So I called Hortense. She told me she was sorry but she was tied up, and explained why. But I told her it was urgent without explaining why and finally got her to agree to come and talk to me. It was about an hour after I hung up the phone that I heard her knocking lightly at the door.
“Is that Hortense?” I called out.
“Yes.”
“Well, relax and come on in.”
She entered. She hadn’t changed. She’d looked about eighteen when I first met her, and she still looked about eighteen, although she must be in her mid-twenties by now. She was still a beautiful girl with the kind of allure that’s almost startling.
Her hair was a dark red chestnut color with a sheen that caught the light no matter which way she turned. It reached to her shoulders, and she wore it simply, parted in the middle and brushed so that it rippled gently as it occasionally grazed her cheeks. It provided a sort of halo-like framing for the slightly feline and very sensual face it outlined.
The face too was compelling, the eyes most of all. They were a very dark green flecked ever so lightly with gold, and they slanted slightly, like a cat’s eyes. And like a cat, Hortense rarely blinked; once a man encountered this direct gaze, it was difficult to relinquish it. Fathoming it was a challenge, and the challenge of Hortense’s eyes was ever mysterious and feminine.
Her high cheekbones accentuated this impression. But her nose, just a bit upturned, and her mouth, set off by dimples and seeming always to be on the verge of laughing, relieved it. If her eyes and cheekbones were catlike, her mouth and nose were kittenish, more playful, more promising of fun than unrelieved sensuality.
Taking the optic elevator down the structure of Hortense’s figure, though, sensuality again reigned supreme. This, despite the fact that the dark green knit dress she was wearing covered most of her charms quite demurely. Not quite so demure was the way the dress clung to her large, torpedo-shaped breasts and well-rounded hips. It stretched tight over a very provocative derriere, and it was short enough so that when she sat down a good deal of her beauty-contest legs was revealed. She was a tall girl, and the overall impression was one of her being slender and voluptuous at the same time. She wouldn’t have looked out of place with the near-Amazons of the Copacabana chorus line.
Hortense was sexy-looking, but she also had a great deal of poise, and despite her profession she was never obvious in the way she handled herself. Personality-wise, she was like a fun-loving coed from an upper-bracket college: attentive, quick to laughter, but with just enough restraint so that she always maintained a certain dignity. She was the kind of girl you could take anywhere and be sure that her quiet style would never embarrass you.
I told Hortense that I was doing another survey for O. R. G. Y. and that I needed her help. I explained that this one had to do with various types of sex clubs involving young marrieds, most of which entailed some ritualistic form of wife-swapping. Needing a wife to swap, I said, it occurred to me that Hortense would be just the girl to pose as my mate for as long as the survey might take.
Hortense said she’d like to help me out, but I’d picked a bad time. She explained about being booked up by the lobby to “entertain” the congressmen. There was an obligation not to let them down, and also one to herself, since it would bring her in a great deal of money over a relatively short time.
“If you’ll agree to go along with me, I can take care of both your objections,” I promised her.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll see that you’re paid whatever you might have made. And I’ll make sure that you’re voluntarily released from your other assignment without prejudice to your future career.”
“If you can do that, Steve, I’d be happy to help you out.”
“Leave it to me. You go rest up for what’s left of the afternoon. Come back here about nine tonight and everything will have been arranged.”
“Okay. I trust you, Steve. I won’t even ask how you can do it.” She got to her feet. “I’ll see you later, then.”
When the door closed behind her, I got on the horn to Putnam. He didn’t question the money I told him I’d need to pay Hortense for her time. And he said it would be no problem to apply the pressure needed to get her released from her congressional assignment. That settled, I asked him to run a fast check on George and Helen, gave him the address Velvet had provided, and hung up on Putnam’s promise that he’d get back to me at eight-thirty that evening.
Putnam was as good as his word. His return call at eight-thirty didn’t provide any world-shaking information, but then given the time allotted I’d known the check would have to be superficial and hadn’t expected that it would. Still, after I hung up on Putnam, I committed to memory the notes I'd made on what he’d told me, figuring they might or might not come in handy later on in the evening.
Their last name was Quentin. They’d been married five years. George Quentin was a lawyer employed by a large corporation which manufactured precision optical equipment. He was in Washington to handle the legal work connected with the bidding on and renewal of contracts his firm had with the Pentagon. His salary was $30,000 per year8 , which was pretty good for a twenty-nine-year-old barrister, even if he was a Yale graduate.
His wife, Helen, was three years younger than George. She’d graduated summa cum laude from Vassar. Originally she was from Philadelphia where her family was well-known and ultra-respectable without being particularly wealthy. She’d met George, who was from New London, Connecticut, at a Vassar prom, the year before her graduation. They’d dated as frequently as time and distance would allow, and the summer after Helen’s graduation they were married. Some of her more snobbish classmates thought Helen had married beneath her -- George’s family owned and operated a chain of dry-cleaning establishments-—but by and large the difference in their respective statuses hadn’t been enough to cause much comment.
They had no children. Recently, Helen’s younger sister, Patricia, had come to live with them while she attended a private school in Washington. Patricia was fifteen years old.
The Quentins were popular with the other young marrieds among their neighbors and well thought of by the older people. Helen’s work with the League of Women Voters had gained her respect with the less flighty element in the area. Both she and George enjoyed a reputation for being sensible young folks who never threw wild parties or disturbed the proprieties in any other way. There was no hint in Putnam’s report that anyone who knew them might be aware of their underground sex activities.
It wasn’t much, but by the time Hortense arrived I’d stored it away in the back of my mind anyway. She looked rested and spruced up, but she'd put on the same dress she’d been wearing in the afternoon. Also, she was carrying a model’s hatbox-style case, which she put down on the floor just inside the door as she greeted me.
“I don’t know how you did it, Steve,” she said, “but I guess I’m all yours. The powers that be called and said they were giving me an indefinite leave of absence with the understanding that they’d put me back on the job whenever I was ready.”
“And the financial details are all arranged, too,” I told her, “so you don’t have to worry on that score.”