Q Clearance by Peter Benchley

  She was beautiful.

  Burnham felt faint. Suppose he hit her with his racket. It was one thing to hit a man; men were supposed to be scarred. But if he opened a nasty gash on this face . . . he'd probably go to jail.

  Please. Let the President call. Anything.

  "I left this number," he said to Hal.

  "Don't worry." Hal grinned. "I'll tell the President you're in a meeting." He put one hand on Burnham's arm, the other on Eva's. "Enjoy yourselves, children."

  Burnham pushed open the door to the court. He started to duck down to go through the small opening, then caught himself and backed off and gestured for Eva to go first.

  She refused, waving him ahead. "No sexism in combat," she said.

  When they were both inside the court, Burnham shut the door, isolating the two of them in a brilliantly lighted white box. "Have you played a lot?"

  "In college. Not much since. I hope I can give you a game."

  "Me too." No! Asshole! "I mean ... I hope I can give you a game."

  "Never mind." She smiled. "We'll have fun."

  Burnham dropped a squash ball from his hand onto the wood floor. It didn't bounce, but rolled languidly against the wall. The hard rubber ball was cold, and the rubber had no elasticity. He should have held it under a hot-water faucet for thirty seconds.

  "I'll warm it up," he said, and he began to rub it between his palms.

  "Here." Eva reached under her sweatshirt, hunched her shoulders and brought out a squash ball. She flung it to the floor, and it bounced to her waist. "Let's use mine."

  Burnham gazed at her dumbly.

  "A bra," she said with a little laugh, "is a coat of many colors."

  Burnham wanted to grab the ball from her, to feel it, examine it, smell it. She had kept it warm in her bra, in the fold of her breast.

  I can't play squash, Burnham concluded. This woman is going to drive me mad.

  Stop it! Do what Milan Kundera says: Separate your sexuality from your self. Compartmentalize the elements of your humanity. It may be possible to regard a sexual partner as an athletic opponent, but it is impossible to regard an athletic opponent as a sex object. See yourself in segments.

  What?!

  He wasn't going to go mad. He had gone mad.

  Eva hit the ball at the front wall.

  Surprised, unready, Burnham flailed at the ball and missed it. It dribbled into the back comer. He picked it up and squeezed it, not knowing what to expect. It felt like a warm rubber ball. Nothing breasty about it.

  He hit the ball at the front wall. She returned it. He returned it. She returned it. He returned it. She returned it. He hit it harder. She walloped it. He retrieved it off the back wall and belted it cross-court. She took a step, dropped her racket head and whipped off a backhand that fired the ball on a sharp angle to the front wall, whence it caromed to the side wall, dropped to the floor . . . and died.

  Burnham was in trouble. She was strong, quick, sure-handed and experienced. She had good ball sense.

  By the end of the brief warm-up, Burnham knew that his only chance for victory lay in surprise, in constantly changing the game on her, breaking her rhythm, keeping her from setting up for the smooth strokes that she hit better than he. He resolved to imagine that she was the hirsute Treasury drone he had played the day before. He would let her get into a point, and then he would dink her to death.

  They played for the right to serve. Eva won. Burnham stood in the receiver's box, his eyes focused on the front wall, waiting to see the black missile streak toward him. But nothing happened. He glanced to his left.

  She was removing her sweat suit.

  "No fair," he said before he could stop himself.

  "What do you mean?"

  She wore a white Bennington T-shirt through which her bra was plainly visible, and white runner's shorts with high swoops over each hip that did not cover all the firm flesh at the bottom of her bottom and that revealed the sharp outline of her miniature underpants. Her calves were turned as perfectly as if on a lathe, her thighs taut and lined with muscle fibers. Her tan continued well up under her shorts. Her chest was ample, her arms highlighted by hillocks of tricep.

  Everything about her seemed to have been made to strict specifications.

  "Be still, my beating heart." He blushed.

  "Don't worry, Mr. Burnham," she said nicely. "I'll get your heart working."

  Ah, but she's slick, Burnham thought. First she exposes an expanse of shiny thigh. Then she feigns innocence of its seismic effect on me and maintains a fagade of formality by calling me "Mr. Burnham." Then she assumes the posture of an authority figure, a trainer.

