact that Cindy had been up and ready to hit the street at seven the morning before had misled me into thinking early rising and the efficient dispatch of business was a pattern that could be relied on.
The minute we got home from the Embassy she konked out and slept like a baby, while I sat on the bed feeling restive and indecisive. Life was looking more and more complicated. Cindy was even more beautiful asleep than awake—slumber added an almost ethereal shapeliness to her face and body. Of course she was shapely asleep or awake, but the minute she was awake enough for her impatience level to rise to its normal mark on the gauge she stopped seeming ethereal and began to seem like a big beautiful Santa Barbara girl who was used to getting her own way.
Cindy slept evenly, peacefully, untroubled by the thought of tomorrow or the memory of yesterday, while I sat and fidgeted for hours, worrying about all manner of murky eventualities.
When I finally dozed for a bit I had my backward driving dream. It was early morning before I had it, because when I awoke from it fall sunlight was filtering through Cindy's long windows. About that time, Cindy, who had been sleeping with her back to me, turned over and curled against me. She slept with her mouth partly open, which for some reason made her seem far more helpless than she really was.
She might not have been helpless, but she was warm. She flopped an arm across my chest and the arm was hot as a stove. Having a long warm girl stretched out against you as the October sunlight is beginning to come through the windows in the morning is a good way to overcome the fidgets. After cooking for a while in Cindy's body heat I became genuinely drowsy and went to sleep, only to have, once again, little flash cuts of myself driving backwards.
Then I began to have a vague but sexy dream involving Boss Miller. As it got sexier the flash cuts of backward driving gradually stopped. Boss took the dream and it got sexier and sexier, although I could not tell that we were actually doing anything. Unfortunately, as the sexiness increased I began to wake up. I tried to stay asleep but I couldn't. I woke up and looked at Cindy, only to discover that she had slipped down in the bed and was quietly and rather speculatively performing an oral sex act, in which I had been playing an unwitting but cooperative part.
I was very surprised, since in our previous lovemaking she had been energetic without being either aggressive or inventive. She went straight to the point and made it. After a bit she might recoup and make it again, but it was essentially the same point. Her lovemaking was like I imagined her tennis game would be: a matter of serve and volley. She was not into drop shots, topspin, or elaborate baseline strategies. She went for the ace, and then went for another ace.
But a change had come over her. Perhaps the fact that I had been deeply asleep had made her feel that a little harmless experimenting could be done. She was experimenting rather tentatively, as if she hoped to learn a new game without the embarrassment of having someone watch her practice.
Being compliant by nature, I went along with what I judged to be the requirements of the situation and pretended to be asleep, although for a time I watched what was going on through lidded eyes. It only had the effect of making me feel like a peeping Tom. The longer Cindy's experiment went on, the sillier I felt, though thanks to her natural impatience it probably only went on a few minutes. The fact that it was early morning and that I couldn't decide whether to be asleep or awake made it seem longer.
I guess Cindy concluded that oral sex might have its interest but was not likely to get her any aces. She soon decided she preferred the old game of serve and volley and hopped on top of me. I opened my eyes just long enough to glimpse a narrow band of bright sunlight between her body and mine. Cindy must have been pretty excited because she looked like a big strawberry. She came in no time and collapsed
on my cheek in a kind of victor's trance. Her breath, warm from her exertions, ruffled the little hairs on my arm while I cuddled her a bit.
As for me, I felt as distant as if I were in the middle of Wyoming. My mind was as sere and dry as the flats along the Wind River, and they are very sere and dry.
Then she began to want to be kissed, which surprised me a little. After all, she hadn't spoken to me at all the evening before. But she definitely wanted to be kissed. Her breath was always fresh as a green grape—breath that was blowing straight off some absolutely tiptop cells. Even in the early morning she had a clean, grapelike flavor that was very appealing.
After a while my Wind River mood passed and I began to feel not so empty. Also I began to feel curious about what might be going on with Cindy. It was true that we had made love on previous occasions, but there hadn't really been much amorousness involved. Cindy had just wolfed down a little sex much as she had wolfed down Brie and salami. The wolfing had had no real character. It had been all vigor and no tone.
Now all of a sudden, on a morning when I was supposed to go somewhere with Boss, she was developing an interest in tone.
"Let's fuck all day," she said. "I never have."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
“I never have just spent a day in bed, doing things," she said. She said it almost meekly, as if it were a shameful confession.
"You never will, either, if you start this early," I said. "Not unless you can arrange for a string of fellows. No one fellow is going to last all day."
"It doesn't have to be just fucking," Cindy said, still meekly. "We could do other kinds of things."
"What other kinds of things?"
She shrugged her beautiful freckled shoulders. "Orgy-like things," she said. "You probably know more about them than I do. I never get to do those kinds of things."
"That's hard to believe," I said, though in fact I could believe it perfectly well. A lot of brash girls who will fuck you in an instant turn out not to have done much sexually— they often live a life of very simple fucks.
"But you're the toast of Washington," I said. "How come you haven't had better opportunities?"
"I told you," she said, wiggling a little. "These are successful people. They can't lay around in bed all day."
She looked slightly depressed, as if it had just occurred to her that she had missed a lot because all the successful men she knew were off running the country, leaving no one to do what she called orgy-like things with her.
"What about the reporters?" I asked. "They don't have to run the country."
Cindy shook her head. "They always fall in love and then they never leave their wives," she said. Then she reached down between my legs to see if there were any signs of recovery in that region. I could hardly believe what was happening. The efficient social-climbing woman of the weekend was fading out and being replaced by an almost lovestruck, partially innocent Santa Barbara girl who wanted nothing more than a day of slightly out-of-the-ordinary sexual adventure.
