Clandestine

Maggie led me to her bedroom. She left the light off. She unbuttoned her blouse, unhooked her bra and let the garments fall to the floor. I stepped out of my undershorts. We lay on the bed and held each other for a long time. I stroked Maggie's hair. She cooed into my chest. I grew tired of it, and tried to bring her chin up so I could kiss her, but she resisted, pushing her head harder against me. After a while her grip loosened and I was able to cover her neck with kisses. Maggie sighed, and I began to suck her breasts. I felt her hand between my legs, urging me toward her. She positioned herself beneath me and guided me in. I began to move. Maggie didn't respond. I tried slow, exploratory thrusts, then hard insistent ones. Maggie just lay there, motionless. I propped myself up on my hands, the better to look at her face. Maggie looked up at me, smiling. She reached up and framed my face with her hands, her smile more beatific as my thrusts multiplied in their urgency. I came very hard. I groaned, shuddered and collapsed on top of her. She never said a word. When I finally managed to look at her she was still smiling; and I realized I had been thinking of Lorna Weinberg.

Maggie had seemed to change during our lovemaking. She had gotten what she wanted, and it wasn't love, or sex. Her smile and post-lovemaking ritual of bringing in brandy and snifters on a tray seemed to be saying, "Now that we have gotten that over with, we can get down to the real business of our meeting."

We sat in bed and sipped brandy, both of us nude. I liked Maggie's body: pale, freckled skin, gently rounded shoulders, soft stomach, and small soft breasts with large dark red nipples. I liked her openness in showing it to me even more, and had no desire to leave. The brandy was good, but I watched my intake. Maggie was sipping steadily, and would soon be pie-eyed. Maggie beamed at me as I shifted postures. I waggled my eyebrows a la Wacky Walker. Maggie beamed some more. I told her some lies about the insurance racket. She still beamed.

Finally she said, "Bill, let's go into the living room, okay?" She dug two terry cloth robes out of her bedroom closet, then led me into the living room, gave me a big kiss on the cheek, and sat me down on the couch like a loving mother or schoolteacher. She went back into the bedroom and returned with a large leatherbound scrapbook.

She sat down between me and my piled-up clothes and poured herself more brandy. My robe was well worn and smelled fresh. As Maggie arranged the scrapbook on the coffee table I adjusted her robe to show off a fair amount of cleavage. She reacted with a prim kiss on my cheek. I disliked her for it. The ten-year gap in our ages was beginning to show.

"Memory lane, Bill," Maggie said. "Would you like to take a little trip down memory lane with old Maggie?"

"You're not old."

"In some ways I am."

"You're in your prime."

"Flatterer."

She opened the scrapbook. On the first page were photographs of a tall, light-haired man in a World War I doughboy's uniform. He stood alone in most of the sepia-tinted photos, and in a preeminent spot in the group shots.

"That's my daddy," Maggie said. "Mama used to get exasperated with him sometimes, and say bad things about him. When I was a little girl I asked her once, 'If Daddy was so mean, why did you marry him?' and she said, 'Because he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen.'"

She turned the page. Wedding pictures and baby pictures.

"That's Mama and Daddy's wedding—1910. And that's me as a little baby, just before Daddy went into the army."

"Are you an only child, Maggie?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Yes."

She flipped the pages more rapidly. I watched time pass, seeing in minutes Maggie's parents go from young to old and seeing Maggie go from infancy to lindy-hopping adolescent. Her face, as she danced at some long-gone high school sock-hop, was a heartbreakingly hopeful version of her current one.

She drank brandy, talking on in a wistful monotone, barely heeding my presence. She seemed to be leading up to something, working slowly toward some goal that would explain why she wanted me here.

"End of volume one, Bill," Maggie said. She got up unsteadily from the sofa and knocked over my folded sportcoat. When she picked it up, she noted its heaviness and started to fumble in the pocket where I had put my gun and handcuffs. Before I had a chance to stop her, she withdrew the .38, screamed, and backed away from me, holding the gun shakily, pointed to the floor.

"No, no, no, no!" she gasped. "Please, no! I won't let you hurt me! No!"

I got up and walked toward her, trying to remember if both safety locks were on. "I'm a policeman, Maggie," I said softly, placatingly. "I don't want to hurt you. Give me the gun, sweetheart."

"No! I know who sent you! I knew he would! No! No!"