“No, let’s not have bellboys crashing the party. I can drink it warm if you can.” She took the glass I gave her and looked at me appraisingly. “Now you’d better sit down in that chair, so I can perch seductively on the arm, and then slither, down into your lap and snuggle up to you and get you all aroused.”
I said, “The hell with that. You’re too big a girl to sit on anybody’s lap. If there’s any lap-sitting to be done, let’s wake up Penny. She’s got the size for it if not the age and experience.”
“Penny might surprise you,” Jenny said. There was an odd note in her voice. I looked at her, and she laughed quickly and said, “Sometimes I just wonder how much my daughter knows about life first-hand. But I suppose all parents wonder that.”
“She’s kind of a sweet kid,” I said.
Jenny drank from her glass and looked up irritably. “Damn it, we didn’t come here to discuss my offspring! Come on, Dave, please give me some help. What do I do next to get this man into bed with me, and what happens about the clothes? I always wondered how in the world a woman got her girdle off with reasonable dignity at the critical moment.”
“You shouldn’t be wearing a girdle,” I said. “Very poor technique. There are other ways of holding up your stockings. And who said anything about dignity?” I looked at her and frowned. “Hell, wasn’t either Howard or Hans ever in in a hurry, Irish?”
She grimaced. “Oh, dear, no! They were both perfect gentlemen at all times, damn them. Very considerate and patient... Look here, Dave Clevenger, is there something wrong with me? Here I am, offering to be as drunk and disorderly and sexy as you like, and all you do is ask stupid questions. Either you help me get this seduction off the ground and onto the mattress, or I’ll go back to my room and get some sleep.” She glared at me. “We’ve been in this room together for half an hour—well, it seems like half an hour—and you haven’t even kissed me.”
The moment of truth and sincerity had passed. We were back out where the tall corn grew—asking to be kissed, for God’s sake.
I said, “Well, if you insist...” I stepped forward and kissed her on the mouth. The drinks we were both holding made it a rather awkward and cautious osculation. “Okay?” I said, stepping back.
She shrugged. “It depends on what you expect from a kiss. But now you’ve made a gesture in the right direction, Professor, proceed with the lesson.”
I said, “There are two approaches you can use. There’s the gradual-loss-of-inhibitions approach, and then there’s the slaves-of-sudden-passion routine. The first takes more time and liquor, but the second’s apt to be kind of hard on the costume. I mean, in one case you disrobe little by little, ostensibly for comfort’s sake, as the orgy progresses, until you’re down to fundamentals and things start happening. In the other case, after a short buildup, desire grips you all of a sudden and you drag the guy down on the nearest bed. Between the two of you, you manage to get off what’s got to come off, and it may not all come off intact, if you know what I mean. If you’ve got a distance to go afterwards, and people to meet, and no safety pins handy, it can get awkward.”
She was silent for a little. I wondered if she was telling herself to be a brave girl and go through with the horrid performance, now she’d carried it this far.
She said, “Well, I haven’t got far to go, just down the hall, but these are the only reasonably good clothes I’ve got and... and Penny may be awake when I come in. Let’s try the version that’s easier on the wardrobe. What comes off first, the shoes or the dress?”
“Oh, the dress, by all means,” I said. “Leave the shoes on as long as possible. Most men find the combination of high heels and lingerie very stimulating... Hold it!”
She’d gulped down the remains of her drink and set the glass aside. Now she was reaching around back for her zipper. She looked up, perplexed.
“What’s the matter?”
“Where’s your psychology? Let the man do the work, always. He probably wants to. Most men get a kick out of helping a woman take her clothes off. Turn around.”
After a slight hesitation, she turned her back to me. I unhooked and unzipped the blue linen jumper and unbuttoned the thin white blouse underneath. The buttons were small and round and my fingers weren’t quite steady, which annoyed me. It was strictly a mechanical reaction. I mean, I didn’t really want the damn woman at all. I guess I had some sentimental notion of being true, at least a little longer, to a girl who was dead; besides, as far as I could see, it would be an additional and useless complication to an already complex situation. Genevieve Drilling wasn’t a complete fool. Sleeping with me wouldn’t change her opinion of me in any way that really mattered.
“There you are,” I said, working the stuff off her shoulders. I couldn’t help noticing that these were strong but nicely rounded, and freckled like her face. “It’s legitimate to hang it up neatly at this stage of the proceedings,” I said as, having stepped out of the dress and slipped her arms out of the blouse, she stood holding the garments a little uncertainly. “Later, of course, we’ll be scattering things around in an uninhibited way... What’s the matter?”
She’d swung back to face me. “You might at least take off your coat,” she said with some resentment. “I feel awfully bare like this, with you standing there with coat and tie on. Here, I’ll help you.”
I watched her step up to me, in her high-heeled pumps and a white slip with a lot of finely pleated stuff at top and bottom, that rippled as she moved. They can do some very pretty things with pleats these days. She was a tall girl and she moved nicely. Well, I’d noticed that before.
I said, “Irish.”
Her fingers were busy with the knot of my tie. She didn’t look up. “Yes?”
“This is a lousy game, Irish. What are you hoping to win by it?”
