Lady, he thought, you got the wrong guy. She might actually kill him with such excitement, even if he were capable of it, what with his back and everything else. And would she be a good mother? The letter had nothing to do with being a mother, in fact. He put it into the no pile.
Martha opened the door to the conference room. She looked like what she was-a tired lawyer, overweight, overburdened, used to hearing her own voice.
"You met Towers?"
"I did."
"And?" she asked.
"Inspires confidence."
Martha sighed. "Don't do it, Charlie."
"Come on." He handed her the maybe folder. "Some of these are pretty impressive."
"What's this?" She opened the folder.
"I want you to contact these women and set up interviews, here, as soon as you can. Next few days if possible. The rest are not right. Please tell them they've been rejected."
Martha's eyebrows lifted. "Rejected."
"Yes. Write them a nice letter. Don't put my name on it, of course."
She glared at him. "You're serious."
"Yes. Also, did you set up my appointment at the fertility clinic?"
"For tomorrow morning," she answered. "If you stop now, I won't bill you for what we've done so far."
"Martha," Charlie said, "either help me to the best of your ability and shut up about it, or tell me to find someone else. You're pushing me and I don't like it." He pulled himself to his feet. "What's it going to be?" Martha's fleshy neck reddened as she stared at him, the room silent, an air-conditioning vent rattling, telephones softly trilling in other offices. "Martha?"
He waited for an answer, and when it didn't come, he showed himself out.
I don't want to go home, Charlie thought, carrying the Shanghai bowl as he got out of the cab. I don't want to go home, but I will. Kelly, a uniformed figure of sweaty obedience, held the taxi door.
"Just saw Mrs. Ravich," Kelly observed.
"How was she?"
"She had a lot of packages, considering this heat."
"She was doing her duty for the American economy."
"Sir?"
"If nobody buys unnecessary junk, we'll plunge into a depression."
He crabbed past the mahogany paneling into the elevator, and Lionel, just starting the night shift, blinked his slo-mo recognition, an ancient mystic in an elevator man's uniform, all vitality in his being concentrated between the elbow and fingertips of his spectral left hand, which incessantly fondled the brass throttle. Where Lionel's right hand hung down against his pants leg, the material was worn shiny from the incidental graze of his unkempt fingertips.
Charlie stepped out into the foyer of his apartment. "Good evening, Lionel."
"Evening, Mr. Ravich."
He opened the front door. "Ellie?" He pushed the bowl back behind the coats and boots in the hall closet. He'd surprise her later. "Ellie?" Jolly her up, he thought, make her feel good, even though never in a million years would he be buried alive in a retirement community where men dribbled cereal onto their three-hundred-dollar sweaters and farted disconsolately through the day. Napping in their golf carts. Not me, he told himself, not the man who yanked eight million after-tax dollars from a dead man's mouth. "I'm here!" he called. "Your first husband is back. He has absolutely nothing interesting to tell you-no announcement from afar, no volatile shift in stock prices, including his beloved Teknetrix, no bulletins of world events, no private revelations, no confessional outbursts." He listened. "Ellie?" Nothing. Silence-the great roar of marriage. "What did you buy that needed the efforts of our man Kelly?"
Ellie came out of the bathroom off the kitchen, turning out the light. She kissed him quickly. "You sound like you had a drink at the office."
Bit excited here, he thought. "I didn't but I wouldn't mind one."
"Gin and tonic?"
He followed her to the bar in the dining room. "What did you get?"
"Get?"
"Shopping. Packages. Supporting the American economy."
"Nothing."
"Kelly said you came in with a bunch of packages."