The Sphinx (10 page)

“Who’s talking
about serious? Can’t we have some fun together?”

She turned
around, and gave a fleeting, preoccupied smile. “I guess so. It’s just that I
don’t want you to think that we can ever get any closer.”

He looked
across at her and sighed. Talking to her about love was like fencing with an
opponent who was ten moves ahead at every stroke. Parry, riposte, lunge. No
matter how he angled his conversation, she was always moving away, always
defensive, carrying her secret so close that he couldn’t even guess what it
was.

He flicked his
cigarette out of the window.

“Do you think
you’re ever going to be totally honest with me?” he said. “I mean, are you ever
going to tell me what it is that’s bugging you?”

She was silent
for a moment. “It’s no use, Gene,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything.
Believe me, it’s better this way.”

“How can it be
better if it’s driving me nuts? What is it with you? What can you have possibly
done that makes it out of the question for us to get married? Have you been in
jail? In a mental hospital? Is there something wrong with your chromosomes? I
just can’t imagine anything that puts marriage beyond the pale.”

Again, she
didn’t answer for a long time. But eventually she said: “The people of
Ubasti
are... different, that’s all.”

“You mean like
Amish?”

“In a way. Some
of the difference is religious.”

“So, if I
wanted to marry you, I could change my religion. So I’m Protestant. What’s to
stop me converting to whatever it is–Ubasti?”

“No. You could
never be Ubasti.”

He followed the
overhead traffic signs that directed him toward the city center. It was almost
dark now, and cars were flashing past hi blurs of white “and scarlet light.

“To tell you
the truth,” he said, “I never heard of Ubasti. That’s a terrible admission for
someone from the State Department, but I have to confess it.”

Lorie said
nothing. He glanced across at her again, but he had the distinct impression
that she didn’t want to talk about her religion or her race, and that the conversation
was closed.

They drove
another twenty minutes in silence, and then Lorie said, “That was the Merriam
exit back there. You just missed it.”

“I know. I
thought we’d go back to my place for a nightcap. You don’t mind that, do you?
I’m not going to propose.”

She appeared to
be anxious. “I did tell mother that Td come back before ten.”

“It’s only a
quarter of eight now. We’ve got plenty Of time.”

“Really, Gene,
I’d rather...”

He raised his
hand. “This tune we’re going to do what 7 want to do. We’ll go back and mix
ourselves a nice, cold jug of vodka martinis, and then I can rustle up some
hamburgers and salad, and we can play Mozart and talk about us.”

“Couldn’t I
just drop by and tell mother I’m going to be late?”

“Forget
mother,” he told her. “You’re twenty years old and beautiful and the night is
still young.”

“But...”

“Forget her.
That’s an order from an important government executive.”

Lorie finally
smiled. “All right, Mister Executive. I surrender. I’m just glad I don’t have
to argue diplomacy with you over the conference table. I might lose.”

He grinned.
“Lorie, you’ll never lose. Not to me. Not to anyone. It’s about time you untied
your mother’s apron strings and started to realize that you’re a winner.”

When they
arrived back at Gene’s apartment, he showed her where .the kitchen was and
asked her to get the hamburger meat out of the icebox while he mixed the vodka.
It was a neat, modern kitchen with hardwood worktops and bright orange
cupboards. Lorie poked around looking for plates, spice jars, and cutlery while
Gene filled a glass jug with ice and went to the sitting room to fix the
drinks.

“It must be
wonderful, having your own apartment in the center of the city,” she called.

“It suits me,”
said Gene.

He finished
mixing the vodka and went back into the kitchen. Lorie was laying everything
out, and heating up the grill to cook the hamburgers. He stood behind her, and
put his arms around her, nuzzling her hair with his face.

She went
suddenly tense.

“Gene,” she
said, “don’t hold me like that.”

He kissed her.
“Why not? I’m enjoying it.”

“Please,” she
insisted. “Don’t hold me!”

He backed off,
feeling snubbed. “I was just trying to be affectionate. Is affection a crime?
Or is it against your religion?”

