The door opened.
Her eyes closed tightly, and she tried to contain her breathing to the natural shallow breathing of sleep.
She waited for the exclamation from him, astonishment or harsh annoyance. Neither came. There were only the soft sounds of shoes rubbing on the carpet, of human movement, of a stifled yawn.
She eased one lid open to form a slit of vision. He filled the thin, long frame: his broad back was to her, his dinner jacket already removed, his white suspenders and dress shirt sharply contrasting with his thick growth of kinky inky hair. His stubby black hands were unfastening the white bow tie. He undid it, dropped it on the table, opened his collar. He began to turn, and knowing middle-aged men, she guessed what was next. He would make his way to the bed to sit, remove his shoes and socks, and stick his feet into comfortable bedroom slippers before settling down to read.
He had come around quickly, before she had closed her eye. For a second, she had the record of his petrified expression at discovering her: at once startled, at once confounded, at once agitated.
Her eyelid covered the slit. She feigned deep sleep, inhaling and exhaling through her mouth. She sensed, not heard, his advance toward her.
“Miss Watson-Miss Watson-”
She must seem to be too drunkenly unconscious to hear him. She breathed on, squirming slightly to her side in his direction.
“Miss Watson?”
Her bare arm felt the light touch of his blunt fingers, and involuntarily the nerves beneath the skin jumped, but she remained inert. His fingers pressed into her arm, and then pulled at her arm, shaking her. The pretense was over. She must do what must be done well and speedily.
She opened her eyes slowly, dazed eyes, closed them, then suddenly opened them wide in a double take, and instinctively hunched her shoulders in a position of self-protection. Her hand went to her mouth. “What-what are you doing here? What-where am I?” She tried to make her voice disoriented, distraught.
He remained standing over her. “I’m afraid, Miss Watson, you fell fast asleep on my bed. You said before that you felt you’d had too much to drink, and you wanted to lie down. I don’t know how you found your way up here, but-”
“Oh, heavens, did I? What an awful thing. I-I guess I wanted to find some out-of-the-way corner-I meant to lie down on the bed in the Rose Guest Room, but I-oh, I remember-I couldn’t make it, that’s it. I was going past here, and I felt suddenly ill, and your bathroom was the nearest, and after that I simply collapsed on the first thing I saw. I’m afraid I’ve made a spectacle of myself. I’m sorry.”
“Not a bit. It happens sometime or other to everyone. It’s just that-” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he smiled weakly. “If I had come in with someone, it could have been embarrassing for both of us. Of course, it’s ridiculous-”
She had not moved, lying there, her eyes on his Adam’s apple and his nervous fingers. She could see his gaze go helplessly from her naked thigh between the bunched hemline and the upper sheath of her silk stocking, to fix once more on the protrusion of her brassière cup. “I don’t know what to say,” she found herself saying. “What you must think of me. I’m ashamed. I hope you won’t hold this against me, I mean, against my keeping the job.”
He swallowed, and tried to chuckle. “Hardly,” he said. “What I should do is offer you a drink, or something, to get you on your feet. But I think you’ve had quite enough. What I will do is send you right home in a White House car, Miss Watson.”
“Thank you, Mr. President, thank you so much. You’re very kind.” She came up on an elbow, and then groaned, even as she forced a smile, groaned and touched her brow, to give validity to her having passed out. “Ouch. I have a cage of buzzards in my head.”
He was instantly solicitous. “If you don’t think you can make it, I’ll have Mrs. Crail find you a room on the third floor.”
“Oh no, not that, Mr. President. Mrs. Crail? She’d have me branded Hester Prynne-S for scarlet sinner-in ten seconds flat. I can make it under my own steam. I’m grateful to you.”
She began to sit up, and as she did, Dilman started to turn away. “I’ll step out while you fix yourself.”
“Oh,” she gasped, pretending to see for the first time her dropped bodice and revealed thigh. “Heavens, what a sight. Don’t leave-I’ll be out in a second.”
In a rapid motion, knowing she had survived the ordeal, eager to escape, she swung off the bed. As she did so, her hip struck the bulging evening purse on the edge of the bed, and the purse hurtled to the floor, hit hard, burst open, and spilled its contents widely over the figured rug.
She was momentarily horrified by what lay strewn about the rug, not her lipstick and compact, not her handkerchief and keys, but the bent index cards filled mainly with her clear writing, everywhere. She wanted to throw herself across them, hide them, gather them, but it was too late.
Out of automatic gallantry, Dilman had crouched, gone down to one knee, retrieving her beaded purse, returning to it the lipstick and compact, the handkerchief and keys, and now he began to pick up the scattered index cards.
“I-I’ll-please let me-don’t bother-” she cried out, yet she was unable to move from her sitting position on the bed.
He had gathered some of the cards, but the frantic pitch in her voice made him glance at her with surprise, and then, almost as a reflex, down at the uppermost card in his hand.
“It’s nothing-” she gasped out.
He stared down at the index card, ignoring her, while his free hand groped for the rest of the cards on the floor. He placed these on the others, and stared at the new top card, which was also crammed with writing. He rose silently, leaving the purse on the floor, blinking at the cards in his hand.
She could not see his full face; it was averted from her, lowered over the cards. She crossed her arms, dug her nails into her flesh to make the trembling cease. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to go, no way to brazen it out. She wanted to die, but could only wait for the first blow.
His voice, issuing from the lips and face not fully visible to her, was surprisingly controlled, level, though chillingly soft and restrained. “You have embarrassed both of us, Miss Watson-you have.”
“Don’t believe-it doesn’t mean what you-”
“It’s my own fault, of course.” His Negro modulation, the slurred vowels, had become more pronounced. “I should have known there is no one to be trusted. I should not have breached security by leaving my briefcase unlocked. Yet, I suppose I felt that my bedroom was-my own.”
The blood and drinks had coursed to her head, and the room rocked, and she felt palsied by insane desperation and recklessness. “Believe what you want-but try to believe me-I swear it on the Bible-I was drunk-I came in here to-to use the bathroom, and then lie down-I bumped into your briefcase-and something was sticking out-I figured it couldn’t be important if it was sticking out-so I took it to read, to help me nap-I read only a few pages-then I started copying a few things because-because-you want the truth? I want to write a book about you one day, about being your social secretary, and I wanted these notes as inside stuff to put in my diary, to remember years from now when there’d be no security involved-I swear-it was just something that-that happened on the spur of the moment-believe me-”