“Sure,” I said.
She tossed some cushions on the floor-it was a shag carpet in here, very homey-and we lay on them and watched the fire.
“You must think I’m terrible,” she said.
“Why would I think that? Which I don’t.”
“Inviting a strange man to my home.”
“I’m not a strange man. I’m a good customer.”
She almost did a spit take with her martini. “Geez, that sounds even worse…”
I smiled at her. “I didn’t mean it to. I like you. I like being around you.”
It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the reason I was here, but it wasn’t a lie.
“I’ve had kind of a… rough time of it lately,” she said. “I wanted some company tonight.”
“Glad to oblige. Why a rough time?”
“My boss… Lonny…” Shook her head. “He’s making things tough…”
“How so?”
“I like Lonny. We were friends for years, or anyway he and Bob and Laureen-that’s Lonny’s wife, ex-wife now-well, we were all friends. Socially, and involved with the party.”
“Democratic Action party, you mean?”
“Right. And, anyway, Lonny’s been really sweet, giving me this job and all. But he’s been, well, pressuring me.”
“He getting ‘handsy,’ too?”
“I wish it were that simple. He’s asked me out. We’ve been out. I’ve… let him kiss me a few times.” She made a face. “Damn, this sounds so, so high school. I’ve never slept with him. I just don’t.. don’t feel that way about him.”
She sipped her martini.
“But he’s serious about you,” I said.
She nodded. “I know now that he only gave me that job to be close to me.”
“Afraid if you tell him you’re not interested in him you’ll lose your job?”
“That’s not it, exactly. I’m good at what I do. I sell a lot of cars. I could go elsewhere, I really could. I was a good student, you know-or I was till my senior year, when dad died. I got pregnant in junior college, and was already involved with that Born Again bull, and my life sort of got away from me. Then working for Preston Freed I realized I still had brains, that I could go out in the business world and make something of myself, without Bob’s help, screw him if he doesn’t want to help his own kids… well, one of ’em’s his, anyway.”
“Then what’s the big deal with telling Lonny how you feel? You’re not afraid for your job, after all.”
“I know,” she said, rim of the martini glass near her lower lip, “but I like him. He’s been sweet. I just don’t want to hurt him.”
“You afraid of hurting your ex-husband, too?”
“Bob? Why, what do you mean?”
“If he isn’t paying his child support and alimony, throw his butt in jail.”
She shook her head wearily. “It isn’t that simple. Bob… that’s something else that’s been a little rough on me lately. Sorry if I sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself…”
“It’s okay. Bob.”
“Bob,” she said. “You see, he wants me back. He says he’s not going to run around anymore. Learned his lesson and all that garbage. He apologized for that time he didn’t buy what I said about, you know, Freed getting ‘friendly.’ He… he wants his family back.”
“Do you want him back?”
“No. I loved him once, but he’s too smothering. He’d never let me work; this house was my world. And since the split I found out I like to work. Anyway, he’s been coming around a lot… it’s hard, it really is. See, he’s holding back on what he’s supposed to pay, knowing that for me to do anything about it I have to take him to court.”
“Have you done that?”
“Yes. I saw an attorney six months ago. And faced with that, Bob paid up, four months worth. Now he’s pulled the same thing-three months behind. I’ll have to go through the same damn rigmarole.”
“Unless you take him back.”
“Unless I take him back.”
“Which is in the no-way-in-hell category, I’d guess.”
“Sure is. Even though he’s trying to work on me through the girls.”
She stopped, something catching in her throat; she had tears in her eyes. She finished the martini and got up and got herself another one. I sat up and poked at the fire while she did that.
Then she settled herself on the cushion again, on her stomach, ankles crossed behind her, white dress hiked up, and said, “Why do you ask so many questions?”
“I’m interested in you.”
“Why?”
“You got a nice smile.”
“Is that all?”
“You got nice just about everything.”
She gave me a kiss; even the alcohol on her breath didn’t take anything away from it. Slow, kind of wet, very sweet. I liked it.
“You don’t know me,” I warned her, wondering why I was warning her.
“I don’t want to know anybody right now,” she said, smiled and sipped her martini. “Just want some company. Okay? Just be company.”
“Fine.”
We listened to the fire crackle.
Then I said, “Somehow I can’t picture you getting caught up with this Freed character.”
“Then you’ve never heard him speak. He’s something. Those eyes really hold you. Charmed the pants off many a girl.”
“You said as much earlier. He really fools around with a lot of those pretty young things on his staff?”
“He sure does. I was almost one of ’em, remember? But you know what I heard?”
“What did you hear?”
Giggled, sipped her martini. “I heard the damnedest rumor. Thing of it is, I think I believe it.”
“Which is?”
“Well, you know he has this TV ‘news’ show, told you about. In fact, I used to be sort of involved with it-if you call carting-the-tape-every-Monday-night-to-the-little-cable- outfit-that-does-his-uplinks being involved. He has a small but pretty elaborate studio at his house. Actually it’s more than a house, it’s kind of a mansion. Anyway, he tapes his weekly show right there.”
“Yeah. So?”
“They say that’s not all he tapes there. They say he’s got a video-tape library, of all his ‘conquests.’”
“You mean, his sexual conquests?”
“Yeah, yeah. There’s this mirror over his bed, they say, and there’s a camera behind it. He tapes himself doing it with these girls.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I heard it on good authority. From a girl who found out and was pissed off, man, really pissed.”
“So he doesn’t tell them, then?”
“Hell, no! He just takes ’em into his bedroom and has his way with ’em and watches the replays to his heart’s content.”
There was a mirror over Freed’s bed. And the bedroom had been well lit. And the candidate was a narcissistic son-of-a-bitch. It made a perverse sort of sense.
“And none of these girls knew, at the time at least, they were on camera. Can you imagine?”
If the Democrat Action party’s presidential candidate had been taping tonight, I’d been on camera, too. Stunning the stunning behind of Freed’s latest conquest. I didn’t like the thought of that. Leaving my image on tape, no, that I couldn’t allow. I’d have to check this out.
