Its cold out there, p.5
It's Cold Out There, page 5
Grove tightened his grip on her arm, and she sensed her breath beginning to quicken, but she could read in his face that he was, fortunately for her, unaware of how he was affecting her. What is the matter with you? she demanded of herself. She felt as if her face must be swollen and pulsing with her wanton blood, giving off a scent like a bitch in heat. She started to tell herself still another story—Grove was a burglar who had broken into her house, but no common burglar, a great jewel thief who stole for excitement—
"Kristie?" he asked.
And she felt an immediate Yes in her throat, melting there like warm syrup, but she forced herself to remain silent, and she watched his expression falter and grow mild.
"Will you have dinner with me tonight?"
"Yes," she said quickly.
"Good. Around seven-thirty?"
"Whenever you like."
"Maybe we could go dancing after?"
She pretended to consider this, then smiled. "Maybe," she said.
She closed the door on Grove and leaned against it with her eyes closed. With their wary light shuttered, her face became soft and girlish. Her lips parted softly. Grove could be an exciting man, she decided, if only he would gather himself together and throw himself into something with all his strength. She could have been a man, she thought. She would have known how to be a man, but since the thought came dangerously close to an admission that she didn't know how to be a woman, she let it drift away.
She must do something! Anything, even if it's wrong. She called the General and was put right through to him. She smiled with satisfaction when she heard the eagerness in his voice, and when she agreed to have lunch with him, his bass rumble grew sleek and fat like the purring of a lion. She hung up and thought, Now, he is a man.
She took a bath and, with soap creamed around her delicate shoulders like a froth of lace and the constant guarding tension of her stomach, legs, and hips melted into the warm, scented water, she was as close to relaxing as she could ever allow herself to be. It seemed to her she really was the warm, generous, and honest person she had always hoped to be. She must throw a party for all her friends. Soon, she decided, tomorrow or the next day. And if she gave her friends pleasure, could she help it if her enemies grew sour—all those who had envied her, who had been glad to see her fired and were now waiting for her to go down?
She dressed quickly but with care and drove to Trans-Western, where she teased the security officer into letting her use one of the executive parking places. She deliberately left her ten-year-old Chevy next to Nathan Holleran's white Mercedes.
For a moment, aware that the security officer was still watching her out of the corner of his eye, she paused to turn slowly and look over the impressive buildings of Trans-Western, recalling the deep thrill she had always experienced coming to work here, where some of the country's most important projects were managed. She had watched NASA projects slide across the PERT charts toward completion and had glibly repeated the executive remark that "building the damn things was nothing" once the smooth flow of logistics had been successfully ordered. She had felt such a strong sense of participation, of belonging, as if the company were her family and she were one of a rich and powerful clan. Now they were working on the M.M.F.T., the job of the century, and she was out of it! Amazed to feel the sting of tears, she whirled and glared at the security officer, who coughed and pretended to be studying his feet. He still thinks I'm Executive Tail, she decided savagely.
As she walked through the halls toward her old section, she noted avidly how everyone still watched her, and she thought she could sense them wondering what it was she was up to now. There was a hushed, wary quality to their regard, as if they were near a bomb they were almost sure was a dud and would be quick to dismiss with grateful contempt once they had seen it officially disarmed, but were still uncertain—such was the quality of Kristie's presence.
Irene Pappas, at Kristie's own desk, looked up questioningly. "Hello, Kristie. Are you authorized to be here?"
Kristie studied the vulgar and falsely emphasized swell of Irene's large breasts and smiled thinly. "I believe I left a few things in my desk, and while I was here I thought I might cut and run off a stencil."
"A stencil?" Irene repeated warily.
"Yes, an invitation to a party I'm giving."
"A party—" Irene began, then caught herself and said coolly, "You left nothing in this desk, not even dust, as you well know, and I can't allow you to use company equipment for personal work. Not even if you were still employed here, which you are not."
"If I were still employed here," Kristie said in a flat, hard voice, "you'd still be offering your fat ass to get out of the file section!"
"Well, honey," Irene returned in a poisoned whisper, "I'm out of the file section, and you're out of a job. Now you draw your own conclusions."
"That you were available, and I wasn't."
Irene flushed with anger. She opened her mouth to continue, but Kristie, catching a glimpse of Mel Sirclum, one of the supervisors, moving toward them, turned away and smiled warmly.
"Mel! How are you?"
Sirclum was a roundheaded hobgoblin of six and a half feet, youngest of the supervisors and still uncertain what attitude to take toward his own rapid advancement. He seized Kristin's hand and smiled down at her.
"How are you?"
"Fine."
"Are you coming back to work?"
"Just visiting."
"Too bad. Things are dull since you left."
Kristie smiled delightedly. "What a wonderful compliment."
"It's true. Do you have something lined up?"
"Some prospects," said Kristie in a manner that implied that several large concerns were bidding for her services.
"When you're settled in, send for me."
"I might just do that," Kristie said. She waved her hand around. "May I use one of the typewriters?"
"Take your pick."
"And a mimeo stencil?"
"I don't think it'll break the company."
