“Help yourself.”
He got up and she took his place at the counter and reached for the hamburger without embarrassment or self-consciousness.
He stood behind her while she ate. “What are you doing here, Helene?”
“Miss Burton told me you usually had lunch at this place so I came over and here you are.”
“And now what?”
She spoke quickly and quietly so the man on the next stool wouldn’t overhear. “Gill just had a phone call. From Dodd. I’m sure it was about you and some money. I could only hear Gill’s part of the conversation and not much of that. He asked me to wait outside so I couldn’t hear any more, but I think he’s going to meet Dodd late this afternoon. They may be planning some kind of showdown.”
“About the money?”
“I guess so.”
“They have no grounds.”
The man on the next stool paid his check and left, and Rupert sat down in his place.
“Listen,” Helene said. “I’ve got to know more about this. I’ve put myself in a bad position trying to defend you. I want to be reassured that I’m doing the right thing.”
“You are.”
“What money was Dodd talking about?”
“I cashed a check on Amy’s account, using her power of attorney.”
“Why?”
“Why do people cash checks? Because they need money.”
“No, I meant why all the fuss on Dodd’s part, and Gill’s? Gill said it was legal but that someone should have stopped you, under the circumstances.”
“No one could have stopped me. No one even has the right to question me about it. As a matter of fact, whatever employee of the bank informed Dodd about the check was guilty of improper conduct. Dodd holds no official position, and private records shouldn’t be open to him.”
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”
“Miss Burton has,” she said, with deliberation. “Last night.”
He tried to look indifferent. She could see his face in the mirror behind the counter, trying on various expressions none of which seemed to fit. He said finally, “So she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.”
“She didn’t intend to tell me anything, don’t be hard on her. She thought I’d come to the office as a spy for the great Brandon-Dodd combine. That’s a laugh, isn’t it?” She pushed away the empty plate with an expression of distaste as if she’d suddenly decided that she hadn’t been hungry after all and now regretted eating the hamburger. “Miss Burton’s in love with you, I suppose you know that.”
“No, I don’t!” he said sharply. “You’re imagining...”
“It’s time you found out, then. It’s written all over her, Rupert. I feel rather bad about it.”
“Why should you?”
“Oh, empathy, I guess. It’s happened to me too, being in love with someone who hardly noticed me. That was years ago, of course,” she added quickly. “Before I met Gill.”
“Of course.”
“Are you in a hurry?”
“Why?”
“You keep looking at that clock on the wall.”
“Well, I have to get back to the office pretty soon.”
“I thought you weren’t going back to the office this afternoon.”
“What gave you that idea?”
“Miss Burton.”
“Miss Burton,” he said easily, “almost managed to convince me I wasn’t feeling well and should go home. The fact is, I’m fine and I intend to spend the afternoon working.” He swung round on the stool as if he intended to get up and leave. Instead, after a second’s hesitation, he completed the full circle and faced the counter again. “Let’s have some coffee, eh?”
The maneuver would have been obvious even if she hadn’t already been suspicious of him. By tilting her head slightly, Helene could see in the mirror the reflection of the entrance door. A young woman had just come in and was surveying the room with an air of anxiety. She was well built and pretty, dressed in a skin tight woolen suit, a feathered hat, half a dozen strings of colored glass beads, and patent leather pumps with heels so high that she stood at a forward angle as if she were bucking a high wind. When she put up her hand to adjust the feathered hat over her blond curls, a platinum wedding band gleamed under the lights.
“She’s rather pretty,” Helene said.
“Who is?”
“The young woman by the door. She appears to be looking for someone.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, notice now.”
“Why should I?”
“Oh, you might be interested. She is. She’s coming your way.”
“She can’t be. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
Rupert turned and gave the girl a long, cold, deliberate stare. She stopped abruptly, then headed for the cigarette machine, moving with little wobbly steps on the high, narrow heels. Helene noticed that her feet were proportionately larger than the rest of her, very wide and flat, as if she’d spent a considerable period of her life walking barefoot. When she had fished the cigarettes out of the trough, the girl put them in her black patent leather handbag and walked toward the exit. One of the men sitting at a table gave a low whistle as she passed, but she paid no attention, as if she hadn’t heard the sound or didn’t know what it meant or for whom it was intended.
“I think she’s a farm girl,” Helene said. “That getup looks like something she’s copied from a movie magazine. I suppose you might call her a blonde with a good tan or a brunette with a good bleach job, depending on your viewpoint.”
“I have no viewpoint. I don’t know the woman.”
“She’s probably one of the secretaries in your office building and has a mad, mad crush on you.”
“You’re being ridiculous. I’m not the type of man women get crushes on.”
“Oh, but you are. You make a perfectly splendid father image, firm but kindly, strong but gentle, that sort of thing. It’s fatal — for a girl that age. How old would you say she is? Twenty-two? Twenty-five?”
“I haven’t thought about it and don’t intend to.”
“Years and years younger than Miss Burton, anyway, wouldn’t you say?”
“Stop playing games.”
Helene smiled. “I like games. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. It’s kind of amusing, isn’t it, Gill and Dodd sniffing around like a pair of nervous bloodhounds and me trying to put them off the scent? Your scent.”
“Why are you trying?”
“I told you, I like games.”
“I like games too, when the grand prize isn’t my own skin. This is the second time you’ve warned me about Gill’s activities. What’s your real reason, Helene?”
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
“Don’t explain, then,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“I want to thank you, anyway, for all the trouble you’ve gone to.”
“You’re welcome. At least I think you’re welcome. I don’t know. I–I’m beginning to feel like a traitor. I’d like to be reassured that I’m not, that I’ve done the right thing in coming here.”
“You’ve done the right thing,” he said gravely. “Thank you again, Helene. Someday, perhaps soon, Amy will be here to thank you too.”
“Amy? Soon?”
“I hope so.”
“She’s coming back?”
“Of course she’s coming back. What made you think she wasn’t?”
“Nothing — special.”
“Maybe by Thanksgiving, or at least by Christmas, we’ll all be together again. Everything will be the same as it always was.”
“The same,” she repeated dully. “Of course. Precisely the same.”
Precisely. Inevitably. Irrevocably.
She rose, one hand pressed against her mouth to stifle a sound she could never let anyone else hear.
Later, when she was asked, she couldn’t remember exactly how she spent the next couple of hours. She recalled walking along many streets, staring into the windows of shops and the faces of strangers. For a long, or a little, time she sat on a bench in Union Square watching sad-eyed old men feed bread crumbs and popcorn to the pigeons. The pigeons were plump and sleek and did not resemble Amy at all, but Helene drew back in protest when one of them came too close to her foot. She was repelled by its dependence, its insistent docility, which it seemed to be forcing on her. Amy. Amy again. By Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. No hope of never.