“Five.”
“Five what?”
“Five days. You didn’t go once this week.”
“That’s it,” Bianca said, laughing. “Keep track and make me feel guilty.”
Lacey grinned. “Hey, Doc, I’m just sayin’…”
“I’m not a ‘doc.’ Not yet.”
“Yeah, but you will be.”
Bianca sighed. “Assuming I ever complete my dissertation.”
“My money’s on you, Doc. Anyway, everybody’s gone and I’m heading home—unless you need me to do something last minute.”
“Thanks. I’m fine. You go ahead. Enjoy the weekend.”
“You too. I hope you have some exciting plans.”
“Very exciting,” Bianca said dryly. “The laundry. A trip to the Union Square Greenmarket. A trip to Whole Foods. Maybe a quick stop at Bloomingdale’s to look for a new towels.”
“No hot date?”
“No,” Bianca said, and she knew she’d said it too quickly because Lacey gave her a funny look. “No,” she said, this time with a smile. “No time for dates, hot or otherwise.”
Lacey nodded. “Dissertation before men,” she said solemnly, clapping her hand to her heart. “I have the same attitude about my thesis.”
“Exactly. Work first. Everything else second.”
“But you’re almost done with the research, right?”
Bianca nodded. “I’m close. In fact, I’m meeting with the last subject in my study this evening. In…” She shot a look at her watch. “In half an hour.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. Have a good weekend, whatever you end up doing with it.”
“You too.”
Lacey held up her hand and turned away. Bianca could hear her heels tapping against the highly polished oak floor in the reception area, then the opening and closing of the door that led into the hall and to the elevators.
“Okay,” she said briskly. It was time she left, too.
She reached under her desk, pulled out the zippered tote she used to carry things to and from her office, and began loading stuff into it.
How could she have forgotten tonight’s meeting?
The answer was simple.
She’d wanted to forget it.
She was in the final stages of her research. That should have been cause for celebration. And, yes, in some ways it was.
In other ways…
Not so much.
The topic of her dissertation, Interpersonal Bonding Among Millennials in the Age of the Internet, hadn’t worked out quite as she’d hoped.
She’d run into difficulties she hadn’t anticipated.
Bianca had run carefully worded ads in the New York Times Personals section, the Village Voice, Craigslist, and in two university alumni quarterlies.
PhD candidate in psychology wishes to meet with users of online dating services for open and honest discussions of expectations and results. Privacy and anonymity assured.
Her adviser, Dr. Marilyn Epstein, had read it and smiled.
“You sure about this, Bianca?”
“What do you mean? Do you think there’s a better way to state the criteria?”
“What I think is that you’re liable to be walking into a problem. You may find yourself dealing with women who’ll take one look at you and hate you. As for the men… I wouldn’t be surprised if they forget all about the science.” Epstein had winked at her. “You might want to hire some big, strong, sexy hunk to go to the interviews with you and just sit nearby, watching you with smoldering eyes, making it crystal clear you’re no competition to the women—and clear to the men exactly whose woman you are.”
The doctor had chuckled. So had Bianca, but she’d immediately thought of Chay. The way he’d looked at her when they’d made love had left no doubt that she belonged to him.
Except, they hadn’t made love. They’d had sex. And she’d only been his for as long as the sex had lasted.
Not that she’d wanted to belong to him. To any man. Surely not now, and surely never to a man like Chay.
Besides, she’d been certain Epstein had things wrong. This was a survey. She was a trained scientist. She’d made the parameters of her study clear, especially for those participants—ten women, ten men—she’d chosen for what she called Closing Interviews.
She’d been correct about all those things. Unfortunately, they were also beside the point.
A few of her meetings with the female subjects had gone well.
Others had not.
One woman had taken a look at her, turned on her heel and walked out of the Cuppa Joe’s on Madison Avenue, where Bianca had decided to hold the interviews.
Another had burst into tears. “Why would I want to talk about the misery of online dating with somebody who looks like you?”
A third had accused her of being a shill for a dating service.
“That’s ridiculous,” Bianca had said. “Why would I do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” the woman had answered, ending the interview.
Score one for Dr. Edison. Bianca sighed as she checked the contents of her tote. Actually, score two, because she’d done as bad or worse with the male subjects.
So far, she’d interviewed nine of them.
Two had been informative and honest.
An astounding seven had found it difficult to believe that what she wanted from them was data, not hookups.
Men.
What was it that made them so arrogant? So sure of themselves? Even the ones who had nothing to be arrogant or sure about, not just the ones who did, not just the Chay Olivieris of this world…
And what was he doing in her head again? And what was that nonsense about him having something to be arrogant about?
Yes, he was good-looking. Yes, he could hold up his end of a conversation. And yes, he certainly knew how to dance.
Unfortunately, he was also a rat.
Bianca dug into her tote. She had a compact buried somewhere inside. There it was. She snapped it open and peered at herself in the mirror.
Good.
