“Take advantage of me? Believe me, my sweet naïve Jimmy, that shoe is on the other foot.”
Elsa raised her hand to his neck and pulled his face to hers.
II
[ONE]
The Goethe Suite
Kurhotel Marburg
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany
0715 7 October 1945
Counterintelligence Corps Special Agent James D. Cronley Jr. put his hands under his head and tried to reconstruct exactly what had happened the night before.
It had not been an exceedingly clear erotic dream ending in a nocturnal emission. The proof of that was the naked woman in bed beside him.
One moment he had been standing by the door between the Goethe Suite and Room 408a with Frau von Wachtstein—with whom he had been absolutely determined not to get a half inch out of line even if she had had a good deal more Jack Daniel’s than was good for her—and the next moment they were on her bed, with her uniform skirt above her waist and his trousers at his ankles.
They had subsequently divested themselves of their clothing and had at it again.
And then again.
Was it three times total—or four?
He looked down at her again. She was more beautiful, he decided, than she had been in the wildest of his fantasies about her. And she was sound asleep.
Not surprising.
After what happened—it was four times! No, five!—she would probably sleep all day.
Moving as carefully as he could, he eased out of the bed and walked on his toes toward the connecting door.
“Jimmy,” Elsa said, her voice soft and sleepy, “where are you going?”
“To muss my bed, so the chambermaid doesn’t get any ideas.”
“Then come back . . .”
I will come back if I have to crawl through the fires of hell on my hands and knees.
“Sixty seconds,” he said, and went through the door.
He jerked the cover from his bed, tried to muss the sheets, didn’t like the result, and then jumped on the bed with both feet, marched around it, and then finally punched the pillows until they appeared to have been used.
When he went back to the bedroom of the Goethe Suite, Elsa lifted the sheet so that he could slide in beside her.
—
“Well, what should we do now?” Jimmy said, when he had regained his breath.
“After we have a shower, you mean?” Elsa asked.
“After we have a shower?”
She smiled. “That might be interesting. And after we have a shower, how does breakfast sound?”