“Her name is Miranda. But you’d better stick to Mrs. Shaw if you know what’s good for you.”
“Can’t I even ask a question without you getting all torqued up?”
“Mr. Henderson has a strict rule prohibiting fraternization between members and employees. You were warned about it several times last summer, remember? Frederic’s sister, April, the Peterson girl, Cindy Kellogg—”
“What’s to remember? Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?”
“Practically nothing.”
“Sometime when I have a week to spare you’ll have to tell me what ‘practically nothing’ covers.”
He hesitated for a moment, then leaned across the desk and patted her lightly on the top of her head. Her hair was very soft, like the feathers of a baby duck he’d found on a creek bank when he was a boy. The duck had died in his hands. “Hey, stop fighting me. I’m not so bad. What’s so bad about me?” For no reason that he could see or figure out, the duck had died in his hands. Maybe it was because he touched it. Maybe there were soft delicate things that should never be touched.
He straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest as though he was suddenly conscious of his nakedness. “I like the girls and the girls like me. Why would you want to change that? It’s normal.”
“So it’s normal. Hurray.”
“Don’t you like normal?”
“I like normal.”
“But not in me,” Grady said. “I wish we were friends, Ellen, I honest to God do. You seem to be friends with everyone else around here. What’s so bad about me?”
With the ointment washed off her face and replaced with moisturizer and makeup, Miranda felt a little calmer. But each minute had its own tiny nucleus of panic. There was a new brownish patch on her forehead, the mole on her neck appeared to be enlarging, and the first ominous ripples of cellulite were showing on her upper arms and thighs. She missed Neville to tell her that the mole and the brown patch were her special beauty spots and the ripples of cellulite existed only in her imagination. Not that she would have believed him. She knew they were real, that it was time to go back to the clinic in Mexico for more injections.
She couldn’t leave immediately or even make a reservation. Her lawyer had advised her to stay in town until Neville’s will was probated. When she asked for a reason he’d been evasive, as if he knew something she didn’t and wouldn’t want to. His attitude worried her, especially since there was a story going around that Neville’s son by his first marriage was planning to contest the will. She would have liked to question Ellen about it — Ellen might know the truth, people were always confiding in her — but when Miranda went into the office the lifeguard was there and Ellen looked a little flustered.
Miranda said, “I’m expecting to hear from my lawyer, Mr. Smedler. Has he called?”
“No, Mrs. Shaw.”
“When he does, have someone bring me the message, will you please? I’ll be in the snack bar.”
She hadn’t looked at Grady yet, or even in his direction, but he was well aware that she’d seen him. She’d been watching him off and on all morning from under the floppy straw hat and behind the oversized amber sunglasses.
She turned toward him, taking off the glasses very slowly, like a professional stripper. “You’re the lifeguard, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Grady.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s my name. Grady Keaton.”
“Oh. Well, there seems to be a child screaming somewhere.”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the Quinn kid, Frederic.”
“Can you do something about it?”
“Probably not.”
“You might at least try. It sounds as though he’s suffering.”
“He’d be suffering a lot more right now if his father didn’t have ten million dollars. Or maybe twenty. After the first million who counts?”
Her smile was so faint it was hardly more than a softening of the expression in her eyes. “Everybody counts, Grady. You must be new around here if you haven’t learned that.”
“I’m a slow learner. I may need some private tutoring.”
“Indeed. Well, I’m sure Ellen would be willing to acquaint you with some basics.”
“Ellen and I don’t agree on basics. That presents kind of a problem.”
“Then perhaps you’d better concentrate on more immediate problems, like Frederic Quinn.”
She meant to put him in his place by sounding severe, but she couldn’t quite manage it. During the years of her marriage to Neville she’d never had occasion to use her voice to exert authority or raise it in anger. Everything was arranged so she’d have no reason to feel dissatisfied or insecure. Her only bad times were at the clinic in Mexico when she’d screamed during the injections. Even then the screams had seemed to be coming from someone else, a shrill, undisciplined stranger, some poor scared old woman: “Stop, you’re killing me.” — “The Señora will be young again!” — “For God’s sake, please stop.” — “The Señora will be twenty-five...”
For the first time she looked directly and carefully at Grady. He had a small golden mustache that matched his eyebrows, and a scar on his right cheek like a dimple. He was no more than twenty-five. She felt a sudden sharp pain between her breasts like a needle going through the skin and right into the bone. “Stop, you’re killing me.” — “The Señora will be twenty-five.”
She took a deep breath. “You’d better attend to the boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I may be able to help. I haven’t had much experience with children but I like them.”
“I don’t,” Grady said.
“You must like some of them, surely.”
“Not a damn one.”
“They don’t all act like Frederic.”
“They would if their fathers had ten million dollars.”
“So here we are back at the ten million. It’s quite pervasive, isn’t it, like a smell.”
“Yes, ma’am. Like a smell.”
“Well, the boy can’t be allowed to suffer simply because his father has a great deal of money. That would hardly be fair. Come on, I’ll go with you and help you quiet him down.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Shaw,” Ellen said. “Grady can handle the situation himself.”
“Of course he can. I’ll just tag along to see how it’s done... if Grady doesn’t mind. Do you mind, Grady?”
Grady didn’t mind at all.
Ellen stood and watched the two of them walk down the hall side by side. She wanted to turn and busy herself at her desk with her own work but she couldn’t take her eyes off them. In an odd disturbing way they looked exactly right together, as if they’d been matched up in a toy store and sold as a pair.
Having secured his notepaper, Mr. Van Eyck decided to drop by Mr. Henderson’s private office to thank him.
Henderson was glancing through a week-old Wall Street Journal while he ate his lunch, a pint of cottage cheese which he spooned into his mouth with dip chips. He preferred to read with his meals, on the theory that his gastric juices flowed more freely when they were not interrupted by the conversation of nincompoops.
What he read was not important, was not, in fact, even his own choice. After the swimming area of the club closed for the day he went around gathering up all the reading material that had been abandoned or forgotten — paperback books, newspapers, travel brochures, medical journals, airplane schedules, magazines, even the occasional briefcase with interesting contents like the top-secret financial report of an oil company, or complete plans for an air-sea attack on Mogadishu drawn up by retired Rear Admiral Cooper Young. Henderson had no idea where Mogadishu was, but it was reassuring to know that if and when such an attack proved necessary, Admiral Young would be ready to take care of the situation.