of the bottle on the table. “I didn’t know drinking was bad for malaria.”
Winch shrugged. He wanted badly to change the subject. “They told me not to,” he said shortly.
“And soon you’ll be going away again. Off somewhere.”
“Probably,” Winch lied. “Actually,” he added, “I may be stationed here for a while. In Second Army.”
“That would be great,” Carol smiled.
“Let’s dance awhile,” he said.
It had been so long since any sexual desires had moved him. Not since Frisco. They said the digitalis and the diuretics caused that. Holding her against him dancing, her breasts lying heavy against the chest of his shirtfront, he felt no sexual stirrings. That didn’t bother him. It wasn’t sex he was after with her. It was that incredible, unbelievable youth. It stung him, like some furious insect.
When he took her home to her parents’ house on the big, tall tree shaded avenue, he did not attempt to kiss her and told the taxi to wait as they got out.
“Let him go,” she said. “Don’t you want to come in for a while?”
Winch shook his head. “I’m too old to go around necking with girls on the sofas of their mamas’ parlors,” he said as they walked up the walk.
“Oh, there might be more to it than that,” Carol smiled promptly.
“Not on any living room sofas, with papa and mama upstairs,” Winch said. “Not for me. But next time I take you out I can have a place to take you. If you want.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No threat,” he said. “A promise.”
They were at the door and instead of answering she put back her head, closed her eyes, and pushed out her lips for him to kiss her. Winch waited, deliberately, until she opened her eyes looking startled, before he leaned forward and put his lips on hers. When he did, she immediately popped her tongue into his mouth and rubbed it around hard all over the inside of his mouth in a mechanical way.
“When?” she said, when their mouths parted.
“How about tomorrow night?” Winch said, and when she nodded, added coldly, “First thing, I’m going to have to teach you how to kiss.” Before she could answer that, he was on his way down the walk to the cab.
He sat quietly on the ride back. He was feeling the first sexual stirrings he had felt since the heart failure attack in Letterman and old, what was her name? Arlette. Carol pretty clearly didn’t know any but the most obvious things about sex and it could be great sport to teach her. In his khakis which he never wore underwear with he could feel his cock crawling and extending itself a little, tentatively. His breathing deepened. He sat quietly in the cab and savored the sensations all the way back to the hospital, watching out the window the rich, well-off lawns and trees and avenues and then the poorer places and suburban juke joints of Luxor’s Southern city landscape.
It was easy enough to arrange for a room at the Claridge. Jack Alexander kept two rooms there for players to rest or sleep or drink in, as well as the suite in which he ran the big-time, high-stakes poker game for the big winners of the Army’s monthly payroll. Alexander called the Claridge for him. Jack made sure the room was on another floor from the one his game was on.
“You knew exactly how to handle me, didn’t you?” Carol said with a triumphant little smile, when he took her there after another dinner at the Peabody’s Plantation Roof. “I’ll bet you’ve done that many times before, with women.”
Winch sensed she wanted him to grin. So he did, briefly. “If you want to know the real truth,” he smiled, “I’m just too old to fart around any more.”
“You intrigued me. You said you’d teach me how to kiss. I thought I knew how.”
“Well, you don’t,” he grinned. “The first thing to remember is never to use heavy pressure. And never be mechanical, never keep repeating the same movement. The whole art of sex is to tease just ever so slightly. That way you want more. And more. Come here. But first, let me show you how I undress you.”
The covered parts of her were as deliciously, unbelievably youthful as the uncovered parts. There wasn’t an excess ounce of fat on her. With that black, black hair and pale, pale skin of the black Irish she had a thick black luxurious bush against her white belly. She played a