Saturday night.
Date night.
Chapter 38
Laura lived in Monroeville, a suburb a few miles beyond the city limits. Monroeville was just another of many suburbs around Pittsburgh until 1969, when the Monroeville Mall opened. It was the first large, fully-enclosed shopping mall in the region, and it became the linchpin of a retail and population growth spurt in the municipality that continued for decades. The area right around the mall is heavily commercial, with dozens of shops and theaters and family restaurants and fast-food joints and bowling alleys and pet shops and every other type of business enterprise you can name. In the middle of all this, though, there is one small patch of green, a place called the Tennis Club. Actually, it was there before the mall appeared, and over the years, as the population of the area grew, so did the Tennis Club. Today, there are six outdoor tennis courts and fourteen indoor courts, along with both indoor and outdoor pools, a dozen racquetball courts, a weight room, a quarter-mile indoor jogging track, and about a zillion jazzercise classes every week. There’s also an apartment building adjacent to the club, The Tennis Club Apartments, and that’s where Laura Fleming lived. I pulled into the parking lot just before six-thirty, and two minutes later, I was calling apartment 821 from the entryway. Laura answered, said she’d be right down, and buzzed me into the lobby.
The lobby was expensively furnished, with a large chocolate-colored suede sofa and two matching overstuffed occasional chairs, a couple of end tables with lamps, a glass-topped coffee table, plants and a few pieces of artwork on the walls. The floor was polished slate, and the late-afternoon natural light that flooded in from the glass wall facing the entryway filled the room with a cozy glow. Up one step was a carpeted area where two elevators could be seen. Out of one of them walked Laura Fleming.
She was wearing a golden tan suit. Very short skirt with a matching fitted jacket that reached just below her waist. An ivory-colored collarless silk blouse. High-heeled pumps the color of the suit. Her hair was swept back and held in place by a simple gold clip, and around her neck was a thin strand of pearls. She carried a clutch the color of the suit. Her legs were elegant and sexy and I was having trouble breathing.
She paused before stepping down into the lobby area, twirled once, and said, “What do you think? Appropriate for an art exhibit opening at the Frick?”
“Or for meeting the king and queen of England,” I said.
She smiled and stepped down and walked over to me, the scent of her perfume trailing lightly behind her.
“I wasn’t sure exactly what to wear, so I decided to err on the side of dressy.”
“An excellent decision,” I told her.
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “it’s amazing the bargains you can find at the Big Boy Shop downtown.”
“Hm-mm,” she said. “Right.” Fingering my lapel, she added, “Except that this feels like an expensive silk jacket. Angie told me that you cleaned up nice.”
“Geez, don’t tell the guys down the plant, okay? I’m in enough trouble with them from when I wore my power tie at the last union meeting.”
By this time, we were at my car, and Laura started to take off her jacket. I helped her with it, noticing that the blouse was sleeveless, revealing slim, taut arms. It was obvious that Laura spent some time keeping herself in shape. She opened the back door and placed her jacket on the seat, then stepped up into the front seat while I held the door.
“I don’t want to wrinkle my jacket,” she said.
“We’re of a mind on that,” I told her, as I went around and hung my sports coat on a hanger in the back seat on my side of the car. Briefly, it crossed my mind that it was a habit that I apparently shared with the late Terry Pendleton.
On the twenty-five-minute drive to the Frick Art Museum, we talked about a variety of things, from school to local politics to Angie and Simon and their kids. It was all very natural and comfortable. When we pulled into the driveway of the Frick, a valet appeared at Laura’s side of the car. He glanced at the back seat, opened the door and retrieved her jacket, then opened her door and helped her on with the garment. Nobody opened my door or offered to help me on with my coat. I could have sat there and pouted, but I decided to be a bigger man than that, and I did everything myself. No one noticed that I’d taken the high road. Sometimes, virtue has to be its own reward.
As we approached the front door, a young woman smiled at me and held out her hand for the engraved invitation I’d received in the mail a few weeks earlier.
“Hi, Jeremy,” she said. “How’re you doing?”
“I’m fine, Katie,” I said. Turning to Laura, I said, “Laura, this is Katie, one of the docents here. Katie’s working her way through art school.”
Laura and Katie exchanged hellos, and then we went inside.
“Good grief,” said Laura, “you know the docents? How often do you come here?”
“Only when the porn shops downtown are closed after a raid,” I said. “Then I have to find other outlets for my cultural development.”
“Seriously, Jeremy,” she said, “how did your interest in art come about?”
I told her about my brother and his passion for art.
“Between Jim and an art appreciation course I took in college,” I said, “before I knew it, I had an art jones.”
By this time, we were walking around the exhibit space, looking at works by Monet and Manet and Pissarro and Renoir. Laura had several intelligent observations about the paintings, whilst I mostly contented myself with admiring the pretty colors.
“You’re not