"Come on," she whispered. In my confusion I had not exactly launched into doing things.
Clearly I had to do something, so I repaid Jier what might be called a favor—I guess it counted as an orgy-like thing, because Cindy had an orgasm so strong that an observer might have thought she was being electrocuted. After that she fell into a deep sleep and I got up and shaved and took a shower. From the force of the orgasm I judged she might sleep long enough for me to go off and spend a few hours in the country with Boss.
That plan had a life-span shorter than a gnat's. While I was standing there, half adrowse in the shower, the door opened and Cindy stumbled in, half asleep also. I woke up but she didn't. She hugged me and resumed her nap. The shower poured down over both of us. Cindy didn't have on a shower cap. I don't think she cared that her hair was getting wet. She had just got out of bed and sought a body to be near. Some homing device had brought her straight to me. She seemed to be sleeping soundly, her wet face against my wet chest.
After that we stood there for a while, one of us asleep and the other wide-awake and a little confused.
Chapter XII
My confusion lasted over an hour, most of which time I spent trying to provide Cindy with enough sexual pleasure to knock her out again. In this I failed. Once she had her little nap in the shower she became extremely wakeful and nothing I did in the way of orgy-like activities put her back to sleep. Her hair was so wet that every time I put my face in it I got water in my eyes. When things were going slow she rubbed at it vigorously with a towel. Once when she was wiggling around I slipped out of her, only to be immediately reinserted.
"Stay in there," she said.
It was only thirty minutes before I was due to meet Boss. Although I seemed to be glued into a day-long embrace, I still had faint hopes that I could somehow escape and keep my date. I had stopped feeling romantic about the date—I seemed to have all the romance I could handle closer to hand—but I was determined not to let Boss think I couldn't get away from Cindy when I wanted to.
However, I was far from certain as to how I was going to get away from Cindy. At the moment she had one hand on the base of my cock, to see that I didn't slip out again.
Since she was looking quite friendly I decided to try a frank approach.
"I have to tell you something," I said.
I guess she was looking friendly because she was sort of tuned in to her own pleasures, listening to them as if over a radio. When I interrupted the radio she raised her head briefly and gave me a kiss.
"What?" she asked. ' ~
"This is not a day we can spend all of in bed," I said. "We could do that tomorrow," I added quickly.
I meant it, too. I had nothing against a day in bed with the new Cindy. But that didn't mean I wanted to lose face with Boss.
"What's wrong with today?" Cindy wanted to know. She didn't look mad. She didn't turn loose of my cock, either.
"I have to go somewhere," I lied. "I have a very big deal lined up."
"Un-uh," she said.
To strengthen her point she wrapped her legs around me and hooked her ankles. She was a strong girl, too.
"I don't know what's come over you," I said.
"I don't either but you can't go," she said.
"But this is important," I said. "It's a deal that could make me as rich as Boog."
Cindy shook her head.
"Naw," she said. "You'll never be rich. You aren't even successful. You better just stay here and fuck me. It's the best you're gonna get.
"Don't try to be like everybody else," she said, raising her head for another kiss.
"Why not?"
"It will just spoil everything," she said. "I don't want it spoiled. I want it like this. I'm tired of everybody else."
That's when I knew the day was lost. Boss was right, I couldn't get away. Cindy and I looked at one another for a while. I didn't feel in love, but I felt extremely fond.
In ten minutes Boss was going to expect me to start for Middleburg with her. Meanwhile Cindy and I were floating along on a slow boat, sexually. We weren't doing much but we were definitely united.
For some reason I decided to be honest, a rare decision with me. I guess it was prompted by the deep ephemeral feeling of closeness I had with Cindy. I didn't feel like lying to a face that was only two inches from mine.
"I have to make a call and break that appointment," I said.
"I bet it was with a woman," she said.
"You better not lie," she added, looking at me closely.
I hadn't meant to, but she did well to warn me. Sometimes I cut into a lie at the very last moment, even when I have every intention of telling the truth. An instinct for the protective falsehood seems to take over.
"It was with Boss," I said.
Cindy regarded me solemnly for a second. I think she was genuinely surprised that I had told her the truth. I was surprised myself, since I knew she was jealous of Boss.
In terms of womanly power, B
oss was far ahead of her, and Cindy knew it. Boss had a husband, children, many lovers—a depth of gesture Cindy just didn't have. Against Boss she was overmatched.
Thus it was kind of a big deal that I had told her the truth. For once I had gambled on the potency of honesty. Cindy's only immediate response was to flex her hips.
"I feel embarrassed," I said. "I have to call. It's not fair not to break the appointment."
Cindy didn't say a word. She was leaving it to me. So call, her look said.
"Put your fingers in your ears for a minute," I said, in a cajoling tone. "Then I won't have to get up. I can use the bedside phone."
"You're not getting up," she said, flexing her hips again.
"I've never talked on the phone at a time like this," I said.
For an answer I got a kiss. Then she wiggled her head down between two pillows and raised her arms to squeeze the pillows against her ears. She didn't really squeeze them very tight, though. Her armpits were lightly stubbled. Evidently she had decided to rely on her eyes alone to detect any treachery.
I called Boss, who answered on the first ring.
"I can't come today," I said, wasting no words.
Boss was silent for a moment. In the background I could hear Micah giggling and the outraged voice of Desi Amaz. An early morning rerun was in progress.
"What a surprise," Boss said. "How about tomorrow?"
"What?" I asked, surprised myself.
"Cyrus canceled," Boss said. "Bessie couldn't come today and he won't do anything without Bessie. Do you think she'll let you out tomorrow?"
"I don't know," I said, risking another venture into truth. Further bravado seemed pointless.
I expected gloating, but Boss didn't bother.
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