Playing for Time

by Bretton, Barbara

  "Maybe it's his doctor," Joanna said, finishing her drink. "Maybe he has a heart problem or something."

  "Oh, no," Rosie said,. "Ryder is hale and hearty. The only thing wrong with him is a broken leg."

  "A broken right leg?"

  "Yes," Rosie said, looking at Joanna with open curiosity.

  Joanna started to laugh. "With elaborate drawings all over the cast?"

  "You've met him?"

  "Oh, yes, I've met him."

  "Any fireworks?" Rosie's romantic imagination was in full swing.

  Joanna thought about their interlude in the laundry room and the look on his face when she turned around and met his eyes. Her heart might have revved up into double time but she doubted if his had so much as missed a beat. "Afraid not, Rosie."

  "I don't understand," Rosie said, shaking her head. "I was certain you two would hit it off right away, being new at the Carillon and all."

  Joanna could barely hold in her laughter., "I don't think I'm his type."

  "Not his type!" Rosie's small frame swelled with outrage. "Why, you're beautiful and bright and – "

  "Sorry, Rosie, but I have a feeling Mr. O'Neal likes younger women."

  Rosie was still sputtering about men and their sexual quirks when Joanna said good night. Tomorrow she would explain all about her Kathryn disguise, but for tonight she would let Rosie rant and rave.

  Maybe next time Rosie wouldn't be so quick to set up a surprise blind date for Joanna.

  And maybe next time the blind date wouldn't be so quick to say no.

  Chapter Four

  Maybe you had to be in the right mood for it, but Star Wars wasn't half as exciting as Ryder remembered. Of course, the first time he'd seen it he'd only been with PAX for five years – controlled insanity hadn't yet become second nature to him.

  This time the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and the beauteous Princess Leia were growing a little dull. With apologies to all, he zapped off the TV with his remote and faced the silence of his apartment.

  Talk about dull.

  Maybe he shouldn't have been quite so eager to say no to Rosie's dinner invitation. Dinner with Rosie was usually a hell of a lot of fun; it had been the prospect of a blind date that put him off.

  He'd seen a few specimens from Rosie's eclectic group of friends and knew his dinner companion could be anything from a Playboy bunny nymphet to a woman of Kathryn-Hayes-of-the-laundry-room's more advanced years.

  He chuckled and reached for the phone. Actually he'd probably have a better time with Kathryn Hayes than watching a Playboy bunny fumble with the salad fork and try to keep her tail out of the hors d'oeuvres.

  "Can I make it in time for dessert?" he asked after Rosie said hello.

  "Tired of your own company, are you?"

  "You could say that. Even a blind date is better than Star Wars for the eighty-seventh time."

  "I'm glad Joanna isn't here," Rosie said. "I don't think she'd like the comparison."

  He felt surprisingly disappointed. "Dinner's over?"

  "Afraid so."

  "What did I miss?"

  Rosie described the menu in excruciating detail.

  "I don't care about the salad dressing. What does Joanna Stratton look like?"

  "Tall and beautiful and too good for a cur like you, Ryder O'Neal. She wasn't thrilled with the idea of a blind date herself. Especially not after meeting you."

  "Meeting me? She must have me confused with somebody else."

  "How stupid of me." Rosie sounded highly affronted. "I'm sure she meets men with broken right legs all the time."

  "Are you sure she met me?" While he wasn't a monk, he hadn't exactly been cutting a wide swath through the women of the Upper West Side these days. A tall and beautiful unattached woman was someone he would remember.

  He could hear the hesitation in Rosie's voice. "Well, actually she didn't say she met you, but she did describe that Picasso cast of yours to a T."

  Now he understood. He and Joanna Stratton had never met. This was just Rosie's way of needling him for refusing her dinner invitation. He decided to play along with her.

  "Did you tell her what a great catch I am?"

  "No," Rosie said. "I told her you were a spoiled rich kid who rides around in Rolls-Royces with Savile Row Englishmen by day and does God-knows-what by night."

