He smiled. 'I'm sorry, babe.'
'God, you did it again.'
'Oh, I'm sorry. 'Babe,' you mean?'
'Yes. I hate that.'
'I'm sorry.'
'And stop apologizing. It's so…unmanly.'
Jeff McCay had long had this dream of having an uncomplicated relationship with a woman. Other men, over drinks, always told him about their uncomplicated relationships with women. But somehow it never happened for Jeff. Certainly not with Mindy, who could be like living with an entire psychiatric ward all at once. And certainly not with the ten-or was it twelve? — women at Foster Dawson with whom he'd had 'things' over the past four years. A little hot, quick, garter-snapping sex; that was all he asked for. But it quickly became so much more, sunk in that morass of failed expectation and enmity. Take gorgeous Brenda, here. She was one of those women who seemed basically to hate men. But, knowing it was men who more than not still dominated the business world, she was not in the least averse to sleeping with one of them now and then to get what she wanted.
And what she wanted was simple enough in agency terms: a full art directorship with all the commensurate salary increases, the real and imagined perks, and the real and imagined prestige that went with such a position.
In the beginning, part of his seduction scheme, Jeff had hinted (but was careful not to promise) that he would talk to Barney Graves, the Chief Art Director, and put in several million good words for Brenda. But all along, Jeff knew that he would not do this because he kept his own job only because the agency's largest client was his uncle-in-law. He was resented enough already; if he started getting his girlfriends promotions, he would be in dangerous waters indeed.
The second problem was that he was in love with Brenda and did not want her to get the promotion because once she did, she'd say good-bye for sure. In love. He thought about that as he stared across at her perfect white legs and her perfect white posture and her perfect tumbling red hair. God, he did love her; she could destroy him he loved her so much, and that made him feel both wonderful and terrible-wonderful because she made him feel so good, and terrible because he knew, deep down, that she'd dump him without a care and he would be maimed in some spiritual way forever.
'I checked his calendar,' Brenda said.
'Oh?'
'Yes. He's free for lunch tomorrow.'
'Oh-you mean Barney and-'
'Barney and you.'
'Oh.'
'Why do you keep saying `oh'? It's almost as annoying as your saying 'babe.''
'I'm sorry.'
'God. There you go again.'
Each time now, her distaste for him was more apparent. He wanted to have some kind of personality transplant-Why not? They were transplanting everything else these days-and emerge from surgery as just the kind of non-annoying man Brenda Kohl liked.
'I'll talk to him.'
'When, Jeff?'
'Tomorrow.'
'How about today?'
'If I get a chance.'
'You're that busy?'
'I'm afraid I am.'
'I'm tired of your lies, Jeff.'
Hearing her harsh words, seeing the anger in her green gaze, he thought again of how other men, particularly in bars, spoke and felt about women: as breasts, as bottoms, as legs and as laughs. Leave it to Jeff McCay to fall in love with a woman who essentially hated him.
'Why can't we be the way we used to be?' he said.
'We didn't use to be any way but the way we are right now, Jeff-me pleading, you evading.'
'Who's evasive when the subject of love comes up?'
'Oh, God, Jeff, not 'love' again! I'm twenty-four years old and I've slept with four men in my life and one of them could barely get it up-what do I know about love?'
In that whining tone of his that he despised so much, he leaned forward, palms sweating, head pounding, cheeks ablaze with shame, and said, 'You know how much I love you, Brenda. Doesn't that mean anything?'
'I used to think it would mean an art directorship. To be frank, I mean.'
'Well, that's a fine thing to say, Brenda. That's a fine thing.'
She indicated the small room with a regal turn of her slender white wrist. 'Jeff, I almost feel sorry for you. This is the Hubba-Hubba Room. This is where people come to use each other-for sex or for promotions or for a way of alleviating boredom. But nobody, Jeff, nobody falls in love in the Hubba-Hubba Room. Can't you understand that, Jeff? Can't you?'
He was about to yield to her, collapse inside and make a bitter promise (which he intended to keep) to go up-stairs and talk to Barney right then, when something that almost never happened in the Hubba-Hubba Room happened.
Behind the bar was a battered old black phone, the type Humphrey Bogart used to speak into when he was playing Sam Spade. It almost never rang (the Hubba-Hubba Room was supposed to be for uninterrupted pleasure), but now it rang as shrilly as the scream of a dying person.
Brenda said, a touch sardonically, 'It won't be for me. Assistant art directors aren't that important.'
He flew to the phone and snatched up the receiver. 'God, I'm so glad I got you. You've got to get home immediately.'
Mindy.
Glancing over his shoulder at Brenda, who was studying her perfect red-painted nails, he said, 'How did you know this number?'
'Your receptionist gave it to me. She didn't want to, the bitch, but then when I reminded her about my uncle- what's her name, anyway?'
'Who?'
'Your receptionist?'
'Sandra.'
'She sounds like a Sandra.'
'How does a 'Sandra' sound?'
'Snotty. Bitchy. I'm going to ask Uncle Ray to have her fired.' Mindy was not bluffing. Mindy never bluffed. Mindy had gotten any number of people at the Foster Dawson Agency fired. 'But right now you've got to get home.'
'Why?'
'Because I saw something.'
'What did you see?'
Behind him, Brenda stood up and waved. He wanted to lunge at her, hold her from leaving and shout I love you! until she confessed her love for him back.
Brenda left.
'Jeff? Are you still there?'
'Yes.'
'Why do you sound so surly all of a sudden?'
'Mindy, I'm just buried in work and I really don't have time to-'
'She's back.'
'Who's back?'
'Who do you think?'
