All But a Pleasure

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “That disposes of genealogy in a nutshell.”

  “Rather a jumbo-sized nutshell?” He grinned. “Consider in what an unenviable situation over-attentiveness to genealogy embroiled the Murgatroyds of Ruddigore.”

  Laughing with him, she hummed a little of the ghostly chorus, then said, “And from then on, all through fourth grade, your favorite rolegame was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and escaping on the Underground Railroad.”

  “The slavering jaws of those voracious bloodhounds could clamp down rather sharply on whichever limb came within their enthusiastic reach. Amazing how the creatures could scent out even an octoroon! Though occasionally I did attain Canada and liberty. Once or twice, by negotiating floes of ice. Yes, I would play Uncle Tom’s Cabin again. Would you find that scenario at all more congenial than Spanish Inquisition or Christians versus Lions?”

  “Maybe…a little. Cory, I’m afraid you’d better be getting back inside where it’s safe.”

  “I protest astronomical odds against our being in any grave jeopardy here and now. Still and nevertheless, the hour is late—by your schedule—and a longer distance home faces you than me.” He bent his head to the open car window.

  She lifted her face to his. Their lips touched. One quick, light good-night kiss of friendship had no business doing such things to her insides! “Good-night, Raggedy Andy—now scoot back safe inside.”

  “Stipulating that you roll up your window, Raggedy Ann, and that you telephone me as soon as you too are safely within doors, I hear and obey.” A sort of mock-sloppy salaam—mixing his game scenarios rather badly—and he turned back to the apartment house. Rolling up her car window, she watched him go. When he got inside, he turned again and gave her a triumphant wave through the glass panel beside the door. Waving back, she started her car, smothered a sigh, and determinedly thought about seeing “Foggerty’s Fairy” with Hank Algood.

  * * * *

  “Mmm,” said Julie, coming up for air. “Handsome, what have you been wasting your time on all my life?”

  They sat in his red Rambler in the Pankhurst Arms parking lot. He had slid over from behind the steering wheel, and she in from the window, to meet in the middle of the front seat for half an hour or so of necking, petting, and smooching like teenagers.

  “Mundane stuff,” Dave answered her question. “Like helping bring bad guys to justice.”

  Another long kiss. Then, “What is ‘justice’?” Julie asked.

  “Justice is not buying a car with these new armchair front seats.”

  Another kiss, and hands up and down each other’s torsos. A few more minutes, and Dave suggested, “I hear the back seat can be pretty nice, too.”

  “So can bed, sweetheart.” She drew back teasingly and laid two fingers lightly on his lips. “But not tonight. Not quite yet. You’re definitely a date number three man.” Besides that, while so far his touch had been very pleasurable, she didn’t want the kind of pressure on her sore spots that real lovemaking entailed. “Think about it,” she added.

  One more kiss, and he wanted to know, “Maybe tomorrow night?”

  “Can’t. I’m on night shift Mondays just now, remember? Shall we make it…let’s see…Thursday?”

  “Thursday it is. Even though it’s going to be a very long first four days of the week this week.” He hugged her tight enough to draw out a little gasp, which she hoped he’d hear as pleasure rather than pain.

  Strangely enough—which had never happened to Julie before—this time, beneath his unaware and passionate arm, the pain was…almost sweet.

  Definitely, it was time to go emeritus from Dante’s Delight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Monday, September 25

  The coffee shop of the Lew Wallace Public Library was a pleasant place, its indoor area hung about with portraits of Midwest America’s favorite literary sons and daughters, its outdoor terrace overlooking a pleasant bend of the Vigo River…kilometers away from the place where Harry Jackson’s body had been found. A cafe of any kind might not have been Julie’s first choice for the coming interview, but it was better than strict—and therefore suspicious—privacy; and at 1400 hours they should have it almost to themselves. She got there about 1345, bought tea and a salad at the food counter, and, seeing how warm and sunny the day was for late September, carried her lunch to a table on the terrace, where they would be out of even the kitchen staff’s easy earshot.

