She stretched luxuriously, but he was too full of what had happened even to see the white grace of her body. "Did you like it, love? Would you like to have it forever?"
XIII
For nine days Chandler's status remained in limbo. He spent that day in a state of numb bemusement, remembering the men and women he had worn like garments, appalled and exhilarated. He did not see Rosalie again that day, she kept to her room and he locked out. He was still a lapdog, but a lapdog with a dream dangling before him. He went to sleep that night thinking that he was a dog who might become a god, and he had eight days left.
The next day Rosalie wheedled another hour of the coronet from Koitska. They explored the ice caves on Mount Rainier in the bodies of two sick, starving hermits and wandered arm in arm near the destroyed International Bridge at Niagara, breathing the spray of the unchanging Falls. He had seven days left.
They passed like a dream. He saw a great deal of the inner workings of the exec, more than before. He had privileges. He was up for membership in the club. Rosalie had proposed him. He talked with two Czechoslovakian ballet dancers in their persons, and a succession of heavily accented Russians and Poles and Japanese through the mouth of the beach boy who came to tend Rosalie's garden. He thought they liked him and was pleased that he penetrated where he had not been allowed before ... until he realized that these freedoms were in themselves a threat. They allowed him this contact so that they could look him over. If they rejected him they would have to kill him, because he had seen too much. But by then a week had passed, and another day, and though he did not know it he had only one day left. Rosalie did what she could to make the days of waiting easy for him.
"Embarrassing, isn't it? I went through it myself, love. Come have a drink."
"When will I know?" he demanded fretfully.
"Well." She hesitated. "I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you, love, under the circumstances—"
He knew what the circumstances were.