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  The taxi stopped. Peyton climbed in the back, pondering his weighty excursion into philosophy. Was he that crass that he would shower a woman with gold and diamonds before . . .

  “Where to, pal?” the driver asked, watching Peyton through the rearview mirror.

  “Downtown. Bowser’s. Know it?”

  “Yeah.” He gave the taxi gas and merged with the sparse traffic. “It’s that fancy effing joint where everybody eats out on the effing sidewalk.”

  “Patio, I believe.” Effing?

  “Patio, schmatio. It took the caveman a billion years to figure out how to put a roof over his head so’s he could eat without getting rained on, and now we’re so effing fancy, we eat outside for the effing fun of it. Screwy, huh?”

  “I suppose.” Peyton wondered if this philosophy thing was spreading. He seemed to have contaminated the cabbie instantly. It occurred to him that all the cabdrivers he had ever encountered had some kind of quirk. This morning the guy had launched into a spiel about how the Chinese had sabotaged the space shuttle Challenger. He had managed to work himself into a lather by the time he had dropped Peyton off at the lab, and Peyton had been highly relieved when he drove away. Chinese, indeed—everybody knew it was the Russians.

  The taxi ran into heavier traffic, causing the predictable delay. Peyton looked at his watch. Behind the smashed crystal, the hands read four-thirty. Rush hour was barely half an hour away. He had promised this certain blond lady that he would be at Bowser’s before five, and smashed crystal or not, his watch worked quite well.

  He sat back, resigned to whatever fate the taxi had in store for him. He let his thoughts drive back to the previous night, Thursday, when Julie

  Blond lady

  femme fatale???

  had spent the better part of the evening and night at his apartment over on Walker Street. Peyton had borrowed—filched—an aging slide projector from the university’s junk repository and put on a private slide show. Champagne had been purchased and dutifully drunk, along with a pizza, which, during the last year of his efforts to perfect synthetic skin, had become his main source of sustenance.

  Julie had been in high humor. She had cracked up and laughed champagne out of her nose when Peyton showed a slide of himself at thirteen, a gawky, skinny kid with overlarge glasses, standing in front of his booth at a science fair.

  “Look at those glasses!” she had shrieked through a mouthful of champagne, which was about to find a strange exit via her nostrils. “Mr. Ed!”

  Peyton had accepted this unfavorable review with humility, never knowing that Yakky had endured the same humiliation, then laughed wildly when the wine blasted out of her nose like a sneeze. He clicked the projector while she dabbed at her blouse with a Pizza Hut napkin. This slide showed a fifteen-year-old Julie Hastings in a swimsuit, posed for the camera at poolside, pretending to be debonair.

  “God, your jugs were big back then,” Peyton said, and grabbed two handfuls in order to make a more precise judgment. She didn’t mind. He was busy with her twin marvels when she asked the question he did not want to hear.

  “Peyton, how’s the skin coming?”

  This brought him back to reality, hard. He mumbled something about ninety-nine minutes.

  “It’ll happen,” she said, then dropped another unwanted party favor. “Think the grant will be renewed in December?”

  “Hard to say,” he replied uneasily.

  “Have you meet your new grad assistant yet?”

  “Nah. He’s coming over tomorrow sometime. Name’s Yakitito Yanagita. Japanese grad student. I sure hope I don’t have to say his name much.”

  “You’ll get used to it. Think he can add some ideas?”

  “Hope so. I’m tired of this quagmire I’m stuck in. Maybe I’ll just dump the whole frigging project, stop beating a dead horse. Biochemistry is a dead-end field. We’ve gone as far as we can.”

  “Oh, stop that,” she said. “You’ve never been a quitter. We’ve been going together since high school and you haven’t quit on me yet.”

  “These love bumps are a good incentive.” He squeezed them harder. “Going to, ah, spend the night?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not when I’ve got you in this new karate hold I just invented. Just try to escape.”

  She hadn’t. Sometime around two o’clock, when she was sleeping with her face in a cold bar of moonlight, Peyton had stroked her hair, enjoying that familiar fragrance of shampoo and perfume, and made up his mind. They weren’t getting any younger; they were both financially secure; and lately, when Julie saw a mother with her children on the street, an oddly pensive expression would pass across her face like a shadow. Peyton knew what it meant, though she might deny it.

