"Yes."
"Be nice," she said softly. "Play up a little, please. You're making it very hard for me. Don't act so government-agentish. Can't you see I'm embarrassed as hell?" She drew a sharp little breath and went on briskly before I could speak:
"All right, now I've got as far as the man's hotel room. What do I do next, seduction-wise? Do I simply take off my clothes and jump into bed and stretch out my naked arms to him? It seems a little… well, abrupt. Shouldn't we first maybe have a couple of drinks?"
I said, "Shouldn't we first maybe discuss just what kind of help you're hoping to buy with your white body?"
She drew another quick breath and said impatiently:
"You're really being damned difficult! Even though I don't trust your motives at all, I'm willing to gamble on your being honest enough to do something for me after.., after you've had me. Why can't you be willing to gamble on my being sensible enough not to ask more of you than… than one good Jay is worth? Believe me, after living for fifteen odd years with a man who considers sex infinitely less interesting than science, I'm not likely to overvalue what I've got to offer."
I regarded her with growing respect, and the uneasy feeling that somewhere beneath the play-acting was some kind of a solid foundation of truth and sincerity. The question was, what kind.
"I said, "You do put it right on the line, Irish."
She met my look steadily. "I try to. I'm not going to ask you to betray your country or neglect your duty or anything like that. I… I just want somebody in my corner when the showdown comes, somebody who has a personal interest in seeing that I get a reasonably fair deal. I'm glad you didn't ask for money. I'd never be sure of a man to whom I'd given money."
I said, "You don't know much about this kind of business, do you? What makes you think a man who's willing to go for a deal on the side is going to stay bought no matter what you pay him off with?"
She shook her head quickly. "You don't understand. I'm not really asking you to be bought or stay bought, Dave Clevenger. All I'm really trying to do is get you to look at me as me, not as a bunch of damaging information in a file somewhere. If you'd just take one good look at me, forgetting everything you've heard, you'd see I couldn't possibly be the sinister person you think I am-you, and those two other government men who are following me so tenaciously, and Howard, and Hans, and… and everybody. I'm not that wicked and I'm not that clever."
She was really very good. I thought of a glove and a bottle that was supposed to contain salad dressing and didn't. I said, "I don't know what's more dangerous, a woman who tells you how wicked she is, or a woman who tells you how wicked she isn't."
Jenny made a protesting gesture. "Damn it, you're thinking of me as a movie clichй: espionage heavy, female, Type
B. I'm not a clichй, I'm a woman, and a pretty ordinary woman at that. If I have to pay you or go to bed with you to make you realize that… Ah, let's get on with it! Where do you keep your liquor? That should be the first step, shouldn't it, to get the man drunk and susceptible?"
"Sure," I said. "That's the procedure. Here."
I went to my suitcase and got out a bottle of Scotch in a paper bag. As I slipped it out of the sack, I remembered the last time I'd had a drink from that bottle, and who'd been with me that night, and what had happened between us, and what had happened to her later. It made me, for some reason, feel kind of cheap and disloyal.
I said to Jenny, "I didn't expect to be doing any entertaining up here, or I'd have had ice ready. Do you want me to ring for some?"
"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 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 ball, 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.