We wheeled along Soldiers’ Field Road with the Charles, quite small and winding this far up, on our left. I looked at Rachel. She was crying. Tears ran in silence down her cheeks. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her shoulders were a little hunched, and her body shook slightly. I looked back at the road. I couldn’t think of anything to say. She didn’t cry any harder and she didn’t stop. The only sound was the unsteady inhaling and exhaling as she cried. We went past Harvard Stadium.
I said, “Feel like a freak?”
She nodded.
“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.
“A freak,” she said. Her voice was a little thick and a little unsteady, but if you didn’t see the tears, you wouldn’t be sure she was crying. “Or a monster. That’s how everyone seems to see us. Do you seduce little girls? Do you carry them off for strange lesbian rites? Do you use a dildo? God. God damn. Bastards.” Her shoulders began to shake harder.
I put my right hand out toward her with the palm up. We passed the business school that way—me with my hand out, her with her body shaking. Then she put her left hand in my right. I held it hard.
“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.
She squeezed back at me and we drove the rest of the way along the Charles like that—our hands quite rigidly clamped together, her body slowly quieting down. When I got to the Arlington Street exit, she let go of my hand and opened her purse. By the time we stopped in front of the Ritz, she had her face dry and a little make-up on and herself back in place.
The doorman looked like I’d made a mess on his foot when I got out and nodded toward the Chevy. But he took it from me and said nothing. A job is a job. We went up in the elevator and walked to her room without saying a word. She opened the door. I stepped in first; she followed.
“We have to go to First Mutual Insurance Company at one. I’m addressing a women’s group there. Could you pick me up about twelve thirty?” Her voice was quite calm now.
“Sure,” I said.
“I’d like to rest for a while,” she said, “so please excuse me.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be here at quarter to one.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Lock the door behind me,” I said.
She nodded. I went out and waited until I heard the bolt click behind me. Then I went to the elevator and down.
“I’m meeting with a caucus of women employees at First Mutual Insurance,” Rachel said. “This is their lunch hour and they’ve asked me to eat with them. I know you have to be close by, but I would like it if you didn’t actually join us.” We were walking along Boylston Street.
“Okay,” I said. “As I recall from your book, First Mutual is one of the baddies.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes. They are discriminatory in their hiring and wage practices. There are almost no women in management. They have systematically refused to employ gay people and have fired any that they discovered in their employ.”
“Didn’t you turn up discriminatory practices in their sales policy?”
“Yes. They discourage sales to blacks.”
“What’s the company slogan?”
Rachel smiled. “We’re in the people business.”
We went into the lobby of First Mutual and took an elevator to the twentieth floor. The cafeteria was at one end of the corridor. A young woman in camel’s-hair slacks and vest topped with a dark-brown blazer was waiting outside. When she saw Rachel she came forward and said, “Rachel Wallace?” She wore small gold-rimmed glasses and no make-up. Her hair was brown and sensible.
Rachel put out her hand. “Yes,” she said. “Are you Dorothy Collela?”
“Yes, come on in. We’re all at a table in the corner.” She looked at me uncertainly.
“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I just hang around Ms. Wallace. Don’t think about me for a moment.”
“Will you be joining us?” Dorothy said.
Rachel said, “No. Mr. Spenser is just going to stay by if I need anything.”
Dorothy smiled a little blankly and led Rachel to a long table at one end of the cafeteria. There were eight other women gathered there. I leaned against the wall maybe twenty feet away where I could see Rachel and not hear them and not be in the flow of diners.
There was a good deal of chair-scraping and jostling at the table when Rachel sat down. There were introductions and people standing and sitting, and then all but two of the women got up and went to the food line to get lunch. The luncheon special was Scrambled Hamburg Oriental, and I decided to pass on lunch.
The cafeteria had a low ceiling with a lot of fluorescent panels in it. The walls were painted a brilliant yellow on three sides with a bank of windows looking out over Back Bay on the fourth side. The bright yellow paint was almost painful. Music filtered through the cafeteria noise. It sounded like Mantovani, but it always does.
Working with a writer, you get into the glamour scene. After we left here, we’d probably go down to Filene’s basement and autograph corsets. Maybe Norman would be there, and Truman and Gore. Rachel took her tray and