  “Bowser’s, mister.” The cabbie wrenched down the arm of the fare meter, startling Peyton out of his memories. “Four-twenty. And just look at them dummies eating on the sidewalk. Effing effers.”

  Peyton paid him and got out, glad to be rid both of him and his effers. He spotted Julie waving at him from a table and sauntered over, feigning a casual attitude. In reality his heart had switched into a higher gear at the sight of her beneath the fringed patio umbrella. He patted his coat again. Still there, still worth more than seven hundred dollars. How about that business with being crass? Was he still?

  He nodded slightly as he walked. Call it crass if you must, but that’s one tough lady when she wants to be. The necklace was grease, pure and simple.

  Are you that afraid she’ll say no?

  Naw. Not really.

  What if she does? What then?

  What should I do? I can’t simply keel over dead on the sidewalk, and the earth is most certainly not going to open up and swallow me. How red can a face get? Will people stare?

  Aren’t you really afraid that if she does say no, your relationship will be over?

  Please God, no. Anything but that.

  Then don’t take a chance.

  Wise effing counsel, Peyton decided, and pulled out one of the white metal chairs to sit down. Julie stood up at the same moment. Peyton looked at her quizzically, then at the table, where a glass and a greasy plate sat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and for a terrifying moment he was sure she had been reading his mind.

  “W-what?” he managed to stammer.

  “Sorry I have to leave. I’m running late already. Big meeting popped up, and Pappas couldn’t make it. He sent me instead.” She picked up a briefcase from the cement and stuck it under one arm. “This is big, Peyton. Bigger than I’ve ever handled before.”

  He slumped in his chair. She cast him a sweet smile. “You’re such a dear,” she said, and bent to stroke his cheek. “Try the mutton hock today. Sounds like pure puke, I know, but Christ, is it good. See you tonight, right?”

  She gave him a peck on the lips, then hustled away. Peyton sat frowning, not quite ready to digest any of this. His eyes widened as it sank in. For God’s sake, he was supposed to propose today!

  He jumped up and hurried after her. She was hailing a cab, one arm waving. For her, of course, a cab appeared instantly. Peyton rushed to chase her down.

  “Julie, wait!” he called. He fumbled at the lump in his pocket as he ran, managing finally to pull it free. He held it overhead like a trophy. “Julieeee!”

  She opened the door of the cab and set her briefcase inside. Peyton rushed up and grabbed at her arm. The cabbie looked on, frowning.

  “Julie,” Peyton said, breathing hard.

  She sat down on the tattered seat. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should . . . maybe we ought to get . . . married?”

  Her blue eyes became larger. “Marriage? Well, we could do that, I suppose. Of course, there’s our careers. I mean, I’m just starting to get used to the firm. And you know I kind of like having my own place.”

  He shook his head furiously. “We’re practically living together now. All marriage means is that we only get one list
ing in the phone book. What about kids?”

  She looked stricken. “I—I can’t talk about this now. I’m late. And there’s—”

  “Just say yes,” he implored, practically on bended knee. “Julie, I’m asking you to marry me. Please?”

  The cabbie, delighted with all this, spoke up. “Hey, Mac,” he said, “have you got a ring in that box, or is that where you keep your dirty socks?” He laughed uproariously at his keen wit.

  Peyton straightened. “Ring? Holy Christ!” He handed the box to her and she opened it. She gasped. The driver leaned close to Julie. “If you ask me,” he said, “this fellow doesn’t show much commitment. Or common sense.”

  She gave him a furious glare that made him turn back around to his own business. He ratcheted the meter, grumbling, and it began to tick.

  “Peyton, I love the necklace, but we’ll have to talk later. This is all too fast for me.”

  “But I love you,” Peyton said, panicked. He could see it all crumbling. Why hadn’t he waited for a romantic evening to drop this bombshell?

  “And I love you,” she said. “But I’ve got to think about it.”

  That said, she shut the door and the cab pulled away with a brief screech of its tires. One cabbie, highly irritated; one Peyton sinking into despair.

  He hailed a taxi. None stopped.