Kristie resisted the temptation to smile triumphantly at Irene Pappas—real winners never bothered to underscore their victories. She typed out her invitation and handed the stencil to the mimeograph girl, who ran it off without question, automatically assuming Kristie to be someone of importance.
She passed a few of the copies around the office, to Sirclum and one or two others, and folded another into a U-Save-Em envelope, addressed it to Nathan Holleran, and marked it Personal, which she knew to be a futile gesture, since Nathan had a staff of three for whom nothing was too personal. As it happened, she was able to deliver it personally.
On her way out, passing through the corridor that connected the executive offices, she met Nathan. The sight of him affected her far more than she had imagined it would, and she handed him the invitation like one member of a relay team passing the baton to another.
"Hello, Kristie," Nathan said evenly. "What's this?"
"Read it and see."
She studied Holleran intently as he read her invitation, admiring his blunt male face, his coarse, rust-colored hair, and the solid way he held himself. His hair must have been red once and his face freckled (she could always imagine this high school face set with determination beneath a football helmet, or over a physics text), and then the hair had dulled and the freckles faded as these frivolous characteristics were sloughed off along with youthful wonder to be replaced with great drive and relentless ambition.
She recalled, in a vivid shuffling of impressions, their first night together. She had been able to persuade herself that what she was going to do she was doing for the company, her foster parents, and for the good of the project. Nathan was overworked and worn down carrying the responsibilities of a dozen mediocre men in addition to his own. His wife was demanding and inadequate, unable to appreciate or properly respond to a man of Nathan's caliber. Kristie had told herself that only she could give him pleasure and release, but actually in the motel she had been bloodless, unable to respond, and too perversely proud of her coolness to fake an excitement she didn't feel. It had been a failure, a disaster. But then in the car, as Nathan had leaned over to kiss her good night, she had come suddenly and violently to life, and there in the cramped discomfort of the small Mercedes, with her legs hanging out the open door, they had made love again, and it was as if they were held aloft in the hand of a giant while the whole dull and unfeeling world plodded beneath them. Afterward she had clung to Nathan as if he were the container of everything she had ever thought precious.
Then the dismal ending with Nathan, in spite of the grim finality of his tone and expression, actually pleading with her to understand while he told her perhaps he loved her, he didn't know, but he did know she was too difficult, too complicated. He couldn't understand her and he didn't have the time or the emotional energy to make the effort.
Oh, Nathan! she thought, watching his hard white hands holding her invitation. Nathan, let's try again.
Holleran looked up. "This sounds like fun—" His eyes were careful, but for an instant they betrayed something she read as hesitation. She reached out to him.
"You will come?"
"I'm sorry, Kristie, I can't make it."
"But you want to, don't you?" Kristie demanded with sudden fierceness. "But you're afraid. Afraid of your wife, afraid of your job."
"Damn it, Kristie, we've talked and talked. What am I supposed to say? Why won't you just let me say I can't make it? Yes, I'd like to come, but I can't make it."
"As you wanted to stop them from firing me, but just couldn't?" Again Kristie was fighting tears. "Do you know what this job meant to me?"
Holleran shook his head like a large, sturdy animal worried by a hornet. "When my bosses want you out, what can I do? It would have endangered my own position, and in all fairness, Kristie, my job was far more important than yours. I could have threatened to resign, but I'm certain even that couldn't have saved you, and they may well have accepted my resignation."
"You could have made the gesture."
"Kristie, I don't make gestures. Haven't we talked about this enough?"
"Yes. Yes, quite enough."
She snatched her invitation and turned on her heel. This was the man of whom she had written in her journal: He is an eagle! A woman must either love him or hate him. There is no in-between with this man.
Now she felt nothing but contempt. Nothing but contempt. She tried to forget the electric shock that had passed up her arm when her hand had brushed his.
Ex-General Irving sat behind the wheel of his late model Cadillac flipping through a magazine called Pan. A tall, thick old man, he wore a conservatively cut gray suit. His bald head was covered with a narrow-brim hat, and his hands were well cared for. He paused, staring at a photo spread, nudes and semi-nudes, of a young girl, titled: Those Virgin Islands. The photographer had made use of a single prop, a white sheet, which by turns became a cowl, a crumpled bed, a child's dress, and Delphic robes.
Kristie opened the door on the far side and slid in, handing Irving one of her invitations. She had deliberately calmed herself and now smoothed her skirt with a practiced hand. "I'm late," she said.
"Not that late." He handed her the magazine. "How old would you say she was?"
Kristie studied the girl briefly and thought her thin legged and cheap-looking. She shot a quick side glance at Irving and found herself looking into his hard, yellow and humorous eyes. Take the intelligence from Irving's eyes and you would have the eyes of a turtle. Take the humor as well and you would end with the eyes of a barracuda.
"She's made up to look younger than she is."
"Even so?"
"Fifteen, possibly sixteen."
"What an improbable age for anyone to be," Irving mused. "I'll be sixty-nine in a few months. One more turn of the wheel and I'm seventy."
"You don't look it," Kristie assured him automatically.
Irving snorted. "I look like the old man of the sea." He put his hand on her thigh. "Unfortunately I don't feel that way."
Kristie slid away. "What do you think of my invitation?"
