A Purrfect Romance

by Bronston, J. M.

  “Oh, Mack lives in Twelve B,” she said, making it sound casual. “We just happened to meet in the hall.”

  “Mack?”

  “Mr. Brewster, I mean.” She felt the flush rising in her cheeks and cursed the fair complexion that had always been such a dead giveaway. She rushed on with her explanation. “He told me he’s been planning for a long time to buy the Willey apartment—”

  “All that in the hallway?”

  “Well, uh . . .” She came to a stammering stop.

  Gerry smiled slightly. He had seen the bright color rising in her cheeks and heard her nervous stammer.

  So, he thought. The plot thickens.

  He kept that thought to himself.

  “This just came in the mail,” he said, heading her off. He waved the letter in his hand. “The board is notifying me that they do indeed intend to challenge that portion of the will that concerns the apartment. They say that the passing of the property to anyone other than a family member is contrary to the co-op rules.” He saw her face go pale again and wished the board had been a little slower about coming to their decision. Brewster must be pushing them. Maybe he’d already made an offer on the apartment. “I’m sorry, Bridey, but it looks like we may have a fight on our hands. I’d like to see you stay there as long as you want. And our firm had hoped for as little publicity as possible—”

  He cut himself short. The whole matter had been embarrassing right from the beginning and he certainly wasn’t prepared to reveal his own foolishness to anyone outside the firm. Increasingly, as he got older, there were days—and it looked like this was turning into one of them—when he wished he could retire to his place in the country, maybe take up some sort of soothing hobby. Wood carving might be nice . . .

  “Mr. Brewster says he wants to break through and take over the whole floor.”

  He told her all that, Gerry thought, just chatting in the hallway?

  “And what’s more, he’s planning to just turn the cats out. He’d send poor Silk and Satin to the ASPCA or something—”

  That must have been some conversation. She practically got the man’s life story.

  “—as though Scout deserves to be in that apartment more than they do.”

  “Scout?”

  “His dog. His black Labrador retriever.”

  Gerry thought this all over for a long moment. Then he asked, “What more do you know about this Mack Brewster? What’s his business?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sounds like we ought to find out.” Gerry wondered why she’d missed out on that.

  “Does it matter?”

  “You never know. I’ll check it out and let you know if it’s important.” He made a few notes on a yellow pad. “In the meantime, you should just go on home, Bridey, and continue your cooking and writing. These legal proceedings take time, and if there’s one thing we lawyers know how to do, it’s how to slow things down. Nothing’s going to happen for a little while, anyway, and we’ll drag it out as much as we can. See if we can’t stall things enough so you can finish your book. You just go on home and continue as you were.”

  He came around to her chair and handed her the green jacket as she rose.

  “And everything’s okay with Silk and Satin?” he asked as he walked her to the reception area.

  “Oh, sure. They’re just fine. No problem.”

  “Good. We want them to enjoy every one of their nine lives.” As they shook hands at the door, he said, “How long do cats live, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Fifteen, twenty years?”

  The door closed behind her.

  Good. I’ll be safely retired by then.

  Gerald Kinski was not alone in dreaming of an escape into retirement. A few blocks away, in the offices of Harmon & Brewster, Helen Goodman was fuming. She yanked the chair back from her desk.

  “I’ve been that man’s executive secretary for three years,” she said, slapping down a folder full of papers, “and for his father for thirty years before that, and no one’s ever spoken to me that way before! Maybe I’m just getting too old for this job.” She pulled a tissue out of the box in her bottom drawer and blew her nose loudly. “If he doesn’t want me around anymore, maybe it’s time for me to take my pension and get out of here.”

  “Oh, Helen. Everyone knows this place couldn’t run without you.”

  Janet Warensky had just popped into Helen’s office for her regular 10 A.M. coffee break. She’d brought two mugs with her, just filled from the brewer in the kitchenette down the hall, and she set Helen’s in its usual spot, next to the African violets that always bloomed on Helen’s desk.

