The address was over in New Brooklyn. She slipped the light blue sedan
into the proper cross-town tunnel entrance, adjusted the automatics
and turned upon me suddenly. The dim reflection of the headlights from
the dull-painted walls of the one-way tunnel gave her face a ghostly
loveliness. I had just become sharply aware of this phenomenon, when
she brushed a light, experimental kiss across my lips.
Volume II, of Dr. Bankawaya's "Twenty-First Century Emotional
Reactions to the Love Stimulus" notwithstanding, my socially-adjusted,
medically-trained and professionally-restrained instincts played a
rotten trick on me. Instead of staring at her with a cool eye and
calming her with a proper, chilling remark, I responded like a frog's
leg to an electric shock.
My chin jerked out to follow the sweetest sensation I could remember.
It didn't have far to go. She had retreated only three inches.
The tunnel curved right there, and the car lurched. I made a bad
connection with only half her mouth, but a slight correction on her
part squared us off to what is outrageously described in the texts as a
basic, or primary, wooing gesture.
After the first, delirious second I knew it was a frame. After the
second moment, I didn't care. But it wasn't until several minutes had
elapsed that Doctor Calicoo's cool resolve collapsed, and I learned
what a kiss could really mean from a woman who meant it, herself.
She tore out of my arms with a little cry. "Look out!" Then I became
aware that the warning light had been flashing unnoticed. We were
coming to the tunnel's exit where manual vehicle control became
necessary. With trembling hands she gripped the controls until her
knuckles were white knobs.
As we flashed past the patrol station and two alert faces checked the
interior of our car, I said, "I think I know what you had in mind.
You had me hooked on but good. Why didn't you go through with it?" I
referred to the easy possibility of our shooting from the tube in each
other's arms and thereby violating the safety code for tube passage.
Such a simple frame would have put M.P. Investigator Klinghammer on
the tabloid front page, if his feminine companion had chosen to file
a complaint--with police witnesses to the act. Exit Klinghammer to a
hobby of his own, probably less lucrative than building phantom symptom
machines.
"I guess I overdid it," she said simply. She began to cry. Her white
blouse quivered.
* * * * *
All I did was pat her gently on the shoulder, and the tears ran like
mercury from a retort. "Let us not assume that we are enemies," I said,
regaining a portion of my composure and all of my stuffiness. "So you
_are_ the frustrated Mata Hari; perhaps I'm on your side. Were you
acting on orders? Was this a set up?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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