  So she'd noticed Alistair and the ubiquitous limousine. It shouldn't come as a surprise; they hadn't been particularly discreet. Yet Ryder had thought limousines were commonplace for the Carillon's gentry.

  "That's my uncle," he said, grasping onto the first thought to pop into his head. "He found the apartment for me."

  "So you are a spoiled rich kid, are you?"

  He thought about his ordinary, middle-class upbringing in a frame house on a little street in Omaha, Nebraska, and how far he'd traveled since then.

  "Guilty. I've never done an honest day's work in my life." At least, not one he could talk about.

  "Why is it I don't know if you're telling the truth or not, Ryder O'Neal?"

  He chuckled and changed the subject. "Did you find the keys to your mailbox?" This was the third time in five weeks that Rosie had misplaced something important.

  No, and I've asked Stanley for a duplicate but he says it will take a week. He says I'm getting senile." She paused for a moment. "Maybe he's right."

  Bastard, Ryder thought. Forgetfulness sure as hell wasn't the sole province of the elderly. "I'll get a key for you tomorrow, Rosie." A call to Alistair should do the trick. The man's influence was something to behold.

  "That's it," Rosie said. "You're a locksmith. I knew I'd figure it out sooner or later."

  "Wrong again. I told you I was a spoiled rich kid, didn't I?"

  They bantered for a few minutes more about his mysterious occupation, then Ryder stifled a yawn.

  "Sorry," he said into the phone. "Life in the fast lane is getting to me."

  "It is almost ten-thirty," Rosie said dryly. "Maybe you should turn in."

  "Good night, Rosie," he said laughing."

  He was about to hang up the telephone, happy that he'd been able to deflect her curiosity about Alistair and his occupation when Rosie said, "Ryder?"

  "Yes?"

  "You got away with changing the subject this time, but don't think you'll always be that lucky."

  Click.

  Ryder stared at the telephone for a full ten seconds after Rosie hung on up him.

  Senile?

  Not very likely.

  #

  The next morning Joanna woke up early. She washed and dried her hair until it sparkled like spun silk, carefully applied her makeup and slipped into a long-sleeved red minidress and black tights.

  The mad urge to do laundry had seized her in the middle of the night. She collected everything marked washable in the apartment and by noon she had trekked up and down to the laundry room five times.

  Amazing just how much tending those washers and dryers actually needed.

  Amazing just how far a woman will go to fool herself.

  Finally, around one-fifteen, the only thing left to launder was herself, but the thought of stripping off her clothing and leaping into a top-loading Whirlpool didn't appeal.

  You might as well face it, she thought as she lugged the spanking-clean shower curtain and guest towels back up to her mother's apartment. He doesn't spend his time dozing in the laundry room. That had been a fluke, same as her visit.

  He was probably out right now visiting his orthopedist, trying to describe the wild sexual variation that had broken his leg and landed him in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the National Enquirer.

  She locked the apartment door behind her and threw the last batch of clean clothes atop the four other batches of clean clothes that were stacked on top of the sofa and the chairs and the credenza.

  Holland was still at her audition. Joanna was going to meet her at seven for dinner at The Maltese Falcon, a little café on Columbus Avenue, but
until then she had an endless expanse of six hours and absolutely no way to fill them.

  She was not a woman meant for idleness.

  Benny Ryan's job offer could put an end to that idleness, she thought, at least for a few days. Yesterday's excursion into the real world in her improvised old-age makeup had gone a long way toward proving to Joanna that she could handle the demands of the job. And her evening with Rosie and the opportunity to study the patterns of aging had given her new ideas that would help her underplay the obvious and highlight the subtle.

  Joanna pulled her enormous leather suitcase from the hall closet and dragged it over to the desk by the window.

  The only way she was going to bump into the mysterious stranger with the broken leg and the muscles that went on forever was to coerce Rosie into staging another blind date for them.

  Until then, it was back to work.

  She opened the suitcase and reached for the heavy-duty Pan Cake #733D, Alabaster Echo.

  #

  "You look bored." Alistair poured himself another gin and tonic from the bar in the back of the Rolls as it cruised up the FDR Drive.