  In her many years as Harmon & Brewster’s marketing manager, Janet had seen all sorts of crises come and go, but she’d never known her friend to be in such a state.

  “Mr. Brewster’s always so even-tempered,” she said. “What happened?”

  Helen was too upset to even hear the question.

  “I’ve known that boy since he was in diapers.” She blew her nose again. “I remember when his mother used to bring him in here when he was just a baby. He used to play around everyone’s feet, pushing his toy cars across the carpet. He was Scooter back then, not Mr. Brewster. Why, I still have the birthday cards he used to draw for me. How could he talk to me like that?”

  “Like what? What did he say?”

  “I’d left these letters on his desk for his signature.” She pointed at the folder. “He barely looked at them and he just threw them back at me, right across his desk.” She mimicked Mack’s deep voice sarcastically. “ ‘These are a mess,’ he said. He practically barked at me. ‘What’s the matter with you, Helen?’ he said. ‘Can’t you do anything right?’ ”

  “Mr. Brewster said that? To you? Why, Helen, your work is so meticulous. And it’s so unlike him to talk that way. He’s always so polite and correct.”

  “And then he said, ‘Just take these and get out of here! Just get the hell out of here and leave me alone!’ Well,” she went on indignantly, “no one talks to me that way! I’ve a good mind to hand in my resignation this minute.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, Helen. I can hardly believe it of Mr. Brewster. Something must be bothering him. Maybe it’s a girl. Maybe he’s been seeing someone and he got dumped.”

  “There isn’t any girl. I’d know about it if there were a girl. He’d be sending flowers and things. Remember when he thought he was in love with that Tiffany Glover? That snobby young lawyer from Baines and Dunster? Remember how he was on the phone to her every couple of hours? But he never acted like this when they broke up. Oh, sure, he moped around for a couple of days, but—”

  The door behind her opened and Mack was there.

  “Helen, could you come in here, please?” he said sharply.

  She wiped her eyes, squared her narrow shoulders and got up.

  “Of course, Mr. Brewster,” she said, as coldly as she could. He held the door for her as she went into his book-lined office.

  “Please sit down, Helen.”

  She did.

  He pushed aside a tall stack of papers and sat on the corner of his desk, facing her.

  “My behavior was inexcusable, Helen,” he said rather stiffly. “I’m very sorry. I should never have spoken to you that way. I’m just not myself today.”

  “Well, Mr. Brewster . . .” She noticed that his tie was slightly off center and one button on the collar of his button-down shirt was undone. No, he certainly wasn’t himself today. As though in confirmation, Mack looked down at his tasseled loafers and frowned, as if he was seeing them for the first time that morning. Casual brown shoes with a dark gray business suit. Whoever he was today, he was definitely not himself.

  “Please accept my apology,” he was saying. “It has nothing to do with you, Helen. Your work is always excellent.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Brewster. I try to do my best.”

  “I know you do, Helen, and Harmon and Brewster couldn’t get along without you. I couldn’t get
along without you.”

  Maybe, she thought, she wouldn’t retire just yet after all. She stood up to go.

  “You can bring those letters back, Helen,” he continued, “and I’ll sign them. Just check the spelling of Colin Balfoure’s name. I think he spells it with an e at the end.”

  “Yes, Mr. Brewster.” She was feeling much better now. Mack was still glowering, but at least not at her.

  “And then get me Harold Maudsley on the phone, at the co-op board. You have the number?”

  “It’s on my Rolodex.”

  As she reached the door, he added, “And Helen, after you do that, would you send a dozen roses to Miss Bridget Berrigan, at Six Twelve Park. Apartment Twelve A.”

  Oh! She felt triumphant. So it is a girl, after all!

  “No, wait. On second thought,” he said, “not roses. Roses are too formal. Tell them to make up a big arrangement of spring flowers: freesias, daffodils, that kind of thing.”

  Oh, boy! Here we go again. “Yes, Mr. Brewster. And will you want to enclose a card?”

