“So how is everything with you two?”
“Really, Sarah, I’m not in the mood.”
“Never mind. I’ll ask Willie.”
Jake Grafton wandered aimlessly through the beach house looking at everything and seeing nothing. He was engaged in the most noxious task known to modern man — waiting on a telephone call. From time to time he flipped through his sectional charts, read his airport directory again, measured distances and calculated flying times. Occasionally he looked up from his task and watched a few minutes of convention coverage. Then he went back to wandering.
Callie and Mikhail Goncharov chatted from time to time, ate, and napped. Callie managed to read a few chapters in her current novel. Goncharov had nothing in Russian to read, so he, too, paced, but he did his pacing upstairs.
“He’s a kind, gentle human being,” Callie told her husband at one point.
“Who is?” he asked distractedly.
“Mikhail.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m trying to imagine how I would have managed to get from day to day if I had been in his place, trapped in a bureaucracy I loathed, one engaged in subversion, murder, framing innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, all to prop up a criminal regime. I think I would have just quit. Would have gotten a manual labor job to eat.”
Her husband gave her a long look, yet said nothing.
“On the other hand,” she mused, “quitting would have been a cop-out. If you don’t fight evil, you become evil.”
“That’s a platitude,” her husband murmured.
“Every deep human truth is a platitude,” his wife shot back. She was no shrinking violet, which Jake Grafton well knew.
“You would have done what he did,” Jake said. “If fate had put you in that place, you, too, would have written down the secrets, hoping that someday you could find a way to make the truth known. That choice took courage and commitment. Goncharov may be a kind, gentle man, but he’s got guts. So do you. That’s one reason I married you.”
He squeezed her hand and wandered out into the yard to look at the grass.
Ten o’clock came all too quickly. I left the van fifteen minutes early and walked completely around the hotel so that I would approach the main entrance from the side opposite the van. I had on my sports coat and tie.
Dorsey was fashionably late, arriving in the café at six after the hour. She saw me at a table in the corner and joined me.
She bussed me on the cheek and squeezed my hand before she sat down. “Thank you for coming.”
“You look ravishing this evening, Ms. O’Shea.”
Actually she looked like she was under a lot of stress. I had seen her in that condition before — chasing the porno tapes, and after she shot the intruder in her house — and knew the signs.
The waitress came, and Dorsey ordered a salad, as I had predicted. I ordered a sandwich and a glass of wine. Dorsey also thought a glass of wine would be good.
“Do you think I look old?” she asked.
Of course I denied it. She was in her early thirties and looked maybe twenty-five.
“I feel as if life is passing me by,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I am wasting my life.”
This was a new Dorsey, introspective. I’ve always believed that the idle rich should avoid introspection. “What do you want out of life?” I asked politely, trying to guess where this gambit was going.
“I want to be happy,” she said flatly. “I want a man who loves me, and I want kids.”
This was the first I’d heard about kids. That comment jarred me. Dorsey wasn’t my idea of the maternal type.
“What is happiness?” I offered, just to keep her talking.
“I’m not sure,” she mused. She began playing with that idea and was still chattering when our drinks came. The wine was cool and delicious. As I sipped it and listened to Dorsey the thought occurred to me that maybe I should have ordered something stronger. I was beginning to suspect that Dorsey was on her way to a destination I wasn’t going to like.
And by God, damn if she didn’t go there!
“Tommy, you’re the only man I ever met who didn’t want something from me.”
“I don’t do platonic relationships,” I muttered.
“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about money. Every single man and half the married men who meet me have dollar signs in their eyes. I’ve heard every investment opportunity and charitable scheme you can imagine. I hear a new one almost every day.”
“You need to find a better class of people to hang with.”
“I need a man who wants me, not my checkbook.”
“They’re out there. You’ll meet one.”
“Why not the two of us, Tommy? You and me. Is that so crazy?”
So there it was. I was being proposed to. And I had no idea how to handle it.
The waitress arrived with our food, which gave me a few seconds to think. When she disappeared I sat watching Dorsey toy with a little tomato with her fork. Finally she put the fork down.
“Dorsey, I don’t think you’re in love with me.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I am. But I think we could love each other. I like you so much… Oh, Tommy, can’t you see us together? We could travel all we wanted, see the world, enjoy the people and places and find a perfect spot for us. And we could have children. Two, I think, a boy and a girl. You and I living life together could be so perfect.”
Wandering aimlessly through life on an eternal vacation was not my idea of how I wanted to spend my days. “I’m not going through life with a woman paying the bills,” I said as gently as I could.
“We could do a prenuptial agreement,” she said earnestly. “I’ll give you half of everything I have when we’re married. Then you can pay the bills.”
I took a healthy gulp of wine. I was right — I should have ordered whiskey.
“If we were married we couldn’t have any secrets from each other,” I stated, trying to turn this ship to a different heading.
“That’s true.” She was watching me like a hawk, her salad and wine untouched.
I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed it and washed it down with wine while I waited in vain for her to take another step on the subject of secrets. She wasn’t going to, I concluded.
“Dorsey, I’m flattered. I have never been proposed to before. I’ve never had a woman care that much for me. I don’t know what to say. I care very much for you and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Yet I doubt that we would work as a couple. We tried dating regularly once, and that didn’t work so well. You are you and I’m me, and that’s sort of an unchangeable fact. Maybe we should accept that. Make love when it suits us, go to dinner when we can fit it in, now and then a play or party, and each of us go on with our lives.”
Her eyes were glued on me. I had never seen her so intense. “Tommy, I’m offering you me and half of everything I own. I want you as a husband. And a friend who trusts me. I am trying to do the right thing for both of us. Do you trust me?”
Oh, boy! “I believe you are trying to do what you think best. But I am not convinced it would work.”
“If we want it badly enough, we can make it work.”
The divorce courts were full of people who once thought that. I did not make this comment to Dorsey O’Shea. What I said was this: “I need time to think. I confess, I haven’t been thinking of marriage. I need some time to get a handle on where I’m at.”
She reached for my hand. “Spend the night with me. Let’s go up to my room. I need you now, this evening.”
A roll in the hay with hot, wanton Dorsey pulling out all the stops while Willie Varner listened to the action was the last thing on earth I needed that night. I told her I had to go back to work. I signaled for the check, stood, and dropped money on the table.