The direct question startled her. Her fingers stopped working, and she had to grab at the dress and blouse draped over her arm, to keep them from sliding off to the floor, but she still didn’t look up. When she spoke, her voice was expressionless.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re batting in the wrong league, doll,” I said, making my voice hard. “I’ve had this one pulled on me before.”
She said lightly, “Well, we’re getting somewhere! At least you aren’t calling me ma’am any more.”
I said, “Okay, have it your way.”
She yanked my tie free and looked up at last. “I told you—”
“I know. When the showdown comes, you want a friend in your corner at any cost. Okay, let’s be friends. Here, take my coat, too. You can be hanging things up while I freshen the drinks.” There was a little pause while she moved away and came back. Busy with the bottle, I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Now you can start moving in on one of the beds, Irish. Don’t be obvious about it. Just act as if that happened to be the handiest place to sit.”
“Like this?”
I went over and looked down at her sitting there. I didn’t want to like her, and I didn’t. It’s hard to feel tenderness for a lady who keeps vitriol in the pantry. I didn’t want to be attracted to her, either, but a goodlooking woman with her dress off is always attractive to a certain type of lewd male mind, and I’m afraid my mind happens to be just that type... I shoved one glass into her hand, and took a drink from the other one.
“Hell, you’re much too ladylike, even in your underwear, Drilling,” I said. “You’re supposed to be getting tight, remember? Shove your legs out straight and let them wander well apart; let that slip ride up... That’s better. Now muss your hair a little and drop a strap off your shoulder. Lick your lips. That’s the girl. A little pouty now, kind of sleepily provocative...” I stepped back and surveyed the effect like a photographer posing a fashion model, with my head cocked to the side. “Very good, Irish. We’ll make a tart of you yet.”
She tossed the displaced lock of hair out of her eyes and looked up at me reproachfully. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
She made no response to this. She just watched me sit down beside her. Then she asked quietly, “What have you had pulled on you before, Dave? What did you mean by that?”
“You know what I meant,” I said. “If you want the details, there was a girl in... Well, never mind where.” Actually, it had happened in Kiruna, Sweden, but Jenny’d want to know what a Denver private detective had been doing up there above the Arctic Circle and it was too late at night to figure out a plausible lie. I went on: “This girl had some friends. The friends wanted something from my hotel room. Her job was to keep me busy and interested while they got it. Like you’re keeping me busy and interested now. What’s happening in your hotel room, Irish?”
It was a long shot, but a faint narrowing of her eyes told me it had hit close. “Did she get it?” Jenny asked quickly. “I mean, did her friends get it?”
“Sure they got it,” I said. “I wanted them to get it. It was a plant, but they didn’t know that.”
I used the word deliberately, to see what reaction I would get. The result was satisfactory. I might have been talking about an aspidistra for all the sign she gave. She wasn’t concerned about plants. She had no suspicion she was part of one, a very elaborate one—that we all were. All she cared about was steering the conversation away from her room and what might be taking place there.
“You’re very clever, aren’t you, Dave?” she said smoothly. “And what happened to the girl?”
I looked at her for a moment longer. I needed very much to know what kind of a woman this really was, and I’d had enough of her acting. I had to shake her up a bit, for my own satisfaction.
“I’ll show you what happened to the girl,” I said, and her eyes widened slightly at the tone of my voice. I took the glass from her hand, set it on the floor, and placed mine carefully beside it. “This is what happened to that girl,” I said, and I grabbed her and pulled her to me roughly. I heard her startled gasp. “Dave, please—”
Then I was kissing her hard and forcing her down on the bed. I guess I wanted to see if she’d panic, and for a moment I thought she had. There was a second or two of desperate resistance, or so I thought; then I heard something fall to the rug—two objects—and realized that she’d just been holding me off while she kicked off her shoes. She made a funny little triumphant sound in her throat and came to me as if she’d been waiting all her life for some man to realize she wasn’t made of glass and wouldn’t break—or as if she’d just been waiting all night for me to make the tactical mistake of laying rough hands on her.
I felt her fingernails dig through my shirt, and her mouth was warm and responsive despite my violence. I found my clever plans and sentimental reservations quickly becoming unimportant. I even found myself forgetting, more or less, that I was supposed to be a dedicated public servant on an important mission. I soothed my conscience with the thought that I wasn’t really supposed to care what might be happening in her room. As a tough private eye, I was reacting the way I was supposed to. You might even say I was tending strictly to business.
There were those first frantic seconds—maybe minutes—of exploration and discovery; then we lay quite still in each other’s arms, breathing hard. It was no time for jokes, perhaps, but suddenly I knew this woman well enough to try one even though I didn’t know her at all.
“Here’s your moment, Jenny O’Brien.”
“Moment?”
“The critical moment,” I whispered in her ear. “When you get it off with reasonable dignity. Don’t forget the dignity. This I want to see.”
She laughed softly, lying close to me. “Clothes!” she murmured. “Why do we have to wear them? Just pull it off me, darling. Skin me like a rabbit. Peel me like an eel, stockings and all.”
“Do eels wear stockings?”
