Operation Isis. E. Hoffmann Price
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did. And through cognac communion, they knew that moment after moment brandy was becoming less and less important.
Diane’s deeply drawn breath and her leaning back and stretching from the waist rounded the crepe de chine blouse in curves akin to those of the glasses that were contoured like magnolia buds about to ripen into blossom. Exhaling, she twisted a little to set her glass on the kidney-shaped end table with its red marble top and saw-pierced brass guard rim.
The long moment ended when, instead of by legerdemain, it was dexterity of ankle and toes that got her feet free of red reptile and high heels. Suppleness of body made it beautiful when, with leg cocked over knee, she busied herself taking a reef in hosiery that he knew must be silk. When it gathered about the ankle, Felix was sure there were no such snags or runners as he would have started. When he had his chance to undress Diane in fact as he had so often in fancy, he would know how. That would be next time.
Having her between the sheets and by light borrowed from the adjoining room was luxury, but most of all was pillow talk, and not in whispers.
And time to refill the snifters.
Freedom from furtiveness! What the barracks boasters imagined they knew about women was becoming ever more pathetic.
In view of the Governor-General’s history, there were questions; answering these and keeping the glasses replenished made it a marvelously busy evening for Felix.
“...is he actually going to retire?”
And another fragment, between additions of another thirty cubic centimeters of Grande Fine: “...he’ll be going to North America to see wartime comrades before it is too late?”
Like her guest, Diane was finding it a crowded evening.
Felix would ponder, frown thoughtfully, and come up with answers indicating that he had considered both sides of every question. His earnestness, his thoroughness, impressed Diane until, bit by bit, she realized that instead of clarifying anything, Felix ended by spreading a smoke screen of ambiguity. And since the dream girl had never met the Old Man, it was too soon for her to wonder whether thoroughness was in fact hereditary secretiveness, spontaneous and instinctive.
Felix did not know that Roderick David Garvin’s fixed opinion—one of a great many, that is—was to the effect that “Women, especially wives, excepting of course Azadeh, make it their life’s work to ask the god-double-damnedest questions.”
Although Felix thus far had had no wives and only one mother, wherefore his generalizations were scarcely based on experience, the Garvin Doctrine was taking—had already taken—form.
“Now that your sister has completed her higher education, do you suppose that madame your mother would still find North America as revolting as Mars?”
For the first time, Felix had a forthright answer. “Honey, I am no mind reader. You might ask madame the Old Lady.”
But to eliminate purely personal bias, he added that she should consult a good astrologer.
A medium dollop of Grande Fine went into each goblet. And Felix finally began to cogitate: Diane is a girl-watcher’s dream, a real pièce de resistance... With the Old Man always having women on the brain, this Mademoiselle Hot Panites might get the idea of becoming the First Lady of Mars.
Grande Fine Champagne grade of cognac is perhaps the most civilized, the most gracious of the many spirits that man has distilled. Accordingly, it is also one of the most insidious. Although a persistent clod can guzzle himself puking drunk, he or she who knows how attains the earlier stages of apotheosis, then restful sleep, and, eventually, happy resurrection.
When the clock of Cathedrale Ste. Marie trolled three, Diane was nearing nirvana. At the half hour, she sighed and stretched luxuriously. Although her words were French, they would have conveyed her meaning if she had addressed Felix in Old High Etruscan or Gujarati. “Chéri, I have had it. And you have had your share.”
Instead of telling her that the evening was still young, he countered, “Of cognac or of you?”
“You devil! I’d love to have you stay for late breakfast, but not until Monsieur the Governor-General and Madame la Chatelaine are honeymooning, and she is too busy persuading him to stay in France and forgets to watch your hours.”
Her voice was more convincing even than her logic. “Might be a good idea, having a taxi meet me at the épicérie door. That way nobody would suspect I was leaving you.”
He would be mistaken for a customer leaving the back door of the deluxe whorehouse that fronted on Boulevard Rempart de Lachepaillet. She was so pleased by his finesse that she did not follow his clear logic.
Diane sat up, swayed a little, fumbled, and found the robe that had gotten itself bemuddled with sheet, pillow, and evening paper. Abandoning her struggle with the garment, she gestured.
“In the living room alcove. That desk.”
“I saw the phone.”
“I meant the directory.” Diane smiled drowsily, contentedly. She murmured something that might have been, “A bientôt!”
He drew the sheet and blanket to her chin.
Ever since early childhood, Felix had heard of those fabulous women who could drink a platoon of armor under the table. Clearly, this was not one of those wonder girls.
Steady as an adjutant on parade, the young master found desk and phone. He did not find the directory, which was obscured by several paperback books that Diane had not gotten around to having fitted with custom hardcovers, as she probably intended. They were classics.
Being sure that he’d find no taxi service phone numbers in Flaubert’s Tentation de St. Antoine, nor in Bourget’s La psychologic de L’amour moderne, nor the worn and stained Guide fratique de Lyon, he poked about in pigeonholes and shelf stacks of the desk’s upper structure. The center drawer yielded nothing. Finally, starting over from a different angle, he got a glimpse of a color photo, used as if for a book marker, ten by fifteen centimeters, professional work, critically sharp, not the typical murky blurred blob. What had baited his curiosity was the space officer’s uniform with kilometers of gold braid, hectares of medals, decorations, and orders, and epaulettes the size of wastebaskets.
That the man portrayed was Roderick David Garvin made it very much the son’s business. That Flora had a much larger print in which the domes of Mars showed in the background was standard stuff. What piqued Felix was that Flora’s copy, considerably larger, did not include the very good-looking old lady, an aristocrat wearing a formal gown with bodice of sequins all aglitter with highlights that danced as she breathed.
The Admiral’s probably enjoying a standing ovation, and that two-teated brunette is proud of the old devil, he thought. Must be Azadeh—my honorary stepmother, or my halfway aunt?
With her makeup just right, Flora was more spectacular than Azadeh, and this left Felix wondering why Mommie had cropped an oversize blowup of that scene. Thanks to the enchantment built into every drop of cognac, the answer came to him: Though his mother was Number One Wife, she was not the First Lady of Mars.
But this particular picture was hardly unusual: There were Garvin fans all over the globe, and other groups who loved to hang Garvin in effigy and often did so.
Maybe, Felix surmised, Diane just got this picture and hasn’t had time to frame it. Or she’s waiting to have him autograph it. He frowned, then shook his head. That’s off the beam, too. Odd as balls on a bay mare! If she’d been a fan, she’d have asked all kinds of really damn fool questions.
Then he found the phone directory and finally figured that he could be halfway home before anyone answered a phone, assuming that someone was on duty. At this hour there was little chance of an unpleasant encounter. It was too late for hopheads and trouble-hunting drunks. By now they had either gotten their fix or been knocked off in the attempt. Anyway, he had learned a promising kung fu trick. If the other fellow survived, as he probably would, he would not know his own name for the next two or three days.
Taking