The bedroom door popped open again. The man with the little moustache and the straight bangs stood there again. Again he wagged his finger. “Hygiene!” he said sternly. “Hygiene!” And then once again he was gone.
“Now tell me you didn’t see him that time!” Neck caught between Brandy’s pulsating, clutching thighs, Penny struggled to get free.
“See what which time?”
“That man! That man who just came out of the bedroom!”
Brandy stared at Penny for a long moment. “Do you find sex threatening?” she asked finally.
“Do I what?”
“Find sex threatening? I mean, does it often happen that when you’re on the brink of it you find yourself hallucinating this way? You don’t have to be afraid of me, darling.” Her thigh muscles tightened on Penny’s neck. “Just try to relax and enjoy yourself.” She slid downward adeptly, effectively cutting off any answer Penny might have made.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink! Penny was determined to hold to this maxim. But in the end—-you should pardon the phraseology—-Penny was carried away. And then Penny was carried onward and upward to even better things.
The terrycloth robe fell away and Brandy was spread out before Penny like a feast. That fantastically voluptuous body was open to the taking. The triangle of red curls ended in a quivering, beckoning finger pointing toward a sheath waiting to be daggered. Penny stabbed and Brandy reacted with a torrent of motion that carried the two of them from the couch to the floor and then—it seemed that way—-right up to the ceiling and through it.
When they came down, the man was standing in the doorway again. “Hygiene!” he chastised them. “Hygiene!” A third time the bedroom door closed behind him.
“What’s ‘hygiene’ supposed to mean?” Penny wondered.
“If you’d known the answer to that, I might not have divorced you,” Brandy told him.
“What the hell are you implying?” Penny was angry.
“It was just a joke, darling. Don’t be so sensitive.”
“Why wouldn’t I be sensitive? Here I am having sex with you and every five minutes your lover—or whoever he is—pops out of the bedroom and yells ‘Hygiene.’ ”
“Did you see him again?” Brandy was sympathetic. “Oh, dear. We’ve simply got to do something about your paranoia. It really must stem from a sense of sexual inferiority. Why do you suppose you’re so threatened by sex?” “Hygiene!” Penny snarled. “The hell with it!” Penny decided after a moment. “I don’t really give a damn if you do have a lover in the bedroom. Let’s get back to the reason you wanted me to come up here. I gave you ten thousand, and now you want me to give you another ten grand. Right?”
“Wrong!” Brandy was indignant. “You never gave me ten thousand.”
“I didn’t? But I thought—” Penny was confused.
“What did you think?”
“Didn’t I bring you the ten thousand after you called me?”
“No, you didn’t. You promised to, but you never did. And if you don’t hurry up and get me the twenty thousand soon, it’s going to be thirty thousand. Or would you rather I became a call girl?”
“Frankly,” Penny told her, “I don’t care if you do. I’ve got problems of my own.”
“Sex problems!” Brandy snarled nastily.
“Well, yes, but not what you mean.”
“Are you going to get me the money, or—” Brandy was interrupted by the telephone ringing. She picked it up automatically and listened. Then she handed it to Penny.
“It’s your mother.”
“Hello.” Penny took the phone.
“I thought you’d be there!” Mrs. Potter’s voice was nasty. “You just can’t stay out of that woman’s clutches, can you? I just don’t understand what she has.”
“Then you must be blind. What did you call for? Just to check up?”
“Why should I check up on my son? After the way he spoke to me, I have no son. My son is dead.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To remind you that you have an appointment with that no-good analyst of yours at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“If he’s a ‘no-good analyst,’ then why remind me?”
“Because that shrewdie charges even if you don’t keep the appointment. I can’t see letting him get away with that. So keep it!”
“All right. I will,” Penny promised her.‘ “Oh, by the way, what’s the name and address?”
Mrs. Potter supplied the information. “And make sure you ask him about your amnesia,” she instructed Penny. “Don’t forget!”
“How could I forget about my amnesia? That isn’t the kind of thing a person forgets.”
“So remember!” Mrs. Potter hung up.
Penny turned back to Brandy. The redhead was lying there with her limbs spread invitingly. Penny ignored the invitation and started to get dressed. “Are you sure I never gave you the ten thousand?” Penny asked.
“Of course I’m sure. Hey! Why are you getting dressed? Don’t you want to -?”
“No, I don’t. It’s already been too much in one night for a beginner. And I’ve got a lot to think about. So long.”
Penny headed for the door.
“ ‘So long!’ What do you mean ‘So long’? What about the money? Aren’t you going to get me the money?”
“Nope.”
“But where will I get it?” Brandy wailed.
“Ask the guy in the bedroom for it,” Penny suggested, closing the door on her protest and heading down the staircase.
Out on the street, Penny checked the time. It was nearly four A.M. Only five hours to kill before it was time to keep the appointment with Pennington P. Potter’s shrink.
The way things looked to Penny now, the shrink was the last hope. If Potter hadn’t given the money to Brandy -- or to Sonia, or Clytemnestra—then Penny didn’t have the faintest idea what he might have done with it. His suicide note had pointed the finger at a woman, but now all the female leads had fizzled out. Could there have been another woman in Potter’s life? If there was, then the shrink was the logical one to know about it. In any case, the shrink was the only lead of any kind that Penny had left.
So Penny spent the night wandering the streets aimlessly and conjuring on just what intimacies Potter might have confided to the shrink. At eight-fifty-five A.M. promptly Penny arrived at the analyst’s outer office. Five minutes later the receptionist waved Penny through the door to the inner sanctum.
The analyst had his back to the door.
“Dr. Hitler?” Penny said tentatively.
“Yes. Dr. Adolph Hitler.” The analyst continued to stare out the window. “But why so formal today, Penny? You usually just call me ‘Doc.’ ”
“I’m sorry, Doc.”
The analyst turned around.
“You!” Penny gasped.
The analyst’s deep black eyes stared at Penny from under the straight black bangs. His fingers toyed with the smudge of moustache. Then he wagged one of the fingers in Penny’s face.
“Hygiene!” Dr. Hitler said firmly. “Hygiene!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Lie down on the couch,” Dr. Hitler instructed. “Wait a minute!” he snapped as Penny moved to comply. “Did you change your underwear this morning?”
“Well, no. I’ve been up all night and-—”
“Insomnia?”
“Sort of,” Penny said. “Actually though, I had no choice. You see—-”
“But you didn’t change your underwear?”
“I didn’t have a cha—”
“Then don’t lie down on the couch! If you didn’t change your underwear, you can’t lie down on my couch! I’m not running some kind of pigsty here!”