“It doesn’t matter, does it? I jumped to conclusions, which I don’t ordinarily do. But you didn’t seem to fit into the image you were trying to create for yourself. I mean, you just don’t match the ink-stained bureaucratic hack picture, the gray-faced civil-service type tangled in the typical government delirium of red tape. You’re too-I hate the word, it’s so damned emasculating, but you’re too sensitive. That’s what intrigued me.”
His lips slowly twitched into a little smile. “I can’t tell if you’re flattering me or insulting me. The truth isn’t nearly as mysterious as you seem to think. I’m a lawyer, I used to work for a politician named Speed, and when he died I had to find a job, so now I’m with the SEC.”
“Jim Speed?”
“Did you know him?”
“I knew him to-to talk to,” she said. “He was a very nice guy, compared to most.”
“Most politicians?”
She opened her mouth, thought better of what she had been about to say, closed it, and nodded.
He said, “As for not fitting the image, what can I say? At least my work’s less dull than sitting in an office drawing up corporate charters.” The dinner came-filets mignon with sauce bearnaise.
He regarded the girl from under lowered brows while she began to eat; he said suddenly, “If I ask you a direct question, will you answer it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are you?”
“Try another one.”
He said, “We’re skating around each other. I don’t like it much.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, with an edge on her voice.
He matched her tone. “If you didn’t want to know me, you didn’t have to accept my invitation.”
“Can’t we just enjoy each other’s company? Why do we have to pry up rocks and see what’s under them? Have I asked you about your wife?”
It took him aback. He bridled. “I haven’t got a wife.”
“No? You don’t act like a bachelor-you act like a man with a home who doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m divorced,” he said. “A few months ago. Does that satisfy you?”
“If you say so.” She was eating; her eyes lifted to meet his. She had his anger up now, and he glared at her; they began to scowl at each other, silently, jaws set.
It went on, a grim contest of wills, until abruptly Carol’s eyes began to sparkle. Hastings’ nose twitched. Suddenly they were both laughing helplessly.
He said, “Okay-okay. I apologize.”
“No, don’t. It was my mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“I thought I could try something. I can see it’s no good.”
He said, “Damn it, you confuse me. Every time you open your mouth, I get confused.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve been putting on an act with you. I deserve your anger.”
“An act? What kind of act?”
Her hair swung forward as she looked down; it masked her face. She said slowly, with care, “Sometimes it seems an awful waste to think about where you are-it’s so much nicer to think about where you could be.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“When you came to my apartment this afternoon you were a total stranger, you didn’t know anything at all about me, and I liked you immediately-you seemed so nice and sensitive and so Goddamned normal. I don’t meet many normal men in my life and I gave in to the stupid fairy-tale wish that I could just meet a nice normal fellow and have a nice normal dinner with him, no strings attached, no front to keep up, no tired dreary thoughts of what would come after it.”
She still hadn’t looked up, and he didn’t speak; he waited for her to go on, and after a moment she drew breath sharply and said in a very low voice, “It wasn’t any good. I should have known that-I should never have come. But you asked me here without suspecting a damned thing and you haven’t mentioned a word about that NCI stock you tried to pump me about this afternoon, and I did come, and now, damn it I owe it to you-I’ve got to level with you.”
She tossed her head back and gave him, full face, a twisted smile. “Do you really want hear about me, the sad story of my life?”
“Do you want to tell it?”
“No. But I’ve got to, or you’ll keep phoning me for dates-you’ll keep after me until you’re satisfied, I can see it in your face, and I’d only have to turn you down. You deserve to know why.”
She peered past the bar to the front window of the restaurant. The lobby entrance of a small hotel across the street was lit. “Do you see the two girls in that hotel entrance?”
He turned to look. The girls were skinny and nervous, standing hipshot in the hotel doorway, wearing miniskirts and elaborate tousled hairdos which were probably wigs.
Carol said, “Ladies of Cypriot persuasion. They do a brisk business from lobbies like that one, all over the midtown area. This town is Mecca for thousands of teen-aged girls like that. Out in Queens and New Jersey the pimps recruit them in candy stores by promising them parties and expensive clothes. They’re stupid, backward, maybe already hooked on hard stuff, fourteen or fifteen years old. I mean the ones that cruise Times Square and hole up in flophouses on Ninth Avenue. Those two across the street work out of that hotel. They’re a little higher in the social order-they get maybe twenty dollars a trick, which they have to split with bellhops and cops and a pimp. They may gross a hundred and fifty a night, but they only keep sixty of it, and most of that goes to support their habits. They’ll snag a chief petty officer on overnight shore leave, or a typewriter repairman whose wife’s home pregnant and won’t let him touch her, but if you’re a district sales manager in town for a meeting, or a doctor at a medical convention, you want something better-a girl you can take to dinner at the Copacabana and show off to the other doctors at an after-hours hotel party. Someone who can make good conversation and look gorgeous and spend the night, provided you’re willing to shell out for it.”
Hastings’ eyes were squinted almost shut; his hands had become still. Carol said wearily, “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I guess.”
“Then you do understand what the mystery was all about.” She met his eyes and said with brutal directness, “I see no reason not to believe I’ve been the principal player in more dirty locker-room stories than the farmer’s daughter. It’s part of my stock in trade-one of the reasons I can charge what I charge is that the johns want to boast about it later. It feeds their egos and their sagging libidos to brag to the boys in the club car that they just blew a stinking great fortune on one of the highest-priced call girls in New York City. A girl who only accepts johns with references, who looks innocent and gives them the illusion of glamour. A girl who shops in the best Fifth Avenue stores and likes paying two hundred dollars instead of nineteen-ninety-nine for a dress. By appointment only.”
She sat back and gave him a brassy stare.
He paid the check, drew back Carol’s chair, and took her elbow. Outside she disengaged herself and turned to walk away, her back stiff. He gripped her arm, saw her puzzled scowl, and held her beside him while the doorman smiled and nodded and summoned a cab. Hastings tipped him and got in beside her. He gave the driver the address of her hotel, and settled back. There was no conversation. It was a short ride. They got out of the cab and, on the sidewalk, Hastings said, “One question. Do you enjoy it?”
Her smile was twisted.
“My God, you’re rude. I suppose now you want to go up with me for a nightcap. No man’s got any conscience below the waist.”
He took her inside, his mouth making a pinched line across his face like a surgeon’s wound. They went up silently in the elevator, and he walked her to her door. When she inserted the key she said coolly, “I’d better warn you, I come damned high.”
“Sure,” he said. “I guess the fat ugly ones have to be extra generous if they want you.”
She opened the door and went inside, not barring his way. She said, “Misunderstood husbands, sweating little-boy men-I thought maybe you were a little different.”