  "I am bored."

  "I thought lunch in SoHo was the perfect antidote."

  "SoHo is boring," Ryder said, feeling like a petulant six-year-old.

  Alistair chuckled. "I rather thought you'd like feeding at one of those Yuppie watering holes I hear so much about."

  "Did you see the way they were dressed in there? It looked like they'd gotten a group discount from the L. L. Bean catalogue." His leather jacket and jeans had been as out of place as a tuxedo at a nudist colony.

  Alistair offered him a drink but Ryder shook his head. "I'm glad to see your sardonic humor is returning, my boy. You've been a trifle dour today."

  "Not dour. Bored."

  "I have the perfect solution for that."

  Ryder glared at him. Alistair had been describing that perfect solution all afternoon. "Forget it. I'm not interested."

  The chauffeur eased off the FDR and started crosstown toward Columbus Avenue.

  "Now I'm the one afflicted with boredom." Alistair's crisp British accent gave each word a certain upper-crust arrogance that often drove Ryder mad. "We need you and you are part of us. It is that simple."

  "Nothing's that simple."

  Alistair lit one of the foreign cigarettes Ryder hated. "I can see that this taste of civilian life was not one of my better ideas. We should have sent you off to Bali or Tahiti for your R and R."

  "You're not afraid I'll be seduced by the lure of the South Seas and end up a beach bum?"

  "Somehow I don't fancy you selling coconut oil to tourists, dear boy." Ryder watched as Alistair inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "No, Ryder, where you are concerned, real life's the greatest danger of all."

  "How would I know?" Ryder countered. "I've seen damned little of it in the past fifteen years."

  Alistair watched him carefully. "My well-honed instincts tell me this is not the most opportune moment, but I'd like to talk to you about a short-term assignment."

  Ryder's response was not one found in the handbook.

  Alistair pressed on. "The Caribbean is lively this time of year."

  Ryder instantly knew he was talking about the crisis at the American embassy on the island of St. George and he wanted no part of it.

  "Call Poliakoff or Lewis," he said, grinning as two children in private-school uniforms tried to peek through the smoked-glass windows of the Rolls-Royce as it waited at a red light. "They did a damned good job at the western White House."

  "Of course they did," Alistair said smoothly. "Except that you drew up the diagrams, keyed in the security codes and monitored everything else."

  "You weren't supposed to know that." He'd been grooming Ira Poliakoff and Mitch Lewis for bigger and better things. "They can handle anything you throw at them. I was the one who couldn't back off."

  "And you believe you can now?"

  "Yes." He hesitated. "I think so."

  "Pardon me if I find that difficult to believe."

  "I don't give a rat's ass what you find difficult to believe, Chambers. I'm damned sick of living out of a suitcase. I want more out of life than an unlimited expense account."

  Alistair didn't bother to hide his amusement. "If indeed you are finished, my boy, why do you avail yourself of the organization's largesse?"

  Ryder picked up one of his crutches and slammed it twice against the partition between passengers and driver.

  "Pull over!" His voice was an angry roar.

  The chauffeur, accustomed to abrupt changes in destination and/or passengers, smoothly pulled over and stopped the car.

  "It's a long walk, O'Neal," Alistair said as Ryder pressed a series of buttons, then opened the passenger door. "Hardly a delight on crutches."

  "I don't give a damn if I have to crawl." Ryder began to maneuver himself out of the plush limo, awkwardly using the crutches for leverage. "I'm getting the hell out of here now."

  "Ah, the impetuosity of youth!" Alistair slid over to the other side and retrieved Ryder's wallet from the floor. "You might need this."

  Ryder, who had been inordinately pleased with his grand exit, cursed. "The least you could have done is let me walk a block," he said, accepting the wallet.

  "Walk all you want," Alistair said, getting back into the car. "Let off steam. We can talk more about this tomorrow over lunch."

  "You can take lunch and stick it up your –"

  Alistair laughed and powered up the car window, and Ryder's words fell upon the ears of two Sisters of Mercy, who crossed themselves and offered a quick prayer for his redemption.

