Free Nightwork by Irwin Shaw Page B

together, a second secretary at an embassy who ran dope in the diplomatic pouches, a lobbyist who had blocs in both Houses in his pocket, a CIA operator who was responsible for murders in several South American countries. I had enjoyed myself, allowing her to pick the wine, although I would have preferred beer, and order for both of us, saying, “I’m just a simple country boy and I trust myself to your hands.” It was exhilarating to be able to talk to a handsome woman without stuttering. A whole new world seemed to be opening up before me.
    “Is your entire enormously wealthy, slightly shabby family composed of simple country boys like you?”
    “More or less,” I had said.
    She had stared at me quizzically. “Are you a spook?”
    “A what?”
    “A spook. CIA?”
    I had shaken my head, smiling. “Not even.”
    “Hale told me you were a pilot.”
    “Once. Not anymore.” I wondered when she had had time, in all the confusion of the party, to question Hale about me. For a moment, the woman’s inquisitiveness had bothered me and I half-decided to put her in a cab after dinner and let her go home herself. But then I had thought, I mustn’t get paranoid about the whole thing and settled back to enjoy the evening. “Don’t you think we need another bottle?” I had asked.
    “Definitely,” she had said.
    We had been the last ones left in the restaurant, and I was pleasantly drunk from the unaccustomed wine when we got into the taxi. We sat in the taxi without touching each other, and when the taxi stopped in front of the apartment building in which Mrs. Coates lived, I had said, “Hold it, driver, please; I’m just seeing the lady to the door.”
    “Forget it, driver,” Mrs. Coates had said. “The gentleman is coming in for a nightcap.”
    “That’s just what I need,” I had said, trying not to mumble, “a nightcap.” But I had paid the driver and gone in with her.
    I hadn’t discovered what the apartment was like, because she didn’t switch on the lights. She merely put her arms around me as I shut the door from the hall and kissed me. The kiss was delicious.
    “I am now seducing you,” she had said, “in your weakened state.”
    “Consider me seduced.”
    Chuckling, she had led me by the hand through the dark living room and into the bedroom. A thin shaft of light from the partially open door to a bathroom was enough so that I could make out the shapes of pieces of furniture, a huge desk piled with papers, a dresser, a long bookcase against one wall. She had led me to the bed, turned me around, then given me a sharp push. I had fallen backward on the bed. “The rest,” she had said, “is my job.”
    If she was as good at Justice as she was in bed, the government was getting its money’s worth.
    “Now,” she said, sliding up on me, straddling me, using her hand to guide me into her. She moved on me, first very slowly, then more and more quickly, her head thrown back, her arms rigid behind her, her hands spread out on the bed, supporting her. Her full breasts loomed above me, pale in the dim light reflected off a mirror. I put up my hands and caressed her breasts and she moaned. She began to sob, loudly, uncontrollably, and when she came she was weeping.
    I came immediately after, with a long, subdued sigh. She rolled off me, lay on her stomach beside me, the weeping slowly coming to an end. I put out my hand and touched the firm, rounded shoulder. “Did I hurt you?” I asked.
    She laughed. “Silly man. Lord, no.”
    “I was afraid I …”
    “Didn’t a lady ever cry while you were fucking her?”
    “Not that I remember,” I said. And none of the ladies ever called it that either, I could have added. They obviously called a spade a spade at Justice.
    She laughed again, twisted around, sat up, reached for a cigarette, lit it. Her face was calm and untroubled in the flare of the match. “Do you want a cigarette?”
    “I don’t smoke cigarettes.”
    “You’ll live forever. So much