yesterday, and you’re going away again tomorrow. I’m not going to sit around pining away just because I went to bed with you last night.“
“Who do you have a date with?” It was all he could think of to say.
“I don’t see why that’s any concern of yours.” Gideon wondered what she had to be angry about.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” he said. “I guess my male chauvinistic value system ran away with me. Enjoy your date. Thank you for last night. I’ll drop you a line from Torrejon.”
To his surprise, her eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. In her annoyance with them, she stamped her foot like a little girl. Gideon wanted very much to take her in his arms and kiss the moisture that shone on her soft cheek. He held back, however, half in what he knew was childish retaliation, half because he wasn’t sure how she would react.
“That’s what I hate about women,” she said. “Damn it. We cry at the drop of a hat. It doesn’t mean anything. Our glands are different.” He was sure she wanted to brush the tears away, but she let them stay. “All right, it’s with Eric. It’s just a stupid dinner at some stupid Heidelberg professor’s house.”
Janet with Eric—gross, fat Eric. Gideon suppressed the images that sprang quickly to his mind.
“Have a wonderful time,” he said. “It’s been very pleasant knowing you. Perhaps I’ll see you again when I come back to Heidelberg.”
“Damn you, Gideon, if you wanted to see me tonight, you could have asked me this morning, instead of assuming you owned me like some caveman. You stupid man!” She glared at him through her tears, looking wondrously huggable. “Stupid
His mood was ambivalent as he watched her stride down the hall. On the one hand, he was very sorry indeed that he wouldn’t be spending the evening in her company and (another male chauvinist assumption) the night in her arms. But there was also an unmistakable if somewhat wistful sense of reprieve; clearly, he had narrowly missed becoming enmeshed in a Meaningful Relationship. He sighed. Maybe later on he’d be ready to try that. In the meantime, he would have been happy to settle for a Meaningful Experience or even a Moderately Significant Relationship. A Good Lay wouldn’t have been so bad, either.
He poured himself another Scotch and settled down to spend the evening grappling with the intricacies of simian brachiation.
A little after midnight, he heard her voice at the door.
“Gideon!”
Without putting on a robe and almost without waking up, he jumped from the bed and opened the door a few inches.
“Yes?” he said, blinking at her in the glare of the lit hallway. She smelled of the cool night, and when she laughed softly at him, he shivered with… lust? Love? He wasn’t sure.
“What are you laughing at?” he said.
“You. Look at your hair. You look as if you’ve just come out of six-month hibernation. Open the door some more. I bet you’re not wearing anything.”
As he knew she would, she suddenly pushed at the door. He offered resistance of the most token sort, and she was quickly inside, turning on the light as he took her into his arms and pressed his lips against the soft, clear skin of her cheek, just where he had wanted to kiss her earlier. The roughness of her wool suit against his bare skin and the slipperiness of the slip under her skirt excited him at once.
“Eek,” she said. “Just as I thought. There’s a naked man in
“Mmm,” he said, nuzzling at her faintly perfumed throat.. “How was dinner?”
“Lousy. I couldn’t wait to get back here to say something to you.”
Her seriousness brought his face up, but he didn’t let her go. “What is it?”
“Well…” she said, laying her head on his shoulder, wanting to be coaxed.
“Come on, tell Papa,” Gideon said, his naked skin jumping where her long hair lay over it.
“Well… just… take me, I’m yours.” She raised her eyes to his. “If you want me.”
Without warning, his eyes filled.
“Gideon,” she said, startled, “what’s this?” A tentative finger explored his wet cheek.
Gideon pretended a gruff embarrassment. “So, I’m crying. Contrary to your theory, lachrymal glands are not sexually specific organs. Males have them, too.”
“How poetically you put things,” she said. “It’s lovely.”
He kissed her on the lips—a lingering, eyes-closed kiss, inhaling the peachlike fragrance of her breath.
When he came up for air, she said, “You know, I feel somewhat overdressed for the occasion.”
“I see what you mean,” Gideon said, his fingers already at the buckle of her belt. “Why don’t we lie down and discuss it?”
In the morning he made it a point to request the pleasure of her company when he returned the following week.
WHEN YOU ENTER MADRID from the east, on the highway from Zaragoza and Torrejon de Ardoz, you watch the clean, rocky countryside with its occasional flocks of sheep give way first to blank-faced factories lining the roadway, and then to block upon block of dreary, high-rise apartments that make the heart sink. The air, especially
