• The train arrives right on time. 8:43 A.M. Robert moves along wth the thousand other commuters, through the huge space of Grand Central, down a large passageway, out onto East 42nd Street.
He wonders if he’ll see her today. Let’s see, Wednesday. Nothing this week so far. She’s got this way of turning up unexpectedly, casually. Hey, it’s the Big Editor! Yo, Big Rob, who’s winning the newspaper wars? Hi, Robie, what’s happening?
He smiles as he trudges along. The New York News building is two blocks up, on the right. A quick little commute down from Westchester, forty minutes door to door.
He’s got a gray suit on, a big green parka over that, a soft brown stetson on his head. He walks along hunched over against the cold wind, hands in his pockets. It’s a bright day but still the middle of winter. He notices dirty slush in the gutters, from the big storm a week ago.
Yeah, he thinks, she’s due. Let’s put some money down. A hundred dollars even money she shows. Yeah, I’ll take that bet.
The woman’s lively, he thinks. Got to give her that. Couldn’t be from New York. You just know it. The amazing thing is she’s really very pretty. But not that fine, delicate beauty that the models have. Something weak about that. Kathy’s more robust. A down-to-earth, soap-and-water kind of beauty, he thinks. You don’t imagine her at a fancy ball, making empty talk. Maybe on a horse, doing something. Hell, riding the south forty. Doesn’t matter. Point is, she’s capable, confident. A real easygoing way about her. What was it she said? Kicking ass and taking names. . . . Right. How’s it going in marketing? I said. And she says, Oh, I’m kicking ass and taking names.
Robert Saunders laughs as he crosses Third Avenue.
Yeah, truth is, I hope she shows up. Makes me feel good.
Then he shudders, not from the cold. Thinking how crazy it is that he would flirt, no matter how harmlessly, with this woman. Why’s she do it anyway? That’s the question.
He’s never had this problem before. Always sort of formal. A tough guy if he has to be. A woman’s too friendly, you just don’t notice. Hell, he thinks, it’s like they say. L.A. is about money, New York is about work. People don’t have time to mess around. You want messing around, go to the sticks. People bored out of their brains. Man, there’s nothing to do but get in trouble.
He reaches the building, trudges straight across the big lobby, making it a point not to look around, not to check for her.
“Well, Big Bad Robie.”
There she is. The voice ripples a thrill down his arms. But he keeps going a few steps, pretending not to hear her. Then, almost as an afterthought, he half turns. A little smile of recognition. Oh, you. Last thing I expected.
“Oh . . . Kathy.” Like he can’t even remember her name. “How’re you doing?”
“Doing good, Big Rob. And you?” She gives him that hot little smile. Cool and knowing. Mischievous eyes.
But she stays a few feet from him. The way she holds herself is very guarded. Anybody seeing them would think they hardly know each other.
He just stares for a few seconds, pretending to be preoccupied, something else on his mind, looking at something else. Certainly not at the way her black hair waves down almost to her shoulders, not at the tendons in her white throat, not at the curve of her lips.
“Robie, my man,” she pushes with her voice. “What’s up in newspaper land?”
Robert shrugs, hunches his wide shoulders, his hands still down in his pockets. “Well,” he says confidentially, “we in newspaper land are all atwitter this morning. Mayor’s giving a press conference. Amazing man. He does something dumb. Then he says he didn’t do it. Then he apologizes for doing it. Then he says this thing he didn’t do, it was necessary to do it. And besides, he’s appointing a commission to make sure it never happens again. Not that it ever did.”
Kathy smiles. Hey, look at all the words she got out of him. “Look out, Dan Rather. Robie, they ought to put you on the tube.”
Robert Saunders laughs. Playing the cool big brother. “Everything all right, Kathy?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Good.”
“You know,” she says in a musing way, “that’s something you could teach me about. Politics.”
“Maybe,” he says vaguely.
They reach the elevators, go into a crowded cab. They stop talking, pretend to ignore each other.