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?”
“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
