Chapter 7
Work was a bitch on Tuesday. A press release had an error in it—not Kari’s fault, but it still made her look bad. A crisis arose in Accounting that involved her department, and she got dragged into it. The woman who usually answered the phones over lunch was out sick, two secretaries were out sick, and Kari got dragooned into fielding the phones for an hour. Some information she needed for a report she was working on wasn’t available.
Worst of all, she was getting stage fright about her weekend with Max. What if they didn’t hit it off as well in person as they had by email? What if they found that, in person, they sat staring at each other and had nothing to say? What if he canceled...it wasn’t definite, after all.
Or what if she fell seriously in love and began a long distance affair? Could he, would he, come see her every weekend? Would that even be enough? Ultimately, would he be willing to move to Jeffersonville? If not, would she be willing to move to Elm Ridge, giving up her job, selling her house, pulling up roots? If Max had been raised in his house, he might not be willing to pull up stakes so easily. But could she?
By mid afternoon, she’d developed a headache. She reached for an emergency Snickers bar from her desk drawer, but it didn’t help anything—the headache, the worries, or the business problems.
At 5:00, she felt like just going home, having dinner, and curling up in bed with a good novel. But, of course, she had committed to helping with the mailing at Larrimore HQ. Resolutely, she headed around the corner to China Xpress, whose motto was “Food on your table in ten minutes, or dinner’s on us.”
In fact, it took eleven minutes for her to be served, which Kari was not at all reticent to point out to her waiter. She ate her egg roll, Szechuan pork, and House Special fried rice—combination platter number six—with extra enjoyment, knowing all it would cost her was the tip. Then, fastidiously dabbing at her mouth, she rose from the table and exited the restaurant.
It was growing quite chilly. Kari hurried to the warmth of her car and pulled out into traffic, heading for the campaign’s storefront. When she got there, things were in a worse uproar than they’d been at her office earlier. “I
know
I picked those flyers up earlier!” Russ was thundering. Russ was one of the bigwigs in the campaign. “I picked them up personally! They were in the back of the van.”
“Maybe the printer’s still open and could run some more off for us,” Jeff suggested.
“Where are the ones we already had...and paid for?”
“I never saw them,” Jeff quickly pointed out.
“You were in charge of getting the mailing out. Did you take them off the van and forget?”
“I haven’t seen them, I told you.”
“Well,
somebody’s
done something with them. Look around the office again.”
“We’ve looked three times,” Eileen said wearily.
“Well, please look again.” His voice brooked no buts.
Turning to Kari, whom he’d only just noticed, Jeff added, “Somebody’s been tearing our posters down, too.
That,
I’d assume, is being done by some of Badley’s people, but I can’t account for the flyers.”
“Maybe Badley’s got a mole in our office.” That was another of the volunteers.
“You’ve been reading too many spy novels.” That was yet another volunteer.
“It
does
seem awfully odd....” Russ agreed with the first volunteer.
Kari looked around the room. Was someone here really sabotaging the campaign? Russ seemed suspicious of Jeff...but it
couldn’t
be Jeff. Kari refused to believe that was a possibility. “What are we going to do?” she asked. Her coat was halfway off, hanging from one arm. Was there work for her, or should she hurry home to her computer?
“You’re here to work. Get to work,” Jeff said. “Get on the phones. We’ll get the job reprinted—if we don’t find the flyers by tomorrow morning—and we’ll do the mailing Thursday. Meanwhile, scare up some votes by phone. But first, why don’t you have a look around the place? Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will find the missing flyers.
“They’re black and red on tan paper, and they were in brown cardboard cartons. The printer folded and stapled them for us. We have to address the outside of them and meter them.
“Look for anything that might be them. Maybe someone put them in a different container, or...I don’t know. Just look.” The forever grin was a mere hint of its usual brilliance, the hair wilder than ever from his running his fingers distractedly through it. “Steve looked earlier, too, but maybe one more pair of eyes....”
