Man at Work

by Elaine Fox

  “She’s great. I got her a bone so she won’t chew on the furniture.” He turned back to her.

  “A bone?” Marcy looked at him with concern. “They’ll splinter, you know, and can—”

  “Relax. It was a fake bone. She’s fine.”

  They stood awkwardly a moment until Marcy said, “I got your message.”

  “I figured you did.”

  She looked at him frankly. He liked the way she did that.

  “And I agree with it completely,” she said.

  In her dark purple suit, with her dark hair sticking up in back and her eyes puffy from sleep, she just didn’t go with the apartment. In fact, his whole image of her didn’t go with the apartment. She had so much more life and personality. The apartment was…sterile. Like a hotel room. Designed to be tolerated by many people and loved by none.

  He wondered about that. Was there nothing she loved. Or was there a reason she didn’t want to show it?

  He cleared his throat. “I figured you would.”

  “I was hoping, however, that it didn’t mean you were no longer going to help me. I have a few questions about the pictures you took, for one thing.”

  He spread his arms out to the sides. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Her lips curved. “You certainly are. And with very little warning. I’m tempted to get you a phone just to make things easier on myself.”

  So there it was, he thought. Slipped onto the table just that easily. The I’ve-got-money-and-you-don’t gauntlet. The let-me-fix-you attitude. Let me fix you and then maybe I’ll let you kiss me without panicking.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t need your help.”

  She shook her head and ran a hand over her hair, discovering the tangle in back. “I know. I know. I’m sorry—”

  “Fact is I like not having a phone.”

  One hand fooled with the knot. “I’m sure you do. I didn’t mean—”

  “And I like not being beholden to anyone.”

  “I kn—”

  “And I don’t think—”

  “Oh for pity’s sake,” she interrupted, digging her fingers into her hair in frustration. “Lighten up, Fleming. It was a joke.”

  He paused. “Sure, I know you think it was, sugar. But the fact is you got to be careful what you say to people. How you joke.”

  She abandoned the knot and this time it was she who crossed her arms over her chest, her expression darkening. `“You call me sugar and you’re trying to tell me how to talk to people?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just trying to help you. I don’t think you have any idea how someone like you comes across to someone like me.”

  She laughed once, disbelieving, and shook her head. “I know a lot more about someone like you than you know about someone like me, let me tell you, Truman Fleming. And if there’s one thing I hate it’s someone trying to tell me how to act.”

  “I’m not telling you how to act. I just wanna help you see how the real world is, sweetheart.” He arched a brow and looked pointedly around the room. “It might help you relate a little better to…” He wanted to say “the world” but he amended it at the last minute. “Your client. Not to mention the jury, which I’m sure you’ll be hoping to stock with salt-of-the-earth types like myself.”

  “Give me a break. First of all, it’s going to be a bench trial, not a jury trial. And second of all, my eyes are open, Fleming. So while they are and we’re on the subject, let me just help you out a little. You might want to reconsider the disparaging uses of sugar and honey and sweetheart because you apparently have no idea how you’re coming across to someone like me. Someone, that is to say, female.”

  He smiled slightly, letting his gaze return from the room to rest on her lovely flushed face. “I know exactly how I’m coming across to you.”

  The unspoken sugar hung in the air for so long he might as well have said it.

  “Wait here,” she said then, abruptly, and walked around him to disappear down the hallway.

  Tru stood motionless in the room for a moment. Was she calling security? Unleashing a pit bull? Getting a gun?

  Finally, he let his eyes wander from the hallway to examine the room while she was gone. Even the throw cushions on the couch were white. He was glad to see, however, a pair of dark purple pumps askew on the floor by the loveseat. A token bit of clutter, but it made him feel better.

