After a long time-a long time-I drew back, back from her lips but only far enough so I could look into her milky, maternal gaze. My body was still pressed hard into hers.
"Jesus, Sissy," I panted.
"Hm? What? Whatsamatter with my baby?"
"Aren't we supposed to be at work or something?"
She touched my cheek and pursed her lips and giggled as if I were the cutest thing imaginable. She was happy-she was so happy to be in love and have a man of her own. "Well, we are," she whispered. "We are at work. In fact, I have a very special job for my sweetie to do. That's why I called you."
She kissed me again, on the nose, then on the mouth, very gently. I lingered, slavish, at her lips, even more excited than before. This was her other hold over me: assignments. Weiss had let it be known around the Agency that I was available for occasional investigative work. Since most of our work came from the attorneys on the two floors upstairs, and since most of our legal work went through Sissy, she was the one who had the most assignments to give out. I wanted them, those assignments. I wanted them as much as I wanted her, maybe more.
We were still in that kiss-I was still at her lips-when she said, "Scott's been called out of town." Her breath flowed warm into my mouth.
I breathed back. "Weiss? Out of town? Where'd he go?"
"I don't know. It was very sudden. And he has a client coming in this morning."
I swallowed. I moved so that my lips brushed her cheek. My heart beat hard against her breast. "You want me to take one of Weiss's clients?" I said. I had never done that before. I had never taken a client at all. I had never even imagined doing it-or, that is, I had imagined it, but I had never imagined it could actually happen.
Sissy made a rough noise in her throat. She tilted her face up to me. Our lips came together and her tongue was in my mouth again. My hands felt the shape of her bottom through the pleated plaid. While I ground myself against her, a thought came to me.
"I don't even have an office," I gasped as we broke apart.
"What? What?"
"To see the client in. An office. Don't I need an office if I'm going to see a client?"
"You can use Weiss's," she moaned into the hollow of my throat.
"I can use Weiss's?" I buried my face in her wispy hair. "I can use Weiss's office?"
"Sure. I told you. He's not here."
"Weiss's office?" I said again, only it came out something like Whysososo? as I was simultaneously overcome by Sissy's cool fingers down the back of my pants and the mental image of myself enthroned in the high-backed swivel chair that was the Agency's heroic seat of power.
Now Sissy, her waist against my waist, tilted her shoulders back. She gazed up at me and her gaze was full of meaning. Her whisper was full of meaning as she whispered my name.
It had come to that moment, you see, that moment when you are supposed to tell a girl you are in love with her. Only I was not in love with her. I was in love with Emma McNair. So I couldn't tell her.
I gazed down at her. I tried to make my gaze full of meaning too. I tried to make my voice full of meaning. I said, "Who's the client?"
I could see the disappointment flood Sissy's eyes. She continued to look up at me, but it was a sad look now, wistful. She pressed her lips together. She brushed the back of her hand regretfully against my cheek. I knew exactly what she was thinking. She was thinking that her baby was not mature enough to make a commitment. She was thinking I was still too much of a boy to realize how in love with her I was. Also, she was thinking she would wait for me to come around; she would wait no matter how long it took.
And yes, yes, all this made me despise myself even more, if that was possible. But at the same time, I really did want to get the lowdown on this new client. My first client.
"I just thought I ought to be prepared," I told her.
Sissy took a deep breath. She gave a deep sigh. She tugged herself away from me. I released her. She turned and bent over a folder open on her desk. The sunlight coming in behind her touched on wisps of her golden hair and made them shine.
"He's a professor out at Berkeley," she said. Her tone was a little more distant suddenly.
I nodded. Professors were becoming something of a specialty with me, probably because of my Agency reputation as an overeducated egghead.
"Oh, and you should like this," Sissy went on drily. "He's a novelist too. It says here he won the Pulitzer prize."
A thought fluttered at the edge of my mind like sparrow wings at the corner of my eye, but it flew off before I could catch it. It's odd about things like this. We modern types, we're so trained in skepticism, so immersed in our faithless climate of opinion, that we sometimes stare right through our own destiny when it's smack in front of us. If this were fiction-I mean, the ordinary sort of fiction made up entirely out of my head-I couldn't even tell you what came next. You'd complain; you'd say: That's pure coincidence; that would never happen. But, of course, pure coincidence of the most fateful kind happens all the time, every day. Why should we let our theories about life override our experience of it? Why should I waste time wallowing in reasonable ex- planations? Why can't I simply tell you: it happened as if it were meant to be.
Sissy said, "His name is Patrick McNair."
Even then there was a moment when I stood by the window as if I hadn't heard her, as if I were still waiting for her to speak. There was a moment more when I understood what she said but didn't realize, couldn't bring myself to realize, what it meant.
My client-my first client-was Patrick McNair. The English professor. The prize-winning novelist.
Emma's father.
10.
It was two hours before McNair arrived. A good thing too; I needed that time to recover my senses. At first, after Sissy spoke his name, I couldn't think at all. My head was filled with a noise like wind rushing through a tunnel. I was stunned by a whirling sense of mystic impossibilities.
Of course, like most amazing coincidences, this one was not as amazing as all that. I had met Emma while working on a case involving a lady professor. The lady professor probably knew McNair and recommended Weiss to him. That's what I told myself, in any case. Still, the wind roared in my head.
I left Sissy and made my stumbling way back down the hall, back through the glassed-in reception area, back past the smirking Amy, and down the farther hall to my alcove, my desk. I sat there a long time, making copies, typing reports, doing whatever the hell I did-I wasn't sure then and I don't remember now. Mostly, I think I watched the digital clock on my desk. With every minute that ticked away, a sensation grew inside me, a feeling between dread and panic. I could think about nothing but my meeting with Patrick McNair.
Why was he coming? What could he want? Could it have anything to do with me? There were no answers in the manila case folder Sissy had given me. A name, a brief description, an address. I kept turning back to it, opening it, scanning the two typed pages inside, but there was nothing else.
The time of our appointment approached. I got up from my desk with the folder in my hand. I stepped with the tread of a condemned man down the last stretch of hall to Weiss's office at the end. I opened the door slowly. I stepped gingerly across the threshold.
I shut the door. For a long time, I simply stood there, stood where I was. I looked at the place with what I would have to call reverence. Weiss's office. Somehow, just being there began to calm me down.