  "Your serve. Miss Pym."

  She lofted the ball high, aiming to have it caress the side wall and drop softly, without a bounce, at Burnham's feet. But he jumped the ball on the fly and swatted it smartly to the front wall, low, just above the tin. She lurched forward but could not reach it before it bounced twice.

  "Good shot," she said.

  He served, and stepped into the center of the court, onto the "T."

  Her return was a good one. It dropped like a dying duck an inch from the side wall. If Burnham swung at it, he would smash his racket head against the wail. He took a step back, hoping to catch the ball on its bounce off the floor, but the ball was spinning crazily, and it jumped off the floor directly at his face, so he took another step back—and crashed into Eva.

  They hit back to back. Her weight was forward, on the balls of her feet. His was backward, on his heels. So when they collided, she tumbled forward and he fell on top of her. He spun as he fell, instinctively (like a cat) trying to position himself to break his fall with his hands. One of his hands hit the floor to the left of her left shoulder, one to the right of her right hip. His right knee came to rest between her thighs. His head, the heaviest of all his corporal equipment, plunged deep into her left armpit.

  His face was buried in the soft flesh of her underarm, in the swell of her pressed breast. His nose felt snug warmth and smelled soap and salt and a faint blend of spices.

  He didn't want to move. He wanted to lie there and pull the covers up and take a nap and . . .

  He felt a swelling in his shorts, taut pressure against the pocket of his jockstrap. Dear God! He was getting a hard-on. (Milan Kundera wept.) He fell it spring free of its pouch. It was probably poking out the leg of his shorts. He didn't dare stand up.

  "Are you okay?" Her voice came from inside her shirt.

  "Yes. You?"

  "Well ... I have this head in my armpit." She laughed.

  He snapped his head back. "Sorry. Sorry." He pulled his head free and, bit by bit, disengaged his body from hers, backing away on his hands and knees. Before she could turn around, he bent down and checked his shorts. There it was. Judas Priest! He swiveled on his knees, turning his back to her and shot his hand down the front of his shorts. He grabbed the offending member, and disregarding its painful protests, wrenched it back to a respectable stance. He pulled the tail of his shirt free of his shorts and let it hang out.

  "You play for keeps, Mr. Burnham," Eva said, smiling.

  He wanted to ask her to call him Timothy, but he thought not: He had forced quite enough intimacy on her for the time being. "I am sorry. Miss Pym."

  "No harm done." She found the ball in a comer. "That was a let, so it's still love-one."

  "No, no, I insist. Your point. I never got near the ball."

  "Let's play it over."

  Keep arguing, Burnham told himself. Stall for time, till the creature in your pants dies a natural death. "No, really. Your point. One-all."

  Did she know? Her eyes left his face and traveled quickly down his front. She smiled and shrugged and said, "Okay. Whatever you say."

  Burnham won the first game, 15-12. He was sure she had let him win, because she had stayed a point or two ahead all the way to 11-all and then, inexplicably, had made three unforced errors in succession. He double-faulted at 14-11, then she missed an absurd
ly easy shot to lose the game.

  He was positive she had let him win when she thrashed him in the second game, 15-7, never ahead by less than four points, drawing him back and forth across the court like a fly on a spinning rod.

  He didn't know why she had let him win the first game—a kindly gesture to his male ego, perhaps—but he was determined to take, not be given, the third game.

  As the loser of the previous game, he served first. He knew she expected a high, slow dribbler, so he boomed a line-drive serve that zipped behind her and took her by surprise.

  He swung at his second serve as if he were going to patty-cake the ball, but at the last instant snapped his wrist and fired a low bullet that struck her in the hip.

  Two-love.

  As she prepared to receive his third serve, she looked at him with a theatrical sneer and said, "1 see your rotten plan. Vietnam squash."

  "What?"

  "You plan to blow me away, turn me into a parking lot."

  "Beware, archfiend." Burnham chuckled. "You haven't seen the half of it."