  “Oh, that’s right. A card.” He pinched his lower lip thoughtfully and then said, “I’ll write it out for you and you can read it to them when you call in the order.”

  She waited while he scrawled his message on a memo pad. After a moment’s thought and a couple of false starts, he handed her the note and she closed the door behind her.

  She took it to her desk, where Janet was waiting expectantly.

  “So,” Janet said, “did he fire you? Or has the storm passed?”

  Helen finished reading the note and handed it to Janet.

  “You were right,” she said. “Look at that.”

  The guy I live with, it said, can sometimes jam his big foot in his mouth and not even figure out how it got there. Please rescue him before he chokes to death. It was signed Scout.

  “Scout?”

  “His dog.”

  The two women grinned at each other conspiratorially as Helen picked up the phone.

  “Do you think this is the one?” Janet asked.

  “I sure hope so. It’s about time that man settled down.”

  Chapter Nine

  “He just caught me totally off guard, Marge.”

  Bridey had her cell phone in one hand and Mack’s card in the other, and she was pacing around the kitchen, practically wearing a tread in the floor tiles. The huge bunch of cheery spring flowers confronted her from the countertop, where she’d set it down in the middle of her working mess. She had been creating Stews on Sunday, Dinners All Week, and had all six burners going when the flowers arrived.

  “What should I do, Marge?”

  “Oh, give the guy a chance,” Marge said. “At least talk to him. Talk is a good thing.”

  “I don’t know, Marge. After last night—”

  “Look, sweetie, I’d love to hold your hand through this, but I’ve got layout people coming in now, and one of our editors left a manuscript at her kid’s nursery school. Somewhere up in Westchester, no less. It’s crazy here and we have a Wednesday deadline. I just can’t talk now.”

  “Oh, sure. I’m sorry, Marge. I know you’re busy. Call me tonight.”

  She hung up quickly.

  “I know, I know,” she said to Silk and Satin, who’d come into the kitchen, drawn there by the alluring aromas that had been floating out of the kitchen for the last hour. “I’m a big girl, and I can handle this myself.”

  Silk rubbed Bridey’s ankle in agreement and Satin licked his paws as though he, for one, couldn’t understand why she was making such a fuss. He had better things to do than worry about Mack Brewster’s shenanigans.

  “You guys don’t get it,” Bridey said to them. She stuck the card in among the flowers and scooped up Silk, holding her so they were face-to-face. “If you knew what that man is up to, you’d scratch his eyes out.” Silk patted her reprovingly on the nose. “Well, maybe not that,” she corrected herself, thinking of those handsome black eyes. “But you sure wouldn’t feel friendly toward him. Or toward that big black dog of his either.”

  But she had to laugh. The note was kind of cute. Cuter than she’d have expected from such a stuffed shirt. Maybe Marge was right. Maybe she should give him a chance. And it wouldn’t hurt to let him hear her side of things as well.

  She went to her desk and, on a small piece of scratch paper, wrote:

  Scout: Even if he doesn’t know how he got there, it’s a smart man who knows when he’s in trouble. Tell the guy you live with to stop by when he gets home from work.

  She left the note unsigned, folded it in half, carried it across the hall and slipped it under the door of 12B.

  Then, with a surprising flutter inside her rib cage, like a ten-year-old girl who’s just left a party invitation under the door of the best-looking boy in the class, she ducked back into 12A.

  The cats, who had escorted her on her errand, returned with her to the kitchen, where a simmering Szekely goulash of pork, onions and sauerkraut had achieved a velvety, paprika-rich gloss, ready now for the addition of caraway seeds, sour cream and a generous cup of dark beer. She was feeling giddy; she made it two full cups. Then she made the appropriate notation of the change on her laptop.

  “Scout says he has a message from you.”

  She had to laugh. The dog had her note in his mouth and Mack stood behind him, as though the roles had been reversed and he was the one on a leash.

  “He brought me over,” Mack said, “to say I’m sorry.”

