He already knew her. “Afternoon, Miss Scott,” he said, coming in.
She smiled at him, in a brisk impersonal way. “Hello, Roy. Sorry about the mix-up.”
“Oh, that’s okay, Miss Scott.”
I closed the door and returned to my seat. Roy didn’t sit down, nor did Katharine ask him to. Putting his attaché case on the table near hers, he opened it and withdrew a thin sheaf of papers. “This is the presentation on the Mall,” he said. “Mr. Willson said you wanted to go over it before copies were run off.”
“Oh, yes. Fine.”
For the next fifteen minutes or so, I sat there and watched Katharine play executive, while Roy stood attentively at her side, handing her papers, taking papers back, occasionally writing down on a memo pad instructions she would give him, such as, “Tell Henry to leave the people out of the drawing. This isn’t an automobile ad, it’s an architectural presentation.” And, “Tell Frank I just don’t think we can deal with those people. I’ve met them three times, and they’re simply not serious in terms of cost. All they really want to do is plant a few rhododendron and look the other way. If Frank wants to pursue it, that’s up to him, but he should certainly not tender any suggestions.” Each time, Roy nodded and wrote it all down in what seemed to be shorthand, and at the end he took the last papers back, put them with the memo pad into his attaché case, closed it, and said, “Thank you, Miss Scott.”
“Thank you, Roy.” Katharine got to her feet and stretched. “What time is your flight back?”
“Three-twenty.”
She looked at her watch. My own was still in the cab, but I estimated it was now a bit after two-thirty. I saw Katharine look thoughtful for a few seconds; then she glanced over at me with a rueful expression, and said to Roy, “Have a good flight.”
“Thanks, Miss Scott.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, getting to my feet, as he turned toward the door.
He nodded to me, with a noncommittal expression, and left. At no point had he shown the slightest curiosity about anything; not about me, or what Katharine was doing, or anything else.
“Well,” Katharine said, with a happy smile. “That’s a relief.”
Meaning she wouldn’t have to think about the office anymore. But I knew what the real relief was; she’d put off the decision yet again.
Looking over at me, she said, “On to Los Angeles?”
“Sure,” I said.
She frowned. “Something’s wrong.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. Something’s wrong.”
“We’re wasting time,” I said. “On to Los Angeles.” And I held the door open.
She went on frowning at me a moment longer, then shrugged and picked up her attaché case. “Have it your own way.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” I insisted. There was, of course; but I didn’t want to talk about it.
20
All airports make you drive in great circles to get anywhere. You can never just drive in to the airport and then turn around and drive back out again. You have to loop over and under and in and out and through and around, all on a network of roads architecturally based on the concept of the Christmas-present bow, following endless barely comprehensible signs. I had hardly begun this unreeling process when a cop stepped out in front of me and flagged me down. When I came to a stop, he trod over to my window and said, “Didn’t you see the sign back there?”
“I saw about six hundred signs back there. Which one did you have in mind?”
“The one that said no commercial traffic,” he told me. “The one that said taxis to the right. You can’t let off passengers up this way.”
“I don’t intend to,” I said.
He glanced at Katharine, who was once again in the back seat. “You picked a passenger up here?” Clearly, if I’d done so, it had been in a somehow illegal manner.
I said, “No, I didn’t pick her up here.”
“Brother,” he said, “you got to be doing one or the other, either bringing a passenger here or taking a passenger away from here.”
Katharine, leaning forward, said, “Tom? What’s the matter?”
“Just a misunderstanding.” To the cop, I said, “I’m not actually a cab, not the way you think I am.”
“You sure look like a cab.”
“Well, I am. But I’m a New York City cab.”
He beetled his brows at me, then got a little smug smirk on his face and said, “Oh, yeah? Myself, I happen to be from the planet Mars.”
“Really? Is it true those aren’t actually canals?”
“All right, smart guy, pull off on the grass.”
I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have noticed my license plate, would you?”
No, he wouldn’t have. Beginning to wonder just who was kidding who around here, he backed away, frowning massively at me through the windshield until he reached the front of the cab, when he transferred his frown to my license plate. His lips moved. He brooded at the plate. He looked at me some more, through the windshield. He came back to the window and said, “Okay, fella. And just what in holy hell are you doing here?”
“Passing through.”
“Then keep passing,” he said, with a jerking motion of his thumb. “And don’t let me see you here again.”
What is it that makes cops so insecure? “I won’t,” I assured him, and drove on.
“Tom?”
“It was just a mistake,” I said, not bothering to look in the mirror.
“Not that,” she said. “This may surprise you, since it isn’t even three o’clock, but what I was thinking of was lunch.”
“Oh, lunch. Right, lunch.” What with my hangover, and my larger-than-normal breakfast, and the rush to get to Kansas City on time, and the activities since, I’d completely forgotten about lunch, but now that she’d mentioned it I did notice a kind of vacant feeling around my middle. “I’ll stop as soon as I see a place,” I promised.
“Fine.”
There was a diner near the airport. I pointed to it, calling, “Look okay to you?”
Katharine said, “Will they give me food if I cry and beg and scream?”
“Okay,” I said, and pulled in there, and we took a table at a window overlooking the cab. I might almost have been in the Market Diner on Eleventh Avenue, except for the different brand of English being spoken: R’s were being pronounced all over the place, but on the other hand the G of ING was being left silent. Also, the waitress smiled when she took our order; chef salad and iced coffee for Katharine, the shrimp salad platter and iced tea for me. Then I sat looking at my cab until Katharine said, “I wish you’d tell me about it.”
I shook my head at her. “I really don’t have anything to tell. Just a bad mood, that’s all. Probably the hangover.”
“Something happened while we were in that conference room,” she insisted. “Everything was all right when we went in there, but all of a sudden at the end you were in a bad mood.”
Shrugging, I said, “It’s over now, or it’s going away. Does it matter?”
“Yes. I thought we were becoming friends. I thought I could talk with you.”
“You can,” I said irritably. “Listen, everybody has moods, right? So I had a mood, and now I don’t have it anymore.”
“What did I do wrong?” she asked me. “What upset you?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. How do I know what you did wrong; I’m no landscape architect.”
She frowned at me, thinking it over. The waitress brought our iced tea and coffee, and I busied myself with stirring. You put sugar in iced tea, it means a lot of stirring.
Katharine said, musingly, “It isn’t as simple as that, it isn’t just male envy about me having a good job. You’re not like that, or it would have shown up before.”