  He hit a dribbler and moved out onto the "T." She returned it hard down the center, right at him. He stepped out of the ball's way and slashed it, floating a wicked slice that would die when it struck the front wall.

  But the ball flew higher than he had hoped, and she had time to dash forward and scoop it up.

  He could tell by the way she held her racket as she ran that she meant to dink the ball into the comer, so he charged after her.

  She wristed the ball softly into the comer. He reached around her and caught it an inch from the floor and flicked a little lob that soared over her head.

  She shot her arm up, but the ball was already behind her head. She staggered backward, swung wildly, stepped on Burnham's foot, slammed her rear end into his shoulder and collapsed on top of him.

  He lay on his back. Her ponytail was in his mouth. It tasted sweet and salty. His panting breath moved the little hairs around the base of her neck. He could see far into the pink cavern of her ear. She rolled off him and drove a heavy thigh into his crotch.

  Not again, he prayed. I can't hide it this time.

  She rolled onto her knees and elbows. He could see, down the front of her shirt, her breasts heaving as she breathed, and he yearned for one to escape its silky prison and flop free.

  "We have to stop meeting like this," she said. "You're a married man."

  "How do you know?"

  "Everybody's married." She smiled. "Aren't they?"

  "Are you?"

  "No. Who'd want a wife who can't get out of her own way?"

  They both laughed, and they helped each other up. Her arm, as Burnham touched it, was slick with sweat, and once again he felt the creature stirring in his shorts. Quickly, he removed his hand, but he could not bring himself to wipe his palm on his shirt. He kneaded his fingertips together.

  Now the creature struggled again to slip its bonds. He dropped his racket and, as he turned to fetch it, wiped his hand on his shirttail. "Now. Where were we?"

  "What do you say we flip for the third game?" she said. "I don't think either of us'11 survive it if we play it."

  "Okay. Rough or smooth." Burnham spun his racket.

  "Rough."

  Burnham examined the telltale string. It was smooth. "Rough it is," he said. "The day is yours."

  Why did he do that? he wondered, as Eva gathered up her sweat suit. Why did he want to play the gallant? Who was he trying to impress? Himself?

  In the corridor outside the court, Burnham looked at his watch. It was ten to one. He wanted to ask Eva to lunch, but he didn't dare. He should go back to the office, he told himself, in case the President called. But that wasn't it; he was lying. The fact was, he was married, and to ask a young woman to lunch constituted a kind of infidelity. No. Even that wasn't the whole truth. He could take a woman to lunch—Dyanna, say—without burdening himself with guilt, because Dyanna caused no turmoil in his loins. But to go to lunch with a young woman over whom he had already sprung not one but two impudent boners would be more than a lunch: It would be a date. Like Jimmy Carter, he would be committing adultery in his heart. He had so far been trying to maintain a conviction that the sorry state of his marriage was no one's fault. The misunderstandings would eventually sort themselves out. But if he added adultery to the mix—even mental adultery, spiritual self-abuse—the balance would tip against him; he would become the villain.

  He and Eva walked toward the locker rooms. A few steps before the point where they would have separated, Hal intercepted them.

  "How was it, children?" he asked cheerfully.

  "A scrimmage," Eva said. "I thought I might have to have his nose removed surgically from my armpit."

  "Lovely."

  "I was about to make a peace offering to Mr. Burnham." She glanced at Burnham with a half smile. "Like buying him lunch."

  Burnham stopped breathing. She had read his mind. Maybe she had read his shorts. What should he say? He should beg off. He could use work as an excuse. The White House was always a valid excuse for anything. No one understood what went on in the White House, but everyone assumed it was a cauldron of constant crises.

  But he didn't want to beg off. He wanted to have lunch with her. He said, "Oh."

  "A gentleman must accept," Hal said, reaching out to pat Burnham's shoulder.

  Burnham recoiled from Hal's touch, raising his hand and pretending to be gravely concerned with the time of day. "I'd like to . . ."he said, leaving an implicit "but" hanging in the air.

  "The President won't miss you," Hal said.

