Stillman shook his head. “Fo’s not the owner. He’s just a friend of mine who comes here on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It took him twenty-eight thousand meals to learn to pick out the best Chinese food, but I’m hungry today, so I don’t have time for experiments.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “Life is too short to screw around trying to rediscover what somebody else knows already, so don’t waste your time with it. On the small stuff, find somebody who knows, and then give him the courtesy of humbly admitting it. That way you’ll avoid fifty years of heartburn and bad hangovers and stall-outs on freeways.”
He slipped into another topic. “So, do you hang out much with the people at work?”
“Not really,” Walker said. “Once in a while one of us will invite another to dinner or have a small party. But most of the time, to tell you the truth, we bore each other. I mean, we all smile and talk at the coffee room, but we all know the same things.” What he had just said was true, but saying it aloud made it worse.
Stillman nodded. “How about women? You’re not queer.” It was a statement, not a question.
Walker kept himself from looking around to see if anyone had heard. Stillman caught the expression and said, “Hey, it’s San Francisco. Anybody here look shocked? A lot of people from Ohio come here just to sign up for the parade. You didn’t. So why aren’t you married?”
“I haven’t met any woman I want to live with until I die,” said Walker. “Unless I could be sure of dying in a month or so.” He congratulated himself on saying the lie so fluently. He had met somebody, and he had let her slip away, but his life was none of Stillman’s business.
Stillman nodded. “Yeah. I saw you gaping at Cardarelli when she left your cage the other day. Don’t just ogle and wonder. Make a move on her. You might find that you wouldn’t want the month to end.”
Walker shook his head. “She’s nice to look at, all right . . . .” Walker stopped himself, shocked. He had almost been lulled into telling this stranger something that might harm her.
“But?” Stillman prodded.
Walker said carefully. “I guess sometimes relationships go that way, and sometimes they don’t.”
Stillman sighed happily. “Not with me. They always go that way. I’ve had three really poisonous marriages, and I still hope to have one that lasts long enough to be fatal. Since you’re young enough to learn, that’s another thing I can give you a shortcut on. So far, the only thing I can think of that’s worth any unpleasantness at all is a woman who’s amenable to your favorite pastimes, and whose voice doesn’t set your teeth on edge. Would I trade everything I’ve got for it? Sure. I’ve done it about four times.”
“I thought it was three.”
“I’m counting one who didn’t let it get that far. I loved her. I even learned to make martinis for her—spent several evenings watching the bartender at the Mark Hopkins and asking him questions. It cost more than medical school on a per diem basis, and nearly ruined my liver. One night she was at my place, and I went to the kitchen to make some drinks. When I came back, she had bolted. The door was open, swinging on its hinges. Later, I asked her why she didn’t want to marry me. She said, ‘The martinis weren’t strong enough for that.’ I always count her.”
He stared at the table for a moment in a reverie, then seemed to remember Walker. “Never judge people by what they have. That’s mostly luck. Judge them by what they want.” He waved his hand. “Do they want to mind their own business and be somebody decent, or do they never quite feel right unless they take what they get from somebody else and leave them bleeding so they can savor the contrast?” He lifted his eyes. “Ah, David,” he said. “What have you brought for us?”
The waiter happily rattled off a group of unfamiliar Chinese phrases as he set plates on the table and proudly whisked the tops off. Walker could see dumplings, pieces of chicken and meat that he suspected was pork but could conceivably have been duck, and vegetables that he had seen before. None of it looked particularly unusual.
“Wonderful, David,” said Stillman. “Thank you very much.” He heaped various things from the serving dishes onto Walker’s plate, and they began to eat.
Walker spent most of the meal wondering what Stillman was up to. If he had invited Walker here in order to get him to incriminate himself or someone else, he was doing a poor job of it. He continued to do two-thirds of the talking, and showed far less interest in McClaren Life and Casualty than in women, weather, the behavior of passersby on the street below them, or food.
Walker had been deceived by the appearance of the food. He took two bites and decided it was the best food he had tasted in two years in San Francisco, and he felt bereft at the thought that he would never come to this restaurant again. If he tried, he would probably run into Stillman. Even if that didn’t happen, he couldn’t imagine ordering whatever Mr. Fo had ordered. It occurred to him that he had no idea what the place was called. He assumed it was on the menu, but he had not seen a menu.
On his way out, he made one last try. He pointed to the neon sign and said to Stillman, “What does that say?”
“Good luck,” Stillman said. “They always say ‘Good luck.’ ”
On the eighth day of Stillman, at five minutes to twelve, as Walker was trying to compose the concluding paragraph of his interpretation of sea-loss figures for the quarter ending June 30 in time to go to lunch, he caught a shadow in his peripheral vision, and looked up to see Stillman in his doorway.
“Come on, kid. Time to go.”
“One second,” said Walker. He decided to skip some of the preliminaries and rapidly typed the words “Recommmend no action at this time,” then saved the report and let the terminal return to the main menu. He looked up again, but Stillman was gone. He supposed “Time to go” had been Stillman’s way of saying he wanted to go to lunch again. Walker took his coat from the hanger and stepped out in time to catch a quick almost-glimpse of Stillman turning the corner into the hallway near the elevators, just a vague impression that a charcoal-gray coat had been there an instant ago.
When he reached the hallway, Stillman was standing in an elevator holding the door open for him. The rest of the McClaren people were streaming into elevator number three, possibly too impatient to wait, but probably relieved at the excuse for staying far from Stillman. He released the door as soon as Walker was in, and the elevator began to descend.
Walker said, “Where do you want to eat today?”
Stillman looked up at the strip of black above the door, where the floor numbers were lighting up, one by one. “If the traffic’s moving, we might have time to pick something up at the airport.”
3
Walker’s head spun to look at Stillman. “Why would you want to go to the airport for lunch?”
Stillman said, “I said we’ll try to get lunch. We may not have time. Our plane leaves in a little over an hour.”
“Wait. Hold it,” said Walker. “Our plane? I can’t get on a plane.” His thoughts unexpectedly clarified. “I don’t even want to. What’s this about?”
“If you need somebody to feed your goldfish or something, I can make a call.” He added, “And don’t worry about not leaving your key. The people I’ll call are used to that kind of thing. They’ve evolved beyond the need for keys.”
“I don’t have a goldfish. I do have a job. I have—”
“You do,” said Stillman. “And this is it.” He glared at Walker for a moment, then sighed. “All right. I guess we’ll have to make time for this.” The elevator door opened, but Stillman pressed the button for the twelfth floor. The door closed, and the elevator began to ascend.
Walker gaped at him for a moment. He remembered Joyce Hazelton handing Stillman the phone and asking him obsequiously whether he had time to talk to Mr. McClaren. Walker had never even seen McClaren. He tried to determine whether Stillman was bluffing. They were already passing the tenth floor. If it was some kind of joke, he would have to stop the elevator in a second or two.
The doors opened and Stillman stepped out. Walker hesitated, followed him, then stopped just outside the doors. When they hummed shut he felt as though his retreat had been cut off. There was a woman in her thirties with perfectly arranged honey-colored hair and a cashmere dress walking toward the elevator as though she were a hostess going to answer the door. Walker had never seen her before. She met his eyes, a look of puzzlement appearing on her face. It stayed there just long enough to make Walker’s heart stop beating: if she asked what he
