An hour later, she was fully dressed and pacing around her room, rubbing her hands up and down against her arms, wondering what she was going to do with herself. If she stayed in the city, she was sure she would end up getting plastered, as soon as possible. She wouldn’t be able to help herself, and she was sure that once she got started she wouldn’t be able to stop. She would drink her way right through the time she was supposed to pick up her car at National Rental, and then right through the time she was supposed to arrive in Oyster Bay. Part of her thought she might drink her way right through the Fourth-of-July weekend.
She was thinking about Fourth-of-July weekends, and patriotic cocktails, when the second terrifying thought struck her, and that was that she wouldn’t give a damn if she never got to Senator Fox’s seminar at all. She wouldn’t care if the Act in Aid of Exceptional Children got passed with everything in it the Empowerment Project didn’t want. She wouldn’t care if Harvey Gort fired her. She wouldn’t care if the entire city of Washington was sucked into Chesapeake Bay.
She was standing in the middle of her room then, looking down at the suitcases she’d left piled up against the foot of the bed, and in that moment she felt like a twenty-year veteran nun who’d just realized she had no vocation for the religious life.
Now she stood in the middle of the bedroom Victoria Harte had assigned to her, taking off her shoes, listening to the waves coming in from the sound and wishing she could calm down. She reached under her skirt and started to wriggle out of her pantyhose, wondering vaguely how thin she would have to be before pantyhose wouldn’t bind.
She had the pantyhose off and her skirt unzipped when she heard the knock on the door, and it stopped her dead.
She let her skirt drop to the floor, unbuttoned her jacket—why hadn’t she taken off her jacket first?—and said, “Who is it?” Then she stripped off her shirt, dropped it on the bed, and walked over to the door. Then she scolded herself for feeling ridiculous, standing there in only a bra and panties.
“Who is it?” she demanded. On the other side of the door, someone coughed, a man. A deep voice said, “It’s Kevin Debrett. Can I come in?”
Kevin Debrett. Clare Markey looked down at herself, at the fine blond hairs that coated her thighs like the down on baby ducks. She had spoken to Kevin Debrett a hundred times, but never alone and never about anything in particular. After all, they were on opposite sides.
She turned away from the door and headed for the smaller of her two suitcases, where she knew she’d put her terrycloth beach dress. She unzipped the suitcase and found it there, right on top, her reward for being such a good and careful packer. She turned back toward the door and said. “Just a minute,” in her loudest voice.
She slipped the dress over her head, stuffed her suit out of sight under the bed, and went to answer the door. What was waiting for her there was indeed Dr. Kevin Debrett, and he looked annoyed.
In Clare Markey’s experience, Dr. Kevin Debrett always looked annoyed.
“What were you doing in here?” he said. “Crossword puzzles?”
Clare shrugged and stood back, letting him pass. He was wearing chinos and an alligator shirt, but he looked exactly as he always did, as if he were being strangled by a badly knotted tie. She watched him cross to one of the chairs, and sit down, and look at her expectantly. She let the door stay open and went to sit down herself. “So,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
“What are we doing with the door still open?”
“Guess.”
“Oh, come off it. I don’t commit rape. I don’t have to.”
“Then you shouldn’t mind the door open.”
“Maybe I have something to say to you I’d rather not have anyone else overhear.”
“Who?”
“Dan Chester. He has the room just across the hall and one down, in case you didn’t know.”
As a matter of fact, Clare hadn’t known, but she wasn’t surprised. This was the guest wing. Dan would be somewhere close.
She got up, went across the room, and shut the door, but didn’t lock it. Then she came back and sat down again.
“Well?”
All of a sudden, Kevin Debrett looked very different than Clare could ever remember seeing him, fidgety and unsure of himself and scared. In fact, he was scared to death.
She leaned forward in her chair and said, “Dr. Debrett? Are you all right?”
He jumped, seemed to try to force himself into his habitual attitude of annoyance, and then deflated. “No,” he said. “No. I’m not all right.”
“But what’s wrong?”