  He strolled toward the window when his attention was caught by an abstract painting hanging over the couch. It was huge, white with beige blotches, and, well, he didn’t pretend to know a whole lot about modern art, but it was pretty damn ugly. In fact, the longer he looked at it the uglier it became, until he was so incensed by it he wondered how much she paid for it, and determined that paying for it at all would amount to an unqualified crime. He’d bet it was titled Anger or Fraud so the artist could claim to be rewarded by the average person’s response to it.

  He turned his back on the thing and headed toward the dining area, just off the living area and attached to a small galley kitchen to the left. The table was glass with wood—blond, of course—trim. The chairs were white leather and chrome. In the middle of the table were two white candles that had never been lit.

  From there he moved to the kitchen, which was scrupulously clean. Nothing on the counters, nothing on top of the refrigerator, no magnets on the front, nothing in the sink. He bet the cabinets were sparsely stocked as well, and the refrigerator full of take-out boxes. On a whim, he opened it up and was surprised to see a bowl full of fresh salad and several bags of vegetables along with a family-size tub of yogurt. On the top shelf were two boxes of granola, a carton of skim milk, and a jug of orange juice. She was a healthy little thing.

  He left the kitchen and walked back out into the living room. Blond wood bookshelves held legal tomes and textbooks, with a few novels thrown in. Thrillers, it looked like. Old ones.

  He heard her enter the room behind him and turned. She’d changed clothes and now wore a pair of jeans and a pink shirt that looked like silk. Her hair was brushed and her face had a freshly scrubbed look to it.

  “I didn’t have a chance to change when I got home.” She stopped by the couches and looked at him by the shelves. “Anything you’d like to borrow…” She waved a hand as if to say go right ahead.

  “Just seeing what you had. Not much light reading here.” He walked slowly toward the couch.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have much time for light reading these days. Listen, I have these pictures you took.” She sat down on the couch and pulled the pictures from their envelope. “Most of them I think I know what you were documenting, but there are a few…”

  Truman sat next to her, not too close, and leaned toward the pictures she laid out on the table. Her stomach growled.

  He looked at her. “You eat dinner?”

  She laid one hand on her stomach and studied the pictures. “No, I just got home. Well, a little while ago. I took a quick nap.”

  “Come on.” He stood up and held out a hand.

  She looked at it as if not quite sure what it was for, and did not get up.

  “Come on,” he repeated impatiently. “I know just the place. It’s not far from here and they’ve got the best half-smokes you’ve ever tasted in your life. Come on. My treat.” He smiled.

  She looked disconcerted and glanced back at the pictures.

  “Bring ’em with you,” he said. “We’ll go over them at the restaurant. I haven’t eaten either.”

  “Half-smokes?” Slowly, she gathered the pictures together and stood up, not taking his offered hand.

  “Yeah, you know, big hot dogs?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know what a half-smoke is. It’s just that those’re not exactly health food.”

  He shook his head, with an exaggerated sigh. He was so tired of thin women getting all worked up about junk food.

  “Honey—” he began. She glared at him and both his hands shot up in surrender. “Sorry. Marcy. You don’t lo
ok like you’ve got anything to worry about, health-wise. Besides, they’re the best half-smokes in town.”

  “I don’t know,” she said skeptically. “I’ve had some pretty good half-smokes.”

  He tilted his head and grinned, delighted. “No. You?”

  His mood lifted even more as she picked up her purse.

  “But we’re going dutch treat.” Her voice was firm.

  “Even better.” He stepped back to let her go before him. “And you can drive.”

  7

  Tuesday, October 15

  WORD-A-DAY!

  BAY: n., a position from which one is unable to retreat; a position one might inadvertently have gotten oneself into because of a pretty face

  They walked down the hall in silence, their footsteps soft as snowfall on the thick burgundy carpet. Truman pushed the down elevator button and stood back. The two of them looked at each other in the cloudy brass doors.

  Marcy tilted her head back to look at the numbers lighting up one by one over the elevator, and Truman furtively looked at her.

