Brennan smiled over his glass. “I agree,” he said to what must have been Mary’s weighing expression, “but it’s very successful. And no worse, you must admit, than those women’s shops where you sit down and an ex-countess goes off and comes back with three dresses.”
“Oh, you know about those.”
“Yes.” It was said with finality. “And what about you? If you know about Jaime’s you must be a fairly old hand . . .”
Was it the superlative roast beef, the icy Carta Blanca ordered with it, the shared near-accident on the way here? Or, more realistically, the brandy? For whatever reason, there came a point when Mary heard herself saying suddenly, “You mentioned something, before, about Jenny being right not to trust you. I can’t help wondering how the rest of that goes.”
The moment it was said, she wished it back. The man at the next table was going on angrily, “ . . . had to pay for his own crummy bed, for God’s sake, and not an official finger lifted to help. You think he’s going to forget that?”
Brennan caught Mary’s gaze with his own. “Somehow I liked this better in the car . . . I was never introduced to you. I’d never even seen you before, although I can’t imagine why. I was in the lobby when you arrived with Jenny, and I wanted very much to meet you. You don’t look approachable by strange men, so I asked the desk clerk, who got your name wrong, and when you weren’t in the dining room I thought I’d take a chance on Armand’s, because it’s the nearest restaurant, and there you were.”
He gave a self-critical shrug. “Adolescent, at best. At worst, travelling-salesman. ‘Haven’t we met before?’ I don’t, I assure you, make a practice of it.” Mary, at something of a loss because he was now openly cataloguing her features as if to remind himself of what had attracted him, or maybe to wonder what had made him bother at all, found her face growing hot for the second time that day. Worse, in self-conscious situations like this, she was unable to return a gaze naturally; people’s eyes separated themselves suddenly into the right and the left, and it was a decision as to which eye to address.
Their brandy was long finished, and she took refuge in bending for her bag, dropping her cigarettes and lighter into it, saying, “Well, thank you very much—” ambiguous slide into the next phrase “—for a marvelous dinner.”
Brennan didn’t demur at these unmistakable gestures toward departure. He caught their waiter’s attention and made a scribbling motion in the air, and the waiter came with a promptitude reminiscent of lunch at the Casa de Flores, when Astrid had only to lift her eyes to be supplied almost at once with a daiquiri.
And that was all, Mary realized with a clarity that had escaped her at the time. Astrid had indicated that she and some companions would be ordering lunch—but long before there would have been any chance of its arriving she had been in the lobby, talking to Jenny in front of the postcard display. She must simply have put down money for the cocktail.
And two hours after that she had written a note to Jenny. Or someone had.
. . . The man with Astrid, tonight. A Pied Piper’s face, thought Mary, totally unaware of Daniel Brennan’s curious glance on her own. Indescribable, really, although you could apply certain adjectives. Pointed, with circumflex eyebrows and a cleft in the chin. Dark-blond hair in a kind of helmet effect which wasn’t in the least womanish or, for that matter, hippie-ish. Arm negligently around Astrid, hand resting on her curvy hip.
Brian Beardsley.
Something had tugged vaguely at Mary’s mind upon that meeting in the lobby, and now it presented itself with precision. There was nothing in the least babyish about Astrid, she had thought at the time— and unconsciously been balancing Jenny’s vulnerability against sure accomplishment. More: if you searched the earth, it would be hard to find two more dissimilar types than tall, loose-jointed Jenny and cuddle-able little Astrid. Even without her cousin’s starvation campaign, they were like a bold charcoal drawing and an oil of sun-warmed fruit and wine. What a triumph, for a man still stinging from his summary treatment at the Actons’ hands, to flourish Astrid at Jenny, to demonstrate in the most convincing way possible that what had been an upheaval in her life had been an unimportant episode in his.
Which was exactly what he hadn’t done. In fact, as it would be highly unlikely for two women to go unescorted to a Juarez nightclub, it was the purest chance that Mary herself had seen the two of them at all.
“. . . Ready?” The check had been paid, the tray with its tip pushed to one side, from an echolike effect on the air Brennan had asked this for the second time. Mary gathered herself at once, saying, “Oh, yes, sorry,” and allowing only one last stray speculation as her coat was held for her. She had wondered, when Jenny retailed the contents of the note, how Astrid had compressed her message into what was undeniably a single line. She had even seen the handwriting on the envelope, blue and sweeping, and hadn’t made the connection.
What had Brian Beardsley said to Jenny, using Astrid—satisfying stroke—as addresser and courier as well?
The rain had stopped, but the
