Still, she said, “Would you like me to see if I can get tickets? They might have them right here.”
Jenny hesitated. “Is there an awful lot of gore?”
“Well, the bull doesn’t die of fright,” said Mary reasonably, and Jenny gave a little shudder and shook her head. “Forget I mentioned it.”
The interchange was so normal, and so unrelated to what had gone before, that Mary’s mind had already dismissed that puzzling moment of real fear. It gave her nothing whatever in the way of warning.
8
IT was at lunch that the first invisible move was made.
Owen St. Ives had been accurate in his weather prediction. A hard gray rain was beating down on the flowers and lawns and bouncing up from the walks, with the result that the dining room was crowded with guests who would otherwise have ventured out elsewhere. With the exception of St. Ives, all the people even vaguely familiar to Mary were there: the Indian woman, in a sari of burnt-orange as slumbrous as a fire just getting under way; the conventioneers, giving complicated drink orders (“No, hold that, I’ll have a margharita instead of a daiquiri, but forget the salt”) to a patient waiter; Daniel Brennan, alone at a table for two, gazing expectantly at the dining room entrance and, occasionally, his watch.
Jenny, who evidently regarded her breakfast melon as an entering wedge in every respect, wanted only a cup of soup until Mary said with dangerous amiability, “Why don’t you just have a crust of bread and a sip of water instead? Then I’ll really look like a villain.”
It was the first time she had brought the issue so squarely into the open—and, from her startled and then narrowed gaze, the first time Jenny had contemplated herself in this light. She obviously didn’t mind and perhaps even enjoyed the glances drawn by her pipe-cleaner construction; to be thought of as being punished was a different matter. With dignity, she ordered a chicken sandwich.
That didn’t mean she would do more than taste it, Mary warned herself, but it seemed to her that the starvation pattern was beginning to break down under the pressure of a strange place and a new face. When the sandwich arrived, accompanied by her own shrimp salad, Jenny opened it briskly, scraped off all the butter, added salt and pepper, and took a purposeful bite. She was thoroughly aware of what was going on; she said ironically to Mary, “Eat it, dear, it’s broccoli . . . actually, it’s not bad.”
From its very force—the dining room windows were now tall wavering greenish blurs enclosed in gold-and-brown print—the rain couldn’t last much longer. Jenny said yes to Mary’s question as to whether she would like to visit the market later (kept talking, she might absentmindedly consume a few of the tostados thrust invitingly into her guacamole salad) but her attention was clearly elsewhere. She smiled suddenly, lifted a hand in greeting, said across the table, “That’s a girl I met in my mad dash for the paper this morning. She seems quite nice as well as gorgeous, which I don’t think is fair.”
But gorgeous was an overblown adjective for the girl whom Mary glanced at presently, and beautiful or striking didn’t apply either. She was overwhelmingly, enchantingly pretty, with an air of being on the edge of some delightful adventure even while sitting still: there was a suggestion of breath caught, lips about to curve and part. It wasn’t only a matter of coloring, which was shades of honey; it was millimeters off the norm—a very faint tilt to her nose, a very faint almonding of her eyes, which placed her in a special category. Like a rose in exactly the right stage of bloom, she was a pleasure to behold.
She had been seated at a table for four. She lifted her face to a waiter and indicated that there would be other people coming, and in spite of all that heavy artillery she looked shy and apologetic. The waiter departed as a man off to the crusades and returned almost at once with a daiquiri, although a couple at the neighboring table were still stranded with only silver, napkins, and ice water.
“She looks almost edible,” said Mary with sincerity. “From California, I’ll bet. They seem to have a monopoly.”
Jenny shook her head. “She has a Southern accent.” There wasn’t a trace of envy in her voice, only pride at being on even a nodding acquaintance with such a ravishing creature, and Mary gazed at her with sudden affection. She could be maddening at times, but mixed in with the perversity and stubbornness there was a very sound and sturdy streak.
The rain stopped with faucet abruptness, the last drops falling through sunlight. There was an instant stir throughout the dining room as people who had been lingering over coffee began to shift in their chairs, gather handbags, crane in search of waiters. Mary’s roving glance noted that Daniel Brennan’s business colleague had never turned up and he was now lunching alone. Reminded of their brief exchange that morning, she went to the desk when the check had been settled, waited through a flurry of people checking out, informed the clerk about her nonfunctioning bedside lamp.
It was the difficult one, but today he made no pretense of not being able to understand Mary; indeed, as though to add to her stock of Spanish should she care to return to it, he said, “Ah, lampara.” Patronizingly, he became all teeth. “I will see that the maid bring a new bulb.”
“But it isn’t the bulb,” said Mary, spurred to give him a steady smile back. “I’ve already tried that. It’s the lamp itself.”
This “Ah!” had the alertness of a surgeon’s, finding a malignancy, and the clerk made a note, with flourishes. It seemed somehow too easy. “And
