Wendy whipped sideways in her seat and came face to face with the man leaning in through the window. It was only Jeffrey.
“Oh, Jesus,” she hissed. She let her head fall back on the headrest while she fought to catch her breath.
“What’s the matter?” Jeffrey Pellman asked innocently. “Did I scare you?”
“Only enough to put me in cardiac arrest.”
“Sorry.” The grin on his face said he wasn’t. “I saw you sitting there in a daze, and I figured you could use something to wake you up.”
“Oh, thanks. Thanks a bunch.”
His grin faded. “You really are mad, huh?”
“Oh, I… I guess not.”
She was, though. Scaring her that way had been such a stupid, thoughtless, childish thing to do. And it wasn’t the first time either. Jeffrey was always tricking her, springing practical jokes, messing with her head. Playing games. God, did she ever hate that. But she’d never told him off, just as she could never bring herself to ask Jennifer to turn down the volume on her stereo.
“Am I forgiven?” Jeffrey asked in a tone of voice a shade too sincere to be believed.
No, she wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead she merely smiled-a wan, forced smile, the smile a survivor of a plane crash might summon for the TV cameras-and said, “Forgiven.”
She cranked up the window and got out of the car. Jeffrey was already feeding change into her parking meter. Which, she supposed, was considerate of him.
A moment later he turned, looked her over, and smiled.
“You look nice tonight.”
It was the same thing he told her every time they went out together. The same exact words.
He hadn’t noticed the necklace. Hadn’t even seen it.
“Oh,” Wendy said. “Thanks. So do you.”
She told herself she ought to feel disappointed. She didn’t. She felt nothing. Nothing at all.
Hooking his arm in hers, Jeffrey led her down the street toward a display of cursive letters in red and green neon that formed the words “Mandarin House,” “Chinese Cuisine,” and “Open.” He held the door for her, as he always did.
The Mandarin House was not particularly crowded tonight. A young couple sat at one table, speaking quietly, lost in each other. At the far end of the restaurant, two tables had been butted together to facilitate a gathering of several generations, all talking loudly and more or less simultaneously in fluent Chinese.
Jeffrey selected a table by the front window, with a view of the traffic streaming past the garish neon facade of the Westside Pavilion across the street. He held Wendy’s chair for her, another of his small courtesies, then seated himself. The waiter, smiling nervously and shifting his weight as if in need of a trip to the rest room, took their order for drinks. Wendy asked for an iced tea, and Jeffrey decided on a beer, specifying Heineken to show that he was too sophisticated to drink an American brand.
Once the waiter hurried off, Wendy settled back in her chair, glancing around at the restaurant, adjusting to the place by slow degrees. A bas-relief of a pagoda hung on the far wall. In a corner a brass Buddha prayed for enlightenment under the spreading leaves of a potted fern. Chinese music tinkled like raindrops, rising over the hiss of steam from the kitchen.
“You know,” Jeffrey said suddenly, “I just noticed something.”
Her heart kicked. The necklace. He’d seen it. He’d finally seen it.
“Oh?” she said as casually as possible. “What’s that?”
He cocked his thumb at the ceiling. “The dragon. It’s turned into a fire-breather. I don’t remember that from last time.”
A small, private death took place inside her. Indifferently she lifted her head to the beam ceiling. Yes, Jeffrey was right. The large papier-mache Chinese dragon, suspended over the center of the room by strands of fishing line, was now exhaling a tissue-paper plume of orange flame.
“A new touch,” she said softly. “Nice.”
All of a sudden her lower lip was trembling. She couldn’t let him see that. She opened her menu and held it in front of her face, feeling like a fool. There was no reason to be so upset. It was only a necklace, for God’s sake. It wasn’t important. Besides, she must have been crazy to think he’d notice. Nobody ever paid any attention to her. If she hadn’t raised her hopes unrealistically high, none of this would have happened. The whole thing was all her fault for being so
… so immature.
“Made up your mind?” Jeffrey inquired after a few moments.
“Almond chicken for me,” she answered, and was relieved to hear that her voice was steady, safely devoid of emotion.
“I think I’ll have the shrimp with lobster sauce.”
Putting the menu aside, she smiled, a calm, easy smile which, she was sure, betrayed no hint of pain. “Whenever we go to a Chinese restaurant, you always order the shrimp with lobster sauce.”
“I’m reliable. Sue me.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I’m too tired to be experimental. This shoot today was murder. Took me six hours, and I still don’t think I got what I wanted. The thing is, I decided to go for a soft-focus look, but I didn’t want to lose too much detail, so
…”
Jeffrey went on telling her about his current assignment, invariably the principal topic of conversation when they were together. He was a freelance photographer who did magazine spreads for a living and more consciously artistic work on the side, some of which had been exhibited at the smaller local galleries. The galleries provided little income, but the magazines, glossy large-circulation publications with exorbitant advertising rates, paid well- well enough to cover the rental of a two-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills north of the Sunset Strip, a good neighborhood. The house served as both residence and studio; Jeffrey had converted one bathroom into a darkroom, and used the garage for many of his photo sessions.
On assignment he would shoot anything in any style or format desired, but when he worked for himself he limited his medium to high-grain black and white and confined his subjects to the buildings and monuments of the city; “urbanscapes,” he called the results. To get such shots, he often worked in the early morning, when the streets were empty; no human beings could be permitted to clutter up his vision of the city. Jeffrey positively hated photographing people, because with people, he felt, a photographer could not be in complete control. And as Wendy knew only too well, Jeffrey Pellman was a man who needed to be in control.
Maybe, she’d often reflected, it was his passion for control that made him play tricks on her, in order to keep her off balance, dependent on his whim. Maybe-she didn’t care for this thought, but it sometimes came unbidden, especially late at night when she was alone-maybe that was the only reason he’d ever gone out with her. Maybe he liked the way he could dominate her, control the course of any conversation, hold court with no fear of being challenged by a stronger personality with an opinion of its own. Yes. Just maybe.
Their drinks arrived. Jeffrey made an elaborate show of testing the beer with a connoisseur’s wariness, then pronounced it acceptable. The waiter took their order. Wendy asked for an egg roll as an appetizer, followed by won ton soup and almond chicken. Jeffrey chose pan-fried dumplings, hot and sour soup, and of course, shrimp with lobster sauce.
The waiter returned to the kitchen, vanishing through a swinging door into a haze of steam and a clatter of pans. Jeffrey resumed his monologue as if there had been no interruption, describing in considerable detail the specific lenses and filters he’d used, even though he must have known that the technical jargon meant nothing to her. Wendy found herself tuning him out. She didn’t think she was being rude; as far as he knew, she was still listening in rapt attention. Anyway, he mainly wanted to hear himself talk. She was merely the wall off which his voice was bounced.
Still pretending to listen, occasionally prompting him with a word or two-“Yes.” “Uh-huh.” “Really?” “Did you?”-she let her thoughts drift back to the gourmet cooking class where she and Jeffrey had met three months ago. Even signing up for the class had been a major accomplishment. She remembered how she procrastinated about sending in her check, desperate to escape the prison of her loneliness even if only for one night a week, yet afraid to commit herself to the unknown. Finally she went through with it. She was proud of herself, although as things turned out she was too much of a klutz in the kitchen to learn much of value.
