“Describe him.”
Frick did, to the best of his ability. As he had been talking, he had been looking at her. He had the strange feeling he could not bring her face into the proper focus. When he looked at the flat planes of her cheeks, he could not see the rest of her face. When he looked at her eyes, dark and gray-blue, the rest of her seemed blotted out somehow. Feature by feature, from the lean little nose to long firm heavy lips, to the small round imperative chin, everything seemed just right, except he could not see it all at once, as a face.
As he re-examined the rest of her, he had the feeling she’d acquired more curves and more ripeness since she’d walked in. He thought it strange that there seemed to be just exactly enough of everything. And everything had begun to look curiously precious, as if this woman had been fashioned with more than ordinary care. Suddenly he saw all of her at once, saw her face as a face, an entity, and saw that she was so lovely, he felt as if his heart had been slit and drained and hung empty in his chest. His hands began to sweat. To restore perspective, he began to examine her bare shoulders again and discovered that he could see no ugliness of bone, only a tenderness of hollows which demanded the gratitude of many kissings.
And it’s all for sale, he thought. It was an incredible thought, one that threatened to blow a ragged hole in his brain tissue.
“That’s all you can tell me about him?”
“That’s all I know. Cory... uh... how did you... uh...”
She gave him a cold sweet smile. “How did a girl like me get into a life like this? Just lucky, I guess. Let’s not waste time with that sort of nonsense, Mr. Frick. We have to come up with a plausible way for me to be thrown in contact with Floyd Hubbard, some way that won’t make him suspicious. Any suggestions?”
“I haven’t been able to come up with one. I mean we could say you’re working for me, but it would look funny, I think.”
“It would look implausible. I have one contact I could use that might work out. And it’s actually a kind of work I tried to make a living at, approximately ten thousand years ago.”
“Huh?”
“A friend of mine publishes a regional magazine, Mr. Frick. I even sold him some junk articles a long time ago.” She looked at a tiny gold watch. “It’s too late to phone him now. Conventions are a big local industry. I know I could sell him on the idea of my doing an article on one particular company at one particular convention. What’s your company?”
“AGM. American General Machine.”
“If I go ahead with it, my friend can clear me with the hotel PR man, and then anyone who happens to check will find out it is all true, true, true.”
“So how come you pick this convention and pick us?”
“This convention fits into my busy schedule, let us say, Mr. Frick, and picking AGM was just the result of closing my eyes and sticking a pin in a list. The winners never question their luck, Mr. Frick. The losers are the ones who say they’ve been jobbed.”
“You know,” he said, “I like it. I really like it.”
“Good.”
“Just... just how will you work it with Hubbard, I mean if you decide you can handle it okay?”
He saw that sweet icy smile again. “Things run to pattern,” she said flatly. “We will become terribly attracted to each other, and get around to admitting it, but we’ll agree to fight it. Then I shall tearfully permit myself to be seduced, and it will be such a compelling and glorious experience that we won’t be able to stop. We will agree that this will be our little stolen time of magical love, and when it is over, we will go our separate ways. But then, you understand, because I am so much in love I can’t stand the thought of the heartbreak ahead, I will get a little drunk, and make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene in front of all the people he most wants not to know about his sneaky little romance. Will that do it?”
“Dear God,” Frick said, awed and humble. “That would sure do it.”
“It’s a scene I’ve played before. And the first two times I played it, I thought I meant it.”
“One thing. Can anybody show up who’d... spoil the act?”
“I’m not notorious, Mr. Frick. I haven’t taken on regiments. I’m not on a police blotter anywhere for anything. I have the quaint idea I resemble a lady.”
“I only meant...”
“I’d say the odds are distinctly against it, certainly at the Sultana.”
“Good.”
“And if there was one of those little coincidences, I’m sure I could handle it very quietly.”
“I’m sure you could.”
“I suppose the most reasonable time and place is in the suite you mentioned, in another... fifteen minutes? That’s when you’ll all be gathered. Say! Suppose the boss man, whoever he is, doesn’t like the idea?”
“The boss man,” Frick said with a barracuda grin, “is Mulaney.”
“You can tip him off, then. I’ll be playing it to the others as well as Floyd Hubbard, so even if Hubbard isn’t there, tell your Mr. Mulaney to be... reasonably skeptical.”
“Sure, Cory. I’ll fix it up.”
“I have the suite right? Eight sixty? I guess I’m dressed all right for that sort of thing. You could probably fit me into the dinner arrangements... if I decide I can help you.”
“No trouble at all.”
Miss Cory Barlund stood up, slung the oversized bag over her arm and began working her gloves back on. “I’ll kill some time downstairs, and get to the suite about six thirty, if that sounds all right, Mr. Frick.”
“It sounds fine. Just fine, only...”
“Only what?”
His lips felt slightly numb, and he knew it wasn’t the drink. “What I mean to say, Cory honey, we’ve set up a sort of little business arrangement here and I don’t have to get up there right on the dot, and I was thinking maybe we could... sort of seal the bargain...” She devoted her entire attention to putting her gloves back on. He swallowed and said, “I... I could sweeten the pot a little.”
She smiled at him, but something in her smile warned him to stay just where he was. “Mister Frick, let me set an imaginary scene for you. You walk into a good restaurant. You see me eating alone at a table. You’ve never seen me before in your life. Now how would you judge your chances of coming over, introducing yourself, and even being permitted to sit at my table and watch me eat?”
“Maybe not so good, but that would be because I wouldn’t know...”
“What I am? You know what I am. At least you think you do.” Her smile became more intense. “Let’s make our relationship clear. At a rate of a hundred dollars a second, Mr. Frick, I wouldn’t let an insect like you kiss the back of my hand.”
He sprang to his feet and in a strangled tone said, “Listen, you! Listen to me!”
“Careful!”
“No high class whore is going to...”
The envelope of money appeared with the abruptness of magic, was slapped solidly across his mouth and fell to the floor at his feet. He looked stupidly down at it and then at Cory Barlund walking briskly toward the door.
“Hey!” he said. “Hey, wait!”
She had the door partially open before she stopped. She stood still for a moment, then slammed the door violently and turned and faced him.
“It seems to mean something to Alma,” she said quietly. “And I seem to owe her more than a little. And your terminology is... rude but accurate. I’m a pretentious bitch, Frick. I’d like your apology.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Pick up the money and bring it to me.”
She took it from him and put it in her purse again. “Try me again in ten years,” she said. “By then I may have lost the freedom of choice. That’s supposed to be the standard pattern, isn’t it?”