Lylah’s husband had said he was working at Larrimore headquarters, but so far Kari hadn’t run into him there.
Kari looked under, over, into, and around every pile of papers, carton, wastebasket, file drawer, you name it. She went out to the van and looked inside. She even timidly checked Jeff’s car, unlocked and parked right out front.
No flyers anywhere. No sign of them. Not one single flyer remained of all of them. There had been tens of thousands of them...how had they all disappeared? Today hadn’t been trash day. Where had they gone? More and more, it seemed it had been no mere accident, no simple matter of someone misplacing them. How do you misplace that many cartons, that many pieces of paper?
Kari got on the phones, began exhorting people to get out and vote for Larrimore, telling one and all who answered why Larrimore was the better candidate...when she could get that far. Many people weren’t home, and of those who were, many had already made their minds up, for or against, and didn’t want to hear her pitch.
Working down the list, she came to a Phil Traylor. “Hello, Mr. Traylor? I’m calling from the Ron Larrimore election headquarters.”
“This isn’t Phil.”
“May I speak with him?”
“He’s out of town. I’m taking care of his place while he’s gone.”
“Well, are you a registered voter?
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, may I talk to you, then?” And she launched into the litany of reasons why Larrimore was the better candidate...but all the while wondering why the voice on the other end sounded familiar. The man interrupted her from time to time with a question, and each time he did, she puzzled over the familiar sound of his voice.
Near the end of the conversation, he said, “You sound familiar. Do I know you? What’s your name?” And as he did, it hit her—it was Glenn! Glenn, who’d made the elephant crack after one night in bed with her. Suddenly shaking, she hung the phone up. Jeff, who was discreetly standing behind the volunteers, monitoring their work, noticed that she’d hung up without a goodbye. “What was that?” he asked gently.
“An asshole I once...dated,” Kari answered. And broke down crying. Immediately, she was ashamed of herself for having so little self-control, but Jeff put an arm around her and comforted her.
The way Lylah would do...or would have done in the old days
, Kari thought bitterly. Feeling very unprofessional, she pulled herself together as quickly as she could. She hadn’t known the nerve Glenn had hit was still so raw.
“Do you want to go home?” Jeff suggested. “You’ve been working since 6:00; it’s 9:00 already, about time to stop calling people anyhow. You’ve been working all day, too. There’s not a whole lot more to do tonight without the flyers. Come back Thursday, like we’d planned, and you’ll work on the mailing then.”
Grateful for his understanding, Kari slipped into her coat, gathered up her pocketbook, and left. It had been a bad day all around the board, but Max would be waiting for her “in her computer.”
Opening her front door, she flung her coat down on the nearest chair, stopped only long enough to put on some music and grab a Diet Pepsi, then rushed over to the computer. She booted up, logged on, and found three pieces of email...but none were from Max. Her bad day was continuing!
Her mind raced through all possible scenarios. Something she’d said in her last letter had put him off. He was ill. He’d had to work late. His former fiancée had reappeared on the scene. He had plans for the evening and hadn’t been able to log on, but would pop up later. His computer had broken down.
Which?
She dashed off quick answers to the three letters. She was in no mood to chat lengthily. Then the phone rang. It was Jeff. “Just checking that you’re okay,” he said. “You were upset. I wanted to make sure you got home all right.”
“That’s sweet of you,” Kari said, and meant it. They didn’t talk at any length. Once he was satisfied she was all right, he returned to another futile search for the missing flyers. But she was touched that, in the midst of his own pressing problems, he’d been a caring enough friend, even though he was a new friend, that he’d taken the time to call and check on her. Then, as she hung up the phone, handling it reminded Kari that, in her wild dash to the computer, she not only hadn’t hung up her coat, she hadn’t checked the answering machine either.
And that was where she found Max.
She didn’t know his voice, of course. But when his opening words were, “My dear,” she had a sneaking, heart-exalting suspicion.
