“Oh, well,” I said, hoping something brilliant would occur to me.
“Has Dexter really been working with you all week, Mr. Chase?” Astor said.
“Robert,” he said with a grin that showed more gleaming white teeth than any three humans should have. “Just call me Robert.”
“Robert,” Astor said, trying it out and liking the sound of it.
“Hey, you want to be an actress.” He nodded to the far end of the suite. “I have to go get my shirt-you want to see what an actor’s dressing room looks like?” he said.
“Sure, Robert,” Astor said, not sounding quite as mature as she thought she did. She glanced at me with cool aloofness and added, “I’ll be right back.”
“We’ll just be a second, Dex,” he said to me, still showing too many teeth. “That okay?”
“Um,” I said, with a vague notion that this was skating close to some kind of a line. But before I could frame an objection, Astor rolled her eyes.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Come on, Robert.” And she gave me her best adult stare and said, “Robert and I will be right back, Dexter.” She took him by the hand and the two of them went off to the short hallway at the far end of the suite, where there were three doors, presumably into bedrooms and bathrooms.
Robert glanced back at me; his face was aglow in a way I hadn’t seen before, and I remembered that he did have a crush on me. He probably thought he could please me by showering attention on my sweet and innocent little girl. Well, he couldn’t, and he would soon find out just how sweet and innocent Astor was. As soon as she got over her hero worship and started to act like herself, we would see how he liked it. I waved at him; he waved back and they disappeared together through the far door, and as I turned away from them I saw Jackie hurrying over to me.
“What did he say?” she said quietly but urgently. “Did he ask why you’re here with me?”
“Well, actually-” I said.
“Goddamn it,” she hissed. “What did you tell him?”
“We got distracted,” I said. “I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Well, he’s going to ask again-we have to think of something,” she said. “He’s the one guy who really can’t know about … Patrick.” She bit her lip and looked very worried. “Robert is … He would love nothing better than to spread it around that there’s a psycho after me and get me fired.…”
She grimaced and looked around to see whether anyone had heard her; no one was close enough. Cody stood a few feet away with Sylvia, sticking pins into the dress dummy. No one else was near. “Damn it, I don’t know. We could say …” She trailed off, frowning, and looked around. “Got it,” she said, as inspiration and relief visibly flowed onto her face. “Where’s Kathy?”
A door slammed, and Kathy came hurrying out of the hallway where Astor and Robert had gone. Jackie raised a hand to signal her, but Kathy didn’t see her; she just chugged rapidly out the door to the suite and vanished.
“What the hell …?” Jackie said.
“Maybe she ran out of coffee,” I suggested, but Jackie just looked at me, and then at the outside door where Kathy had gone, frowning, and then Robert and Astor came trotting toward us. Robert was buttoning his shirt, and he looked flustered. I wondered what Astor had said to him. As I knew very well, she was capable of saying some very surprising things. Judging by Robert’s expression, this one had been a doozy.
Like Cody, Astor was turned away from Normal forever. Cody enjoyed killing things, and with proper guidance he would grow up to be like me, a well-adjusted monster. But Astor-I didn’t really know. Girls were different, even if the form her difference would take was not yet clear. From what I knew of the subject, she was at the age where we would soon find out.
Like me, and her brother, Astor could not feel empathy for others. She did not really have emotions, unless you count overwhelming crankiness. I’d done a little research, just to be ready, and it was most likely that Astor would find some career path that let her manipulate people somehow, and then work her way to the top by doing whatever it took, regardless of the consequences to others. She would learn to make people do exactly what she wanted them to do, sometimes merely because she could, just to see them squirm.
Beyond that, I didn’t really know what she was going to be capable of someday; she hadn’t shown any interest in much, other than clothes and making boys suffer, which was almost normal for a girl her age. Mostly she just seemed angry, and a lot of her anger came out verbally; she sometimes said and did things that could be quite surprising to the unprepared. From the look on Robert’s face, I had to think she had done so with him.
“That’s- See? We were only one minute or so, and, uh … where did your assistant go?” Robert said, sounding bewildered as he looked around. Astor stood beside him with a kind of superior smirk on her face.
“Don’t you have an assistant of your own, Bob?” Jackie said, much too sweetly.
Robert scowled. “You know, we have to work together, so-”
“Robert wants to show me the makeup room, but he said I had to ask you first,” Astor said. “Can I go see it? Please, Dexter?”
“It’s just down the hall,” Robert said quickly. And when I didn’t answer, he went on. “And hey! You didn’t tell me-how come you’re down here? With the kids and …” He glanced at Jackie and then stumbled on. “And you know. On a Saturday?”
“Dexter is getting an under-five,” Jackie said. “So I said I’d show him where wardrobe is.” She smiled at Robert, not a happy smile. “Is that okay, Robert?” she said, as if his name was in quotation marks.
“What’s an under-five?” Astor demanded.
“Well,” said Robert, looking right at Jackie and showing her his teeth, “he can’t be any worse at acting than some people who do it for a living.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Jackie said sweetly, showing her own teeth right back. “He’s almost certainly better than … some actors.”
“Mee-ow,” said Sylvia, stepping over and pushing between them. “Are you two still at it? After all these years?”
“Some things are forever,” Robert said, scowling. “Like herpes.”
“Robert has such trouble letting go,” Jackie said lightly. “And it was such a small thing, too.”
Robert turned bright red and clenched his fists. “I guess you’re the expert.”
“Well,” Jackie said, with that same acid-coated sweetness, “you certainly aren’t any expert.”
Robert opened his mouth to say something crushing. But he never got the chance; Sylvia took him by the arm and said, “Enough, you two. Let’s get your pants fitted.”
“He’s going to show me the makeup room,” Astor said.
“Work comes first,” Sylvia said. “Come on, Bob.”
“Robert,” he said automatically. He smiled at Astor and added, “It’ll just take two minutes.” Sylvia tugged at his arm, and with a last glare at Jackie, Robert allowed Sylvia to drag him away.
Astor watched him go, pouting heavily, and then, with a sidelong glance at me to see whether I was going to stop her, she followed along.
I looked at Jackie, hoping for some hint to what was going on. This had gone beyond the normal sniping between her and Robert. It was clear from the venom, as well as the words, that they had some kind of history together, and equally clear that it was unpleasant. I waited for Jackie to say something that might fill me in. But she just watched Robert’s back, and when he was finally gone into one of the suite’s bedrooms, she turned to me at last and said, “Well, now we have to get you an under-five.”
“Isn’t that some kind of tuxedo?” I said.
Jackie smiled and patted my cheek, and even though it was a very clear statement that I was an adorable moron, her hand felt very good, so I concentrated on the “adorable” and forgave the rest.