“You’ve gone out to dinner twice since we arrived here, and you’re going out again tonight, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Amanda added, “I have the impression it’s been with the same fellow each night.”
Mandy was sitting at the machine next to Pancho, doing pectoral crunches, her arms outstretched with her hands gripping the ends of two metal bars. Then she brought her hands together in front of her, pulling the weighted “wings” and thereby strengthening her chest muscles.
The rich get richer, Pancho thought.
“So?” Amanda insisted. “Who’s your fellow?”
“It’s strictly business,” Pancho said.
“Really? And what business would that be, dear?”
Pancho suppressed a sudden urge to sock Mandy in her smirking face.
“Listen,” she said, with some heat, “you go out just about every damned night, don’t you? What’s the matter with me havin’ a date now and then?”
Mandy’s expression softened. “Nothing, Pancho, really. I’m only curious, that’s all. I think it’s fine for you to have an enjoyable social life.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re just wonderin’ who my date could be, ’cause you’ve got all the other men in Selene sewed up for yourself.”
“Pancho, that’s not true!”
“Like hell.”
“I can’t help it if men are attracted to me! I don’t do anything to encourage them.”
Pancho laughed out loud.
“Really, I don’t.”
“Mandy, all you have to do is breathe and the men swarm around you like flies on horseshit.”
Amanda’s cheeks flushed at Pancho’s deliberate crudity. But then she smiled knowingly. “Well, it is rather fun to flirt. If men want to take me out to dinner, why not? I just bat my eyes at them and let them tell me how terrific they are.”
“And then you bed down with ’em and everybody’s happy.”
Amanda flared with sudden anger. She started to reply, but stopped before saying a word. For several moments she stared down at her shoe-tops, then at last said in a lower voice, “Is that what you think?”
“It’s the truth, ain’t it?”
“Really, Pancho, I’m not a slut. I don’t sleep with them, you know.”
“You don’t?”
“Well… once in a while. A great while.”
Pancho looked at Amanda, really looked at her, and saw a very beautiful, very young woman trying to make her way in a world where a woman’s physical appearance still categorized her in men’s eyes. Jeez, she thought, Mandy prob’ly has to spend half her life keeping guys’ hands off her. So she just smiles at them and jollies ’em along and splits before it gets serious. It’s either that or carry a gun, I guess. Or a snake.
“Maybe we could ugly you up,” Pancho muttered.
Amanda smiled ruefully. “That’s what Mr. Randolph said.”
“Huh? Randolph?”
“He told me that if I want to go on the mission with you I’ll have to stop making myself so attractive to the men that go with us.”
Pancho nodded. “We’ve gotta find you some big, bulky sweatshirts. Or maybe keep you in a spacesuit the whole damn trip.”
The two women laughed together. But after a few moments, Amanda asked again, “So tell me, Pancho, who’s your boyfriend?”
Exasperated, Pancho snapped, “You want to meet him? Come on along tonight.”
“Really? Do you mean it?”
“Sure, why not?” Pancho said. “I bet he’d like to meet you.”
Pancho knew that Humphries would go ballistic over Mandy. Good. The man had been pressuring her to find out more about what Dan Randolph was up to. Humphries had been getting downright nasty about it.
Humphries had snarled at her when they’d had dinner, Pancho’s first night back at Selene. The man had seemed cordial enough when he’d ushered her into that big, formal dining room in the house down at Selene’s lowest level. But once he had started asking Pancho what information she had for him, and she had been forced to reply that she had little to report, his mood swiftly changed.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to tell me?” Humphries had snarled.
With a helpless shrug, Pancho had answered, “He’s had us cooped up in La Guaira, studyin’ the fusion system.”
“I’m paying you a small fortune and I’m not getting a damned bit of information from you! Nothing! A big, fat zero!”