Which left precious little for them to do. Well, fine, thought Step. I'll go collect DeAnne and Betsy and we'll head on out of here. After all, attendance has now been taken and we won't be missed.
Step saw DeAnne standing near the food canopy, talking to Mrs. Keene, who had lit up a cigarette and was now puffing away as she talked. Even outdoors with a slight breeze, Step knew that the cigarette smoke would quickly make DeAnne sick and lightheaded, hardly a good thing for a pregnant woman in the afternoon heat.
So, with Stevie and Robbie in tow, Step headed over and broke into the conversation.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Keene, but DeAnne's probably just to shy to tell you that cigarette smoke really makes her ill. If she weren't pregnant, it wouldn't be a problem outdoors like this, but-"
"Oh, that's just fine," said Mrs. Keene pleasantly. "I was hardly smoking it anyway." She dropped the cigarette to the ground and twisted her foot on it. "You should have said something, you sweet girl, I just didn't even think, I smoked right through my own pregnancy with Allison and so I forget that some people just need to have fresh air all the time."
"It really wasn't bothering me outside in the breeze like this," said DeAnne.
"Oh, heavens, girl, I'm the boss's wife, you think I don't know that? But just between you and me, I'm not half so impressed with Ray as Ray is, and Ray isn't all that impressed with me, so kissing up to me won't help anybody keep on his good side anyway!" She chuckled, a low, throaty smoker's laugh.
Mrs. Keene was charming and funny and nice, but also dangerously disloyal. Was the marriage in trouble?
That would be no surprise, really, given the kind of autocratic, secretive man Ray Keene was becoming; the joke in the Pit was that Ray kept secrets so well that his wife had to hire a private investigator to find out where he kept his dick. But if the marriage was in trouble, Mrs. Keene could be a walking kiss of death, bestowing herself on selected employees and then leaving them behind without a thought of the consequences. Somebody was bound to be keeping track of whom she talked to.
"Dad," said Robbie.
Step turned away from the conversation. Robbie was excited about something. Behind him a little girl was standing in front of a clump of other little kids. "Allison wants me to go on the raft with them! Can I go, Dad?"
"No," said Step. "You know you can't go on the water, Robbie. You can't swim."
The little girl stepped forward and, in a voice that was accus tomed to getting results, said, "He can so go.
My daddy said it was perfectly safe."
"Then that means you can go," said Step. "But Robbie cannot go, because his daddy says that it is not safe."
"Well my daddy is the boss of this company and what he says goes!"
Step remembered the three precious pieces of paper in DeAnne's filing cabinet at home-his employment agreement, the contract from Agamemnon, and Ray's memo stating his intention not to support the IBM PC-and his smile broadened. "Well, little girl, your daddy may be the boss of this company, but he is not the boss of my family, and so when it comes to the safety of my children, what he says matters about as much as a mouse fart."
The other children delighted in this-the one topic guaranteed to make little kids laugh is flatulence. But Allison was not amused. "I'll tell my daddy what you said!"
"By all means," said Step. "He'll be proud to know that his little girl thinks she can boss around grown men.
He's doing a fine job of raising you."
Allison was young enough not to realize she was not being complimented. "Well, thank you," she said. "I forgive you and I won't tell. Now come on, Robbie."
"You missed the point, little girl," said Step. "Robbie is not going on the raft. This is because I love Robbie and don't want him to fall into the lake and drown. But I can't wait for you to go on the raft. So please, hurry up, the lake is waiting for you."
Allison looked confused for a moment, and then stuck her tongue out at Robbie and led her little troop of friends off toward the water.
"She stuck her tongue out at me, Daddy," said Robbie.
"And it made her look really ugly and stupid, didn't it?" said Step.
When he turned back to DeAnne and Mrs. Keene, however, he was chagrined to realize that they had apparently been listening to the whole exchange. Mrs. Keene at once put him at ease by winking and saying,
"She's got so much of her father in her, wouldn't you say?"
"I wouldn't know," said Step. "I haven't seen Ray in months."
"Well, you haven't missed much," said Mrs. Keene. "You must be independently wealthy or something, because it's plain that you don't give a rat's ass whether you keep your job. I like that in a man." Then she grinned at DeAnne. "I'm flirting with your husband, Mrs. Fletcher, but don't pay any attention to it, because I'm just a little bit drunk. My rule is no more than one martini-per hour." She laughed in delight. "Not really, of course," she said. "What I'm drunk on is the fact that I can look around this whole group of people, more than a hundred of them now, and I can be absolutely certain deep in my soul that every single one of them hates Ray Keene. You don't mind my telling you this, do you?"
"Actually" said DeAnne, "we really need to be going."
"Oh, I'm not surprised," said Mrs. Keene. "I need to be going myself."
"Where's Stevie?" asked DeAnne.
"Right over there," said Step, pointing to the tree where Stevie was leaning, watching the activities on the water. "Where's Betsy?"
"Oh, that young fellow who used to drive you home a lot is taking her for a walk."
"Glass?" he asked. "Gallowglass?"
"No, he said his name was Roland McIntyre."
"That's Glass," said Step. He cursed himself for not having warned DeAnne, not having told her that she must not let Betsy out of her sight for a moment, and she must be especially certain not to let Roland McIntyre, alias Saladin Gallowglass, so much as touch a hair of Betsy's head. "Where did he take her? How long ago
"Oh, while I was talking to Mrs. Keene here. He took her off that way, up that hill."
Vaguely in the direction of the parking lot. Or the woods just to the left of the cars. In any event, the very area where nobody else was gathered.
"Is something wrong?" said Mrs. Keene.
"I hope not," said Step. "Here's Robbie." He put Robbie's hand in DeAnne's. "Don't let anybody take him or Stevie for a walk, please."
DeAnne clearly caught from Step's air of urgency the fact that she had done something very wrong by letting Glass take Betsy. "Step, I'm sorry, I figured he was a friend, I saw him drop you off so often..."
He didn't stay for the rest of her apology. He wasn't much of a runner, and he was badly out of shape, but he still had breath enough when he got up by the parking lot to call out Betsy's name, then Glass's.
"Over here, Step!" called Glass.
Now Step could see him, standing behind a car at the far edge of the lot, beside an overgrown pasture. "Do you have Betsy with you?"
"Of course," said Glass. "Your wife said I could take her for a walk."
Step was halfway across the parking lot. Now his run up the hill was catching up with him- he was panting, and he hadn't enough breath for speech.
"I think she might be wet," said Glass. "I was just checking. I didn't know which car was yours, though."