  He had to walk eleven blocks before anybody took pity on him, and by then he was so deep in the mental cesspool called depression that he no longer cared.

  3

  Julie

  THE TAXI DROPPED her off eighteen miles out of town, at the Felix Heights Hunting Club, a nose-in-the-air outfit if she had ever seen one, very posh and pooh-pooh. The front entrance was as beautiful as a grand European hotel. Sculptured marble horses the size of merry-go-round ponies flanked the huge double doors, prancing eternally to nowhere. A fountain was splashing somewhere beyond the hedges; aging men shambled about in ridiculous-looking jodhpurs and knee-high boots, bleary eyed, martinis in hand. A fat woman was preparing to tee off on the distant golf course. When Julie saw all this as she walked to the door, she was suddenly gripped by the fear that she might not be as well dressed as she should be. After all, this place was simply crawling with upper-crust types, most of them ugly and old, no doubt about it, but since most of them had more money in the bank than, say, Scrooge McDuck, they could afford to fool themselves.

  She looked down at herself, feeling oddly naked and vulnerable. She was wearing a corporate power suit, the standard version that Sears peddled through the mail to all those executive women who wanted to look like small men: shirt, tie, the works. This suit happened to be green, which she found strangely inappropriate at this moment. Hadn’t she read somewhere that you never wear a green suit if you want to impress somebody. God, had she blown it already?

  Get a grip on yourself, she thought, snarling inwardly, and adjusted her hair with nervous little sweeps of her hand. She discovered, with a burst of horrified shock, that she was wearing a hat. It was pinned in her hair. It was stylish as hell, but it was also very green. She felt suddenly like a frumpy housewife with a head eternally full of curlers, or the party guest who invariable winds up wearing a lamp shade, much to everyone’s disgust. The hat was very heavy, almost enough to topple her over. She quickly unpinned it, looked around, and shoved it into a dark nook in the hedges. The pins followed.

  She discovered also that she needed to go to the bathroom. With her mutton hock at Bowser’s, she had downed three or four glasses of Zinfandel Auslese, a German import that seemed to go well with anything. Almost anything. Her kidneys were manning the pumps in a frenzy, stretching her overworked bladder inexorably to the full mark on the gauge. She hurried inside, expecting to see the clients standing around grumpily checking their watches. Julie put on a false smile as she entered the foyer of the giant club.

  No one there looked even remotely familiar. Two old geezers were examining an ancient flintlock rifle. Three others dressed in colorful plaid pantaloons were comparing putters, one of them loudly arguing that a Glen Cook was the best ever made; whatever a Glen Cook might be, Julie had no idea and didn’t want one.

  She looked around, her nose picking up the scent of luxurious new carpet and cigar smoke. There were no doors except the ones behind her. Where was the john in this joint, anyway?

  She walked up to the men arguing over their putters, cleared her throat, and waited for the clamor to die down. They hesitated in mid-sentence and stared at her.

  “Excuse me,” she said, smiling uneasily, “but could you gentlemen tell me where the ladies’ room might be?”

  One of them raised a finger and pointed it at her chest. “She’s impartial,” he crowed. “Ask her!”

  She got a faceful of putters and a demand to choose the best one. She raised her hands and backed away. “I’m afraid I don’t golf.”

  “All the better,” one of them roared, sloshing his martini all over his shoes and the thick red carpet. “She’s impartial to the bone!”

  “Mine’s a Hogan original,” another said. “Wooden shaft. See?”

  She saw without an inkling of interest. “How nice. The ladies’ room?”

  “Over thataways.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I use the same one as Arnie Palmer, and by God, if it’s good enough for Arnie, it’s good enough for me.”

  “What?” number three said. “You mean to tell me Arnie uses the ladies’ room?”

  They broke apart, howling, coughing, generally getting red in the face. Julie slunk away, feeling very much like the center of attention, which she did not want to be. There was a row of potted palms on the right, and she wished she could dive in. Her nerves had already turned the day sour.

  And Peyton, good God, Peyton. Of all the worst moments to pop the question, he had to go and do it today. Her mind was too full of worries and pressing concerns, too filled up with doubt to handle a sticky point like marriage, kids, one telephone listing. Her thoughts were scattering like autumn leaves. For one brief second she wished Pappas were here to guide her. But no, she decided, she had to sink or swim on her own.