  "All right," Burnham said. "Sure." He looked at Eva, whose smile made him uncomfortable. It wasn't a flirting smile, but it was knowing, as if her sensors had plucked the conflicting signals from his mind, appraised his temptations and determined how to exploit them. He felt that she knew more about him than she had any reason to know. And that, he reassured himself, was patently absurd.

  "I'll see you back here in . . . ten minutes?" Eva said.

  "Ten minutes."

  In the shower, Burnham did battle with guilt, and, to his surprise, won an easy victory. His mind was finely tuned to self-interest, and it concluded that infidelity was defined by intent. If he were to be mugged in an alley and raped by the Rockettes, no infidelity would exist. Just so, he had decided not to ask her to lunch. His intentions were pure; he could not be responsible for hers. He suspected that arguments could be made against his conclusion, but he chose not to entertain them. For the time being, he was secure.

  The only uncontrollable element hung in a froth of soap suds between his legs. "You, sir," he said sternly to his quiescent penis, "are well advised not to betray me again."

  When they were outside the Y, Eva said, "Where do you want to go?"

  "Anywhere. As long as it has a menu."

  "A menu?"

  "I have to order myself. I can't take the blue-plate special."

  "Why not?"

  "I have a bunch of food allergies. It's no big thing, but I have to be careful."

  Eva thought for a moment. "I know a place. We can custom-order anything you want."

  She led him up toward 19th Street. "What are you allergic to?"

  "Everything known to man, and then some. Tomatoes, egg whites, beef, com, cane sugar, milk, wheat, yeast."

  "You can't eat any of that?"

  "I can eat them, but only every other day and in low doses. If I make a mistake and have something two or three meals in a row, 1 get zapped. It's easy to make a mistake. Com, for instance, is in damn near everything—diet colas^ jams, jellies, ice cream and so on. So's cane sugar."

  "What happens to you?"

  "Rashes, hives, bleeding gums, dandruff, stomach pains, headaches, depression. The whole ball of wax. I never know till it happens. I went to a dinner party one night, and there were beet shavings in the salad, and I didn't know it till I fainted at the table." Burnham grimaced at the memory. "Nice."

  "Really!"

>   At 19th Street they turned north. The street was crowded, and Burnham was nervous. This was his neighborhood. He probably knew fifty people who worked in the buildings within three blocks of the White House. Suppose one of them saw him. Suppose Sarah saw him! No. She was in Virginia. But maybe she had a dentist appointment downtown. Suppose he bumped into Warner Cobb. Okay, suppose he did. If Cobb had the bad taste to bring it up, he'd tell the truth: He played squash and then went to lunch with his opponent. What was wrong with that? Nothing. Only people with salacious, suspicious minds would rush to judgment. People like himself.

  He smiled at his own stupidity and, to free his head from the fearful topic, said, "If you're a nutritionist, you probably know all about this stuff."

  "Not all," Eva said quickly. "Not by any means. I see kids who are allergic to peanuts and ice cream. I know the basic stuff about B-6 and vitamin C. But that's about it."

  "What do you cater?"

  "Lunches, dinners, dances. Anything. I work for my father."

  "And you went to Bennington."

  She smiled. "And I went to Bennington. Have you always been in government?"

  "No. Hell, no. I fell into it. I was a journalist."

  "What does a journalist do in the White House? Work in the press office?"

  "No. He writes speeches. And proclamations. And messages to Congress. And letters to the President's aunt."

  "Must be interesting."

  "Sometimes. Rarely."

  Eva stopped. "Here we are."

  It was an Oriental food shop. In the window were teas and herbs, fruits, roots, nuts, powders, berries and what appeared to Burnham to be dried pieces of animals.

  "It's not Chinese or Japanese," Burnham said. "I don't recognize the writing."

  "It's Vietnamese."

  "I don't speak Vietnamese. How'm I supposed to order?"

  Eva put both her hands on his upper arm. Through the light fabric of his summer suit, Burnham felt her fingertips nestle in his armpit. Her touch was soft and warm and (now he was projecting) full of promise.

  "Trust me," she said.

  Burnham looked down into her eyes. On this bright day, they were the faded blue of a tropical dawn. He said, "I do."