Nightwork (8 page)

“If I hadn’t met Jerry,” Mrs. Hale said, candor making her seem suddenly youthful, “I’d have nothing. Nothing.” The doorbell rang. “Oh, dear,” she said, “here comes the herd. I do hope we’ll see a lot of you while you’re here. …”

The rest of the party had been something of a blur, although not because of drink. I never drank much. But the names had been flung at me in such quick succession, Senator So-and-So, Congressman This, Congressman That, His Excellency, the Ambassador of What Country, Mr. Blank, he works for
The Washington Post
, Mrs. Whoever, she’s ever so important at Justice, and the conversation had been about people who were powerful, famous, despicable, conniving, eloquent, on the way to Russia, introducing a bill that would make your hair stand on end.

Even though I knew next to nothing about the social structure of the capital, I could tell that there was a lot of power assembled in the room. By Washington standards everybody there was more important than the host, who, while obviously on the way up, was still somewhere in the middle ranks of the Foreign Service, and who couldn’t have afforded many parties like this on his salary. But Vivian Hale was the daughter of a man who had been a senator for two terms and who owned a good part of North Carolina besides. My friend had married well. I wondered what I would have turned into if I had married a rich wife. Not that I ever had the offer.

I had merely stood around, wincing a little as the drinks began to take effect on the rising curve of conversation, a glass tactfully in my hand at all times, smiling manfully, like a small boy at dancing school. I wondered how Hale could bear it.

Mrs. Whoever, whose hand and lips were now caressing me, had turned out to be the lady who was ever so important at Justice. She looked thirty-five years old, but a very handsome thirty-five, full bodied, with glowing skin, large dark eyes, and soft dark blonde hair, almost the color of mine, that fell to her shoulders. We had found ourselves in a corner together and she had said, “I’ve been watching you. Poor man, you look marooned. I take it you’re not an inmate.”

“An inmate?” I had asked, puzzled. “Of what?”

“Washington.”

I had grinned. “Does it show that badly?”

“It does, man, it does. Don’t worry about it. I leap at the opportunity to talk to someone who isn’t in the government.” She had looked at her watch. “Forty-five minutes. I have done my duty. Nobody can spread the rumor that I don’t know how to behave in polite society. Time for chow. Grimes, are you busy for dinner?”

“No.” I was surprised that she had remembered my name.

“Shall we leave together or leave separately?”

I laughed. “That’s up to you, Mrs. …”

“Coates, Evelyn.” She had smiled widely. I decided she had a mouth for smiling. “Together. I’m divorced. Do you consider me forward?”

“Yes, ma’am.

“Excellent man.” She had touched my arm lightly. “I’ll wait for you in the front hall. Say good-bye to your hosts, like a good boy.”

I had watched her sweep through the crowded room, imperious and confident. I had never met a woman like that before. But even then I hadn’t imagined for a moment that the evening would end up as it did. I had never in my life gone to bed with a woman the first time I had met her. What with my stutter and ridiculously youthful appearance, I had always been rather shy, not sure that I was particularly attractive, and had felt that I was clumsy with women. I was resigned to the fact that other men got the beauties. I had never gotten over wondering why Pat, who was exceptionally attractive, had had anything to do with me. Luckily for my ego, I had no taste for the ordinary kind of male conquest, and the remnants of my religious upbringing had kept me from promiscuity, even if I could have indulged in it.

The restaurant Mrs. Coates had taken me to was French and, as far as I could tell, very good. “I hope you’re enormously wealthy,” she had said. “The prices here are ferocious. Are you enormously wealthy?”

“Enormously.”

She had squinted at me across the table, studying me. “You don’t look it.”

“It’s old money,” I had said. “The family likes to pretend to be slightly shabby.”

“What old family?”

“Some other time.” I had turned her off.

