the other end of the county to get my car. That’s if I could even get a cab in Orchard Park at five in the morning. But if I stay here, I can be on the spot when the lot opens and drive myself home.”
“Here’s the problem with that. Look around you—factories, warehouses, and an impound lot. It isn’t very scenic in the daytime, so there’s a shortage of good hotels around here. By ‘good’ I don’t mean famous, I mean safe.”
“Oh,” she said.
“On the other hand, I happen to have a perfectly good house about twenty minutes away, with six spare bedrooms, five bathrooms, and clean towels.” He held his breath, hoping she would have a better idea.
“I hate to put you to that kind of trouble.”
That meant “yes.” He had no choice but to push the offer as graciously as he could manage at this hour, and make it sound easy. “I have to be at the hospital by seven, and I can take you to get your car on the way.” He glanced at her. “I might even be able to scare up some clothes for you that won’t look strange at dawn—like the bedraggled party-goer at the end of an Italian movie. Jane’s about your size.”
She looked at him with what seemed to be curiosity. “You would do that?”
“Sure.” What choice did he have?
“Won’t your—won’t Jane feel … uncomfortable?”
“What for?” he said too quickly. He had been concentrating on his own discomfort, so he had not yet thought about what Jane would feel. He cautiously considered the subject. He had a sudden vision of Jane’s eyes resting on Susan, taking an inventory—the long, golden hair, the little wisps on the nape of the long, delicate neck where they had escaped from the place where they had been tied, the impossibly smooth ivory skin—then focusing on Carey. But Jane’s look would be completely unjustified.
What he was doing was a simple act of kindness—no, it was even more innocent: an obligatory refusal to be unkind. He imagined Jane hearing his thoughts, and the gaze turned ironic. No, he thought. That wasn’t the way Jane would react at all—unless she was just teasing him. He was being irrational and unfair to her. She would never give him that look just because the person he helped happened to be female.
Then he admitted to himself that his deepest motive for taking her home with him had been provided by the needle on his gas gauge. He hadn’t insisted on driving her to her place, where she belonged, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find an open gas station at this hour on the long, unfamiliar drive to Orchard Park. He might run out of gas, and then they’d both be stranded.
He realized he was taking too much time inside his own head. “If she were here, she would be the one asking you to stay. She’s always doing things like this.” It sounded true to him, as far as it went. He couldn’t quite get himself to feel certain that Jane would invite a woman who looked like Susan to stay in the house while she wasn’t there.
She looked at him closely. “I’d feel a lot better about it if I heard her say it. I’d hate to get you in trouble.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not going to call her in the middle of the night to wake her up and ask her permission, no. But I’ll mention it the next time I talk to her.” He drove onto the boulevard and accelerated. “Of course, the first few times you meet her, you’ll have to get used to my calling you ‘Sister Mary Boniface.’ ”
She laughed the melodious, liquid laugh again. “Oh, well. I guess I’d rather just be your secret.”
Carey was still contemplating those words as he pulled into his driveway. He idled near the front door, where he usually parked in the summer, then found himself touching the gas pedal again to let the car glide the rest of the way up the long driveway before he stopped again at the old carriage house, out of sight of the street. There was no sense piquing the neighbors’ curiosity, he thought. The fact that what he was doing was innocent didn’t make it a worse story.
He opened Susan’s door, led the way to the back entry, unlocked the house, and let her enter first. He reached over her shoulder to flip the light switch just as she stopped to keep from stepping into a dark, unfamiliar room. It would have been much better if they had collided hard, but instead his body met hers softly. “Oops,” he said. “Excuse me.”
She half-turned to give him an utterly unreadable look, then stepped into the kitchen, looking around her. “Great kitchen,” she said. “Do you entertain a lot?”
“No,” he said. “At least I don’t think we do. Jane might let me know I’m wrong at any time. It’s big because that’s the way they were in the old days. Everybody hung around the kitchen because it was warm.”
She said, “Late eighteenth century?”
“The structure might be that old. Of course, it’s been remodeled.”
“When?”
“Beats me. If contractors worked the way they do now, they probably started in 1850 and finished in 1950.”
He flipped a second light switch up as he went, but when he reached the doorway into the dining room, he paused to let her get a head start. She lingered.
He detected that she was looking toward the cabinets on the wall. He said, “Can I offer you a drink?”
She pretended to decide, then smiled. “Sure. It’s a cinch I’m not driving.”
“I don’t have a lot here, so we’ll have to rough it. Let’s see. Malt scotch. McCallan. Terrific stuff. Makes you want to strap on your claymore and march against the Duke of Cumberland. Vodka. It’s Stolichnaya, but I’ve run my Geiger counter over it to be sure it was made before the Chernobyl reactor went. Gin, of course. There’s also some vermouth if you’re good at making martinis. I’ve seen every James Bond movie, and mine still taste like poison. The usual mixers. Cognac. Wine and champagne in the refrigerator.”
“Did you say champagne?”
“I think I did.” He opened the refrigerator and found it. He set it on the counter and lingered over removing the foil and the wire. He would have to remember to buy another bottle. Jane would remember putting it in the refrigerator, and the missing champagne was not the best way to lead into telling her there had been a guest. He removed the cork, plucked two tulip glasses from the cupboard, and filled them.
The sound of the telephone was jarring. He snatched the receiver off the hook on the wall. “Hello?”
The operator said, “Will you accept a collect call from Jane?”
“Yes I will,” he said.
“Hi, Doc.” It was Jane.
“Hi. I was hoping you’d call.” He looked at Susan as he said it, and she tactfully strolled off toward the dining room, then suddenly turned around and mouthed the word, “Bathroom?”
He pointed through the living room at the far hallway, and she walked in that direction. He felt relieved. “Where are you?”
Her voice was apologetic. “You know I can’t say.”
“That isn’t what I wanted to know anyway,” he said. “I should have said ‘How.’ How are you?”
“Tired of missing you. Tired of … all this.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. When are you coming home?”
He heard her sigh. “I just don’t know. I wish it were now. But I really don’t want to have to do this again. And I really don’t want to see this guy’s picture in a newspaper.”
“Or yours, either.”
“You know why I’m doing this,” she said. “Just put yourself in my place.”
He craned his neck to look out the kitchen doorway and through the dining room. Susan wasn’t visible. “Just put yourself in mine.”
Her voice sounded worried, pleading almost. “Please, Carey. This is an aberration. It’s the last time, a job that I thought was finished, and it wasn’t. As soon as I’ve got him tucked away, I’m done. We’ll start over again, from the beginning.”
He was silent for a long time. “All right,” he said. “One last fling.”
“See?” she said. “I knew I could get around you if I batted my eyelashes loud enough.”
He knew it had been meant to be funny, an ironic comment on men and women that they were both supposed to laugh at, but he snorted mirthlessly. He tried to think of words that would take his mind off the worry and the emptiness he felt. He stared at the kitchen floor. “Well, I’m exhausted,” he said. “Tonight was the benefit for the children’s wing.”
She gasped, and he began to wish he had not mentioned it. “It was?” Then she said, “At least I missed that.
