And he actually holds her chair for her.
When he sits down opposite her she’s grateful to him for not lighting the candles. That would be carrying it too far.
She says, “Wendy’s not in the city. They’re at our—his summer house in the Adirondacks. Outside Fort Keene.”
“That in New York State?”
“Yes. Near Lake Placid.”
“Mountain cabin?”
“You could call it that. It’s got twelve rooms.”
He gives her a sharp sidewise look and pours the wine—something red from a California vineyard. She tastes it and it makes her tongue tingle pleasantly. Must be careful—ration herself to one glass.
She says, “They’ll be going back to Manhattan on Labor Day. So I’ve got a deadline and it’s less than four weeks away.”
Now she lets him see her distress. It is genuine enough. “Doesn’t look as if I’m going to be an accomplished pilot by then, does it.”
“No.”
It provokes her quick smile. “One thing about you, Charlie, you certainly don’t believe in polite lies.”
“I try not to lie to my friends, honey bun.”
He hasn’t started to eat yet. He points with his fork toward her plate. Not until after she begins to eat does he pick up his knife. He’s a strange fossil, she’s thinking. The last of his breed.
He asks, “What makes Labor Day the deadline?”
“In the city I wouldn’t have a chance of getting near her. We live—they live in a condominium with its own private elevator. One apartment per floor. It’s a top-security building. Guards all over the place. Even the doormen are private police. And you can be sure they’ve been warned about me.”
“But you think you can get out of this house in the country. Even with her father right there?”
“I know how to do that. Things are more casual at Fort Keene and anyway he’s not always there. Sometimes he commutes to the city during the week.”
“I’ve got to tell you something,” Charlie says. “This isn’t exactly the dinnertime conversation I had in mind for tonight.”
He ruminates on a mouthful and reaches for his wine and otherwise busies himself with actions that fail to conceal how industriously he’s employing the time to absorb and to think. From his expression there is no way to tell how he feels about what she’s told him.
Eventually he says, “Why an airplane? What’s wrong with a car?”
“There’s a seventeen-mile road in to the house. It’s not a private drive—there are other houses—but it’s the only road and it takes at least forty minutes to get out to the highway. He’d have the police on it before that—he’d just telephone.”
“Cut the phone wires.”
“Wouldn’t help. He’s got CB radios in the cars.”
“Those can be disabled.”
“I suppose they can. But there are always three or four cars in the lean-to and around the driveway. It would be hard to bash in all those radios without being noticed. They can see the driveway from the house.”
“You’ve worked it out, haven’t you.”
“I’ve tried to.”
He’s cutting a piece of steak; scowling at it. He sits for a moment with knife and fork poised over the plate and she has the feeling he’s making a decision but in the end he only asks another question:
“Three or four cars. What are you guys—the Kennedys of Hyannisport? How many people around the kid?”
“There’s the housekeeper and her husband. He’s sort of all-around caretaker and handyman, gardener, mechanic, so forth. And my husband’s hired a practical nurse—a nanny to look after Wendy. And most all the time he’ll have two or three of his partners and business associates there. They play cards and spend half the day doing business on the telephones. They like to hunt, even out of season,” she adds pointedly.
“I guess you’re telling me old Albert ain’t poor.”
“He’s in the construction business.”
“Yeah. What does he build? Skyscrapers?”
“Sometimes.”
“And he and his buddies like to hunt. So there are guns around the place.”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t gone so far as to say it’s an armed camp, honeybunch, but would that be a fair conclusion?”
“No.” Try to calm him down now. “It’s not a fortified stronghold, Charlie, it’s just a big rustic summer house. All wood—varnished, not painted. Mostly cedar. Big picture windows—a lot of glass. There’s a cathedral ceiling in the living room, open beams, I guess it’s forty feet high at the peak. You could seat eight people at a table inside the fireplace if you wanted to—I’ve never seen a fireplace that big anywhere else. The house is huge but it’s not a fortress.”
“How do you expect to get in and get Wendy out?”
“I know how.”
“That’s reassuring,” he says a bit drily. “What about an airstrip? Something to land on.”
“There are two or three places.”
“All of a sudden you’re being evasive.”
“I think I’ve already told you too much. Maybe it’s the wine,” she lies.
“Come on. You want me to fly the airplane for you. Don’t you.” He starts to chuckle. “Why not quit beating around the bush?”
“Oh dear. Am I that transparent?”
“I wish you wouldn’t bat the big blue eyes at me. It just makes my heart go all pitty-pat.”
She puts the corncob down and cleans her fingers on the napkin. Without raising her eyes she says, “I’m sorry I’ve turned your romantic dinner into a business meeting. Sometimes my timing’s not very good.”
This time he doesn’t smile; he doesn’t let her off the hook. He says: “I expect it’s time I asked what’s in it for me.”
By leaping ahead of her he has taken her by surprise and as she watches him gnaw corn she reassembles her thoughts and chooses her words:
“It’s become painfully obvious I can’t fly the plane myself. I suppose I could try—but I don’t want to put my child’s life in that kind of danger. So it looks as if I can’t do this without you, Charlie, and I guess that means you can pretty much name your own price.”
“And lead us not into the valley of temptation,” he murmurs. “You like some more wine?”
“No, thank you.”
The steak is blood red. He shaves it in slivers to eat it, she notices; no big hunky mouthfuls for him. He likes to savor what he’s eating. She’s practically finished and he’s hardly started.
He says, “Special occasions like this, I get the meat at a little Italian butcher shop in Encino.”
“It’s very good. Everything’s delicious. You’d make somebody a terrific wife.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She says, “How much is fair, Charlie? What would you say to five thousand dollars?”
“Probably not enough. On the other hand ten thousand sounds like too much. Why don’t we say seventy-five hundred?”
There’s an interval during which she is acutely conscious of the bashing of a pulse behind her eyes. She finally dares to say, “You mean you’ll do it?”
“Sure, my sweet love. Why not. I haven’t had a good silly adventure all week.”
His grin is at once reckless and mysterious. He lifts his wine glass in toast. “To Wendy. Her very good health.”
She drinks to that. To Wendy Hartman A/K/A Ellen LaCasse. She can smell the baby now: she has a tactile memory of tiny fingers clutching her own: she hears the burble of Ellen’s laugh and the strident demand of her outcries. She can see the wonderful smile that crumples the little blue eyes into happy wedges. She can feel her child’s warmth.
29 Driving away she feels by turns elated and confused: uneasy, at intervals, because too often Charlie seems to have that ability to take her by surprise—as he did ten minutes ago when, dishes washed and cognac swirled and lights turned down, he took the glass out of her hand and kissed her as she had not been kissed in longer than she could remember—flicking tongue and hard body pressure—and then lifted her to her feet and steered her toward the door.