“You’re all surprises, you know that? I never figured you for a music lover.”

“I’m not. I stayed for five minutes and then felt an irresistible urge to come here and search for you.”

“Hmm. So what does that make me? A flower maiden? Klingsor’s slave—what’s her name? The one in Parsifal?”

“I haven’t a clue.” I shrugged. “Like I said, I only stayed five minutes.”

Noreen put her arms around my neck. “I hope you brought Parsifal’s holy spear with you, Gunther, because I don’t happen to have one here.” She backed me across the room to the bed. “At least not yet, I don’t.”

“You think I should stay with you tonight?”

“In my humble opinion, yes.” She shrugged off the peignoir and let it fall onto the thick carpet with a whisper of chiffon.

I said, “You never held a humble opinion in your life,” and kissed her. This time she allowed my hands to roam the contours of her body as if they belonged to an impatient masseur. Mostly they stayed on her bottom, my fingers gathering chiffon until I could pull her into my groin. My right hand seemed to be making a miraculous recovery.

“So it’s true,” she said. “Adlon room service is the best in Europe.”

“The key to running a good hotel,” I said, cupping one of her breasts in my hand, “is to eliminate boredom. Nearly all of our problems are caused by the innocent curiosity of our guests.”

“I don’t think I’ve been accused of that,” she said. “Innocence. Not in a long time.” She shook her head. “I’m not the innocent type, Gunther.”

I grinned.

“I guess you don’t believe me,” she said, pulling a length of hair through her mouth. “Because I’m still wearing clothes.”

She pushed me down to sit on the edge of the bed and then stepped back in order to make a performance out of taking off her nightgown. Nude, she was worth a private room in Pompeii, and as far as performances go, it had Parsifal beat by several lewd acts. Looking at Noreen, you wondered why anyone ever bothered to draw or paint anything else but a woman’s naked body. Cubes might have done it for Braque, but I liked curves, and Noreen’s were good enough to satisfy Apollonius of Perga and probably Kepler, too. She drew my head against her belly and, pulling my hair, like the coat on a favorite dog, she teased me with the absence of all that made me a man.

“Why don’t you touch me?” she said softly. “I want you to touch me. Right now.”

She came and sat on my augmented lap and patiently permitted my impudent curiosities with eyes that were closed to anything else but her own pleasure. With nostrils flared, she breathed deeply, like a yogi concentrating her breath.