In the morning Greg had sweet rolls for breakfast Two of them and with large wipes of butter. The doctors at the therapy centre were already grousing about his weight You've got to exercise more, Greg. But that morning he was so tired, he needed a sugar high to get going. In addition to a caffeine high, that is. He also had a Diet Pepsi and two cups of coffee.
He was ready.
Sometime during the night-half-awake, listening for her familiar footsteps next door but realizing, too, that she was gone from him forever-sometime during the night he'd suddenly recalled something she'd said to him about a very strange thing that Kellogg had wanted her to do. She'd pleaded with Kellogg that she didn't want to do it, but he'd said it was important, and that she'd damned well better do it
But Greg couldn't remember what it was.
Something…
His only real hope was the computer. Perhaps she'd written about this, and he could tap into it
After being properly charged by all the sweets, he rolled into his book-lined den. Indian summer had spoiled him. He was used to a flood of warm sunlight splashing across the hardwood floor. But not that day. Grey sky and chill temperature boded snow.
He moved over to the computer, turned on the power, and proceeded, over the next forty-five minutes, to tap into her diary.
It was almost shamefully easy, the way he found what he was looking for so quickly.
Around three-thirty that afternoon, after a lunch of sliced-ham sandwiches and a piece of pumpkin pie, and a good crime movie called The Falcon Goes to Hollywood, he phoned the guy.
He did it right, too. He put a handkerchief over the receiver, and he lowered his voice.
And he scared the hell out of the guy.
That was the one thing Greg could tell for sure. How scared the guy was.
Then, when he was finished, he lay back in his wheelchair and closed his eyes and thought of Emma, her face and her soft skin and the gentle way she'd always treated him. He knew he'd never see her again.
In the afternoon Brolan looked at girls. Ordinarily this was the favourite part of his job. And why wouldn't it be? You sit in a fashionably appointed screening room and look at videotapes of women of every description looking their best. The object was to find a new Stolda's ice cream TV pitchwoman, the former one having landed a part in a cable-system sitcom. You look at films of women, videotapes of women, glossies of women-and sometimes the local talent agencies even send women over live. Today, however, they were all on tape.
Sometime after lunch he had started smoking again. At first it had been a few puffs on a mooched cigarette. Soon enough he'd asked one of the couriers to go get him a pack of cigarettes. His plans were to put in a reasonably full day-be no more or no less cheery than he ever was-and then to start backtracking the dead woman by going to the bar where he'd met her. Maybe the bartender there could at least give him a name and therefore a starting point. ‹
"She's gorgeous," Tim Culhane, the production manager said.
Brolan's attention returned to the screen. "She is gorgeous. Too gorgeous."
"You want frumpy?"
"Not frumpy. Just somebody who won't put other women off."
Actually the woman on the screen reminded him in some dark way of Kathleen. Desire and anger worked through him as he recognized the similarity between the women. He still couldn't believe that even when he was so deeply in trouble, Kathleen could have this effect on him.
"Why don't we look at the next one?" Brolan said.
Brolan sat at the front of the sloping screening room. There were twenty movie theatre seats. In front of the large movie screen was a forty-five-inch video screen. This was what they'd been using the past hour.
The next one up was cute and perky. Brolan did not usually like cute-and-perky, but since it was the polar opposite of Kathleen, cute-and-perky looked great.
"How about her?" Brolan said.
"Her?" Culhane sounded surprised. Tall, muscular, thanks to weight training and running, Culhane still wore his blonde hair shoulder-length-but it was sculpted hair, Hollywood hair, and bore no kinship to the sixties or flower power or any of that. He was handsome in a somewhat overly dramatic way, always posing, and given to the sort of loose-fitting, expensive sports clothes you found on the West Coast. Brolan and Culhane had never gotten along, but the past six months had been especially bad. Brolan, who was solely in charge of promoting creative people, had passed Culhane over in favour of someone else for an executive job. Culhane was neither a forgiving nor understanding man. "She looks like the girl next door."
"She's cute."
"Last time I checked, you hated cute."
Brolan sighed. "All right. Next one, then."
The next one was redheaded and had the sort of reckless beauty that always got to Brolan. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in films was the young Rita Hayworth, and anybody who remotely resembled her was welcome to come into Brolan's life at any time.
"God," Tim said. "She's great." He looked at the sheet that identified where each actress was from. "Chicago."
"Much acting experience?"
Culhane read silently for a few moments. "Actually quite a bit of stage work. Lot of dinner theatre but some small-theatre stuff, too. Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler."
Brolan nodded. He could see her as Hedda, one of his favourite creations. The remote beauty, the inscrutable motives. Not until then did he realize that Kathleen reminded him of Hedda, too.
"Can you see her in a nice suburban dress, with a nice suburban manner, hawking ice cream?"
"Absolutely," Culhane said.
"Good. Then let's get her in here for an audition sometime soon."
Moments after Tim flipped the switch on the VCR, the screen went dead. The screening room, which had a ceiling covered with acoustic tile, was quiet in an almost eerie way. That was why the door's creaking open at the rear of the room made such an unearthly noise, like fate announcing itself.
Culhane looked up and said, "Oh, hi, Kathleen."
Hearing her name, Brolan felt as if he were back in seventh grade. When the other boys knew you 'liked' a certain girl, but you were afraid to show them that you did. Brolan stared straight ahead, as if he found the empty screen fascinating.
Culhane, obviously sensing the mood, took the videotape from the VCR put it back in its box, and said, "Well, I'd better be going. Think we made a good choice." He nodded goodbye.
"Thanks, Tim," Brolan said. He had still not turned around.
The closer she came, the more erotic her perfume got. He felt tense, angry, yet desperate to see her.
She walked down the sloping aisle until she was two rows of seats past him. She looked so trim, her calves perfect, her ankles a dream. She turned around and faced him.
"Kilgore has added thirty percent to his next year's advertising budget," she said.
"Great."
"That's pretty big news, isn't it?"
Kathleen always liked to be complimented.
"It's very big news," he said. "Good work." He had to remember that he was her boss as well as her lover. Or at least one of her lovers.
She said, "That isn't really why I came in here."
"No?"
"No. I wanted to say that I'm sorry about this morning."
"Oh." He cleared his throat, not knowing exactly what words to shape.
"I'm still in love with you," she said.
Seventh grade again. Or at least not adulthood. He felt embarrassed and happy beyond imagining and terrified, all at the same time. Maybe especially terrified because falling in love with Kathleen was scary stuff.