She shook her head. She was pulling off her gloves, making herself at home. She said, "No, I'm not drunk. I just had one when I got home-you did, too, by the looks of that flask-and then I started thinking about that damn hamburger and it made me kind of sick. And then I started thinking about going out to eat alone, and that made me kind of sick, too. So here I am. Make yourself respectable. You're taking me to dinner."

I studied her for a moment. If she was acting, she was very, very good.

I said, "You forgot a word, didn't you?"

She frowned briefly. "What do you mean?"

"It begins," I said, "with a 'P'."

She looked at me. Something happened in those odd, green eyes. She licked her lips. "Please?" Then she said breathlessly, "Please! I'm going nuts in that damn big. house with nothing but a damn dog to talk to. I'll pay for-"

"Cut," I said. "End of take, as they say in Hollywood. Sit down and smoke something somewhere, if you can find it. I'll be with you in a minute."

I got a pair of slacks and a jacket out of the closet, a shirt from my suitcase, gathered up the necessary accessories, and went into the bathroom.

"Help yourself, if you want a drink," I called, hanging up my dressing gown. "You'll have to get ice from the machine outside."

Her voice came from directly behind me. "My God, what happened to you?"

I was just pulling on my shorts. I managed to control the outraged-modesty reaction to the point where I merely finished what I was doing and turned to look at her. She was standing in the opening, one hand on the bathroom door, which she had pushed back silently.

"Happened?" I asked. "What do you mean?" She gestured towards various marks on the still exposed portions of my anatomy. I said, "Oh, those. I was blown up in a jeep during the war and had to have various hunks of old iron taken out of me."

"Old iron?" she said. "Old lead, you mean! I know bullet-scars when I see them. Duke Logan has a couple that show when he takes off his shirt."

"Good for old Duke."

"Who are you, Helm?" she whispered. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

I went up to her, and put my hand out, and pushed her back a step. "I want you to get the hell out of here so I can get dressed," I said, and then I knew I had made a serious mistake.

It had been a long day. I was in a susceptible mood, I guess, after that incident with Beth in the mountains. I was wound up with various emotions and tensions that needed an outlet. I shouldn't have got that close to the kid. I shouldn't have touched her.

Everything had changed suddenly, the way it does. We both knew it. She stood quite still in the doorway, looking up at me.

"Are you sure that's what you want?" she murmured, and now her green eyes were laughing at me as I stood there in my shorts with, no doubt, naked desire in my eyes.

I said, "Honey, if you don't look out, you're going to get that nice dress all mussed."

"It doesn't muss very easily," she said calmly. "That's why I wore it here. But if it worries you, take it off."

She was smiling as she turned slowly around to let me unzip and undress her, if I dared. It was a kid's game and I was damned if I was going to play it with her. I just picked her up and carried her over to the nearest bed and dumped her upon it so hard that she bounced. She looked up at me indignantly from beneath the bright hair that had suddenly tumbled into her face.

I said, "If you were just playing, say so. I'm too old to play games with sex."

She licked her lips childishly. Then she smiled. "Nobody's that old," she murmured.

She was right, of course.

IT WAS A big dining room high up in some Reno hotel, but you couldn't really tell by looking. You only knew it because you'd used an elevator to get there.

In Europe, they'd have had a little roof garden where you could sip your cocktail, aperitif, or aquavit outdoors, and look at the lights of the town, and the mountains beyond, while you conversed intelligently about matters that had nothing to do with love-at least the words didn't. Then you'd go inside to a nice big table with a white tablecloth and plenty of room around it and be served an exquisite dinner by waiters who took pride in their work… I don't want to sound subversive or unpatriotic. They do some things worse over there and some things better. Eating is one of the things they do very well.

This was a table about the size of one of the new small tires on one of the new small cars. There were, roughly speaking, a million of these tables crammed into the room a slight exaggeration, but that was the general effect. There wasn't space enough left for the waiters to maneuver conveniently. They had to ooze through the cracks by a process of osmosis. Maybe this was what had ruined their dispositions, or maybe they'd never had any to start with.

At the end of the room was a stage, and on the stage, assisted by an orchestra of sorts, a man was singing. Well, let's call him a man, just for purposes of reference, and I suppose it went under the name of singing. I looked at the girl on the other side of the table. She was the right age, or close enough to it, to explain the phenomenon to me.

"Does he send you?" I asked. "Does he arouse anything in you?"

"Yes, sure, my maternal instinct," she said. "I've got a practically irresistible yearning to go up there and change his diapers and see if he'll stop crying."

Her resilience was fantastic. Nobody looking at her would have dreamed that less than half an hour ago she'd been lying on a rumpled bed, flushed and breathless, with her nice dress bunched immodestly about her waist and her bright hair tumbled untidily over the pillow. Now she looked cool and crisp and immaculate again, and even kind of innocent, as if a sinful thought had never crossed her mind-at least not since she'd put those fine clothes on. Only her eyes had changed, a little, and maybe that was just my imagination. You like to think it's made some difference to the girl.

She reached out abruptly and touched my arm with a white-gloved hand. "Just one thing," she said. "Don't say anything about Lolita. Promise."

"I wasn't going to-"

"That other guy, the one in New York, I was his lousy Lolita all the lousy time. I thought it was cute until I read the book. What a pill! Anyway, I'm no teen-age kid. Just because he was a few years older… Just because you are, don't start thinking… If you say one damn thing about Lolita, I'll get up and walk out."

I glanced at the loose-lipped, wailing character on the stage and said, "It might not be half a bad idea, if I get to go with you."

"Well, I just wanted to tell you. No Lolita."

"In that case," I said, "you'd better tell me your name, hadn't you?"

She looked a little startled. "Don't you know?"

"Fredericks I know. Not what goes before."

"It's Moira. Isn't that corny?"

"Not particularly," I said. "Mine's Matt."

"I know," she said. She looked around, as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. "Don't you like it here?" she asked. "We can go someplace else if you don't like it."

She'd recommended the place. I said, "I'm just spoiled, I guess. In Europe you get less noise and more atmosphere."

"It is kind of crowded," she admitted, "but the food's supposed to be good." Her green eyes touched me lightly. "What were you doing in Europe, Matt?"

"Business," I said.

"What kind of business?"

I didn't answer at once. I didn't particularly want to lie to her; besides, nobody'd supplied me with a real cover for this job, and when you start making it up as you go along, you're apt to talk yourself into a corner.

Her hand was still on my arm. "You're a government man, aren't you?" she murmured, watching me closely.