“Yes?”
He smiled at her. “You light up the whole room.”
It was a direct attack, but it didn’t put her off; it amused her. She had put the telephone receiver on her shoulder, head tilted against it to free her hands, and now she shushed him with a gesture and spoke softly into the phone. “Yes, Mr. Bierce.” She hung up and got out of her chair. She went through the little gate and said, “I’ll be back immediately-I’ve got to hear the rest of this, it must be good.” Wrinkling her nose at him, she disappeared into the executive offices.
Glancing impatiently across the empty bullpen, Wyatt lit a cigarette and waited.
She was true to her word. Within less than sixty seconds she reappeared. She had good breasts and a provocatively outflaring rump; she was animated and vibrant-and, he thought, ready to be aroused by gentle, easy masculinity.
She settled her nice round little ass in the chair, not taking her eyes off him. “Now, then, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir,” he told her. “‘My prince,’ if you like.”
She wet her lips with the sharp pink tip of her tongue and said, “You were saying, my prince?”
“To begin with, I don’t mean to tread on anyone’s toes.”
“Whose, for instance? Mine?”
“De Angelo’s.”
She only grinned at him. “Tell me, do you always talk with your teeth together?”
“That’s breeding.” He glanced at the door and said, “A stock-broker with a reputation as the wildest party thrower in West-chester County has invited me to a bash at his suburban bungalow tonight, only I have a terrible problem.”
“And?”
“The invitation is for two,” he said, and turned his hands over. “You see how it is. Mr. Hackman was absolutely insistent that I bring with me the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance. Of course, you are the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance, and in order to meet the requirement, I would have to bring you. However, since we’ve hardly exchanged fifty words in three months, I don’t hold out much hope of meeting the requirement. That’s my problem.”
“It sounds like a terrible problem,” she agreed. “Are you asking me to help you solve it, sir?”
“I certainly am,” he said eagerly. “I’m so glad you understand.”
“Yes, indeed,” she replied.
“What I’m doing,” he said, “is inviting you to dinner, say, at Armand’s, and then to Mr. Hackman’s party. I have a car, so it will be no trouble getting you home afterward, unless-”
“Unless I happen to live in some ungodly place like Brooklyn? I’m afraid I do.”
“You wouldn’t put me on!”
She shook her head gravely. “Brooklyn,” she said, drawing her lips back and pronouncing it with a conspiratorial leer. Then, with her face screwed up brokenheartedly, she whispered, “You see, that’s my terrible problem. You can’t imagine how many men have broken dates with me as soon as they found out I lived in Siberia. So I’m being very honest with you and giving you this chance to withdraw gracefully.”
“I’ll risk it,” he said staunchly. “Neither fire nor flood nor sleet nor Brooklyn streets could stay me from making my appointed rounds with the most beautiful young lady of my acquaintance on my arm.”
He saw the lift of her breath; she smiled. “Honest to God, I thought you’d never ask me.”
Steve Wyatt took her arm like a true gentleman and walked her out.
7. Russell Hastings
Russ Hastings sat at the curve of the bar pushing his ice cubes around with a swizzle stick, looked at his watch and wondered if she had decided to stand him up-she was twenty-five minutes late now. Waiting laid a frost on his nerves, and he ordered another Scotch. Sunset midtown traffic crawled by outside the window. His fresh drink came and he demolished half of it at a gulp and looked at his watch again, thinking of Carol McCloud. A glamorous woman with a mysterious source of income-his lips made a lopsided wry smile, but as he began to feel the pervasive ease of the whiskey, her image came to him like a photograph printed on the insides of his eyelids.
When he looked up toward the door, she was there.
He gave a start and went to her. She smiled a little and said, “I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten. The phone rang just as I was leaving-someone I had a hard time getting rid of.”
They waited by the door until the captain took them in tow and guided them to a small table. She wore a sexy black dress, sleeveless and cut low beneath lovely arms and shoulders. She moved with grace and pride.
They were seated and a waiter hovered until they ordered drinks. There was small talk, the awkward maneuverings of strangers-the traffic, the heat, the elections. Her voice had a resonant low smoky quality, and when Hastings remarked on it the girl dipped her head with an inturned smile-her hair swung forward, swaying with silken weight. She said with a small laugh of admission, “I spent a good many boring hours at home with a tape recorder correcting my voice level. That was a few years ago-you wouldn’t have recognized the old Carol McCloud. I had a God-awful twang.”
When he responded, she said, “That’s a nice laugh.” Her eyes smiled at him over the rim of her martini glass.
He tipped glasses with her. “To a long and happy life.”
“By all means,” she replied, with an inverted twist to her tone. It puzzled him, and he said, “What sort of twang was it? Texas?”
“Kentucky.”
“No kidding.”
She laughed. “You know-where they have pretty horses and fast women. I’m a refugee from a one-drugstore town in the back hills.”
“In that case,” he announced, “you certainly have got no right to look so beautiful.”
She only shook her head, giving him the same amused look she had given him at her apartment this afternoon. She said, “Some men are afraid of beautiful women.” But when that remark only elicited his amiable smile, she laughed again. “Was that a trite old saw, or did I make it up?”
She seemed fully at ease. He couldn’t tell if she was flirting with him, and for the moment it didn’t matter: it suited him well enough merely to look at her. Her only jewelry was a huge amethyst clip set in gold. Her elegance was all in her luxurious simplicity. She had the kind of firm-muscled, high-boned beauty that wouldn’t fade.
They smoked and drank and ordered dinner. After a stretch of silence, he said, “I suppose we could play the old game of who do you know that I know.”
Her eyes widened a little, and she pursed her lips. “I don’t think so.”
“No? You keep taking me by surprise.”
“I was born this afternoon when you met me. No past, no associations-let’s just leave it that way.”
“Now you’re really making me curious.”
She made no answer of any kind. A waiter took away the ashtray and replaced it with a clean one. Carol said, “You look older in this light than you did this afternoon. You’ve got a touch of snow around your temples.”
He nodded. “My gray hair’s a little premature, but I prefer it to no hair at all. Early gray runs in my family.”
“It must be nice to know things like that.”
“Come again?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Only, you haven’t volunteered much about yourself.”
“Not much to volunteer.”
“Now you’re being demure,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you. You do interest me, you know-you caught me off guard this afternoon and I pegged you all wrong.”
“I know. You said you took me for a-And then you stopped. Took me for a what?”