I checked the bug from time to time. Suddenly a clashing sound. Swords? A sword dance? Must be from the foot thuds and clashes.
And then her voice, raised high in song, came through:
Little, little feet on my tum, tum, tum.
Dancing like fairies, run, run, run. Up and down, up and down, leap, leap, leap.
Get it in, get it in, deep, deep, deep.
Up you go, up you go, bloom, bloom, bloom.
Now you come, now you come, boom, boom, BOOM!
What in blazes was going on in there? Were the boys dead? Was she dancing a funeral dance?
No. I could hear some little squeals. Laughter? Delight? They surely weren't squeals of pain! Too cheerful.
More like ecstasy? Delight. It was delight.
I gave it up. It was nine. I had had a hard day. I turned out my light and without much hope, I left my door open. I went to bed.
It must have been half an hour later. I was jerked awake by a rustling sound.
My bed moved slightly.
Hands.
It was Utanc!
She was fully clothed but her lips were warm as they touched my cheek. Then they were blazing hot as they crushed against my mouth!
Her hands were all over me. She pushed the bedclothes back to get at me better.
"Utanc," I whispered.
"Sssh. This is all for you. The mouth is everything!"
Her hands!
I started to turn into fire with passion.
It went on and on!
After a long time, I was lying there, gasping, spent.
Her arm was across my naked chest.
Joy began to well up in me.
I had WON!
"I am so glad you came," I whispered.
She whispered back. "I get so aroused." Then after a bit, "They don't have much endurance and you're the only other man around, such as you are."
"Do they look like Rudolph Valentine and James Cagney?"
She gave a shuddering sigh. "Oh, yes. I thought it was just makeup at first but it didn't wash off. They look like them when they were little boys." She sighed again. Then, "As the years go on they will become like them exactly! I compared the pictures." She sighed again and shuddered.
Once more she was all over me, her mouth searing my flesh in beautiful ecstasy. It went on and on. And then I felt like the whole world had exploded!
She lay there panting. Gradually she quieted down in the darkness.
After a bit, I got very brave. I came to a momentous decision. I decided to be honest with her at least just this once.
Utanc," I said. "I have to go away."
No response.
"Utanc, you are in danger here."
A slight stiffening of limbs?
"I have procured a diplomatic passport. I want you to come with me, posing as my wife. I have had the photo taken already—just a veiled woman. And you can go veiled."
"You have money?"
"Yes."
"You will let me take care of the money and bills on the trip?"
"Well..."
Was she going to get up and leave? Hastily, I added, "Yes."
"And you will go where?"
"New York."
Swiftly she asked, "I have no clothes. You can stop over in Rome, Paris, London en route?"
I considered. Was she getting up to leave again? "Yes," I said quickly.
"And I can take twenty trunks under diplomatic seal?"
Yikes! At the cost of air freight? "One trunk."
"Five trunks."
"Five trunks?"
She said firmly, "Five trunks."
I knew when to give in. "Five trunks," I said.
"Good," she said. "And we will have separate rooms in hotels, of course."
Well, naturally she'd want separate rooms, she was so shy. I nodded, then realized she couldn't see me in the dark. "Agreed," I said.
"And you promise to bring me back to these dear, darling little boys in a few weeks?"
The boys? She suddenly seemed totally fixated on those two little boys! I realized she wasn't going to put them on a shelf as knickknacks the way I had planned! But I said, faintly, "Yes."
"Good, then I will go with you."
My joy surged!
"Thinking about the little boys, I had better go back now and make sure they are sleeping peacefully in my bed." She got up quite abruptly and hurried out.
I lay back. It suddenly occurred to me that as time went on, as she had said, those two (bleeping) boys were going to look more and more like Rudolph Valentine and James Cagney. I had miscalculated just a little bit. I had two little boys as rivals right now and it would get much worse.
But then I stretched, luxuriating. I had really won. She had come to my bed. And she would come to my bed again and again!
Not a single thing now stood between me and the total wreckage and demise of Heller.
How sweet life was!
How sweet!
Although I pushed, we could not get off the very next day. Utanc had to take the two little boys to a photographer in town to get their portraits and gold frames for them.
They did resemble the actors quite a bit, or at least the way those actors had looked at that age, if a small boy can be said to resemble anything. They were insufferably smug about their new looks. Even their own mothers didn't know them and claimed Devils had been at work. I thought so, too, to get them born in the first place!
Utanc also had to pack and Gods, when she finished, were those heavy trunks!
True to my promise that she should handle the money, I gave her one hundred thousand dollars U.S. and told her that was all I had. It seemed a fortune but I was cautious: I told her to take it easy on the bills so we'd have money left when we got home.
And so, with much fuss and hurry and scurry, the following day she, I and five trunks took off in a cloud of jet fuel.
Now, to give you some idea of how hard it was to get to Washington—the capital of the United States where I had my first business to conduct—and to give you some idea of the trials an Apparatus officer faces in his efforts to do his duty, I should touch briefly on that trip.
Our first stop was Rome. Apparently Utanc had telephoned on ahead for reservations. And while one could understand that a shy, wild desert girl was tired of privation, I hardly expected that we would stay at the Hotel Salvatore Magnifico Cosioso, the jewel of the city's center. In fact, I would have been kind of lost trying to find the city itself! But Utanc, peering over her veil, seemed to be looking at road signposts and she seemed to get the idea that the Italian taxi driver was going round about to run up the fare.
In purest Italian and in purest vitriol, she told the driver, "Listen, you emasculated rooster, if you think you can swindle me just because I am the helpless wife of a sheik, you got another think coming! If you don't get on the right road instantly, I'll shove a stiletto up your (bleep) so high you'll think you're having a tonsillectomy!"
It was something she must have learned in a tourist phrase book, of course, but it startled me.
At the Salvatore Magnifico Cosioso, we were promptly introduced into the bridal suite—which the reservation seemed to call for. It was magnificent—gold and white! Huge! Awe inspiring! She kicked me and my baggage into its sitting room and locked the bedroom door on me.
After wondering for three hours what she was doing in there with her five trunks, I decided I wasn't going to find out and decided to go to the bar and see what I could see.
In the corridor, I beheld the most beautiful European woman I have ever seen. She was walking toward our suite. She was dressed in the latest feminine mode, wearing stilt-heeled shoes and twirling a handbag to match.
It was Utanc!
She went by me and into the bedroom and locked the door. And that was my stay in Rome—two days of it.
In Paris, we had reservations for the bridal suite at the Chateau Le Beau Grand Cher. It was gorgeous, spacious, gold and white. The manager himself showed us in. Utanc pointed at the champagne bucket that was courtesy of the hotel and in what I recognized must be French, said something that must have been very disdainful. The manager picked up the bottle and looked closely at the year and then went quite white. For ten solid minutes she lectured him before she let him stumble off to return with a wine steward. She found what she was looking for on the wine list and they hastily came back with a different bottle. And also a bottle of Malcolm Fraser Scotch.