“Gene, I’m
sorry, but when you touch me it makes me nervous.”

“Listen, it
makes me nervous as well, but it’s a nice nervous.”

She turned and
faced him. She was tall and gracious, and when she looked at him that way he
knew how much he wanted her. Her eyes were glowing green, and her lips were
glossy in the fluorescent light of the kitchen. Her big breasts softly
stretched the front of her safari jacket, and her long legs were tightly
outlined in brown leather boots. And all the time there was that faint
lingering scent about her, that musky scent that aroused him more than he could
ever remember being aroused before,

“Gene,” she
said simply. “You know how much I like you.”

“It’s okay,” he
replied. “It’s absolutely okay. If you don’t want to rush things, I’m not going
to force you.”

“Gene, it’s not
that at all.”

He leaned
against the kitchen cupboards and gave her a sour little grin. “It doesn’t
matter what it is, does it? You’re as nervous as a cat. The best thing for you
to do is relax, and have a drink, and when you feel like it, it will all happen
so naturally you won’t even think about it.”

She looked away
from him.

“Come on,” he
said, “why don’t you fix us a couple of Semple burgers and we can talk about it
like mature, responsible adults.”

“All right,”
she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He leaned
forward, and reluctantly she bent her head so that he could kiss her on the
forehead.

“It’s not that
I’m... well, I’m not frigid or anything,” she said quickly. “You mustn’t think
that I don’t find you attractive. I do. I think you’re very attractive.”

“It’s okay,” he
insisted. “You don’t have to qualify yourself.”

She took his
hand and held it close between hers. “Please understand that I’ve never been
out with a man on my own before, except for my father, and that I’ve never
taken off my clothes in front of anyone.”

“I understand,”
he said simply. “Now, how about some dinner?”

“Yes,” she
said, smiling, and he lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them. Then he
went into the sitting room to pour some drinks while she busied herself with
the meal. She found eggs in the icebox and onions in the vegetable cupboard,
and she clattered around with spoons and basins while Gene sat down in his big
leather armchair and watched Superbowl football without the sound.

“I bet you’re a
fantastic cook,” Gene called out.

She laughed.
“Wait until you’ve tasted these hamburgers first.”

There was a
heavy tussle going on at the eight-yard line, and Gene tried to figure out who
was doing what to whom as he sipped his chilly cocktail and relaxed his tired
muscles. He had enjoyed Walter Farlowe’s cook-out, despite the charcoaled
steaks, but after making light and witty conversation to doctors and bankers
and flirting, middle-aged ladies all afternoon, he was glad to sit back and let
his tensions seep out of his mind and his body on an ebb tide of television and
vodka.

“I’m starving,”
he said. “The quicker you can rustle up those burgers, the better.”

He watched the
ball being cleared, and he could see the Superbowl crowd silently cheering and
waving their arms. It was only after two or three minutes that he realized the
kitchen had gone quiet, and that Lorie was no longer whisking or frying or
whatever she’d been doing before. He pricked up his ears but all he could hear
was Mozart. “Lorie?” he said.

Frowning, he
set down his drink and got up from his chair. He walked quietly across the
sitting room to the half-open kitchen door, and laid his hand on the knob. He
was just about to open it wide when he heard a noise that made him pause. It
was a kind of snuffling, gnawing noise. He listened to it for a while, and then
stepped quietly back and put his eye to the crack in the door.

What he saw gave him a freezing feeling all the way down his
back. Lorie was standing in the middle of the kitchen with a huge handful of
raw, unseasoned hamburger meat, and she was cramming it into her mouth so that
the blood stained her chin and ran between her fingers. Her eyes were closed,
and the expression on her face was that of a fierce animal devouring its prey.

F
or one horrified moment, he was tempted to push Open the door and
confront her. But then she laid the half-eaten meat down on the kitchen counter
and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and he knew that if he surprised
her and told her that he knew What she’d done, he was going to foul up any
chance he ever had of getting to know her better.

