“Do you? That’s nice. I’m a guy who likes being liked by beautiful women. I also like to know their names. You see, the possibility of being sued or blackmailed by a woman whose name I don’t know is rather embarrassing. It’s a weakness in my social adjustment.”
She went through the smoke and Scotch sequence, her moist lips curling in a sly kind of smile. Beyond the drifting veil of smoke, her dark eyes glittered with malicious humor.
“My name is Harriet, and I’m usually called Etta, but you may call me Mother.”
He stood watching her, giving his adrenals time to slow down and resume normal production. She lay back in the rich brocade embrace of the big fireside chair with all the audacious presumption of a cowbird in the nest of a warbler. Although she didn’t move, she somehow gave the impression of stretching, of luxuriating sensuously in the flexing of flat muscles. A sheath of black wool was tailored to the contours of her body. His eyes descended nylon to wriggling toes. Her discarded shoes, a pair of thin soles with essential straps and incredible spikes, were half buried in shaggy white pile.
“I’m an extremely regressed adult,” he said. “I need a lot of mothering.”
“Maybe we can make a game of it.”
“Good. It ought to be more fun than canasta.”
She laughed. It was a soft and gauzy scrap of sound that seemed to ascend and fade and thin to nothing. It was as if she had blown out more smoke through the vapors of Scotch.
“I’m beginning to think I may get my kicks out of having a son. Such a convenient method, too. Ready made and ready for love. I’m really quite relieved. I though you might hate me.”
“So I might. I’ll let you know the exact state of my feelings when I learn what this is all about. Are you trying to tell me that you and Senator Big are married?”
“Senator Big? Is that what you call him? It has a disrespectful sound. Perhaps you’re not such an affectionate son, after all.”
“Affectionate with the Senator? You’d just as well try being affectionate with a party caucus.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t found him so unresponsive. Generally tender, I’d say, with brief interims of passion. Just enough to make things interesting.”
“With you, I admit, it would be easier. The Senator always had a fine eye.”
“Thank you.”
“Where is he now, by the way?”
“Upstairs lying down.”
He started where he’d stopped on his other tour of inspection, with her wriggling roes, and reversed his way back up nylon and black wool to her mahogany eyes. They were still glittering with malice, but he had a feeling that the malice was not integral, was only assumed as a temporary attitude until his own was determined.
“So you really are married,” he said softly. “You really hooked the old boy.”
“That’s a rather crude way to put it, but essentially correct.”
“Pardon my crudity. You married him, of course, because you love him as a noble servant of the people. All you want is to share the life of a great man.”
She laughed again, and this time it was a freer and fuller laugh, filled with the solid stuff of genuine amusement. “Well, let’s not go to the other extreme. After all, he’s only a State senator, not national, and I understand he’s served certain vested interests a hell of a lot better than he has the people. I’d say my position is somewhere around the middle.”
“What’s in the middle? The neat little fortune the Senator’s acquired quite incidentally from his long years of service?”
She lifted her glass and looked into it. “Do you find that thought disturbing? Well, no wonder. It must be quite a shock to find yourself no longer sole heir. My glass seems to be empty. Would you mind filling it? Scotch and soda.”
“Certainly, Mother. Ice?”
“No ice. Just a dash of soda.”
He walked over and got her glass and carried it to a portable bar that had been wheeled in. He made hers heavy and one straight for himself and carried them back to her. She reached up and took the one that was hers, and her fingers in the small action trailed lightly across the back of his hand. They were long and slender, and their touch suggested exceptional talents.
“I’m curious,” he said.
She looked up at him at a sharp angle through thick lashes. “About what?”
“You and the Senator. How you managed it.”
“It was voluntary on his part, I assure you. As a matter of fact, he was quite urgent about it. It’s true that he placed himself in a vulnerable position, but I was not compelled to take advantage of it.”
“Maybe that’s lucky for you. Others have tried from an advantage and failed. When he bought off my blonde last year, he showed remarkable skill in the details of the transaction. He knocked her down from ten grand to five and boxed her in so she can’t ever come back for more. Experience, I suspect.”
“Poor girl. Obviously out of her class.” She smiled lazily and tilted Scotch and soda through the smile. “Do you have a cigarette?”
He gave her one and lit it and watched her swallow smoke. She sat there wriggling her toes and alternating Scotch and smoke, and he used the time to empty his own glass. When it was empty, he carried it back to the bar.
“If you’ll excuse me now,” he said. “I think I’ll go upstairs.”
Depositing her glass and crushing her cigarette in a tray, she stood on stocking feet and reached slowly for the ceiling, stretching with a supple twisting of her body.
“Of course. But you haven’t kissed me. Isn’t it proper for a son to kiss his mother? I know so little about such things. I’m afraid you’ll just have to take the initiative until I learn.”
Now there was something in her eyes besides the glitter of malice, a