She looked professional. No makeup. Her hair was in its usual neat ponytail at the nape of her neck. Combined with a dark pantsuit plus sensible shoes—her usual outfit—the way she looked might keep tonight’s interviewee—Noah? Yes. Noah—from reading things wrong.
That hadn’t worked with seven other guys, but she still had hope, especially since Noah had come across as a low-key, quiet person in his responses to her questionnaire.
She needed, desperately, to end the research portion of her study and settle into writing her dissertation and preparing to defend it, and that kind of get-it-over-with attitude was not a good way to feel about the work she’d spent months planning and more months researching and collating.
She kept reminding herself that she had, in fact, gathered some useful data. Epstein had even suggested that once she had the dissertation written, it might be that rare paper that would pique interest outside the hallowed halls of academia.
“I know we’re supposed to gag at the possibility some TV show or magazine might sit up and take notice of something we do,” Dr. Epstein had said with a wink, “but a little commercial success never hurts.”
Bianca scooped up a couple of pens and a small notebook, and she tucked them into the tote.
Yes. But what she did in this office, working with patients Epstein called difficult—though calling them individuals with possible sociopathic leanings might be closer to the truth—made her feel as if she were doing something of value. The work was often draining and sometimes disturbing, but always rewarding.
Almost always.
Her thoughts bounced to the patient who’d called her in Texas. Only Epstein, who was also the founder of East Side Associates, knew what those calls had involved, the litan
y of sick perversions her caller had whispered he was planning for her.
Not even Bianca’s training had kept the horror of his words from making bile rise in her throat.
The man was out of her life now, someone else’s worry. He’d have been locked away in an institution if it weren’t for his family name, his money, his bristling denials—and the fact that his new therapist, a nationally famous psychiatrist, said he was responding well to treatment.
Still, the experience had left her jumpy. On edge. And she hated being like that.
Bianca rose from her desk and went to the closet. Maybe, with luck, she’d left an umbrella in it. Or a jacket. The rain had increased in intensity. She could hear it pelting against the window, and a couple of jagged streaks of lightning, accompanied by still-distant rolls of thunder, made it clear she wasn’t going to reach Cuppa Joe’s without getting wet.
Thud!
She spun around, heart racing—and breathed a sigh of relief. It was only the tote. It had fallen on its side.
Yes, she was definitely on edge.
Take what had happened last week. She’d answered two calls on her cellphone, said “Hello,” and received no response. Just silence. Of course she’d had calls like those once or twice before. Everybody got them.
But because of Texas, when the third call came in, she’d rushed to her carrier’s nearest store.
“They’re just hang-ups,” the guy at the store had said after checking her phone. “Well, not real hang-ups. You know, nobody actually hangs up a cellphone, but that’s what we called them back in the day. Some jerk dials around, usually at random, and when he gets an answer, he hangs up. Disconnects.”
Bianca had explained that she’d been the one who’d had to disconnect. The person who’d made the calls didn’t.
“Kids,” the guy said, rolling his eyes. “Little SOBs—pardon my language—with too much time on their hands. Look, if you want to change your number we’ll do it, but…”
The “but” was exactly why she told him thanks, but no thanks.
Changing the number again meant notifying everybody she’d notified just a couple of months ago. That time, she’d told her family she’d had to change her number because the person who’d owned it before had turned out to be a guy with a bad financial history.
“I’m getting calls from all kinds of credit agencies,” she’d said, and they’d all said yeah, getting a stranger’s bad number was a hassle.
What excuse could she use now?
The same one wouldn’t work twice. Even if it did, Alessandra wouldn’t be fooled. She would know something was up and then, absolutely, she’d break her vow of silence and the Wildes and the Bellinis and Tanner would all be involved.
Everybody but Chay.
Bianca blinked.
Dio, she was thinking about him again! Ridiculous. She hadn’t thought of him in weeks. Not since that night in California. Not once. Not for a minute. Not for a second. And she never would. Never, ever…
Thunder roared. A jagged spear of lightning illuminated the room. Bianca jerked back from the half-open closet so quickly that she bumped her head on the door.
“Dammit,” she whispered.
No umbrella. No jacket. A storm of epic proportions outside. What the hell. She could stay here until it ended. All she had to do was call Cuppa Joe’s. Ask one of the baristas if he’d please see whether there was a man sitting at the table in front, the one nearest the counter that held sugar and sweeteners, milk and cream. The man would be holding a copy of today’s New York Times. And if somebody like that was there, would the nice barista please hand the guy the phone and—
Another flash of lightning. Another roar of thunder.
The lights flickered. And Bianca held her breath.
East Side Associates had a small conference room. At the conclusion of her first week here, her new colleagues had thrown what they’d called a Welcoming Party on her behalf. All the associates, including the one she was replacing had shown up as well as some of their spouses and partners.
That part had turned out to be…interesting.