  Her thick dark hair tumbled around her shoulders, making him think of the night he’d touched its softness, the night he’d touched her. Her arms were crossed over her chest and he imagined loosening them, then loosening her jacket, her blouse, the button of her jeans…

  The elevator dinged and Truman nearly jumped out of his skin.

  Marcy shot him a puzzled glance.

  The doors opened to reveal a white-haired couple dressed in evening wear and a middle-aged man in a blue windbreaker.

  Marcy stepped onto the elevator and pressed the already lit L. Truman felt the white-haired man’s eyes on him as he followed her. With obvious disapproval, the man took in Truman’s leather bomber jacket, worn jeans and scuffed-up workboots, then shifted himself and his wife closer to the back of the elevator. Away from the Bad Element, Tru knew. As if the man should be making judgments about what anyone wore; he had on a cravat, for pity’s sake.

  There commenced a bit of whispering between the older couple, out of which Truman thought he deciphered, “heard there was a plumbing problem” and “isn’t there a freight elevator?”

  The car crept slowly downward, stopping at the tenth floor for apparently no reason, then resuming its painfully slow journey. Nine…eight…

  The whispering behind him continued. Truman felt his ire rising.

  “So, honey, where should we go for dinner tonight?” he finally asked in a boisterous voice. He moved closer to Marcy and toyed with the idea of putting an arm around her shoulders, but that would probably be going too far.

  Marcy turned as if to see whom he was talking to, then gave him a look that inquired none too subtly if he’d lost his mind.

  Truman turned to the older couple with a jocular smile. “You two look like you’re going out. Where you going? Someplace you’d recommend?”

  The woman looked alarmed to be addressed so directly and took a sidestep closer to her husband. The two of them were practically pressed into the corner.

  “We’re going to a private party,” the man intoned with a sniff, looking down his nose at Truman. He drew the word private out so long Truman thought he might have gotten lost in it.

  “A private party, huh? I never get invited to those. All the parties I go to are public.”

  Everyone was quiet as the doors opened on the fifth floor. “Going up?” a lady with a walker asked.

  “Down,” the man behind Truman intoned, with heavy irony.

  The doors closed. Truman silently seethed. What gave people like Mr. Cravat the right to be so superior? Money? He wanted to turn around and scoff in the man’s face. People like him were the precise reason Truman had gotten as far away from wealth as possible.

  He eyed Marcy next to him, with her gold earrings and Saks Fifth Avenue jacket. Well, maybe not as far as possible.

  “I know, dear,” the woman behind him said, in response to some frenzied whispering by Mr. Cravat. “I suppose we could mention something to the management. Perhaps the freight elevator is inadequately marked.”

  “Perhaps he can’t read,” the man stage-whispered back.

  Truman looked to Marcy again, hoping to catch a sympathetic look back, but she kept her attention on the lighted numbers over the doors.

  “Well, we’ve never seen workmen on here before,” the wife continued.

  Did they think Truman was deaf?

  “I suppose we could go to the Watergate,” Truman said to her, in a musing tone of voice, “but the people there are so awful.”

  He leaned against the side wall and glanced at Mr. Cravat and his wife. The guy next to them in the windbreaker studied the contents of his pockets, which seemed to consist mostly of a napkin, coins, and some lint.

  “Truman.” Marcy’s voice was low. She finally shot him a look, one not quite as commiserating as he’d hoped. “I thought you knew where we were going.”

  “Yeah, I do. Smokey Joe’s. Good place. Nice people. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Truman?” the old man murmured. His wife whispered something to him in return and they both looked at Truman with renewed expressions of curiosity.

  Tru turned away, suddenly mortified. Did he know these people?

  “Smokey Joe’s is good,” the windbreaker man volunteered. “I like the pulled pork barbecue.”

  “Pulled pork barbycue!” Tru thundered, in an exaggerated southern accent. “Now that sounds good, don’t it, Miss P.?”

  Marcy’s mouth dropped open and she looked at him as if he’d suddenly whipped out a banjo and started playing Dixie.

