“Of course,” Alicia said.
Señora Duarte laid her fingers on Peter’s cheek. “Don’t dally, dear,” she said, and then, motioning her husband to follow her, she started to walk to the main house.
Humberto nodded, then walked after his wife.
“Give me a minute to take this off,” Peter said as he pulled down the zipper of his gray flying suit and started to shrug out of it. Beneath it, he still wore the suit Gradny-Sawz had admired.
“I was afraid for a moment,” Alicia said, “that she was going to take you to her room to wash your hands, and send me to make a place for you at lunch.”
He smiled at her.
He freed his legs from the flying suit and hung it on the wing support. Then he followed Alicia into the house, where she led him not to the bedroom where the Duartes were staying, but to her own. The moment they were inside, she locked the door and th
rew herself into his arms.
“When you came by plane, I was afraid you’d been ordered to Germany,” she said.
“No,” he said. “So far, there’s been no word from Berlin.”
“I’m so frightened for you, Peter,” she said.
That makes two of us.
“There’s nothing to be frightened about, precious,” he said, stroking her hair.
Do I believe that? Or am I pissing in the wind?
He gently extricated himself from her arms.
Another thirty seconds of feeling her against me like that, and I’ll carry her to her bed.
And all we need is Clete’s lunatic aunt coming to look for me, and finding us in Alicia’s bedroom.
“Let me wash my hands,” he said.
She nodded toward her bathroom.
He went into the bathroom and washed his hands with a clear bar of glycerin soap—concluding that while it might do wonders for the complexion of a young female, it was not ideal for removing oil from hands.
She was standing by her desk when he went back into the bedroom.
“If they do order you to go to Germany,” Alicia asked, “then will you go to Brazil?”
“Baby, I don’t think they’re going to order me to Berlin.”
“If they do!” she insisted angrily.
“If that happens, we will see what I have to do.”
“Sometimes I hate you,” she said.
“Baby, don’t say that!”
“Why not? Right now, I mean it!”
He reached his hand to touch her face. She knocked it away, walked to the door, and unlocked it.
“They’ll be wondering what’s keeping you,” she said.