  Corwin joined her promptly at 1400, with a sandwich plate in one hand and cup of coffee in the other. “Ave et bene,” he greeted her, taking his seat. “Salutations and felicitations.”

  “Aves of the heartiest,” she returned. “You know, every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been wearing black. Do you always?”

  “Since millennia before our recent prejudices came to associate darkness with undesirability, black was the symbolic hue of life, the earth, healing rest and salubrious slumber. Rendering it vastly more appropriate for our clergy than the common rather vague associations of mourning for the sinfulness of the mortal condition and renunciation of the world as perceived in Manichean theology. Moreover, I do not wear black exclusively. Today, if I remember, I donned a turtleneck undertunic in tawny amber.”

  “So you did!”

  “But for how much longer do you purpose to balance me in suspense regarding the subject of this conference?”

  “First, let’s eat our lunch. Recreational talk only during the meal. Serious conferring afterwards.”

  He pushed his plate to the center of the table and folded his arms across his chest. “Can you truly expect me to small-talk my way through the tenterhooks of anticipation? I refuse to partake of a mouthful until you have elucidated the enigma.”

  She decided, just for once, it might be more in the spirit of the guiderule to bend it a little. “Tenterhooks,” she said carefully, feeling her way. “Now, that’s an interesting choice of words. Let’s look back about half a century…”

  As she spoke, she watched his expression move from astonishment to admiration, his sandwich forgotten and his coffee cooling untasted. Never a hint of outrage, censure, or willful misunderstanding. By the time she finished, his face fairly glowed with enthusiasm.

  Nevertheless, after finally taking a few bites of his sandwich and swallowing a little coffee, he said, “The invitation honors me, very likely, beyond my merits. Still, you understand, I shall require a few days of meditation preliminary to signing the consent form.”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t want you if you didn’t take time to think about it first. I don’t even have the consent form with me.”

  She had sipped her tea away between sentences, and he pronounced his coffee too tepid for proper appreciation. He replenished both their mugs, bringing back a plate of petits fours at the same time, and the rest of the hour passed in pleasant chat about ancient philosophy and recent films.

  Thursday, September 28

  The Geldhoffer was the swankiest dinner club in Forest Green. It dated from late Victorian times, when it had been the Geldhoffer Mansion, built on a rounded hill that might be an Indian mound—or might not: the legal skirmishes between the present owners, the archeologists, and the Tribes threatened to outdo the plot of the Dickens novel Bleak House, providing job security for a lot of civil lawyers. For the foreseeable future, the Geldhoffer Restaurant was safe where it was, overlooking a bend of the Vigo River; and the present owners had promised that, if a court decision favoring either the archeologists or the Tribes ever forced them to do so, they would move the historic old building to another site, plank by plank and brick by brick.

  To dine at the Geldhoffer on the salaries of a police detective and a nurse marked how deeply Dave and Julie felt about their third date. Dave’s Sergeant Lestrade, who knew the sous chef from when they both lived in Chicago, had made the reservation in Dave’s name, and their table sat by itself in a cozy alcove papered with crimso
n flocked arabesques on an ivory background, accented by striped draperies in the same colors, mock gaslights in translucent shades, and crimson candles in silver holders on the creamy tablecloth. Enough dark shades for richness, enough light tones for cheerfulness.

  They settled into their antique mahogany chairs with petit-point seat cushions, and their waiter produced a bucket stand holding a half-magnum of champagne on ice, “compliments of a friend,” whom both guessed to be Sergeant Lestrade again.

  “I can hardly wait to meet her,” Julie told Dave.

  “Some have said it’s easiest to admire her from a distance,” Dave replied in a cautioning tone, and took a sip of champagne. “But I’m proud to be working with the Old Woman.”

  “Maybe…if we should decide, after tonight, to take things…farther, I should ask for her permission?”