For starters, the guy she was replacing had smiled too broadly, pumped her hand too hard, and several glasses of wine later, he’d marched to where Bianca stood and informed her that if she thought she could fill his shoes, she was wrong.
“Choosing someone as inexperienced as you to take my place,” he’d said, loudly enough to silence all other conversation, “is ridiculous!”
Dr. Epstein and the man’s partner had taken him by the elbows and hurried him out the door.
“Sorry about that,” Epstein had said.
“No, that’s okay,” Bianca replied, because what else could she have said?
It had been an insightful experience, if not a pleasant one.
There’d been other insightful moments that evening too, but nobody had ever said psychologists and psychiatrists lived trouble-free lives.
One associate’s wife had taken Bianca aside and said brusquely that her husband liked to flirt and she hoped Bianca would not be foolish enough to take him seriously. The warning had been surprising, to say the least, because the man in question was in his eighties and about as flirtatious as a clam.
The husband of another associate had offered to refill Bianca’s wineglass and as he did, he’d said—in the same conversational tone he’d used in suggesting more wine—that he and his wife had an “arrangement,” and if she were so inclined, Bianca should feel free to give him a call sometime. Wink wink.
Bianca hadn’t responded. What could she say to that, especially when what little she already knew of the wife suggested that the woman would have been astounded to hear that her husband believed they had any sort of arrangement?
Dr. Epstein had no spouse to put in an appearance. She was recently divorced, and she seemed surprised but pleased when her son showed up.
The son was nineteen, tall and gangly and shy.
“This is David,” she’d told Bianca when she introduced them. “My only child.” She’d beamed up at the young man. “I’m so proud of him! He’s the man in our lives.”
He was also the opposite of his gregarious mother, Bianca realized after a two-minute conversation. David mumbled when he spoke and looked down at his feet, and the most Bianca had been able to get him to say about himself was that he was a graduate student in mathematics, home on vacation. He left before the party ended, and it had touched her when Epstein took her aside and thanked her for being “so kind” to David.
“He has an IQ of 180,” the doctor had confided. “And, as is the case with many who have such brilliant minds, his social skills aren’t the best. He’s especially tongue-tied with women, who are not often as gentle with him as you were, Bianca.”
Mostly, though, the party had been a mix of pleasant chatter and funny anecdotes, including one about the time a storm had rolled in.
“A summer storm,” someone said. “You know the kind. Lots of Sturm und Drang, and after maybe twenty minutes of the lights flickering on and off, all the power went out.”
“I suppose we could have walked down the nine flights,” someone else said, “but the maintenance guys kept assuring us the power would be coming back any minute. Plus, it turned out a couple of us had little stashes of gin and whiskey.”
“Don’t forget the crackers,” someone else added to a round of laughter. “Anyway, by the time the power came back on, nobody really wanted to leave.”
More laughter. Then Dr. Epstein said that the moral of the story was that it had taken that storm to nudge the building’s management into finally modernizing the system.
Or maybe not, Bianca thought now, as the lights flickered again.
One thing was certain.
She had absolutely no wish to be trapped in the dark, alone. And she probably would be alone, considering that thi
s was a summer Friday, meaning that all over Manhattan, people rushed to leave work as soon as they could to get the weekend started.
No raincoat. No umbrella. So what? This was June. Lightning and thunder couldn’t change the fact that the rain, though heavy, would be warm.
Bianca shut the closet door, went to her desk, tossed her phone into her tote, grabbed it, and went quickly out of her office and into the reception area.
Was she mistaken, or were the overhead lights a bit dimmer than usual?
All the more reason to quicken her pace. Through reception. Out the door. Down the corridor to the elevators. Brrr! It was chilly out here. The lights might be playing games, but the air conditioning was working overtime.
She looked up at the station lights above the elevators. Both were on the lobby level. Bianca pressed the call button. Then she tilted back her head and watched the lights.
Nothing happened.
Neither elevator was moving.
She huffed out an impatient breath and poked the call button again.
Then she checked her watch.
Not good. It was almost a quarter of six.
“Come on,” she muttered, hitting the call button with her fist. Yes! One car began moving. She could hear it groaning as it rose. Still, no matter how fast it got here, she was going to be late for her meeting with—with—
What was the name of tonight’s subject? Something biblical. David. Daniel. Joseph. Noah. That was it. She was meeting with First Name, Noah; Last Name, Charles. Male. Age thirty-four. Heterosexual. Never been married. Was signed onto three dating sites.
The photo he’d emailed along with his filled-out questionnaire showed a pleasant-looking man, skinny, shy smile, curly red hair. Not unattractive, but not someone you’d notice in a crowd the way you’d notice someone like Lieutenant Chay Olivieri—and where was that damn elevator? It paused at the third floor. And at the fourth.
It was ridiculous that she would think about the lieutenant. About that night. Dio. Why would she want to think about it? Sex with a man who was basically a stranger. Sex in a public place. No preliminaries. Not foreplay. It had been embarrassing. Humiliating.
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 9