Читать книгу An Affair of State - Pat Frank - Страница 32

He went back to the apartment and began to pack. As a Third Secretary and Vice-Consul he was entitled to a number of privileges, among them a five-gun salute when boarding a man-of-war, and an extra eighty-pound weight allowance on trans-ocean planes. So that gave him a hundred and thirty-five pounds in all. He found he could get almost everything he possessed, except his books, into the four-suiter, the two-suiter, and the pullman bag, all new and unscarred by travel.

He was even able to pack his maps. He collected maps as some men collect old theater stubs and programs, or first editions, or circus posters. He could look at a map with the rhapsody of a botanist examining a prize orchid. He knew maps. He loved maps. Everything on earth seemed to change except its contour, the depth of its oceans, the heights of its mountains. Maps were solid things. You could depend on a map.

He didn't pack the written and photographic memories of his father. He would ask Stud to put them in a safe deposit vault. He wasn't sure why he wanted to keep them, but he did want to keep them. He felt he could depend on them, too. Wasn't that a silly feeling?

He had also bought a diplomatic dispatch case, of handsome pigskin, tooled in London. It had cost him forty-five dollars, and this seemed a lot of money, especially when he had nothing to put in it except a handful of personal papers, and the parchment commission, carefully enclosed in cellophane, in which the President of the United States said he reposed "special trust and confidence in your Integrity, Prudence, and Fidelity." He was enamored of the dispatch case as a woman with her first mink wrap. It was the patent of his office, the insignia of his rank. Anthony Eden could possess no better. He was admiring its austere beauty, standing on the table with his black homburg beside it, when Susan Pickett called.

She said she'd just heard from a girl in Balkans that he was leaving soon, and she hoped he'd drop in and see her before he left.

"I'm flying at seven in the morning," he said.

"Oh! I didn't know it was that soon." She sounded upset. "I suppose you're awfully busy, packing and saying goodbye. I guess you won't have time."

"I'm all packed," Jeff said. "I've said all the goodbyes I have to say."

"Except me."

"Except you." He discovered that when he visualized her at the other end of the phone it stimulated and exhilarated him almost as if he could touch her. It was a phenomenon at once pleasant and improbable of fulfillment, like a schoolboy's desire for the prettiest girl in the senior class.

"Well?" she challenged.

"Can I see you?" Immediately her reply became important. If she already had a date, or she was tired, or busy, or he could come over but only for a few minutes, then it was going to mean much more to him than a barren final night in Washington. If she said no, he was going to be miserable for a long time. He had committed himself.

"I wish you would come over."

"I'll be over right away."

"Not too quickly. Give me an hour. I just got home."

"Okay. An hour."

He didn't need a shave, but he shaved anyway. He spent an unnecessary length of time changing his shirt, and he had trouble knotting his tie. He found he didn't have proper control over his fingers. They insisted on shaking. Maybe I'm in love with her, he told himself. Maybe this is the way love is, exciting and adventurous the way it was when I was sixteen. More of an adventure than flying to Europe in the morning. Much more.

He told himself he couldn't possibly be in love with Susan Pickett. He'd only been out with her once. Besides, he had always believed that when he fell in love with a girl he would think of marriage, and he wasn't thinking of marriage at all. He was just wondering what she'd do, if anything, this night. His mind was racing from one imaginary scene to another, savoring the possibilities. In a vague way he felt this was somewhat sinful, if he really was in love with her, and wondered whether the thoughts of other men were as gross as his own. He couldn't imagine his father ever thinking as he thought now. Others of his own generation, yes. His generation had attained a certain sophistication about sex. His generation had broken the puritan chains. His generation had traveled. His generation had been around.