to get to know her better, but mainly I'm just curious."
    "Do you think it could ever happen again?" Maggie asked wistfully.
    "Do I think that what could ever happen again?"
    "Us. You and me. The couple most likely to succeed. Isn't that what they said in the 
yearbook?"
    "Maggie . . . I'm a young man. I have my whole life ahead of me."
    "If you think that thirty-two's young, you ought to remember that it's only eight 
years away from forty."
    He swallowed whiskey. "Okay, call 'me in eight years' time. But meanwhile, will you 
just do this one favor for me?"
    "What do you want to know?"
    "I want to know the Semple telephone number. I also want to know if Lorie ever goes 
out, and if she does, where she goes and how she spends her time. I would particularly 
like some photographs of the Semple estate, and some background on Jean Semple's death. 
Oh, and see if you can dig up anything on Mrs. Semple, Lorie's mother. It seems that 
she's quite a dragon in her own quiet way."
    Maggie finished jotting down what he wanted. "How Boon do you need this, as if I 
didn't know?"
    "How about tomorrow?"
    "Tomorrow's Sunday."
    "That's all right-it won't interfere with your regular work. I'll be 'round at 
Walter's, office most of the morning. Why don't you come by with, the stuff, and I'll 
take you to lunch."
    "That a promise?"
    "God's honor. You think I'd tell you lies on the Sabbath?"
    "No more than usual. By the way, what are you eating?"
    "Nothing. What do you mean?"
    "You sound like you're eating something," she said.
    He touched his sensitive tongue. "Oh, that. No, I'm not eating anything. I just have 
this troublesome mouth, ulcer, that's all."
    "Okay, Gene. See you tomorrow. Don't forget, now. Lunch."
    "Bye, bye, my darling Maggie."
    He laid down the phone. He knew it was Insensitive to ask Maggie to look up Lorie 
Semple's background, and he felt more than a little guilty about it, but she was the only 
person he knew that could do it thoroughly, discreetly, and fast. If he asked Mark 
Wellman to do it, or any of the other male members of his political staff, he knew that 
the story of the bitten tongue and the lost shoe would be buzzing around Washington in 
fifteen minutes flat. As it was, his name was probably already being romantically linked 
with Lorie's, and that was going to make his investigations less than, easy.
    He tried to decide if he wanted another drink. He was beginning to feel tired and his 
body was beginning to ache, and in the end he wearily undressed and took a long shower, 
standing under the gushing water and thinking about Lorie Semple. In his mind, he ran 
through the whole evening again, from the moment when he stepped up to her with his hand 
held out, to the disturbing feel of her breast through the thin, material of her dress.
    He soaped himself, and in soaping himself, he suddenly realized just how much Lorie 
Semple turned him on.
    They went to a little french place not far from Walter Farlowe's office, sat behind 
the green glass of a bay window, and ordered steak and eggs. The place was a favorite 
with political staff who were working on Sundays, and it was already crowded when they 
arrived. An experienced observer could have divided the Re-publicans from the Democrats 
at a glance, and seen that while the donkeys tended to sit around the sweet trolley at 
the back of the room, the elephants gravitated to the windows.
    Maggie was looking her usual fresh and wholesome self. She was a petite and pretty 
brunette, with a smatter of freckles across her uptilted nose and wide brown, eyes. She 
always reminded Gene of the girls who used to greet homecoming doughboys on the covers of 
the Saturday Evening Post. Maybe that's why he hadn't married her years ago. They had 
been childhood sweethearts back in Jacksonville, and at the age of seventeen they had 
become lovers and stayed entangled until they were twenty-one.
    Then Gene's political ambitions had called him, and Maggie had gone away to college, 
and somehow the most likely love affair faltered and dwindled, and they both went their 
own ways. Gene had fallen in love with a wealthy married woman almost twice his age and 
had been emotionally turned inside-out, while Maggie fell for a super-jock from Yale and 
had been through all the traumas of unwanted pregnancy and abortion.
    They were back together again now because they were friends, and because the whole 
Democratic theme for the new administration had been Southern togetherness, Gene tore 
bread, and chewed it in large pieces.
    "Did you manage to get it?" he asked her.
    She grinned. "You'll get fat, you know, eating as much bread as that!"
    "Nobody could get fat on what I eat. Do you know what I had last night? One crab 
pastry and two Jack Daniels. I was so hungry in Walter's meeting this morning that my 
guts were rumbling."
    Maggie picked her tapestry bag off the floor and probed inside it. She brought out 
her shorthand notebook, and opened it up.
    "I got most of it," she said, "with the single exception of Lorie Semple's telephone 
number. For that, we have to wait until the phone company reference office opens on 
Monday morning."
    Gene coughed. "I'm an important politician, and I have to wait till Monday morning? 
Did Jack Kennedy ever have to wait till Monday morning? Did LBJ?"
    "Oh, I expect so," said Maggie. "The point was, I wanted to do this quietly and not 
cause a ruckus. I've already had a call from Senator Hasbaum's secretary this morning, 
asking how you made out with the gorgeous Ms. Semple, and if I were you I'd keep this 
particular romance out of the papers."
    "Romance? Who said anything about romance? If you call a sprained ankle and a bitten 
tongue romance ..."
    Maggie blinked at him. "I thought you said it was an ulcer."
    Gene shrugged, embarrassed. "Well, it's a similar kind of feeling. Ulcer, bite. Hard 
to tell the difference."
    Maggie flipped over a few pages in her book. "The Semple house is quite interesting. 
It stands in forty acres of its own ground in Merriam. Most of the grounds are scrub and 
woods and I've been promised an aerial photograph. The house is a fifteen-bedroom 
ante-bellum mansion originally built by a Virginia tobacco grower. It was owned by 
various planters and politicians until it fell into disuse in 1911. It was empty until 
the Semples bought it in 1973, when Jean Semple was appointed to the staff of the French 
diplomatic staff in Washington, and they've lived there ever since."
    Their steak and eggs arrived, and Gene lavished black pepper onto his plate while 
Maggie continued to read from her book.
    "Jean Semple is-or was, rather-a very educated and wealthy man. He was born in 1919, 
in Sassenage, in Isere, of rich parents, and it looks like his family always expected him 
to make it in the diplomatic service. He went to Egypt in 1951 as a junior diplomat, and 
that's where he met his wife, Leila. There is hardly any information on her, except that