“My dear,” his message said. “I’m sorry I missed you. I know you’re working at the campaign headquarters after dinner, but I was hoping you were coming home for dinner. I’m doing some campaign volunteer work myself this evening, heading out that way now. I’ll be back by 10:00, but I’ll wait to call you till 11:00. You should surely be home by then. Be ready for bed when I call, and we’ll go to bed together.”
Ironically, the only other message was from someone at Badley’s headquarters, calling to persuade her to vote for their candidate!
Feeling considerably cheerier, Kari prepared a bubble bath. She usually showered, saving baths for special occasions or times when she felt like doing something luxurious. As she poured the fragrant bubble liquid under the steamy water, she thrilled to the thought of talking with Max in just a little while.
The CD she’d been playing had gone off, so she went back down to the living room and put on a Tony Bennett album, cranking it up loud so she could hear it upstairs. Then she returned to the bedroom, selected a filmy, scarlet nightgown, and laid it out on the bed.
Sinking into the fragrant, warm, bubble-heaped water, Kari lay back and luxuriated. She imagined Max was there with her. Soaping her back. Talking softly to her. Climbing into the tub with her. Would he fit in there with her? It was a small tub. What if it turned out he, too, was overweight? He didn’t look it in the picture, but photos could be deceptive, and besides, the picture showed him only to the waist.
She had taken her watch off to get into the water, but she suspected it was closing in on 11:00. Hurriedly, she sat up, washing herself carefully. A scrupulously clean person to begin with, she washed extra-well tonight, as if Max were
really
going to be in bed with her instead of just over the phone. Then she got out, dried off, and went into the bedroom where the nightgown was waiting.
The clock on the bedside table said ten of eleven. Moving quickly, she hurried downstairs, turned off the stereo, the lights, the computer, put the chains on both doors, hung up her coat belatedly, and double-checked the stove. When she was content that everything was in order, she practically dashed up the stairs. The phone was ringing as she pulled back the covers.
“Hello?”
“My dear Kari. That
is
you, isn’t it?”
“Max?”
“At your service. Are we in bed together?”
She sat down, pulled her legs up onto the bed, pulled the upper sheet over her, and lay on her left side, holding the phone to her right ear. “Yes. Yes, we are. You’re in bed too?”
“Under the covers in the altogether.”
“I’m wearing a fancy nightgown especially for you.”
“Describe it for me.”
“It’s scarlet, sheer, floor-length with fancy stitching around the bustline, and it plunges between my...between my breasts.” She had typed the word “breasts” to him any number of times, but she was momentarily shy about saying it.
“It’s beautiful. You look delightful in it. But now, take it off. I want you naked.”
She complied, sitting up to remove the nightgown, then resuming her former position.
“First, tell me about your day before we get into anything more intimate.”
More intimate
. A shiver raced through her at the implication. She told him about her day, glossing over the most depressing parts and leaving Glenn out altogether. Max, in turn, filled her in on his day. He made the life of a stockbroker sound more exciting than she would have thought.
Max had worked on a mailing that evening at the campaign headquarters where he was volunteering; he agreed it sounded like
someone
had sabotaged the Larrimore mailing.
“I know Russ thinks it was Jeff, and I just don’t believe it,” she said. “I looked for the flyers. They said Steve—my friend Lylah’s husband—looked for them. Other people looked for them. No one could find them. They didn’t just get up and walk off by themselves. But it wasn’t Jeff!”
“The culprit will be found,” Max soothed. “Keep your eyes and ears open...maybe you’ll even solve the mystery yourself. Now let’s talk about more...personal...matters. Like you. And me. Together. I still want to see you this weekend. And I’m still not one hundred percent positive I can. But it’s only Tuesday in any event. Right now, let’s deal with tonight. Tonight, I’m in bed with you long distance...which is better than not at all. I have a good imagination. Do you?”