“Oh, and Mrs. Landry…”
“Sir?”
“I thought it might interest you to know that Thomas Blair Chornyak asked for you specifically. That is, the Lingoe who called on his behalf did. It seems that he recognized your name on the job-wanted notice… claims to have seen you once, as a matter of fact.”
“Really?” Michaela was astonished. “Where could he have seen me, Supervisor?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sugar. Perhaps he was visiting one of the places where you’ve been working.”
“Perhaps… but you’d think I’d remember.”
She would have. The top linguist of all linguists? The most responsible of all linguists, and the pinnacle of prey for her? She would not have forgotten.
But the Supervisor didn’t see it that way.
“Why on earth would you remember?” he chided her. “What conceivable reasons would your employers have had for telling you he was there? Goodness… let’s remember our position in life, shall we? Thomas Blair Chornyak, may he rot in hell and all his relatives with him, is a very important man.”
“Yes, Supervisor,” said Michaela, blushing skillfully and allowing a small tear of dismay to appear at the corner of one eye. Which earned her a good deal more patting and exploring, in the guise of comforting the poor little thing. She hoped he would rot in hell, and was only sorry she wouldn’t have an opportunity to help him on his way. But she kept the expression of vapid awe on her face, and used her eyelashes to good effect, until he was sufficiently agitated so that he had to let her alone or risk making some move that would be genuinely indiscreet.
Breathing hard, the supervisor moved away from her and fussed with a stack of papers on his desk, while Michaela watched him and waited. She was accustomed to wasting her time while men dawdled; her training at the Marital Academy had included the most detailed instruction in that so essential womanly skill. And finally, he told her that everything was in order and wished her good luck.
“And if you should ever need me…” he finished, giving her what he no doubt thought was a significant look.
That would be the day. If she ever needed him, she would kill herself.
“Thank you, Supervisor,” said Michaela. “You’ve been so very kind. I’ll go now, and leave you to your work.”
He gave her permission to leave, and she thanked him again. And as she passed him on her way to the door, the appointment card for her interview at Chornyak Household safely in her pocket, she gave a slow and luxurious roll of her handsome hips in his direction.
With any luck at all, she’d have made him wet his pants.
Chapter Fifteen
The decision to marry a woman who has been properly trained for wifery need not be cold-bloodedly commercial. True… the procedure of reviewing threedy tapes of our clients, examining their genetic and personal files, interviewing those women who seem most promising, etc., is reminiscent of the personnel office rather than the romantic idyll. We agree, and we agree that the American man has no wish to proceed in that fashion. Furthermore, it is not necessary. There is no reason why a man cannot see to it that the woman he has chosen as his bride — in the traditional manner — is then enrolled at one of the seven fine marital academies whose graduates are accepted by this agency. In this way he can have the best of both worlds… the tender joy of young love, the ecstasy of finding and choosing the girl of his dreams, and the satisfaction of knowing that he will have a wife who is worthy of the role.
We suggest that you consider the alternative carefully, before deciding that good luck will see you through — and save you our modest fees. Do you really want to begin married life with an untrained woman whose only skill at wifery is the haphazard result of a few mass-ed courses and the confused efforts of her female relatives? Do you really want to risk your career and your home and your comfort to the fumbling trial-and-error techniques of an untutored girl? Do you truly believe that any degree of natural beauty of face and figure can compensate for a constant succession of social embarrassments and personal disappointments? (If you are a father, is that what you want for your sons?)
We think not. We think you want a wife that you can take with you anywhere without hesitation. We think you want a wife you can bring any guest home to in serene confidence. There are few more important investments a man can make in his future — don’t leave your future to chance. We look forward to serving you.
Nazareth waited in the government car, staring bleakly at the snarled traffic all around her; they would be late, and the others would be angry. She would have to ask the driver to go in with her and explain that the delay had not been avoidable… Happy nineteenth birthday, Nazareth Joanna Chornyak Adiness.
She didn’t feel nineteen. She felt old. Old and used up… The children of the Lines had little opportunity to be children, and that aged you. And having the children, first the boy born on her sixteenth birthday and then the twin girls two years later… that brought a certain maturity. But it wasn’t either of those things that made her feel like one of those ancient wrinkled crones cackling crazy imprecations from the back of a cave. It was living as the wife of Aaron Adiness, who was twenty-five on the outside and just barely three years old on the inside, that had done it.
Aaron was handsome, and virile — exhaustingly virile — and with most people he was charming. Nazareth knew that many women envied her her husband. His astonishing facility at acquiring languages and learning them had waned as he had become older, but before that happened he had run up an impressive total. She had no idea how many languages he could read and write with ease, but certainly it ran to nearly one hundred.
It was the sort of thing the media doted on, and they never tired of filling little holes in programming with a feature about “the man who speaks one hundred languages!” Which was absurd, of course — he spoke perhaps a dozen — but the story was better when it was distorted, and it fed the unhealthy fascination the public had for anything to do with the linguist monsters. It was not all that much of an accomplishment, really, not for the human languages. For someone to be fluent in tongues from five different language families was impressive; to know one hundred just demonstrates that you have had a lot of opportunity and that you look on language learning the way others might look on surfing or chess. Human languages are so much alike that by the time you’ve learned a dozen well you’ve seen everything that human languages will ever do, and adding others is almost trivial.
But people weren’t willing to believe that, and Aaron didn’t mind encouraging the misunderstanding. Him and his “hundred languages”… Let a two-line filler come on the screen with his name in it, never mind that it said the same thing it had said dozens of times before, Aaron would be there jabbing the key to guarantee him a hard copy for his scrapbook. Which Nazareth was obliged to keep up-to-date, of course.
Living with him, subject to his whims, she felt that she walked from morning to night on eggshells. His feelings were so easily hurt that she rarely knew what had bruised them; but he would say, “You know very well what’s wrong, you smug bitch!” and sulk for hours, until she had apologized not once but several times. And could be awarded his grudging forgiveness for a brief time.