She had talked about herself, though, without any urging from me. She was a lawyer, she worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, she had been in Washington eleven years, her husband had been a commander in the Navy and was an absolute beast, she had no children and wanted none, she went to the Hamptons on Long Island whenever she could and swam and pottered around a garden, her boss had been trying to lay her for five years, but was otherwise a dear, she was determined to run for Congress before she died. Along with all that, all spoken in an incongruously low, melodic voice, she had entertained me through dinner by interrupting herself to point out other guests and describing them by function and character in short, malicious sketches. There was a Senator with whom a girl wasn’t safe if they were in an elevator together, a second secretary at an embassy who ran dope in the diplomatic pouches, a lobbyist who had blocs in both Houses in his pocket, a CIA operator who was responsible for murders in several South American countries. I had enjoyed myself, allowing her to pick the wine, although I would have preferred beer, and order for both of us, saying, “I’m just a simple country boy and I trust myself to your hands.” It was exhilarating to be able to talk to a handsome woman without stuttering. A whole new world seemed to be opening up before me.

“Is your entire enormously wealthy, slightly shabby family composed of simple country boys like you?”

“More or less,” I had said.

She had stared at me quizzically. “Are you a spook?”

“A what?”

“A spook. CIA?”

I had shaken my head, smiling. “Not even.”

“Hale told me you were a pilot.”

“Once. Not anymore.” I wondered when she had had time, in all the confusion of the party, to question Hale about me. For a moment, the woman’s inquisitiveness had bothered me and I half-decided to put her in a cab after dinner and let her go home herself. But then I had thought, I mustn’t get paranoid about the whole thing and settled back to enjoy the evening. “Don’t you think we need another bottle?” I had asked.

“Definitely,” she had said.

We had been the last ones left in the restaurant, and I was pleasantly drunk from the unaccustomed wine when we got into the taxi. We sat in the taxi without touching each other, and when the taxi stopped in front of the apartment building in which Mrs. Coates lived, I had said, “Hold it, driver, please; I’m just seeing the lady to the door.”

“Forget it, driver,” Mrs. Coates had said. “The gentleman is coming in for a nightcap.”

“That’s just what I need,” I had said, trying not to mumble, “a nightcap.” But I had paid the driver and gone in with her.

I hadn’t discovered what the apartment was like, because she didn’t switch on the lights. She merely put her arms around me as I shut the door from the hall and kissed me. The kiss was delicious.

“I am now seducing you,” she had said, “in your weakened state.”

“Consider me seduced.”

Chuckling, she had led me by the hand through the dark living room and into the bedroom. A thin shaft of light from the partially open door to a bathroom was enough so that I could make out the shapes of pieces of furniture, a huge desk piled with papers, a dresser, a long bookcase against one wall. She had led me to the bed, turned me around, then given me a sharp push. I had fallen backward on the bed. “The rest,” she had said, “is my job.”

If she was as good at Justice as she was in bed, the government was getting its money’s worth.

“Now,” she said, sliding up on me, straddling me, using her hand to guide me into her. She moved on me, first very slowly, then more and more quickly, her head thrown back, her arms rigid behind her, her hands spread out on the bed, supporting her. Her full breasts loomed above me, pale in the dim light reflected off a mirror. I put up my hands and caressed her breasts and she moaned. She began to sob, loudly, uncontrollably, and when she came she was weeping.

I came immediately after, with a long, subdued sigh. She rolled off me, lay on her stomach beside me, the weeping slowly coming to an end. I put out my hand and touched the firm, rounded shoulder. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

She laughed. “Silly man. Lord, no.”

“I was afraid I …”

“Didn’t a lady ever cry while you were fucking her?”

“Not that I remember,” I said. And none of the ladies ever called it that either, I could have added. They obviously called a spade a spade at Justice.

She laughed again, twisted around, sat up, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her face was calm and untroubled in the flare of the match. “Do you want a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

“You’ll live forever. So much the better. How old are you anyway?”

“Thirty-three.”

“In the prime of life,” she said. “The dear prime of life. Don’t go to sleep. I want to talk. Do you want a drink?”

“What time is it?”

“Drink time.” She got out of bed and I saw her put a dressing gown on. “Whiskey okay?”

“Whiskey is fine.”