  The Rolls moved back into traffic. The nuns hurried past. Ryder looked up at the street sign and realized he was thirteen long blocks away from the Carillon.

  Making a point was one thing; being a masochist was something else.

  He waited until the Rolls disappeared from view, then stepped into the street to whistle for a cab.

  #

  Joanna was invisible.

  That had to be it. Through some bizarre accident of nature she'd been rendered invisible and the reason everyone on Columbus Avenue was shoving past her was because they couldn't see her as she wheeled Rosie's shopping cart back from the grocery.

  What other reason could there be? She wouldn't treat a stray cat the way she'd been treated these past two hours.

  Since leaving the Carillon in full septuagenarian makeup and attire, Joanna had been jostled, bumped, cursed at, shoved off the curb, elbowed out of line at the produce scale, and generally treated with all the respect reserved for the unwashed and destitute of Calcutta.

  Correction: The destitute in Calcutta had Mother Teresa to turn to in times of need. On the streets of New York, Joanna had no one.

  By the time she reached the dry cleaners where she had promised to drop off Rosie's coat, she was having the devil of a time controlling the urge to fling her grey wig into the street, strip off the heavy makeup and challenge the next person who pushed her aside to a duel.

  It was a relief to step into Speedy Cleaners and leave the noise and commotion out on the street. She left her shopping cart to the right side of the door and approached the counter, noting with pleasure that Barry was working today. Barry was a starving opera singer who worked in the dry cleaners during the day, sang for his supper as a waiter/tenor at Bardolino's in the Village by night, and prayed for his big break the rest of the time.

  As usual, he was poring over Variety. He glanced at her, then over at the shopping cart. She wondered if he would recognize her through the disguise.

  "You can't leave that thing there, lady." He looked at her, then back at his paper. "Against the rules."

  "It's just for a moment." She kept her voice tremulous and low as she put Rosie's coat down on the counter.

  "Rules are rules."

  "If I put it outside, someone will steal it." Damn it! She'd just spent the better part of two hours shopping for those grocer
ies and if this arrogant whippersnapper thought he was going to –

  "You should have thought of that before."

  "If you write up the slip, I'll be gone before you know it."

  "If you don't move the cart, I can't write out the slip."

  The connection between shopping cart and dry cleaning receipt eluded Joanna. To her intense embarrassment she found herself teetering on the brink of tears.

  Joanna Stratton would have leaned over the counter and grabbed Barry by his lemon-yellow tie. Kathryn Hayes didn't have that option; the past two hours had made that fact crystal clear.

  "Please just write up the slip," she said, forcing a smile. "You can bend the rules this once."

  Barry didn't even look up. "Sorry. Someone might trip and break a leg."

  A deep male voice broke in. "I wouldn't worry about that."

  Joanna spun around in the direction of the sound and looked up into the gorgeous face of Ryder O'Neal. He wore a pair of faded jeans, a pale blue T-shirt and a slightly ratty leather bomber jacket with enough zippers and pockets to qualify as the genuine article. Even on crutches and with that psychedelic cast on his right leg, he conveyed more deadly power than anyone Joanna had ever seen.

  He moved closer.

  "Look up when a lady's speaking to you."

  Joanna almost laughed as Barry's head jerked up and his beloved Variety slid unnoticed to the floor behind the counter.

  Barry looked at Ryder for a long moment, then turned toward Joanna. A wide friendly smile spread across his face, the same smile he gave her, unprompted, when she wore her red mini and left her social security card at home.

  Amazing what a touch of intimidation could do.

  "So how can I help you?" Barry's smile widened even more until Joanna was sure she could perform a root canal on his wisdom teeth.

  She pushed Rosie's coat across the counter. "Cleaned and pressed."

  Barry almost clicked his heels. "At your service." He pulled a pencil from behind his ear.

  Joanna couldn't resist. She motioned toward the shopping cart. "Even though it's still in here?"

  Barry, amazingly enough, didn't miss a beat. "There's an exception to every rule, ma'am. That's what makes horse racing."