“I think that would be the best way. I don’t want you to get the impression that I want to edit the trip in any sense. I don’t believe you’d let me do that anyway.”
We shook hands and Niki walked him to the door. I heard the low murmur of their voices in the hallway. They were both delightfully plausible. I wondered if they were congratulating each other on how well Gevan Dean had been handled. I wondered if they were setting a time and place for their next assignation. There was an undercurrent of closeness between them, of uniformity of viewpoint, as though, somehow, they were members of the same club, knew the grip and the password and the club songs. Maybe between them it was very simple. A big profitable company is a nice thing to pick up and walk off with.
I resented feeling as if I had been an audience of one at a special play put on by competent actors. I resented being steered. I resented liking the guy. I resented being able to look at Niki and still want her. I resented knowing I should leave here, too.
She came back and I heard his car going down the drive. “Do you like him, Gevan?”
“Very impressive.”
“And terribly nice. He’s let down his hair with me. He told me that he hates to hurt people, but he had learned that it has to be done to get a job done.”
“Protesting too much, wasn’t he?”
“Please don’t be nasty, Gevan. And when you go to the plant, please try to understand his position. You’ll need a special pass to get into C Building. From Colonel Dolson. And I’m positive that if you give the Colonel a chance he will speak very highly of Stanley.”
“What goes on in C Building?”
“Oh, it’s some kind of a secret contract. I don’t know what they’re making. I remember Ken saying they had to buy an awful lot of special equipment for that contract, and Colonel Dolson came the day the contract was signed, and a security officer, a Captain Corning, arrived the same week. I guess there’s a big military staff there now.”
“Niki, who recommended Mottling to Ken?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, Gevan.”
I frowned down at my drink. “I’d like to know.”
Her voice changed. “Let’s not talk about the plant and Mottling and all that.”
“Put some violins on the sound track, and we can talk about us.”
She sat beside me. She leaned far forward, the black hair spilling to one side. I saw the tiny dark V of soft hair at the nape of her neck, the shift of muscle under the creamy skin of her shoulder as she crooked her arm, resting her forehead on her forearm. She was close to me. I wanted to lay my hand against her smooth back, run my finger tips up to the nape of her neck, feel the warmth of her and the breathing. She was near me, warm, very alive — somehow more immediate than life, and more dramatic. The stillness had changed again. We were back in a soundless world. I saw her faint shudder.
“Tears?” I asked.
She gave an abrupt nod and did not speak. She did not seem real to me. She seemed more like something I used to dream. I put my hand on her shoulder. I felt the starting tremor of her, and that stillness in her as though she had stopped breathing. I remembered all those beach house nights, when I would be alone and think of Ken and her together, and torture myself by envisioning them in all the gaudy forms of love, all her animal torments.
I knew once again that all this breathing aliveness was mine to take. She had married Ken. This was their house. He lay in earth between bronze handles on padded satin. I took my hand away. She stood up in one unbroken movement, in one sleek flex of thighs, turning away from me to go to the mantel, her back to me. I put my empty glass on the coffee table. It made a decisive click in the silence of the room.
I stood up and she turned. Her mouth looked soft, but there was an expression on her face that seemed to hint of conspiracy — as though we had again come closer during this time of silence. I resented it.
“I’ll be running along.”
“But you’ll come back, Gevan.” It was half question and half statement of fact.
“If there’s anything to discuss, Niki.”
She smiled then. A woman-smile, full of conquest. It made me feel young, crass and inexperienced. The advantage had passed to her, and that was something I had not intended should happen.
I walked down the hallway. The maid brought me my hat. I drove down the curving driveway. I slowed and glanced back. She stood in the big window, watching me leave. There was an immobility about her, as though she planned to stand there for a very long time, as though the next time I came up the drive she would be standing in exactly that same place, waiting for me. I wondered if I would have the strength not to come back. Ken married her and was killed, and though it made no sense, I knew I had to hold her emotionally responsible for it, had to keep my awareness of that blame, or there was no power that would keep me from returning. She would wait there for me, and she had made it very clear.
I drove too fast. This was happening the wrong way. It should have happened the way she had told me it might, for them to drift apart and for her to come to me. That would have been simple. Make her pay for the lost years. Make her humiliation complete, and then build from there. But Ken had died and everything was confused. It could never be clear cut now. In death, he sat silently between us, as though I had reached around him to place my hand upon her.
Chapter 6
At nine o’clock I double-parked in front of the leather store. Joan Perrit was looking into the display window. I touched the horn ring and she turned and came quickly across the sidewalk, between two parked cars. I reached over and opened the door for her. She slid in quickly, smiling, pulled the door shut, and then held her hand out without hesitation. The street lights touched her face. She had grown into a woman. There was no formlessness in her face. It was cleanly structured, the bones delicate and good.
“It’s nice to see you, Joan.”
“I’m glad you came back, Mr. Dean.” Her voice was softer, pitched lower than I remembered. “I’m sorry about your brother. It was a terrible thing.” She had new poise and assurance.
I turned the corner slowly. “Is there some place we can go and talk, Joan?”
“Go out South Cleveland, Mr. Dean. There’s a little bar just over the city line that’s nice.”
It seemed odd to have her beside me. It was a relationship not possible when she had worked for me. I had planned a sort of jovial avuncular approach to ease the nervous intentness I expected. But she was relaxed, smartly dressed, decisive. I stopped for a red light, and she leaned forward and pushed in the dash lighter, opened her purse to find cigarettes. I looked at her and liked the sheen of the dark red hair.
“You better call me Gevan, Joan.” That sounded banal, and made me realize I was less at ease than she was.
“I guess I already do, subconsciously. Anyway, it doesn’t seem strange, Gevan. I’m Perry, mostly, to my friends. Joan or Joanie at home. I’m more used to Perry.”
“Perry, then. You understand, of course, that I wouldn’t have done this if you were Mottling’s secretary. But the switchboard gave me Granby’s office when I asked for you.”
“Isn’t that six of one and half a dozen of the other?”
“I guess so. I didn’t think of it that way. But you did agree to meet me.”
“I would have done that no matter who I was working for, Gevan.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m still your secretary at heart, I guess. The girl’s first big job, or something. After you left, I was sent back to the stenographic pool. Then when Mr. Granby’s girl left, he requested me. But — I think of you as part of the company, and I think of personal loyalty as being first to you, Gevan.” She laughed and it was a good sound. One of those warm laughs that fill the throat. “When I think of what you put up with before I learned the score!”