  “Hey, I’m my own man, I make my own decisions.” He chuckled. “However, if you need somebody to walk you down the aisle…”

  “Let her walk you down the aisle! Last I heard, my folks are still sound enough of wind and limb to walk all the way in from Albuquerque if they have to. And if we give them enough advance warning, of course.” Three sips of champagne, and already she was feeling pretty happy. She guessed that it was more than the champagne, that just plain water might have gone to her head tonight.

  Must have to do less with the champagne itself than with the reason they were drinking it.

  The soup—a light fruits-of-the-sea bisque—arrived in a tureen, complete with portly waiter bearing a silver ladle. Before the waiter started ladling, Dave said, “Time to open your napkin, pretty lady,” and unfolded his with a clothy kind of wannabe snap.

  The napkins were folded with an elegance she would probably never be able to learn in this lifetime. Opening hers fold by fold, savoring the process, she heard something clunk down into her plate.

  She picked it up. A single lustrous black pearl, the size of a small, perfect pea, in a teardrop-shaped setting on a fine silver chain.

  “I know in the wine or the souffle is traditional,” said Dave, “but I couldn’t see gumming it up and having to wash it off before we put it on you. You won’t get any other piece of jewelry from me exactly this way, though. Maybe some other way…”

  How deeply he must have dipped into the money she knew he had banked away for the house he was remodeling! Julie felt her throat lumping up a little. “Dave…if you’d fasten it around my neck for me?”

  He did so, moving around the table on the side opposite to where the waiter stood ladling out the soup. The waiter, a merry-looking fat man of advanced middle age, wore a smile soft as candlelight on his pleasant, round face. People liked to see lovers, Julie thought dreamily. Nice, to give people so much pleasure.

  Once the waiter had glided away and the lovers sat smiling over their ear-handled china soup cups at each other, Dave lifted his champagne flute again and said, “To Date Number Three!”

  “Date Number Three,” she whispered back, raising her own flute. “You could even have been a Date Number Four man, but I couldn’t wait that long.”

  “Your place or mine?”

  “Oh, mine. It’s closer. After dinner, of course.”

  “After dinner. Of course. And eat up, my lady. You’ll need all the energy you can get.”

  * * * *

  They spent no time in his parked car this evening, but they did on her living-room couch, necking and cuddling and generally making with the preliminaries of really earnest foreplay. Julie’s heart pounded in more than passion. The Moment of Truth was near. She had been able to put it out of her mind all through dinner, but now…as it grew closer and closer… Should she insist on undressing in her darkened bedroom, slipping between the sheets at once, never letting him view her naked body until afterwards? Or should she display herself to him beforehand? How often had she preplanned this, making her mind up so often one way and so often the other way that now, with the seconds melting away…so very pleasantly, she in his arms and he in hers…she still had the decision to make, all over again.

  Beforehand, she decided at last, just before they reached the point of uncontrollably tearing the clothes off each other. Beforehand was more honest and aboveboard. If he really was her prince, he’d respect her more afterwards. And if he wasn’t, she’d lose him anyway, whichever way she did it. That was the argument that finally won out.

  Using two spread fingers, she pushed him away just far enough for tickling his face with her words. “Bedtime, Handsome Detective. Just give me three minutes alone to…change. Then you come in and see the surprise I’ve got for you.”

  “Three whole minutes? What’ll I do for three whole minutes?”

  “Be imaginative, my Handsome Detective. Be imaginative.” She slipped out of his arms and ran across the carpet, her shoes already shed.

  In the shuttered bedroom, she tabbed on the light and peeled every stitch of clothing off her body, tossing it all in a neat—well, reasonably neat—pile in the far corner. The only thing she left on was the black pearl he had given her tonight. She got herself naked in something under three minutes, positioned herself to give him a full frontal view the minute he opened the door, glanced back once at the bed—still not quite too late for Plan B—No, let him have the full force of it right away and, Sweet Jesus! how she hoped this one was okay with really big tattoos. “Ready when you are, Handsome Detective!” she called with as much of a purr as she could get into her voice.

  He whammed the door open and froze in the doorway. For a moment or two, they just stood staring at each other.

