Henderson smiled sadly. "Ain't the viewing public wonderful?" He glanced at Nitz. "You think she can stand up to what we have in mind?"
Paul Nitz picked up a slice of fried plantain. "She's tough. I figure she'll go through anything to stay on the show. She's got a very bad self-image, however. The process could turn her into a basket case when it's all over."
Dorfman quickly nodded. His smirk was oily. "I can vouch for her bad self-image."
Henderson looked at him coldly. "I'm sure you can, Murray. I'm sure you can."
Henderson disliked Murray Dorfman. The fawning little weasel really deserved to be fired. Henderson had thought of firing Dorfman before, but somehow there always seemed to be something more important to do at any given time. He sipped his coffee. It was getting cold. He wanted this meeting over with.
"You don't think that she'll actually crack on the show? We can't have that. It makes us look like the bad guys."
Groton shook her head. "I really doubt it. She's kind of dogged. I was wondering if it might be an idea to let her in on the game."
Henderson shook his head. "No way. I really can't go with contestant collusion unless it's unavoidable. As far as Wanda-Jean is concerned, she's playing a straight-arrow game. Keep her wondering why the folks just don't seem to like her."
Nitz started gathering up the debris of his lunch. "Four shows and then review the situation?"
Henderson nodded. "It's a good start." He didn't even bother to look at Dorfman. "Murray, get on to PR and tell them to start leaking Bad Bad Wanda-Jean stories to the media, see if they'll bite."
Dorfman nodded eagerly. "Right away, Mr. Henderson."
"That's right, Murray. Right away."
MALLORY SLICED THE GRAPEFRUIT IN half. It was done with a frightening precision. Dustin sipped his coffee and wondered if she had been a surgeon in another life, or maybe an executioner. She placed the two halves side by side on the black Finwear plate and regarded them with a pursed-lipped expression of displeasure.
"I swear these things get smaller and smaller."
She reached for the box of Kellogg's Hi-Bran. Dustin thought that nothing would please Mallory on this particular morning. Three days had passed, and he was still being punished for his inattention following the Fedder's dinner party. How many days was he supposed to spend in hell for that transgression? On top of that, she had once again taken up the Cosmopolitan Deprivation Diet, and he was expected to starve right along with her. He repressed an urge to pick up one of the grapefruit halves and squash it into her face. Instead, he sipped his coffee and looked docile.
"It's probably the result of a marketing decision taken after months of consumer research," he offered.
"If I wanted a small, sour, yellow orange, I'd ask for one. I want my grapefruit the way they always were."
Mallory picked up the Times and turned to the op-ed page. She folded the newspaper with the same precision with which she had sliced the grapefruit. She read for a couple of minutes and then spoke without looking up.
"Here's something for you, Dustin. Wintek has done a piece on the feelies. He seems to think that we all ought to reconsider our positions and that maybe they aren't so bad after all."
Dustin sighed. "Wintek is a liberal asshole." He knew that Mallory had no interest whatsoever in the thoughts of Herman Wintek and didn't give a damn about the feelies. All that was happening was that he was being set up for another round of her insidious sarcasm. Mallory looked at him over the top of her rimless glasses, the kind that George Bush used to wear. The style had made something of a comeback over the last summer.
"I guess he doesn't have the intellectual scope of a thinker like Bones Bolt."
"Mallory, I-"
"Dustin, please don't make hangdog faces at me. I only mentioned Wintek's column because I thought it might appeal to your new-found obsession with the feelies."
"I don't have an obsession with the feelies."
"Don't pout at me, either."
"I'm not pouting, and I don't have an obsession with the feelies."
"You did the other night. You were certainly more interested in some dumb TV show about them than you were in me."
"How many times do I have to tell you that I was just tired and a little drunk?"
"You weren't too tired to be trying to cop a peer down the front of Laramie Fedder's dress all through dinner. What was it? Are you and Martin trying to organize a little matrimonial swapmeet? If you are, you can forget it. I have no interest in sleeping with Martin Fedder even to titillate you. God knows I do enough to go along with your little perversions, but there are limits."
This was an entirely new charge and also a complete fabrication. What in hell would he be doing looking down the front of Laramie Fedder's dress, for Christ's sake? Mallory was a hundred times better-looking. That was part of the trouble. She even looked good right now, with her loose, sleep-tousled, honey blond hair and practically transparent black lace peignoir offset by the aloof expression and the George Bush reading glasses. A part of him would have liked to have reared across the breakfast nook and had her right then and there among the Finwear dishes, the Gunden place settings, the too-small grapefruit, and the Hi-Bran, but there was no chance of that. She probably wouldn't let him near her for at least a week, and even then it would only be after a considerable period of begging. A lesser woman might have given in to her own needs long before the week was up, but not Mallory. She wasn't the kind to let mere lust come between her and total moral victory. Mallory had once confided in him during the aftermath of passion that when she was a little girl, her ambition had been to be Margaret Thatcher when she grew up. And what did she mean she went along with his little perversions? She had more than a few little quirks of her own.
"Mallory, this is starting to get ridiculous."
She ignored him, slowly lowering the paper and taking off her glasses. "I heard from Daphne Ziekle that Christopher Elwin, the idiot who's been running Elwin Systems into the ground since his father died, finally turned his holdings over to the control of his brother and took a life feelie contract."
"I keep telling you that I'm not interested in the feelies." In fact, Dustin was very interested in the feelies at that moment-anything that would spare him psychwar over breakfast. A life contact seemed very appealing. Maybe he should be Caligula or some Turkish sultan with a very large harem.
Once again, Mallory ignored him. She looked thoughtful. "Maybe Wintek's right. Of course, not for the reasons that he's putting forward. They're twentieth-century bleeding heart nonsense. It could be, however, that their real function is to take the inadequates out of circulation. It could be a way to return to the survival of the fittest without anyone actually getting hurt. When the news came out that Elwin had taken the contract the company's stock went up nine points. What I don't see is why they've made them so expensive. Sure, I can see the value in taking rich idiots off the streets, but why in hell don't they offer it to the underclass? Let the damned epsilons be rapists and junkies while safely locked up in a plastic coffin instead of roaming the streets unchecked and doing it for real."