“Amy!” I barked this time and Alexander gave off a soft whine, nuzzling against his mistress's hip.
It was enough to, if not shatter the spell, at least bend it out of focus a bit, and Amy turned to look down at the dog and then at me. “Hm?”
“We're going to be late,” I reminded her. “You know. Bridge. The Champions. Tonight. Chop chop.”
“Oh.” Her fingers went to her lips and she looked rather wildly at Buddy and then at his sister, while I closed the front door so the world wouldn't find out what was going on quite so quickly. “Trudy, there are things in the refrigerator and we're leaving an hour later, as you know, so we may be a little late.”
Trudy nodded, and even as she responded, Amy's brief return to reality ended and she was again looking at the gangling lout as though he were the son of Tarzan, down out of the vines for the evening. He should have been wearing a loincloth and been carrying Jane on one hip and a chimpanzee on the other.
I turned to Trudy, flapping my arms against my sides and leading the way into the front room, where I turned. “You know where the chow line forms and you know how to work the TV knobs. I suppose your heart-throb is on tonight. What's his name?”
“Jimmy Junkin?”
“Give the little lady sixty-four thousand dollars.”
Trudy smiled, stepping closer, her twin points brushing my shirt. I looked down at her, loving the fellow who invented the mini like a brother. This girl had a shape that made Raquel Welch look angular.
Still, I was a gentleman first. “Easy, kiddo. There are others about.”
“I don't believe you,” she replied, looking back over her shoulder, so that her bodice stretched playfully over her breasts. I wanted to fill my hands with them, like spilling diamonds through my fingers. “They don't know what's going on out there.”
I frowned, gazing past her, to where Amy and the tall kid were still standing, candidates for the waxworks. “By the way, what is going on out there?”
She looked back at me, cute as a button, fingering my shirt front as her lower lip went out in a moist pout. “He always affects older women that way, I guess. They say he's tall, he's got beautiful blond hair that they want to comb, and when he smiles they say he's like an adolescent angel. Sum it up and I guess he's a super turn-on.”
“Not to Amy he isn't,” I muttered. “My God, she must be almost twice his age.”
“I doubt that,” she purred. “He's only a year younger than yours truly.”
“Lord, a deadly weapon at fifteen.” And also, I reminded myself, that shaft between his legs was as potent as it was ever going to be. Somehow, he didn't seem like a harmless angelic kid any more.
Trudy wasn't interested in them, turning her full attention to me. Her knee came forward to touch my crotch, jiggling lightly, her aim as accurate as always as she hit me right on the old knob. I began to pump strength into my staff, pouring in reinforcements for the battle that might be looming.
“I guess you're not so senile, Mr. Brady,” she chirped, her head tilting in approval.
“Who said I was? I thought I did rather well the other night on the living-room floor.”
She nodded. “Still, they say a man over twenty-one is losing his stuff, you know? You come back pretty quickly.”
I wanted to brag a little and tell her I'd been active since her last visit, too, but I wasn't spilling my guts for the sake of stature. “I think,” I mumbled, pulling my fly away from her groping hand, “that Mrs. Brady and I had better go play some bridge.”
Her lower lip shot out again. “I thought you wouldn't need to leave for a while.”
Shaking my head, I muttered, “You're a sitter, not a mistress, remember? Alexander is your responsibility and so is that stud in the front room. I'm expecting you to keep a leash on them both. Do I make myself clear?”
“Sure, Mr. Brady,” she replied, bright as ever. She didn't believe a word I was saying and her supreme confidence made me feel a hundred years old.
I stalked back into the parlor to break up the waiting game. Buddy was still smirking, hands plunged into the pockets of his jeans, his T-shirt stretched across his rib cage. My eyes dropped and, sure enough, his pouch looked like a sackful of rocks. Not only were his jeans glued to his thighs, but he was stretching them even tighter with his hands. The bastard wasn't playing fair.
I turned to Amy, who was still moving her jaw as though it were a metronome without the ticking. I planted myself before her and those hazel eyes focused on me. “Don?”
“Me Don, you Amy. We go. Come on, haul it, wife.”
She seemed to shake the pieces back into place inside her skull, looking about and then bidding her new big friend good evening. Trudy came back behind me and was included in the final act.
At last we pulled ourselves away and, once in the car, I turned to her. “You all right?”
“Of course I'm all right, why?”
“I don't know. You acted sort of funny, as though Columbus had just reported back that the earth was flat and the Pinta and Santa Maria had sailed off the edge.”
“You're being funny now.”
I sighed, concentrating on my driving for a minute. “It seems we have double trouble.”
She was looking into my ear, apparently studying the loops and curves. “Please explain that.”
I shook my head. “If you're going to pretend you don't understand, I'm not going to waste my time.”
But I found it difficult to switch my interest to a game of bridge.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sam and Alice Champion were waiting for us, their eyes a little brighter than usual, and I wondered what tricks-other than those used in the game of bridge- they had up their sleeves.
“What's been keeping you two?” my business partner blurted as we walked into their living room. The card table was already set up, two decks stacked neatly, tally sheet and pencil at the ready.
I shrugged at Sam, angling my chin at Amy. “You know how women are. She spent fifteen minutes inspecting the sitters to make sure they were capable of watching a German shepherd until midnight.”
Alice's laugh filled the room and we looked at our hostess, who was dressed like a teen-ager rather than a woman of close to thirty, her hem halfway up to her box, her bodice cut so low I could see halfway to her equator. “I still can't believe it. A sitter for a watchdog. Wait a minute. You say you inspected the sitters. More than one this time?”
I nodded and Amy explained about the little brother coming along.
Now Alice is no dope, even though she likes to pretend she is, and her head was angled in concentration as she studied my wife. “Something's going on,” she said at last, as we settled around the bridge table. Sam went into the kitchen to prepare a batch of drinks.
Amy frowned across the table at her partner. “Like what, sweetie?”
“Like you're funny tonight and you never call me 'sweetie' unless you're afraid I'm getting too nosy. Tell me Amy, darling, are you embarrassed about something?”
Amy's warm eyes jumped into the quick-freeze compartment as she turned to me. “Don't you agree that even close friends shouldn't pry too deeply into one's private life?”
I shrugged like a neutral ambassador from India as Alice kept on. “What's happened? You can tell us. After all, what are friends for?”
“To mind their own business,” Amy snapped, smiling like an angel as Sam returned with a tray of booze, passing out tall glasses dark with bourbon.
As we played hand after hand the women continued their sparring while Sam and I exchanged sympathetic glances and tried to interrupt by occasionally talking about the business. From time to time Alice's knee found mine and jiggled its familiar hello, but I didn't answer very loudly.
Alice was in a bad way, I figured, either because she knew Amy and I had something going she didn't know about or because Sam had been even more impotent that week and her crotch was building up a head of steam. As it turned out she made her move for me without bothering with the old retreat-into-the-privacy-of-the-kitchen routine.
It was about the fourth hand that I felt her fingers replace her knee, and how a woman can play bridge with