  He looked spiffed up, like a boy on his way to church, in sharp chinos and a blue blazer and, Bridey noted with an inward giggle, a fresh shave. She remembered Marge’s words: Give the guy a chance.

  “I’m not sure what I did,” he added, “but I’d sure like to straighten things out.”

  “I guess we should talk,” she said, stepping back so they could come in. “Will Scout be okay with the cats?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Bridey turned around to look for Silk and Satin, ready to grab them in the event of trouble, and broke into a laugh. Only their heads appeared around the far side of the foyer, one on either side, from the safety of the living room. They were peering out at the big black dog with cat-wary, nervous attention. Scout, for his part, was more forthcoming. He walked across the foyer and introduced himself, making a polite greeting, nose to nose, first with Satin, who, looking cautious but curious, stood his ground firmly, and then with Silk, who backed off a step and kept her ears flat, ready for fight or flight, whichever might be needed.

  Mack spoke to the dog softly. “Scout, come.”

  Scout trotted back to his side obediently.

  “Sit.”

  Scout sat.

  “They’re going to be all right,” Mack said confidently. He told Scout to stay and then followed Bridey into the living room, where she retreated into the sofa’s cushions, curling herself up and pulling her legs up under her. Scout remained where he’d been told to stay and the cats, after taking a precautionary look toward him, jumped up next to Bridey, staying close for protection.

  Mack stood at the center of the room and looked around with a proprietary air, as though he were sizing it up for immediate occupancy, mentally removing the contents and replacing all the beautiful objects with his own belongings.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said. “When I was a kid, I thought this place was as big as a football field. It seemed to me a plane could take off from here. Now,” he added thoughtfully, taking in every detail of the exquisite decor, “it’s not so intimidating.” He walked over to the portrait of Henrietta that hung over the fireplace. “And old Mrs. Willey here doesn’t look so formidable either, for that matter. In fact, judging from her portrait, she must have been really dazzling when she was young. You’d never know from this picture what a wicked old bat she turned into.”

  He turned to look at Bridey, whose delicate features, framed by the lacy froth of her lovely hair, were the equal of any artist’s portrayal: the casual grace
of her slim form against the sleek fabric of the sofa, the perfect contrast her vivid coloring made with the pale decor of her surroundings, her ease with the cats, who were resting companionably against her, made a picture as beautiful as the one above the fireplace, as though the whole room had been specially designed to show her off like a precious gem in an exquisite setting. For a moment, his imagination dressed her in finery to match Henrietta’s, in a gown and jewels, and once again, as on that morning in the park, he was astonished to feel his hand tingle with the urge to trace one of the soft curls that cupped her ear, to entwine a copper tendril around his finger. He almost reached out to touch her.

  What a pity, he thought, feeling the sudden pang of imminent loss. We’ve hardly had a chance to know each other, and now . . .

  “I’m sorry if I upset you last night,” he said, taking a seat in one of the low-backed wing chairs that flanked the sofa. “I just thought it was only fair to tell you that I expect to take over this apartment pretty soon so you can plan accordingly. I didn’t know you were counting on being here for a long time. The lawyers should have explained that to you. But really, does it make such a difference? Surely you’ll be able to finish your work somewhere else.”

  He said it so casually, so indifferently. She realized he hadn’t a clue. He was the picture of self-confidence, his tall, handsome body at ease in the graceful chair, his place in the world safe and assured. He’d never known the kinds of financial worries she faced, the fearful hole she’d dug for herself, burning her bridges, quitting her job, putting all her savings into her expensive electronic stuff, taking this leap into insecurity, all on the fragile hope of writing her way into a better life. Mack Brewster took wealth and comfort for granted; she, on the other hand, would have to put all her dreams on hold, go back to the back-breaking work she’d determined to leave behind her. . .

  “It’s not that easy,” she said. “I don’t think you’d understand.” The anger she’d felt last night was flaring up again, but she remembered what Marge had said.