Ill at ease, Hedra said, "Not so old. I mean, we haven't been friends all that long. But we're friends."
Sam showed his amiable smile. "Wait a minute! We met the other day when I came by the apartment to see Allie. You were visiting. Waiting for her inside. Remember?" "Sure. Now I do."
He adjusted an elastic sweatband on his right wrist. It was blue and white, lettered Yankees. "I told you my name, but you forgot to introduce yourself." "I'm, uh, sorry."
"Anyway," he said, "I think it's great Allie's got a close friend like you. Wear each other's clothes, that sorta thing. New York's not the kinda place where you usually have somebody close."
Allie'd heard enough. "Sam, we're in kind of a hurry." "Oh?" "I thought you were out jogging."
"On my way to run in the park, actually. So I thought I'd drop by. But you weren't home. You are now." "Not quite, Sam, but I'd like to be. Nice seeing you." She moved around him and started up the steps.
Suddenly he had her elbow in a firm grip. Desperation flowed like electricity through him into her. "Allie, listen, please!" Hedra said, "I'll just run on upstairs."
Sam said, "Pleasure meeting you, Hedra. I'm sure we'll see each other again."
Allie yanked her elbow free, sending a jolt of pain up her crazy bone. She wasn't the crazy one here. "I'm going with her, Sam."
He shuffled in a half-circle and blocked her way. There was an agonized look on his face. "Allie, I only wanna talk."
"And I don't." But she knew she did. Goddamnit, she did! "Wait for me, Hedra."
Hedra was standing at the top of the steps, a confused expression on her face. In the beige dress and high heels, her legs looked very shapely from the sidewalk. Sam stared at her for a moment, as if he were seeing Allie in the dress. His teeth were clenched and his breath hissed like steam escaping under great pressure. Allie could smell liquor on his breath. Had he seen them in the bar? Beaten them back to the Cody and set up this scene? No, she decided, it was possible but unlikely.
It began to rain then, slanting under the entrance canopy. Not hard, but steadily enough so another few minutes of standing outside and they'd all be soaked. Windshield wipers on passing cars started their metronome action. Some of them had their headlights on, wary yellow eyes lessening the chance of collision in the lowering gloom. The wet street became opaque glass, reflecting the late-afternoon traffic in muted colors.
A trickle of rainwater broke from Sam's hair and ran down his forehead. Finally he stood aside and gave Allie room to go up the steps. She moved past, barely brushing his arm.
She took each step with deliberation, keeping the sway of her hips to a minimum, knowing he was watching. Behind her, the swish of tires on wet pavement was like harsh and secret whispering. Hedra reached out a firm hand as if to help her achieve the final push of a climb up a mountain. And maybe that's what it was- climbing up out of Sam's influence. Maybe.
She grasped Hedra's hand, squeezed it as if to say "Thank you," and pushed ahead of her, through the door into the cool, dry lobby. Sanctuary. "We'll talk later, Allie!" Sam called up the steps.
She didn't answer. A raindrop clung to her eyelash; she brushed it away impatiently with the back of her hand.
As they were rising in the elevator, Hedra said, "An awkward situation, but you handled it fine, Allie." Fine? Allie interpreted it differently. "Did I?"
"1 mean, you seemed so calm. So in control. More so than I coulda been; that's for sure."
"Didn't seem that way to me, Hedra. I wasn't so calm on the inside."
'That doesn't matter. You're here, and you and Sam aren't having the conversation he was demanding. You didn't let yourself get bullied. That's the important thing."
"No, it isn't," Allie said. "The important thing is that now Sam's sure we're living together."
"Huh? How could he be? He only saw me in the apartment that one time, and he supposed I was a friend waiting for you to get home." "Don't believe what he says." "But what could he prove?"
"I don't mean he could prove anything," Allie said. "But he doesn't have to." "What do you mean?"
"If he wanted, he could notify Haller-Davis I have a roommate and get us both evicted." "Would they believe him?"
"They'd send someone to look over the apartment, and they'd see there are two people living there. No way you can conceal that from somebody looking for it." "What if we didn't let them in?"
"They'd sneak in with a pass key. Then they'd serve an eviction notice, and it'd be up to me to prove I was living alone. They'd know I couldn't do that." Allie wasn't sure that was exactly how the eviction would go, but she was sure Haller-Davis could and would force her out.
She remembered how Sam had noticed the beige dress, how he'd said he recognized Hedra from when she'd answered the knock on the apartment door. He was letting Allie know that he knew: Hedra was her secret roommate. She didn't like that at all. There was no way to predict what might happen; divorces, from affairs as well as marriages, could take unexpected bitter turns.
The elevator arrived on their floor and the doors rumbled open, admitting a press of warm air from the hall.
A vision of the countless street people she passed every day invaded Allie's mind. The ones the rest of the human race avoided thinking about, even avoided seeing, with a convenient selective blindness. She might become one of them, Sam had it in his power to do that to her. A Svengali in jogging shoes. That was what really ate at her, the knowledge that he could do it.
Absurd! she told herself. I'm self-supporting and every bit as capable as Sam. My life's in my own hands.
Hedra stopped halfway down the hall and stared incredulously at Allie. "Sam wouldn't really turn you in to the management company, would he?"
"I don't know," Allie said. "A month ago I wouldn't have thought so, but he's full of surprises. All men seem to be full of surprises." "Not to me." Allie smiled. "I know what you mean, Hedra." But she didn't.
In the apartment, the phone rang and Allie absently answered it, still thinking about Sam. "Allie?" A man's voice. Not Sam's. "Yes?" There was only silence on the line. "Hello?"
A steady buzzing erupted in her ear. Whoever was on the other end of the connection had hung up.
12
AT Fortune Fashions, Mayfair sat at his wide desk, before his IBM computer, and went through the routine taught to him by Allie Jones. His fingers pecked at the gray keys with dexterity now, sure of themselves. She'd done an excellent job of setting up the programs. Inventory, payroll, graphics for sales and manufacturing projections, all reduced to relatively simple commands. She was about fifty percent through the project, she'd told Mayfair. Which meant it was time for him to do what he'd intended from the first moment he'd seen Allie Jones. And why not? You were vice president of a company like this, certain perks were implied.
Allie had too much time invested to give up the Fortune Fashions account now, and she stood to lose too much money. Without a doubt she'd be vulnerable to pressure. And she'd recently broken up with whatever guy had been balling her; Sam something, he thought she'd called him. So Mayfair figured she was ripe enough to fall. Ah, timing was so important in life.
Not that he'd explain the facts to her in such crude terms. He was too practiced for that. But in varied and subtle ways, Mayfair would let her know that now he had enough knowledge to call some other programmer in to finish what Allie had started. Even his secretary Elaine must be getting proficient with a computer by now. The basic software systems were on line, so no problem there. Allie had gotten a small amount of money up front. Gradually, over a week or so, he'd make it clear that if she wanted to finish the Fortune Fashions job and see her big payday, he, Mayfair, was part of the arrangement. It wasn't so unusual; she'd probably done some job-related screwing before. Part of landing accounts, he was sure, a piece of the deal from the beginning, or there wouldn't have been a deal. An attractive woman didn't need a computer to figure that one out. Let's face it, software was software.