  “But us,” Truman motioned to himself and Marcy, “me’n her, we’re goin’ for the half-smokes. Nothin’ like a big ole hotdog when you’re really hungry.”

  The elevator dinged and sank gently to a stop at the lobby. Truman felt it like a release from purgatory. Almost before the doors were open he’d taken Marcy’s arm and steered her out of the car and across the lobby of the building.

  “What in God’s name was that all about? Are you insane?” She jerked her arm from his hand.

  Truman steered her past the front doors and discreetly watched the older couple exit the building. He stopped her by one of the gold-trimmed sofas in the lobby, one armrest overshadowed by a robust ficus tree.

  Once he was sure the people were gone, he closed his eyes and leaned on the back of the sofa.

  “What on earth is the matter with you?”

  He opened his eyes to see Marcy glaring at him. “Sorry, I was just trying to liven things up a little. You know that’s about the slowest elevator on God’s green earth you’ve got there.”

  She shook her head and cast her gaze to the ceiling. “Why me?” She looked back at him. “You acted like a schizophrenic. What was with all that redneck barbycue crap?”

  “Nothing. I just—well, those people were snobs, didn’t you think? They needed a little shaking up.”

  She started walking toward the back of the lobby. “So what? So they’re snobs. Who are you? God’s official shaker-upper?”

  Truman followed her, considering the question. “You think He’s got one of those? Because that would explain a lot.”

  She reached a door marked GARAGE and leaned back to push through it, giving him a sarcastic look while she was at it. “It certainly would.”

  Truman’s boots echoed hollowly in the parking garage as they walked down the second aisle. He did a little two-step to liven up the rhythm, but stopped at Marcy’s quelling glance.

  “Are you always so serious, Miss Paglinowski?” Tru asked, trying to relinquish his ire. This was what he got for hanging around a rich girl—he had to suffer the judgment of a pompous cravat wearer in an elevator. He should have known better. Hell, he did know better. He just…he couldn’t stop seeing her, for some reason.

  They reached her car and Marcy rounded the trunk to the driver’s side. Truman waited on the passenger side for the quiet shunk of the automatic locks opening.

&nbs
p; They got in and slammed the doors. The sound bounced off the walls of the garage, but was muted inside the car.

  Marcy put the key in the ignition and turned to look at him without starting the car. “I don’t know what to make of you. And yes, I guess I am always serious around unpredictable people.”

  “Guess I’ll have to try to be more predictable, then. See if I can’t make you smile once in a while.”

  “I would appreciate that.” She looked back out the windshield, one hand gripping the steering wheel, and she started the car.

  The guy was crazy. That was the problem. Not just unpredictable. Certifiable. He’d probably spent time at Bellevue, or Chestnut Lodge, or some other asylum for the hopelessly insane, and that was the reason he couldn’t testify.

  Marcy pulled the car up in front of a narrow restaurant with a foggy window on which the words SMOKEY JOE’S TAVERN had been stenciled several hard decades ago.

  They were on U Street, northwest, an area that was seeing some renewal but hadn’t completely turned the corner yet. Marcy wasn’t worried, though. This neighborhood was gentler than the one she grew up in, and was practically upscale, embassy-strewn Kalorama compared to the street that housed Truman’s building.

  “Is it open?” She peered across Truman, through the passenger side window, to the door. Lights were on inside but no people were visible.

  “Darlin’, it’s always open.” Truman pushed open his door and climbed out.

  Marcy frowned, then followed suit. The joint lived up to its name immediately, she noted as she pushed into the foggy room. A group of men in plaid flannel coats and baseball caps belched clouds of smoke into the air from a table just inside the door. In front of them were plates piled high with partially denuded spare ribs. Cave dwellers huddled around the kill.

  Several tables stood empty of people but stacked with dirty dishes. She moved through the room toward two clean tables in the back and picked the least crummy one.