“Great.” She shot me a winning smile. “Oh, say,” she added, “how about this dress?” She pirouetted slowly, and I’m afraid I studied her impressive figure more than the dress itself. “I put it back on because I wasn’t sure just how formal or how sexy you wanted me to be. But I have a cocktail gown in there.” She indicated the carrying case. “I can change in a minute, if you want me to.”
“You’re fine just the way you are," I told her. “Not too flashy, but stylish and appealing.”
“Why, thank you, kind sir.”
“You can leave the bag here and pick it up later,” I told her. “We’d better get going now."
We grabbed a cab downstairs, and on the way out to the upper-crust Chevy Chase neighborhood where the Quentins rented their house I went over our cover-story with Hortense. I’d decided to keep it simple, and Hortense had no trouble getting the details down. In essence, it was as follows:
We'd been married for two years and came from Bloomington, Indiana. I'd picked Indiana because it might open the door to conversation about other Hoosiers known to the members of George and Helen’s group. There might even be a lead-in to the missing Cromwells. And I’d decided on Bloomington, rather than the Cromwell’s home town of Danville, because it would tie in with my work.
Indiana University, which has a connection with the Kinsey Institute, is in Bloomington. I intended to be honest about my work with O. R. G. Y. if the subject came up, and instructed Hortense to be the same. It would explain my curiosity about a lot of things. And my experience has been that once people relax with the fact that they’re being observed, they’re kind of flattered by it and cooperate easily. As far as Hortense was concerned, research was my only motive. I didn’t see any need to tell her about the other aspects of what I was doing. But I did tell her that I was particularly anxious to arrange entree into another group which might be hipped on “discipline.” She, as well as I, was to drop hints that we’d been involved in “discipline clubs” back in Bloomington and were anxious to make a similar connection in Washington. To lend credence to our story, we were to say that I was in Washington in connection with a survey of “punishment” groups which would encompass major cities across the country.
By the time we’d gone over the story two or three times and had everything down pat, the cab pulled up in front of the Quentin house. It was an expensive Spanish colonial abode, and I judged it to be in the $40,000 to $45,000 price range9 . The grounds covered a half acre, and had been carefully but not ostentatiously landscaped. The house itself was hidden from the street by high hedges and was reached by a circular driveway.
The front door opened as the cab, having discharged us, pulled back down the driveway. A young woman, petite and blonde and with something of an intellectual air about her, stood in the doorway and smiled tentatively at Hortense and myself. “Are you Steve?" she asked as we mounted the three wide steps to the porch.
“Yes,” I replied. “And this is my wife, Hortense. I hope you’re expecting us. Mr. Vel-”
“You’re expected,” she said quickly. “Our mutual friend called. I’m Helen.” She held out her hand.
I took it and passed it along to Hortense. “I’m happy to meet you, Helen,” Hortense said with just the right mixture of warmth and formality.
“We’re just a small group tonight,” Helen said as she led the way inside. “Only two other couples, but we’re all ardent Francophiles. Ah!” she broke off. “Here’s George. Come and say hello to Steve and Hortense, George.”
A clean-cut Ivy League type entered the large center hallway from the living room. He might have stepped out of a Brooks Brothers window display. His gray suit was conservative, but stylish, and he had the naturally narrow-shouldered sort of build suited to it. He was a little under average height, and his face was boyish, the eyes very alert behind horn-rimmed glasses. I’d have bet it wasn’t more than a year or two since he’d given up crew haircuts. Even now his straight brown hair was trimmed very close to his skull.
As we exchanged handshakes and introductions, two things told me right away that Hortense was an excellent choice for this venture. First there was the way George’s eyes travelled approvingly over the figure in the green knit dress and stayed lingeringly on the exact spot where the vague outline of her legs joined. Second was the fact that in her high heels Hortense was a couple of inches taller than George. It may be a generalization, but I’ve rarely met a short man who wasn’t attracted to tall girls. At first impression, George was surely no exception.
He and Helen ushered us into the living room and introduced the other guests. Only first names were used. The first couple was identified as Barry and Elsa. Barry was fortyi-sh, a big man, jowly and running to fat. Elsa was in her thirties, on the skinny side, nervous in a birdlike way and given to high-pitched giggles that made her seem even more like a bird because of her habit of shaking her head from side to side so that her close-cropped and curly black hair bristled like a coxcomb as she giggled.
The other couple was Phil and Ingrid. They looked to be the youngest of any of us. Phil had a wet-behind-the-ears air of nervousness about him, the sort of doubtful attitude a teen-age boy might have when approaching his first visit to a brothel. Later I would learn that Phil was far from a novice; that what I had mistaken for apprehension was really high-strung eagerness. His wife, Ingrid, was much calmer. Like him, she seemed very young, but there was a sort of sureness about her. It was this sureness I suppose that kept her from appearing blatantly sexual as compared to the other women. Where they were quietly dressed, Ingrid wore a very low-cut cocktail gown, bright red, which seemed bent on ejecting her grapefruit-sized—and shaped—breasts. Also, her hair, a much brighter blonde than Helen’s, was very long and worn loosely so that its strands curled over her voluptuous bosom and accented it. But, as I said, her calm manner kept her from seeming out-and-out brazen.
As Hortense and I sat down and joined the group, George asked if we’d like some martinis. I said yes; Hortense turned him down. As he started for the bar, Elsa held up her glass and giggled that she’d like another.
“Perhaps later, Elsa,” he told her. “But not right now. We don’t want to spoil things.”
“George is really a moralist,” Helen explained, sitting down next to me on the small couch. “He doesn’t hold with people drinking too much.”
“I am not a moralist,” George called from the bar. “I just believe in being practical. A minimal amount of liquor relaxes the inhibitions. Past that point, it’s self-defeating in terms of sexual potential. Any real swinger knows that.”
“In any case, George knows Elsa,” Barry boomed out heartily. “Another martini and she’d be all laughs and no action.”
“I’m afraid I do tend to get tiddly,” Elsa chirped.
“Just enough liquor to whet the appetite without dulling the taste buds,” Ingrid said calmly. “That’s George’s theory. It might seem inhospitable,” she said directly to me, “but actually it’s one of the things that makes George an excellent party host.”
“Ingrid’s right about that,” Helen told me. “When George would turn somebody down for a drink, it used to embarrass me. But now I realize he’s right not to let over-imbibing spoil things. After all, we’re not here to get drunk.”
“Which brings us to why we are here,” Phil said. “Just what have you and George got planned for the evening? I was telling Ingrid on the way over that I always love it when you host a party because you two can be depended upon to come up with something unusual.”
“Well, first,” Helen said as George crossed over to me, “I have a new batch of photos from a group I correspond with in Boise, Idaho. I thought we might pair off to look at them. The subjects are from a new French club, and they’re refreshingly uninhibited. And the quality of the photos, I think you’ll agree, is excellent.”