"Be Cindy's guest," said Bagatti. "Everybody else is."
This guy really needs to get beat up someday, Don thought. But not by me. Let it be some drunk who'll get six months for assault, suspended. If I once started beating on somebody, I don't think I could stop till I earned a solid manslaughter charge.
In his pocket address book, Don looked up the number of Mick Steuben at Helping Hand Industries. As he expected, Mick was already at his desk.
"Got a houseful for you, Mick."
"That you, Mr. Lark?"
"Who else?"
"How many rats living in the couch?"
"Five couches. Place used to be an apartment building."
"Oh, we moving up in the world."
"No rats, or at least if there are any they're real quiet and they don't shit."
"Man, I wish I'd married into that family."
"I'm closing on the house this morning so it won't be mine to donate till after noon."
"I'll get a crew together."
Helping Hand didn't officially provide a moving service. Supposedly you had to have the furniture and appliances you were donating out at the curb. But Mick had figured out that when somebody was emptying a whole house, they weren't going to pay for a crew to haul everything out just so they could give the stuff away. So he had a well-known but unwritten arrangement with several contractors who worked with old houses, that he'd get some volunteers from his pickup crew to do the hauling, as long as the contractor gave his workers some pretty fair tips. That way the contractor saved money on the hauling, and Mick got a houseful of furniture and appliances that otherwise might have been sold or junked. This amounted to aggressive marketeering in the help-for-the-down-and-out trade. "Mick, you'd be dangerous if you ever got into a business with money and power."
"That's why God put me in this place," he said. "Seeya this afternoon, man."
Don pushed a button for another line and called the city to make sure they were really going to hook up the water today. He was still on hold when Cindy arrived. He hung up and stood to greet her.
She looked good, walking the length of the office, and her smile was dazzling. But he saw her glance at Bagatti, saw how her jaw tightened a little under the smile. He wondered how she'd play it—kiss him openly to drive Bagatti crazy, or greet him formally like any other client because it was none of Bagatti's business. There was no need to wonder. Cindy had class, and Bagatti was a bug. She greeted Don with a cool handshake. "Sorry I'm late," she said.
"I came pretty early," said Don, "but I hoped to exploit your free telephones."
"Putting together another deal in Taiwan?" she said. She opened the file drawer in her desk and took out a folder.
"You know how it is, trying to keep all the time zones straight," said Don. "But Mr. Bagatti here said that it was OK just to dial direct, the company would do anything for a customer."
"Haha," said Bagatti. "You only dialed seven digits."
"See you later, Ryan," said Cindy. "This way, Mr. Lark."
Outside the door, Don let himself laugh. "Never thought he could count to seven."
"He's a neanderthal, but he sells houses to a certain kind of clientele."
"When I got here he was sitting at somebody else's desk, using the computer."
"He's a snoop but we all know it, so nobody leaves anything confidential lying around. He thinks he's a real up-and-comer."
They were halfway to their cars. Don slipped his arm around her waist, feeling like a teenager daring to assert a relationship. And like a teenager, he got slapped down. He felt her twist away just a little.
"Sorry," he said, taking his arm back. What was wrong? Was she regretting yesterday's kiss? Or had she already noticed the nick on her car door?
"Let's take my car," she said.
That had been Don's intention, but now he wondered. "I can follow you, and that way you won't have to bring me all the way back here after the closing."
She had walked to her car door and was unlocking it. Don walked between their cars, positioned either to get into her passenger door or into his own driver's door. "Don," she said, "are you trying to avoid me?"
So what was he supposed to read into that look? If she hadn't just rejected his arm around her waist, he'd suppose she was looking at him with hurt and longing, that sort of dreamy-eyed look that he remembered very well from high school, the look that girls eventually realized they probably shouldn't use with guys unless they really meant something by it, because it had the power to make them hover but then they were pretty hard to get rid of. Come on, Cindy which is it? But instead of having it out with her over the roof of her Sable on the way to a closing, Don decided discretion was the better part of valor and got into her car.
Once inside with the doors closed, she was full of businesslike talk about the closing, how the lawyer was so nice to fit them in before the start of his normal business hours; Don refrained from giving his opinion of lawyers and how "nice" they were, beyond saying, "No matter what time he fit you in, he's still charging you, right?"
She laughed. "I guess you've got a point."
By now the car was out on Market Street, heading downtown. It was a four-lane with no shoulder, but to his surprise she pulled the car tight against the curb and ignored the car behind them that honked and swerved around them, curses coming from the open window. She was too busy leaning over and kissing him deeply and passionately. Then, without a word, she took her foot off the brake and they pulled back into the flow of traffic.
"Nice to see you, too," said Don.
"Sorry if it seemed like I was blowing you off back in the parking lot," she said. "I just can't stand the idea of Bagatti—you know."
"I imagine he'd never let you forget it."
"So if he was watching, what he saw was a client making a pass and the ice princess blowing him off. Sorry."
"Fine."
But was it fine? She could have explained herself right then. Bagatti couldn't have heard. Instead she waited, she let him fret in silence until she decided it was time to let him off the hook. And even then, the kiss was her doing. Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them.
Then again, what woman didn't want to decide that? Most of them simply waited until after the papers were signed before they took control of the schedule. Cindy was honest enough to get the reins in her hands right from the start.
"All I could think about all night was you," she was saying to him. "I told you I'm not that kind of girl, and that's the truth, but that doesn't mean there aren't times I wish I were that kind of girl."
It was hard to think how Cindy could have said anything better calculated to make a formerly-married-but-four-years-celibate man replace all conscious thought with pure adolescent horniness. "You shouldn't say things like that to a man about to see a lawyer."
"Oh, lawyers' offices aren't conducive?"
"Pure saltpeter."
She laughed. "Well, we need to keep our friendship on a loftier plane anyway," she said. "Since you're not that kind of boy and I'm not that kind of girl."
She knew exactly what she had done to him. And yet he couldn't quite believe that she was jerking him around. Maybe she was being completely open with him, saying exactly what she thought and not even caring about the consequences. How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?
Despite the warm-blooded prelude, the closing went quickly and smoothly. For the first time, Don realized that most of the time-consuming silliness with closings was caused by the bank. The whole thing was done before nine-thirty. The house was his. It should have felt good, and it did, but Don had no chance to relish it because all he was thinking about was Cindy.