“Stop being silly and finish undressing me, damn you. You started it. You said the man liked to do the work. Dave?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “I hate your lovely guts. Good God, talk about chastity belts. Where’s the key to this thing?” There were only the two of us in the world, talking breathlessly to bridge the awkward but necessary pause between promise and fulfillment. Then the roof of our private paradise fell in, the floor buckled, and the walls collapsed, leaving us exposed and unprotected, two rumpled strangers on a rumpled bed. What I mean is, somebody knocked on the door.
“Mummy,” said a hesitant voice outside. “Mummy, are you in there? Mr. Clevenger, do you know where my mother is?”
15
Well, it wasn’t quite as bad, I guess, as if it had never happened to me before. I’d been married once, myself. I’d had kids—they were growing up out West with the same mother but a different father—and I’d had a good chance to learn what it was like to have the most intimate moments interrupted by a small voice at the bedroom door. Still, it had been some years ago. I was no longer in the parental groove, so to speak.
“Oh, Christ!” I said, sitting up straight and wondering if I’d locked the door securely or if the kid was going to march right in on us. Then things began to add up—at least the possibility occurred to me that they might add up— and I drew a long breath and glanced at the woman lying on the bed beside me. “Congratulations,” I said grimly. “That’s real timing. You and that kid work well together, but she cut it pretty close, didn’t she? Another couple of minutes and all would have been lost, as they say.”
Jenny stared up at me. She looked pale and shaken, and shocked at my suggestion. She protested: “Dave, you can’t think I—”
There was another rap on the door. I said, “Call her off, will you? Tell her she doesn’t have to break it down.”
Jenny sat up and pushed back her rumpled hair. “Just a minute, darling,” she called. Then she turned to me quickly. “Dave, I swear... oh, what’s the use!” She looked around angrily, and called, “For God’s sake, Penny, you don’t have to wake the whole hotel! Let me get some clothes on, will you, darling?”
In spite of everything, I was a little startled. I guess I have old-fashioned notions about what the young are supposed to be told, and what they aren’t. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll give her a trauma or something?” I asked.
“I thought your idea was that this was all planned between Penny and me,” Jenny countered sharply. “And even if it wasn’t, do you really think there’s a modern teenager who doesn’t know people go to bed together? What are we supposed to be doing in here, playing twohanded bridge? Get my dress, please.” She spoke to my back as I got up. “Dave.”
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong, don’t you? I didn’t plan it this way. I didn’t... didn’t even want it this way. If you don’t believe me, come right back here. She can just stand there and hammer on the door and yell her damn little lungs out.”
I glanced at her. “That’s a hell of a maternal attitude.”
“Motherhood, smotherhood. Even if I could do it to you, do you think I could do it to myself? My God, I feel as if I’m going to fly into a million pieces!” She drew a ragged breath. “Well, I suppose we’ve got to find out what she wants. You haven’t got a tranquilizer handy, have you?”
“Sure.”
When I came back with it, Jenny was sitting on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands. She raised her head when I spoke to her, took the pill, and swallowed it with a little water. She gave me back the glass. After a moment she sighed, rose, and hitched various displaced lingerie straps back where they belonged, rather like a farmer snapping his galluses. Then she went through the standard feminine after-necking routine of settling her girdle, and smoothing her stockings up and her slip down.
&
nbsp; She caught the garments I threw her and started putting them back on while I turned to wrap my tie around my neck, knot it and draw it tight like a hangman’s noose. I guess it symbolized the way I felt I looked at myself in the mirror and scrubbed off some lipstick with a handkerchief. “Mummy, please!” said the voice outside the door.
Jenny said, “Oh, let the little monster in, Dave.”
Parental tenderness wasn’t exactly in the ascendant, I reflected. Well, it’s only in the ads that everybody loves kids all the time. At the moment, I wasn’t very fond of the brat myself. Nevertheless, I found myself somewhat abashed as I unlocked the door and let Penny enter to see the untidy bed and her mother standing by it, shoeless and disheveled, with unzipped dress and unbuttoned blouse.
It made things worse, somehow, that the girl was wearing flannel pajamas decorated with Disney-type bunnies: she looked about ten years old, although her hair was in curlers again, covered with a blue net nightcap thing that tied under the chin. She took in the scene gravely, glanced at me, and walked over to Jenny and started to fasten her up the back.
“You’ve got a run in your stocking, Mummy,” she said tonelessly.
“I’ve got a run in my psyche, darling,” her mother said. “I just snagged it on a stumbling-block named Penny. What’s the big deal that couldn’t wait until I got back to the room?”
“Oh!” Penny looked startled. Her reception here had apparently made her forget just what it was she’d come for. “It’s... that man, Mummy,” she said, glancing at me warily.
“Go on,” Jenny said. “Mr. Clevenger, along with the rest of the U.S. government, knows all about Hans. Well, almost all. Go on.”
It was no time to insist on my innocence of official connections. I just waited for Penny to speak.
“Well, he came with the instructions like he was supposed... Is it really all right to tell?”
Jenny made an impatient gesture. “Mr. Clevenger isn’t a dope, darling. He’s already guessed that I’ve been keeping him... distracted for a purpose.”
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