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—
Thirty minutes later, she had finished all of the filet mignon, eaten most of one ear of corn, perhaps a quarter of the baked potato, and all of her second Jack Daniel’s double on the rocks.
“And now if you would be so kind, I think my knight in shining armor should escort me to my room.”
“Would you like some dessert?” he asked.
“I would love some dessert, but I think it would be ill-advised.”
—
In the elevator, she took his arm, and continued to hold it as he led her down the corridor to the door of the Goethe Suite.
She couldn’t find the key.
“I must have left it,” she said. “But we can get in through your room, can’t we?”
“If you’ll be all right here, I’ll go around and let you in.”
“Whatever,” she said.
He went to 408a, and then into the Goethe Suite and opened the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She closed the door behind her.
“Good night, Elsa. Thank you for your company.”
She chuckled.
He started back for the door connecting 408a and the Goethe Suite. She followed him.
“Jimmy,” she said, catching up with him as he started to pull open the door, “do you want to know what I was thinking at dinner and just now in the corridor?”
“That American corn on the cob is better than the Viennese variety?”
“That when this Colonel Mattingly shows up to take me wherever he’s going to take me, we’ll never see one another again.”
“I guess that’s so. It’s a pity.”
“I was also thinking that I haven’t been with a man since the night before I put Karl on the train that took him to the Eastern Front.”
Where the hell is this going?
“I never wanted to be with another man,” Elsa said.
“I understand.”
“Until now,” she said, and moved closer to him.
He was frozen.
“Don’t I appeal to you? I’m too old?”
“I don’t want to take—”