She went into the living room, her robe making a soft rustling sound. I looked at my watch. She had taken it off, the last item, when she had undressed me and put it neatly on the bedside table. She was an orderly woman. The luminous dial of the watch showed that it was past three. Everything in its time, I thought, lying back luxuriously, remembering other three o’clocks, the noise of the adding machine, the bulletproof glass, the bedraggled women asking me to unlock the front door.

She came back with the two glasses, handed me mine, sat on the edge of the bed, her profile outlined against the light from the bathroom. The silhouette was bold and sharp. She drank heartily.

She was a hearty as well as an orderly woman. “Most satisfactory,” she said. “You were, too.”

I laughed. “Do you always rate your lovers?”

“You’re not my lover, Grimes,” she said. “You’re a nice-looking, youngish man with good manners whom I happened to take a slight shine to at a party and who had the great virtue to be passing briefly through town. Briefly is the operative word in that sentence, Grimes.”

“I see,” I said, sipping at the whiskey.

“You probably don’t and I won’t bother to explain.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I said. “Sufficient unto the night are the pleasures thereof.”

“You don’t do this sort of thing often, do you?”

“Frankly, no.” I laughed again. “Frankly, never. Why—does it show?”

“Like a neon sign. You’re not at all like what you look like, you know.”

“What do I look like?”

“You look like those young men who play the villains in Italian movies—bold and dark and unscrupulous.”

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I had gotten used to hearing that I reminded people of somebody’s kid brother. Either I had changed drastically or Evelyn Coates was not deceived by surfaces, could see through to the wished for inner man. “Is that a good way to look?” I asked. I was a little worried by the “unscrupulous.”

“It’s a very nice way to look. In certain situations.”

“Like tonight, for example?”

“Like tonight.”

“I might be coming back to Washington in a few days,” I said. “Should I call you?”

“If you have nothing better to do.”

“Will you see me again?”

“If
I
have nothing better to do.”

“Are you as tough as you pretend to be?”

“Tougher, Grimes, much tougher. What would you be coming back to Washington for?”

“Maybe for you.”

“Try that once more, please.”

“Maybe for you.”

“You
do
have nice manners. Maybe for what else?”

“Well,” I said slowly, thinking, this is as good a place and as good a time to dig for information, “supposing I was looking for somebody …”

“Somebody in particular?”

“Yes. Somebody whose name I know, who’s dropped out of sight.”

“In Washington?”

“Not necessarily. Somewhere in the country, or maybe even out of the country. …”

“You
are
a mysterious man, aren’t you?”

“Someday I may tell you the whole story,” I said, sure that I never would, but pleased that luck had put me into the bed of a woman who was in on the secrets of government, and whose job, partially, at least, must involve tracing people down, people usually who did not want to be traced down. “It’s a private, delicate matter. But suppose I had to find this hypothetical friend, how would I go about it?”

“Well, there are a lot of places you could look,” she said. “The Internal Revenue Service—they’d know his address at the time he sent in his last return. The Social Security people. They’d have a record of whom he was working for. The Selective Service people, although that would probably be outdated. The FBI. You never know what you can pick up in
that
factory. The State Department. It would all depend upon whether or not you knew the right people.”

“Take it for granted that I would get to know the right people,” I said. For a hundred thousand dollars, I could take it for granted
somebody
would be able to reach the right people.

“You probably would eventually be able to pick up your friend’s trail. Say, are you a private detective or something?”

“Or something,” I said ambiguously.

“Well, everybody comes to Washington eventually,” she said. “Why not you? It’s America’s
real
living theater. Standing room only at every performance. Except that it’s a peculiar audience. The good seats are all filled by actors.”

“Are you an actress?”

“You bet your life. I’m playing a role that can’t be beat. The dauntless Portia striking deadly blows at the malefactors of great wealth. Women’s Lib at Justice and Injustice. I’ve gotten rave reviews in the best beds in town. Do I shock you?”

“A little.”

“While on the subject,” she said, “let me give you a t.l.”

“What’s a t.l.?”