He said, “I better get busy or I’ll be fired and have to write like crazy.” He picked up a catsup bottle from the next table, then walked another table down and picked up a second bottle. A third. Where was he going, into the kitchen to water down the stuff so there’d be enough to last through lunch and dinner? “Hey, I mean it about those tickets, Allie.”
“You better. I want opening night.”
“No, let’s make it a few performances later. When all the bugs are worked out.”
“Okay, you’re the playwright.”
The lopsided grin. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Already have.”
After she’d eaten, while she was digging in her purse to pay the check, Allie realized she’d forgotten a disk she wanted to program into the Fortune Fashions computers. No problem. She could hurry back down the street to the apartment and pick it up, then still make Mayfair’s office on time.
When she opened the door, she was surprised to find Hedra home. As soon as she saw Allie, she stood up from where she was sitting on the sofa. Her hands hung awkwardly at her sides, fingers working, kneading air.
“Thought you were at work,” Allie said, striding to the alcove where her computer was set up.
Behind her Hedra said, “I was just about to walk out the door.”
Allie found the floppy disk she was searching for, slid it into a protective hard plastic cover, then stuffed it into her purse.
When she walked out from behind the silk folding screen that formed a fourth wall of the alcove, she said, “I had an interesting conversation with a waiter down at Goya’s.”
Hedra adjusted the belt of her brown skirt. The skirt’s hem hit her at an unflattering angle, Allie noticed. “It’s too easy in this city to have interesting conversations with waiters.”
“This one turned out to be a nice guy.”
“Far as you know from talking to him over the soup. You shouldn’t mix with strange men that way, Allie.”
“He’s one of our neighbors.”
Hedra frowned. She had more makeup on today and looked almost attractive. Allie recognized the eyeshade and lipstick. Colors like her own makeup. “He lives here?” Hedra asked. “In the Cody?”
“Right.”
“Like I used to,” Sam said, walking in from the kitchen. He was using a spoon to scoop low-fat yogurt from a plastic container. Dressed for business today: dark blue pin-stripe suit, white shirt, red tie. It was an outfit the dress-for-success books said was supposed to inspire trust.
Allie realized her mouth was open. She looked at Hedra, who couldn’t meet her eyes and seemed to be studying the toe of her black loafer. Hedra mumbled, “I tried to let you know …”
Allie glared at Sam. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to see you, but Hedra said you’d left.”
“Hedra—”
“Don’t blame her,” Sam interrupted. “I sorta forced my way in.”
“I wasn’t gonna blame anyone but you for being here,” Allie assured him. Anger gathered deep in her. “If you think you have the run of this place just because you can notify the landlord I have a roommate, think again, Sam.”
He gave her his smile that could melt cold steel. Usually. “I only wanted to see you. I still love you, Allie. I can’t help it.”
Hedra coughed nervously, then said, “I better get moving or I’ll be late for work.”
Neither Allie nor Sam spoke as she grabbed up her purse and a light coat and went out, moving jerkily and too fast.
“I’m leaving, too,” Allie said.
“I’ll go with you down to the street.”
She knew she couldn’t stop him from doing that. Not unless she wanted to leave him here in the apartment by himself. “You sure will. You don’t think I’d leave you here alone, do you?”
“I don’t suppose you would,” Sam said.
Allie locked the apartment door behind her while Sam stood in the hall, watching. There was the slightest hint of a smile on his face, as if he’d just heard a good joke and it lingered in his mind.
Hedra had already gone down in the elevator. Allie and Sam waited silently while it rose slowly back to the third floor. It seemed to take long enough to rise three hundred floors.
Allie heard the cables thrum as the elevator adusted to floor level. The doors slid open. Sam stood back like a gentleman to let her enter first. She felt like waiting until the doors were about to close, then stepping into the elevator so he wouldn’t have time to follow. The old rattletrap didn’t have the kinds of doors that opened automatically if someone stuck a hand between them. But she knew that was foolish and would accomplish nothing in the long run.
Alone with him in the elevator, she reached around him to press the button. Gave it a twist with her thumb.
Sam said, “I’m asking for your forgiveness, Allie.”