Irving turned it in his hands. "Am I to admire it or am I invited?"
"Of course, you're invited, but you won't come and you know it."
Irving stared at her hard. "Invite me to a party where you only make one invitation."
"To that party you must invite me."
"I have—several times."
"Well"—she reached over and patted him lightly on the cheek—"keep asking. Who knows?"
Irving laughed and took her hand. "I don't know why I put up with you, Kristie."
"Because I'm pretty and smart, and you tire of those dumb little girls you buy, and because there's enough of the hunter in you to despise sitting game. In short, because you're a man."
Irving released her hand. "Where would you like to have lunch?"
"Some place quiet."
"Asmund's?"
"That sounds nice."
When Irving had the car in motion, Kristie asked, "Is Trans-Western in trouble on the M.M.F.T.?"
"They're a long way from clear sky, but I wouldn't say trouble."
"The word is that all the tech stuff is coming in first-rate, but that management's falling apart. Too much pressure."
"You know Holleran, don't you?"
"I knew him."
"Top man," Irving said sternly. "He was with me in Texas. A goddam bear. Point him, and he'd keep going until he came out where you said he would. And talk! That boy could charm a hornet out of biting him—"
"And charm it into biting someone else."
"Yes, that too."
They rode in silence for a block. Then Kristie said, "If he blows this project, he's through in aerospace, and he will blow it if—"
"He won't blow it. It's important to too many people to see that he doesn't. This is a vital matter, young lady, not a question of spiting someone's chances of becoming student body president."
"I see," said Kristie dryly.
"No, I don't think you do see. The future defense of this country may well depend on what Nathan's trying to do, and he's in that spot because he's the best man for the job. It's a man-breaker, but it won't break Nathan!"
"Yes, yes, yes, I understand—wonderful Nathan!"
Irving smiled grimly. "Easy, Kristie. Something, somewhere, will get Nathan. Something always does. Life will, even if it only turns him into an empty-hearted, hot-handed old man like me. No one rides free."
"I can't wait that long."
"I'm afraid you'll have to. You can't hurt Nathan professionally, and it's obvious you've lost the power to damage him emotionally. What else could you do? Try to be sensible."
"All right, all right." She nodded, trying to smile, but in her thoughts she fiercely assured herself that there would be something she could do. No one could enter her life to ruin it and then leave her to suffer alone. Not even Nathan.
Asmund's featured a fashion show for the luncheon trade, but a show more reminiscent of burlesque than of the salon. A handful of models dressed in playsuits, bathing suits, and shorty nightgowns walked up and down in front of the booths, pausing at each table to execute a series of model's maneuvers, turning slowly while they held out what little fabric they might be covered with for inspection, while their cynical eyes reflected the sure knowledge that it was not cloth that was being inspected. Theoretically the items they modeled were on sale somewhere in the restaurant.
Irving watched closely, to the point of ignoring his lunch. He looked directly into the girls' eyes, and they stared blandly back.
"You're always working, aren't you?" Kristie asked sharply.
"Why not? At my age one expects a high percentage of rejection, so it's necessary to increase the rate of incidence in order to keep favorable returns at anything like the same level. When I was young, I could have any woman I asked, so I only asked the ones I wanted. Now I ask them all."
"I've learned one thing," he continued after a moment. "Pleasure depends on the desire for it, depends on appetites and the means by which to satisfy them. If my hungers falter, I'll not be far behind them. If I'm afraid of anything, that's it. That my desires will fade away as if someone had shut off the gas and lights in a decaying house. It's probably much better to be whipped by needs one can't satisfy than to sit empty waiting to die. Anyway"—he crossed his knife and fork on his plate and took out a thin, dark cigar—"I'm well off and not entirely powerless."
"I'm sure you do very well," Kristie said. "Perhaps you should have a social secretary."
"Hardly." Irving's eyes glimmered with amusement. Kristie knew anxiety, and it made her awkward. "Anyway," Irving continued, "you'd be wasted as a secretary of any kind."
"If you really think that, why aren't I working for AVCO?"
"No, no, honey, not in my company. It's a nice, quiet plant. I enjoy watching you operate, but those dull, dependable boys of mine wouldn't know what hit them."
"So," she said mildly, "poor Kristie starved to death. She was cheerful to the last—"
Irving indicated the large piece of steak she had left uneaten. "You don't appear to be in any immediate danger of starving to death," he said.
"I'll freeze then. They're going to turn off the gas."
"Perhaps that's just fate. You're handy with the freeze yourself."
"I knew your generous and impulsive nature would get the best of you."
Irving chuckled. "You must have a theory that if you want something, demand it. Well, I have a few favors coming from General Electronics. They're working up the components for the Neptune-Three—"
"That's an important project!" Kristie exclaimed.
"Very. Perhaps as important as Nathan's project."
"Could you get me on that? Could you?"
"Maybe."
"How do I know you'll keep your word if I—if I give you what you want?"
"You don't. But we don't need to discuss this as if we were negotiating a ransom payment. I'll talk to Ross over there, and I'll do it because I think you'll do a good job for them. Not for any other reasons. When I pay, I pay cash. It saves complications."
