We left Dennithy clinking quarters, trying to determine how he might figure into a possible scandal. In the elevator to the basement garage I commented acidly, "You must have known this was inevitable, of course?"
"To the contrary," she parried, "I had a notion that a genuine M.P. sleuth would be ninety-two years old and wear a white coat with a stethoscope in his side pocket. You seem to have youth and a rather charming virility, Doctor."
"Cut the flattery," I said. "Let's find your car."
The address was over in New Brooklyn. She slipped the light blue sedan into the proper cross-town tunnel entrance, adjusted the automatics and turned upon me suddenly. The dim reflection of the headlights from the dull-painted walls of the one-way tunnel gave her face a ghostly loveliness. I had just become sharply aware of this phenomenon, when she brushed a light, experimental kiss across my lips.
Volume II, of Dr. Bankawaya's "Twenty-First Century Emotional Reactions to the Love Stimulus" notwithstanding, my socially-adjusted, medically-trained and professionally-restrained instincts played a rotten trick on me. Instead of staring at her with a cool eye and calming her with a proper, chilling remark, I responded like a frog's leg to an electric shock.
My chin jerked out to follow the sweetest sensation I could remember. It didn't have far to go. She had retreated only three inches.
The tunnel curved right there, and the car lurched. I made a bad connection with only half her mouth, but a slight correction on her part squared us off to what is outrageously described in the texts as a basic, or primary, wooing gesture.
After the first, delirious second I knew it was a frame. After the second moment, I didn't care. But it wasn't until several minutes had elapsed that Doctor Calicoo's cool resolve collapsed, and I learned what a kiss could really mean from a woman who meant it, herself.
She tore out of my arms with a little cry. "Look out!" Then I became aware that the warning light had been flashing unnoticed. We were coming to the tunnel's exit where manual vehicle control became necessary. With trembling hands she gripped the controls until her knuckles were white knobs.