The Star of Istanbul by Robert Olen Butler

stupid men prefer virgins,” I said. “We’ve got a sense of history.”
    She was quiet for a moment, and then she asked, “Was your mother happy in love?”
    Selene was freely associating now herself. And she wasn’t hesitant to get personal. I didn’t like the associations squirming to be free in my own head at this question, but at least she made it easier for me to press the only issue I had to work with.
    â€œYou’d have to ask her,” I said. “I didn’t keep track.”
    I let that sit in her for a moment, and it did, quietly. Then I pressed on. “And your German,” I said. “Were you happy with him?”
    She wasn’t saying.
    I got to that question too quick. I backed up. “Who was he?”
    â€œA director.”
    â€œOf course,” I said.
    She fell silent once more. I waited. She wasn’t talking.
    â€œWhich one?” I asked.
    She moved abruptly and I couldn’t see how in the dark and I flinched. But her body was suddenly against me again, her head returned to the place on my shoulder where it had been before the talk began. Her hand returned to my heart.
    I’d been grasping at straws here. Trying to get her to talk about the Germans. Trying to figure out her connections to them. This seemed just a busted romance. But it was the only card I had to play.
    I’m not real smart about women. But I’m smart about reading people, being a pretty good reporter. So after making a certain scale-tipping number of mistakes with women, my reporter skills finally kicked in and taught me a few things. Women, especially ones who have reasons—like jazzing together—to think you’ve got a romantic future, deep down want to talk about their feelings. So for the first time ever while lying around naked with a female, I said, “You want to talk about it?”
    But this wasn’t your usual woman.
    She lifted her head slightly away from me and said, with an edge in her voice she could use for Lady Macbeth, “I’m a movie star. Movies don’t talk. We’re in the last reel of our little smut film, so just shut up now and hold me.”
    Which made me even more interested in her director. I did not believe she was completely at ease with her connection to the German secret service. If they had something on her to coerce her, it might have come from her former lover. I was still thinking about all this when she added, but in the softest of voices, the gentlest of voices, the most natural of voices, a voice beyond the range of her manifest talents as an actress: “Or go the hell away.”
    There was even the faintest hint of a concluding catch in her voice.
    As an agent of the American secret service, there was nothing more I could do now. As a man, I drew her closer and she gave me a kiss on the throat as soft and natural as these last words she’d spoken.
    And a knock came at the door.
    We both flinched upright.
    But she put her hand on my chest, telling me to stop, move no more, make no noise. She clearly wanted to ignore this, whatever it was.
    I figured it to be one of two things. A ship official rousing people for some emergency preparation. But there would be more commotion, if that were the case.
    The knock came again, a little louder.
    Or it could be Brauer.
    It was Brauer. His voice outside: “Miss Bourgani.”
    I felt Selene stiffen.
    The knock came again, though. Stupidly, it was more softly. He was second guessing the wisdom of disturbing her in the middle of the night. Which made him continue to try to disturb her, only more quietly.
    He even lowered his voice: “Miss Bourgani.” He was addressing her formally. I was—in spite of my certainty that there was nothing personal between them—relieved.
    He got even stupider. He said her name softly once more and simultaneously tried the latch on the door. Even though it would certainly be locked. And, of course, since it