  She found the ladies’ room, much to her relief. While she washed her hands she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: blond, slim, attractive, terrified, green. Damn the color, damn the terror. She dug in her purse and hauled her lipstick out, along with an amazing amount of other junk. She shoveled it back in, pausing for a moment to look at the strip of photo-booth pictures for which she and Peyton, just for fun, had posed a week or so ago at the carnival. In the first picture they both sat grim and stony. The next one had them making faces. The third was them kissing while Peyton made rabbit ears behind her head. The fourth was a hand reaching for the camera. Yes, it had been fun, quite hilarious. Looking at these pictures brought back a measure of composure, and she did her lipstick with hands that were no longer shaking. An hour from now it would be over, she would have done just fine, and the deal Pappas should have handled would be wrapped up and finished. Now was not the time to lose her nerve.

  She went out and asked a very nice old gent where the kitchen might be found. He was kind enough to take her arm in arm and show her. For his trouble Julie did not smack him when he dug his fingers into her fanny. Instead she thanked him and disappeared inside . . .

  . . . and returned five minutes later, just in time to greet her new clients at the door. She was smiling radiantly with what she hoped was a measure of authority—the perfect lawyer, slick, suave, unimpeachable, in command. Of course she felt none of these, but the little excursion through the kitchen had eased her nerves remarkably. At least she had a plan now.

  She recognized the elderly Louis Strack from photos Pappas had prepped her with. Tall, slightly stooped, old enough to die but rich enough to hire someone else for the job, as Pappas had joked. Beside him as he came through the doors was his son Louis Strack, Jr., a somewhat short but powerfully built man Julie guessed to be in his late thirties. His black hair was impeccably styled, as
opposed to his father’s, which was a wispy gray tangle. Strack Senior looked positively grumpy; Strack Junior smiled at Julie as she approached.

  “Mr. Strack,” she said, offering her hand, “so nice to meet you. I’m Julie Hastings, here from Pappas and Swain to represent you in the Von Hoffenstein negotiation.”

  “Charmed,” he murmured, and for a wild second she thought he was going to kiss her hand. A brief chill rippled up her spine, and she wondered why.

  Why? her inner voice chided. The man’s a dream boat and filthy rich to boot. Most women would melt. As it is, you’re simply wilting.

  She forced herself to stop wilting. Strack Junior was saying something.

  “Please call me Louis, if I may call you Julie. This is my father—”

  “Goddammit,” his father barked in a rattly voice. “I don’t need some fancy-ass woman to do my negotiating. Where the hell’s Pappas at?”

  Julie flashed him one of her best smiles. “Mr. Pappas is tied up in litigation this week. Don’t worry, I’ve done my homework.” She hefted her briefcase. “It’s all in here.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll stop worrying when Von Ball-breaker drops his price down to sixty million.”

  “I think we can do better than that, Mr. Strack. My figures show—”

  “Just get him down to sixty,” Strack grumbled. “If he goes lower than that, he’s insane.”

  He stomped off. Two or three aides hurried to follow, all of them looking like hungry weasels, which Julie supposed they were. Hangers-on waiting for a nickel or dime to fall out of the old man’s pocket. She turned to the more pleasant visage of Louis Junior, or, as she corrected herself, just Louis.

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “We shall,” she said.

  He walked her upstairs to the conference room, exuding charm and a confidence she hoped was infectious. Inside the conference room an Austrian moneybags named Baron Hugo Von Hoffenstein was waiting, along with his lawyer, Myron Katz. Pappas had briefed her about these guys: They played hardball all the time. At stake was a chunk of riverfront property the good Baron wanted to part with. In return he was asking only seventy-five million dollars. Sums like this were staggering to Julie; she had enough trouble with her own budget. But Pappas and Swain, attorneys-at-law, stood to make a few million of their own from this deal. All of this sat uneasily on Julie’s shoulders. Pappas had told her she would do fine, but the tone of his voice carried something rather sinister. Julie read it as a veiled threat: This was do-or-die for her future with the firm, and her career just might go swirling down the tubes if she botched it.