Whatever her
secret was–whatever psychological problem caused her to keep her body and
personality as tightly closed as her kisses–he would never persuade her to
relax if he forced a showdown. As Peter Graves had said, Lorie believed that
her life was overshadowed by some threatening predestined fate, and the only
way to convince her that it wasn’t so frightening, was to go along with it, and
take it to its ultimate conclusion.

Apart from
that, what was really so weird about eating raw meat? He ate steak tartare
himself, and he. guessed that maybe Egyptian people had unusual tastes in food.

He retreated
slowly back across the sitting room, and picked up his drink. He was thoughtful
as he sipped the ice-cold vodka, but he wasn’t quite so disturbed. The Mozart
record came to an end, and as the stylus lifted itself gently off the record,
he heard the sputtering sound of grilling burgers. He shook his head and
mentally rapped his own knuckle for being so easily shocked, and went to put on
Debussy.

“How are you
doing in there?” he called out. “Do you want any help?”

There was a
pause. “No thanks. I’m just making the salad. I won’t be long.”

Gene sat down
and stretched his legs. Ever since Peter had talked about Lorie’s personality
problems during the afternoon, and suggested that marriage might be one way of
getting her out of them, he had been turning over the idea of matrimony, and trying
to work out what he felt about it. If anyone had told him a couple of weeks ago
that he would soon be considering marriage, he would have laughed in their
face. But right now there was a voice inside him that kept asking, “Why not?
She’s beautiful, she’s classy, she’s the daughter of a foreign diplomat. Do you
really think you’re ever going to find anyone better suited to take on the
privileged role of being Mrs. Gene Keiller? He even said the name Lorie Keiller
under his breath, and it sounded good.

The kitchen
door swung open and Lorie came in with a tray. He couldn’t help glancing at her
mouth to see if there were any traces of raw blood, but she looked just as
sensual and gorgeous as always, and she gave him a radiant smile when she sat
down beside him that dissolved all of his chilly tensions.

He lifted the
bun of his hamburger and looked at the meat “This is kind of a small one. I
thought I had more meat than that.”

Lorie helped
him to fresh salad–tomatoes, onions and crisp lettuce.

‘I’m sorry,” she
said calmly. “That’s all there was.”

He shrugged.
“That’s okay. I have to watch my waistline anyway.”

They listened
to music and ate, and when their meal was finished Lorie took out the tray and
washed up. While she was drying the dishes, Gene lowered the lights in the
sitting-room to a romantic darkness, and poured her another drink. He wasn’t at
all sure how far he was going to get with her, but his motto had always been
that if you don’t try, you never even give yourself the chance.

When she came
out of the kitchen, he handed her the vodka tonic. “That’s the end of your
household duties for today. Come and sit down.”

“I mustn’t stay
too long. I don’t want Mother to worry.”

He patted the
settee beside him. “Sit down! And stop fretting about your mother. How do you
think she met your father and had you? By going home early to Grandma?”

Lorie sat down.
Her hair shone dimly in the lamplight, and her lips gleamed as if she’d been
licking them. It was warm in Gene’s apartment, and she’d unbuttoned her safari jacket
a little so that he could see her deep cleavage and the tiny gold spark of her
pyramid pendant. She sat quite close, and he breathed in her perfume and the
sheer bodily heat she radiated, and he was convinced, then and there, that he
loved her.

“My mother met
my father at Tell Besta, in Egypt,” she said. “It’s in ruins now, but that’s
where our people originally came from.”

“You mean
recent ruins or ancient ruins?”

“Ancient,” she
said. “Even more ancient than the pyramids. Even older than the Sphinx herself.”

He reached over
and opened his cigarette box. “So come from a pretty long line of
what’s-its-names? Ubastis?”

She nodded.
“The city of Tell Besta, where our people used to live, was once called
Bubastis, and it was supposed to have been at its greatest in the days of
Rameses III.”

He lit a True
and blew out smoke. “And you can trace your family back to there?”

She nodded
again.

“And how long
ago was Be–Rameses HT? I’m afraid my ancient Egyptian history isn’t very good.”

She sipped her
drink. “The reign of Rameses III was one thousand three hundred years before
the birth of Christ.”