Sandra looked cool and faintly amused. Her makeup and the dim light took ten years off her elongated face, robbing it of character rather than improving her looks. She had on slacks and a brilliantly striped, loose-fitting silky blouse with black half-dollar-size buttons; only a tall woman could wear that outfit.
"Did you decide you owe me lunch?" she asked Nudger, as he sat down across the table from her. The glass before her was empty except for half-melted ice. She'd been there awhile waiting for him.
"I owe you more than that," he told her. "Or maybe we're more even than I'd thought." The girl on the piano moaned softly about lost love.
Sandra didn't ask him what he meant by that; she was a great believer in letting time do its work. Nudger would get around to what he wanted to say, and she'd still be there to listen.
The waitress suddenly hovered over their table, pencil poised. She was wearing perfume that smelled overpower- ingly of lilacs. Avon screaming.
"Can I getcha anything?" she asked.
"Anything? Probably not," Nudger told her. "Just food or drink."
Her bored-waitress expression didn't change. Wrong wavelength, wrong planet. More evidence that the universe was made up of random, disparate parts.
"I'm not hungry," Sandra said. "I'll just have another Scotch and water." She looked at Nudger. "Go ahead and order some lunch; I won't think you're impolite."
"What's good here?" Nudger asked the waitress.
"Roast-beef sandwiches."
"What else do you serve?"
She shook her head. "Just roast-beef sandwiches."
"Good," Nudger said. A painless and easy choice was refreshing. "I'll have one with ketchup, salt and pepper, no onions."
"They only come one way," the waitress said.
No choice at all was necessary. "Great!" He wasn't being sarcastic; he was obviously really pleased about the sandwiches' lack of variety.
She looked at him oddly and made a darting squiggle of some sort in her order pad. She made similar marks to represent the drink orders, then moved away busily to deliver her message so that someone who read waitressese could interpret and cook and pour.
"The roast-beef sandwiches here are delicious," Sandra assured him. "Now that your mind's at ease about that, what else is worrying you?"
"Do I look worried?"
She nodded her long head. "And puzzled. About what?"
"Why were you waiting for me in my hotel room night before last?" he asked her.
She smiled. "I like you and I like lust."
"I don't doubt the last part," Nudger told her.
She seemed more amused than offended. "There's nothing wrong with lust; it's so much purer and less complicated than love. But why do you doubt the first part of what I said? I do like you."
"But you must know that David Collins doesn't share your affection for me. So why did you give him the letters?"
"David Collins? Letters?"
"Collins is the guy who sent you to search my room and my mind."
"And the letters?"
"The stack of blue envelopes you took from my room and gave him."
As he watched her face, Nudger's stomach began to bother him, a vague stirring of pain and regret. He was wrong about this woman, his stomach was telling him. A presage of guilt twisted its claws into him. It had to be her, and yet it wasn't. He knew it in that instant. He was hurting someone who cared for him, who had trusted him more than he'd trusted her. Yet he had no choice; he had to find out about this for sure, and then probe deeper.
"Is this the big-shot David Collins who gets his name in the papers now and then for charity and chicanery?"
Nudger nodded.
"Never met the man. These his letters that are missing from your room?"
"Not his letters, but they were written by someone he knows."
"And you think I went to you so I could pick your brain and rummage through your room, that I used sex as an excuse to get in and stay awhile." She seemed, more than anything else, disappointed in him. "You believe I stole from you."
"I don't know that for sure. That's why I wanted to talk with you." Too late for moderation; he had lost her.
She stood up from her chair, looking down frowning and slowly shaking her head at him, as if he were vintage wine that had suddenly gone to vinegar. He had let her down in a way not so dissimilar.
"In the grand scheme of things," she told him calmly, "we didn't have much between us, Nudger, but what we did have, you've broken."
"I didn't have any choice. I had to know."
"And do you know?"
He did know; he was certain. It hadn't made sense from the beginning. "You didn't take the letters," he told her. "Sit back down, Sandra. Please."
She gave him a distant, pitying smile, turned, and walked with her long-legged stride through the crowd of drinkers and diners toward the exit. A one-chance woman walking from his life. Afternoon brilliance and traffic noise erupted around her briefly, as if she had magically summoned it all simply by touching the doorknob; then she disappeared into the brightness and sound even before the door swung closed.
Nudger felt suddenly as if the chain-smoking, chain- drinking, moaning girl on the piano were singing just for him. He sat morosely, thinking that the conversation hadn't turned out at all as he'd planned. In fact, a number of incidents had gone wrong for him lately. It was dispiriting; he felt dejected and small. Maybe he'd commit suicide by leaping from his chair onto the floor.
He tried to shake that feeling. It was counter-productive, and he had work to do.
Besides, maybe his string of bad luck was ended. Luck was like that-streaky. And it had balance, a way of equalizing. So probably, despite how he felt about what had happened with Sandra, he'd bottomed out and fortune was now on the upswing. It had to be that way; from now on, things large and small would break his way. He was, in fact, convinced of it. He could feel his new run of luck throbbing in his veins.
A shadow fell across the table. Sandra's? He jerked his head around to look up and behind him, caught the oppressive scent of lilac.
The big waitress was standing over him, looking blankly down at him.
She said, "We're out of roast beef."
XXVIII
Nudger didn't know the woman crossing the Majestueux lobby's deep carpet with a springy, indomitable sort of walk. Preoccupied with his problems, he didn't pay much attention to her until she got nearer. She was in her mid-forties, still attractive in the fragile way of blond women with porcelain complexions. Age had touched her lightly but often, a faint but harsh line here, a lack of luster in the well-coiffed hair there. She seemed brittle yet gentle and knowing, tempered by life's fire. Her springy walk was compact and graceful, like a gymnast's. She was on the short side, petite, and when she locked gazes with Nudger her pace toward him quickened. She had to be-
"I'm Marilyn Eeker, Mr. Nudger," she said. "The desk clerk pointed you out to me. I've been trying to get in touch with you."
"I know," Nudger said. "We seem to be a second behind or ahead of each other. Why have you been looking for me, Miss Eeker?"
"Mrs.," she corrected. "It's about Ineida. I know you've been… looking into her life."
Nudger waited, wondering.
Marilyn Eeker smiled nervously and glanced around. "Can we go somewhere and sit down, Mr. Nudger?"
"Sure." Nudger motioned toward the hotel restaurant. She went inside with him, and the Creole Queen who was the hostess led them to a corner booth by the window. They sat looking out at the wavering heat rising like sultry dreams from the damp street.