Chapter 32: Friday, Dec. 15

She gave a quick, toothsome laugh. "'Miss Tangent!' Oh, I love it. So full of restraints. Not that this place is a stranger to restraints. And, Di, princess!" She turned to Diantha. How are you? You're so right about Norman. He is precious." Then to me again, her hand sweeping the vast room, her silver bracelets jingling. "Isn't this wild! Don't you love its..."

"Extravagance," I offered, finding my voice. I was, despite myself, under the woman's spell.

"Yes. Yes." She took off her long thick fur to reveal attire that, though quite casual, slowly mesmerized me. I mean the pre-faded expensive jeans over nylons and thick-heeled pumps, a low-cut black jersey that molded her breasts just so and displayed her gorgeous throat and neck, what with her lustrous blond hair piled wantonly on her head.

"You will stay for dinner?" Freddie Bain intoned.

"Of course. Norman needs a date."

Norman did need a date. But I found myself wanting not to want what I wanted. I should have made some good excuse for excusing myself. I could have pleaded guilt or insanity or grief or all three. I felt complicit in some tawdry enterprise, but nor could I withstand the fantasy to hand, so to speak. Because Miss Tangent had me quite bedazzled, sitting next to me on the sofa, her shapely limbs articulate as she shifted around. In what remained of my detective's instincts, I understood then how she could have made slaves of Penrood and perhaps Ossmann. With my penchant for self-delusion, I told myself I might be able to get her, in a weak moment, to tell me about what was happening in the Genetics Lab. But I can see, looking back, that all the weak moments were to be mine.

For the nonce, it was Mr. Bain who saved me from any overt foolishness. For reasons I cannot fathom, the man seemed determined to impress me. Glasses in hand, we began a tour of the "art" that hung both in the main room and along the balconied walls. Diantha kept glancing to me now, as though trying to divine if I approved. I didn't. To me the stuff -- Daliesque vistas foregrounded with muscle-bound blond men and great-breasted naked Valkeries with heroic buttocks doing violence to subhumanoid forms -- appeared to be utter kitsch. Or kitsch so kitschy it achieved a kind of parodic authenticity. Art as a serious joke, so to speak. Not that Mr. Bain betrayed any self-amusement as he led us around.

"And what do you think, Norman?" Miss Tangent had hooked her arm in mine, had taken virtual possession, and now delighted in putting me on the spot.

"Influenced by Dali and perhaps by Wyeth, but N. C., not Andrew," I responded, fending her off with a gloss of erudition.

The works on the third tier included a Werner Peiner landscape, an Ivo Saliger nude, and a large mural of muscular Aryans, men and women, at various kinds of outdoor work. "Looks like Communist art," I said to Miss Tangent out of earshot of our host. "I suppose you could call it National Socialist Realism." But my bon mot did not appear to register.

Instead, Miss Tangent unhooked her arm and took me by the hand. "You want to see my favorite room?" I didn't have a chance to answer as she led me along the balcony to a door in the wall behind the fireplace chimney. It opened into a large bedroom with a row of pointed gothic windows on either side. A rug made from two polar bear skins lay in front of a smaller fireplace while a bed capacious enough for giants stood to one side under two angled gilt-framed mirrors. These hung from a ceiling where the beams stood out bold and formed with the joints a coffered effect. A painting over the fireplace depicted a knight in shining armor and a large-limbed maiden vaguely of the pre-Raphaelite School.

I didn't try to conceal my wonderment at it all. Because it wasn't until I glanced out of one of the windows that I realized we were in a kind of wide bridge between the main pile and the side of the mountain in the back.

"Is this the master's suite?" I asked, deliberately employing the Saxon genitive.

"Oh, no, that's upstairs. That's restricted territory. It looks like this only... it has a winding staircase that goes up to the top where there's a greenhouse and a pool." She gave her wide-mouthed laugh. "Maybe we'll all end up there... for a swim."

Which left my head swimming a little at the prospect. I walked over to the fireplace and, pretending some interest in Sir Galahad kneeling before the diaphanously clad beauty, asked, "Do you work for Freddie?"

"Don't we all?" Her laugh had a bitterness to it this time. "Oh, Norman, stop playing detective. It's a real turn-off."

"Miss Tangent..."

She had taken both of my hands in her hers, and it seemed unmannerly to shake them off. "Seriously, Norman, you're off duty. Officially. Until morning. Then we'll straighten everything out for you."

But Miss Tangent remained very much on duty. She let go my hands and reached up to give me a kiss, opening my mouth with hers and for the barest moment entwining her tongue around mine. At the same time she reached a hand down and brought it up softly against the crotch of my worsted trousers with a gesture so light and fleeting it might never have been. "I can tell, Norman, you're not the kind of older guy who needs much help."

I maintained enough presence of mind to ask, "Perhaps that's something you could tell me about?"

She pulled away. "If you're going to be a bore, I'm not going to get naughty with you. Or perhaps I'll just have to spank you."

Next Page: Mr. Bain and I re-enacted the Wagner-Brahms debate in a minor key

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