She checked her watch: it was just after noon. She picked up her mouse and looked at her screen, but it seemed pointless to work when her project might be canceled. Feeling angry and helpless, she decided to quit for the day.
She turned off her computer, locked her office, and left the building. She still had her red Mercedes. She got in and stroked the steering wheel with a pleasant sense of familiarity.
She tried to cheer herself up. She had a father; that was a rare privilege. Maybe she should spend time with him, enjoy the novelty. They could drive down to the harbor front and walk around together. She could buy him a new sport coat in Brooks Brothers. She did not have the money, but she would charge it. What the hell, life was short.
Feeling better, she drove home and parked outside her house. “Daddy, I’m home,” she called as she went up the stairs. When she entered the living room she sensed something wrong. After a moment she noticed the TV had been moved. Maybe he had taken it into the bedroom to watch. She looked in the next room; he was not there. She returned to the living room. “Oh, no,” she said. Her VCR was gone, too. “Daddy, you didn’t!” Her stereo had disappeared and the computer was gone from her desk. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t believe it!” She ran back to her bedroom and opened her jewelry box. The one-carat diamond nose stud Will Temple had given her had gone.
The phone rang and she picked it up automatically.
“It’s Steve Logan,” the voice said. “How are you?”
“This is the most terrible day of my life,” she said, and she began to cry.
24
STEVE LOGAN HUNG UP THE PHONE.
He had showered and shaved and dressed in clean clothes, and he was full of his mother’s lasagne. He had told his parents every detail of his ordeal, moment by moment. They had insisted on getting legal advice, even though he told them the charges were sure to be dropped as soon as the DNA test results came through, and he was going to see a lawyer first thing tomorrow. He had slept all the way from Baltimore to Washington in the back of his father’s Lincoln Mark VIII, and although that hardly made up for the one and a half nights he had stayed awake, nevertheless he felt fine.
And he wanted to see Jeannie.
He had felt that way before he had called her. Now that he knew how much trouble she was in, he was even more eager. He wanted to put his arms around her and tell her everything would be all right.
He also felt there had to be a connection between her problems and his. Everything went wrong for both of them, it seemed to Steve, from the moment she introduced him to her boss and Berrington freaked.
He wanted to know more about the mystery of his origins. He had not told his parents that part. It was too bizarre and troubling. But he needed to talk to Jeannie about it.
He picked up the phone again to call her right back, then he changed his mind. She would say she did not want company. Depressed people usually felt that way, even when they really needed a shoulder to cry on. Maybe he should just show up on her doorstep and say, “Hey, let’s try to cheer each other up.”
He went into the kitchen. Mom was scrubbing the lasagne dish with a wire brush. Dad had gone to his office for an hour. Steve began to load crockery into the dishwasher. “Mom,” he said, “this is going to sound a little strange to you, but …”
“You’re going to see a girl,” she said.
He smiled. “How did you know?”
“I’m your mother, I’m telepathic. What’s her name?”
“Jeannie Ferrami. Doctor Ferrami.”
“I’m a Jewish mother now? I’m supposed to be impressed that she’s a doctor?”
“She’s a scientist, not a physician.”
“If she already has her doctorate, she must be older than you.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Hm. What’s she like?”
“Well, she’s kind of striking, you know, she’s tall, and very fit—she’s a hell of a tennis player—with a lot of dark hair, and dark eyes, and a pierced nostril with this very delicate thin silver ring, and she’s, like, forceful, she says what she wants, in a direct way, but she laughs a lot, too, I made her laugh a couple of times, but mainly she’s just this”—he sought for a word—“she’s just this presence, when she’s around you simply can’t look anywhere else.…” He tailed off.
For a moment his mother just stared at him, then she said: “Oh, boy—you’ve got it bad.”
“Well, not necessarily.…” He stopped himself. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m crazy about her.”
“Does she feel the same?”
“Not yet.”
His mother smiled fondly. “Go on, go see her. I hope she deserves you.”
He kissed her. “How did you get to be such a good person?”
“Practice,” she said.
Steve’s car was parked outside; they had picked it up from the Jones Falls campus and his mother had driven it back to Washington. Now he got on I-95 and drove back to Baltimore.
Jeannie was ready for some tender loving care. She had told him, when he called her, how her father had robbed her and the university president had betrayed her. She needed someone to cherish her, and that was a job he was qualified to do.
As he drove he pictured her sitting next to him on a couch, laughing, and saying things like “I’m so glad you came over, you’ve made me feel much better, why don’t we just take off all our clothes and get into bed?”
He stopped at a strip mall in the Mount Washington neighborhood and bought a seafood pizza, a ten-dollar bottle of chardonnay, a container of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—Rainforest Crunch flavor—and ten yellow carnations. The front page of The Wall Street Journal caught his eye with a headline about Genetico Inc. That was the company that funded Jeannie’s research into twins, he recalled. It seemed they were about to be taken over by Landsmann, a German conglomerate. He bought the paper.
His delightful fantasies were clouded by the worrying thought that Jeannie might have gone out since he had talked to her. Or she might be in, but not answering the door. Or she might have visitors.
He was pleased to see a red Mercedes 230C parked near her house; she must be in. Then he realized she might have gone out on foot. Or in a taxi. Or in a friend’s car.
She had an entry phone. He pressed the bell and stared at the Speaker, willing it to make a noise. Nothing happened. He rang again. There was a crackling noise. His heart leaped. An irritable voice said: “Who is it?”
“It’s Steve Logan. I came to cheer you up.”
There was a long pause. “Steve, I don’t feel like having visitors.”
“At least let me give you these flowers.”
She did not reply. She was scared, he thought, and he felt bitterly disappointed. She had said she believed he was innocent, but that was when he was safely behind bars. Now that he was on her doorstep and she was alone, it was not so easy. “You haven’t changed your mind about me, have you?” he said. “You still believe I’m innocent? If not, I’ll just go away.”
The buzzer sounded and the door opened.
She was a woman who could not resist a challenge, he thought.
He stepped into a tiny lobby with two more doors. One stood open and led to a flight of stairs. At the top stood Jeannie, in a bright green T-shirt.
“I guess you’d better come up,” she said.
It was not the most enthusiastic of welcomes, but he smiled and went up the stairs, carrying his gifts in a paper sack. She showed him into a little living room with a kitchen nook. She liked black and white with splashes of vivid color, he noted. She had a black-upholstered couch with orange cushions, an electric-blue clock on a white-painted wall, bright yellow lampshades, and a white kitchen counter with red coffee mugs.