She was looking at me, brows raised quizzically. She was patting her mouth with her napkin, then crumpling it to the table. She was glancing at herself in the mirror in the purse. Then snapping the purse shut and starting to rise.
And then, praise be, glory to the Great Mixed Blood Father, she sat back down.
“All right,” she said crisply. “Let’s say that PXA is interested in using the Rainstar name. Let’s say that It would be pretty stupid of us to dirty up that name, now, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes, I suppose it would,” I said. “And look. I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you. I always kid around and talk a lot whenever I’m—”
“Forget it. How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“You’re forty. Or so you stated on your loan application. What do you do for a living, if you can call it that?”
I said why ask me something she already knew? “That information’s also on the application. Along with practically everything else about me, except the number and location of my dimples.”
“You mean you have some I can’t see?” She smiled, her voice friendlier, almost tender. “But what I meant to ask was, what do you write for this Hemisphere Foundation?”
“Studies. In-depth monographs on this region from various aspects: ecological, etiological, ethological, ethnological. That sort of thing. Sometimes one of them is published in Hemisphere’s Quarterly Reports. But they usually go in the file-and-forget department.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said thoughtfully, musingly. “Very interesting. I think something could be worked out there. Something satisfactory to both of us.”
“If you could tell me just what you have in mind...”
“Well, I’ll have to clear it with Pat, of course, but... Thirty-five thousand a year?”
“That’s not what I meant. I — what?” I gasped. “Did you say thirty-five thousand?”
“Plus expenses and certain fringe benefits.”
“Thirty-five thousand,” I said, running a finger around my collar. “Uh, how much change do you want back?”
She threw back her head and laughed, hugging herself ecstatically. “Ah, Britt, Britt,” she said, brushing mirth tears from her eyes. “Everything’s going to be wonderful for you. I’ll make it wonderful, you funny-sweet man. Now, do me a small favor, hmm?”
“Practically anything,” I said, “if you’ll laugh like that again.”
“Please don’t worry about silly things, like our bugging system. Everyone knows we have it. We’re out in the open on that as we are with everything else. If someone thinks he can beat it, well, it isn’t as if he hadn’t been warned, is it?”
“I see what you mean,” I said, although I actually didn’t. I was just being agreeable. “What happens when someone is caught pulling a fast one?”
“Well, naturally,” she said, “we have to remove him from the payroll.”
“I see,” I said again. Lying again when I said it. Because, of course, there are many ways to remove a man from the payroll. (Horizontal was one that occurred to me.) My immediate concern, however, as it so often is, was me. Specifically, the details of my employment. But I was not allowed to inquire into them.
Before I could frame another question, she had moved with a kind of unhurried haste, with the quick little movements which typified her. Rising from her chair, tucking her purse under her arm, gesturing me back when I also started to rise; all in one swift-smooth, uninterrupted action.
“Stay where you are, Britt,” she smiled. “Have a drink or something. I’ll have someone pick you up and drive you home.”
“Well...” I settled back into my chair. “Shall I call you tomorrow?”
“I’ll call you. Pat or I will. Good night, now.”
She left the table, her tinily full figure with its crown of thick blond hair quickly losing itself in the dining room’s dimness.
I waited. I had another liqueur and more coffee. And continued to wait. An hour passed. A waiter brushed by the table, and when he had gone, I saw a check lying in front of me.
I picked it up, a nervous lump clotting in my stomach. My eyes blurred, and I rubbed them, at last managing to read the total.
Sixty-three dollars and thirty cents.
Sixty-three dollars and—!
I don’t know how you are in such situations, but I always feel guilty. The mere need to explain that such and such is a mistake, et cetera, stiffens my smile exaggeratedly and sets me to sweating profusely and causes my voice to go tremolish and shaky. So that I not only feel guilty as hell, but also look it.
It is really pretty terrible.
It is no wonder that I was suspected of the attempted murder of my wife. The wonder is that I wasn’t lynched.
Albert, the maitre d’, approached. As I always do, I overexplained. apologizing when I should have demanded apologies. Sweating and shaking and squeakily stammering, and acting like nine kinds of a damned fool.
When I was completely self-demolished, Albert cut me off with a knifing gesture of his hand.
“No,” he said coldly, “Miss Aloe did not introduce you to me. If she had, I would have remembered it.” And he said, “No, she made no arrangement about the check. Obviously, the check is to be paid by you.”
Then he leaned down and forward, resting his hands on the table, so that his face was only inches from mine. And I remember thinking that I had known this was going to happen, not exactly this, perhaps, but something that would clearly expose the vicious potential of PXA. A taste of what could happen if I incurred the Aloe displeasure.
For she had said — remember? — that they did not pretend or apologize. You were warned, you knew exactly what to expect if.
“You deadbeat bastard,” Albert said. “Pay your check or we’ll drag you back in the kitchen and beat the shit out of you.”
5
I was on an aimless tour of the country when I met my wife-to-be, Connie. I’d gotten together some money through borrowing on or peddling off the few remaining Rainstar valuables, so I’d bought a car and taken off. No particular, no clear objective in mind. I simply didn’t like it where I was, and I wanted to find a place where I would like it. Which, of course, was impossible. Because the reason I disliked places I was in — and the disheartening knowledge was growing on me — was my being in them. I disliked me — me, myself, and I, as kids used to say, and far and fast as I ran I could not escape the bastardly trio.
Late one afternoon, I strayed off the highway and wound up in a homey little town nestled among rolling green hills. I also wound up with a broken spring from a plunge into a deep rut, and a broken cylinder and corollary damage from getting out of the rut.
The town’s only garage was the blacksmith shop. Or, to put it another way, the blacksmith did auto repairs... except for those who could drive a hundred-plus miles to the nearest city. The blacksmith-mechanic quoted a very reasonable price for repairing my car, but he would have to send away for parts, and what with one thing and another, he couldn’t promise to have the work done in less than a week.
There was one small restaurant in the town, sharing space with the post office. But there was no hotel, motel or boarding house. The blacksmith-mechanic suggested that I check with the real estate dealer to see if some private family would take me in for a few days. Without much hope, I did so.
The sign on the window read Luther Bannerman — Real Estate & Insurance. Inside, a young woman was disinterestedly pecking away at an ancient typewriter with a three-row keyboard. She was a little on the scrawny side, with mouse-colored hair. But she laughed wildly when I asked if she was Luther Bannerman and otherwise endeared herself to me by her childish eagerness to be of help, smiling and bobbing her head sympathetically as I explained my situation. When I had finished, however, she seemed to draw back a bit, becoming cautiously reserved.