  He had used those three whole minutes to get himself naked in the living room. And—he had a tattoo, too! Not quite as large as hers—but it also was a dragon, breathing fire between his pectorals, spreading its wings over his male nipples, circling its tail around his navel to end with the arrow-shaped tip pointing straight down…

  “Hey!” he cried. “We match!”

  And into each other’s arms they rushed, Dragon Prince to Dragon Lady.

  * * *

  “Hey, Dragon Lady,” Dave asked, kneading his fingers over her shoulders and back, “what’s this here? Feels like some kind of scarring.”

  “Oh, those!” She tried to laugh it off. “Say the dragon nipped me playfully.”

  “Okay. If that’s your cover story. What really happened? Didn’t get this done by Naismith, did you?”

  “Who?”

  “Old renegade tattoo artist hiding out from his association here in Forest Green.”

  “Oh, yes! Think I heard about him.”

  “If he’s been getting careless again —”

  She laughed louder and longer. “Hey, nurse’s pay isn’t quite that bad. I could afford to go a few steps higher than Naismith! No, I got those scars years ago on vacation at Michigan Beach. Slipped on some rocks and landed on a broken beer bottle. Pretty traumatic at the time, but the damage turned out to be only skin deep.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Friday, September 29

  Of the last four Gilbert and Sullivan operas, “Foggerty’s Fairy” was regarded as the fluffiest, the one most nearly resembling “H.M.S. Pinafore” and the other early pieces. While literary criticism tended to bypass “Foggerty’s Fairy” with a few grudging words, it remained one of the most popular for amateur revival, and even professional companies usually made money on it. In games of Topsyturvydom, Angela had sometimes enjoyed roleplaying the Fairy Rebecca. Corwin had once in high school days essayed Foggerty, but found it not entirely to his taste and switched in mid-game to John Wellington Wells, until that point in the session a non-player character.

  After this Friday evening’s show, while waiting for their order at the Klondike Ice Cream Emporium, Corwin remarked, “It seems all but psychedelic, accustomed as we are to seeing the two roles conjoined for the showcasing of a single actress, to find the initial ac
t’s Delia Spiff and the concluding act’s Malvina de Vere portrayed by two young performers of radically diverse physiques.”

  “They did that because so many girls always try out for high school theatricals. Hank told me at the dress rehearsal Wednesday. So they decided to go for contrast.”

  “Pray don’t misconstrue my observation. A feisty though diminutive Miss Spiff contrasts with a statuesquely willowy Miss de Vere to truly excellent effect. The experiment could well bear repetition in professional productions.… How did you find your date with Hank?”

  “Very nice. Like going out with an uncle.”

  “Ah. Avuncular.”

  “Hank’s own very word.… And your date with Julie last Monday?”

  “Not precisely a ‘date’ in the generally recognized popular connotation of that amiable metonym. Why do you persist in applying that term? A simple ‘appointment.’ She proffered me a pregnant—strike that, it was an unfortunate selection of modifier, allow me to recogitate…”

  “Oh, I’m glad even you have to grope for a word sometimes! It mak—renders you a little more nearly human.”

  He grinned back at her. “Well, this time let us settle for a mere ‘interesting’ invitation. About which I am zealous to impart further details…” He glanced around the crowded dessert parlor…“whenever a more convenient occasion for privacy occurs.”

  “You’ve been putting it off all week! I’m beginning to think you’re planning a three-act melodrama.”

  “Oh, trust me, I lie under no necessity of embellishing this.”

  Three quarters of an hour later, Angela pulled Aunt Sally’s borrowed new model Bakersfield Panther up beside the curb in front of the Marquette House, turned off the engine, used the fancy new tab that locked all the car doors at once, and, keeping her finger down on it, turned to him in the glow of the street lamps to say: “All right, Cory, we’re not going to find a much more convenient occasion for privacy than this.” And found herself thinking it might have been nice if Aunt Sally had settled for a model with the smooth door-to-door cushion instead of these new individual armchair seats.