“While the message was still running on the machine? How did you know who it was?”
“I didn’t.”
“That was stupid, Deirdre.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Do you want to know who it was?”
“I take it it wasn’t Kayla.”
“It might have been. It might have been anybody.”
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
“It’s supposed to mean,” Deirdre said, “that there wasn’t any voice after I answered the phone. There was breathing. There wasn’t any voice. But I don’t think it was Kayla Anson’s breathing.”
He should have brought the bottle of scotch to the tub with him, instead of leaving it on the bar. Now, if he wanted to fill his glass, he would have to get up and walk across the sunroom to do it. He would have to walk out there in the open, as naked as the day he was born.
“Well,” he said, very carefully, “that could have been anything. That could have been a telephone solicitation.”
“Funny time of night for a telephone solicitation.”
Peter’s glass was empty. It was so empty, it looked as if it had never been used. He stood up carefully and began to climb out of the tub.
He could not possibly know who that call was from. It didn’t make any sense. There was no such thing as telepathy. It could have been a phone call from Santa Claus at the North Pole as easily as it could have been a phone call from anybody else.
“So,” he said, “you mean this person just called up and breathed in your ear.”
“For a long time.”
“Maybe it was a random obscene caller. Dial the first number that comes into your head. Get a woman. Hit the jackpot.”
“It wasn’t that kind of breathing.”
“That must have been bizarre. I’m surprised you didn’t hang up on him.”
“I thought it was a woman I’d be hanging up on. It was a woman’s breathing. If you know the kind of thing I mean.”
Peter knew nothing at all about the kind of thing she meant. He got to the bar and started pouring scotch. He would have ditched his drink glass for a tumbler, but he thought it would be too obvious. He hoped Deirdre would think he was sweating because of the water in the hot tub. He hoped he wasn’t breathing too hard.
“It doesn’t matter who it was,” he said finally. “If it was anybody important, he’ll call back.”
“You’re really a snot, do you know that?” Deirdre said. “You pick your friends out of the Social Register. You care more about your image than you do about your bank account.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh,” Deirdre said, “I think I’d still be here. Even men who are listed in the Social Register go slumming.”
“I’ve never called seeing you ‘slumming.’ And you know it.”
“You’ve never called it anything else, either. Are you going to marry Kayla Anson?’
“I doubt if she’d have me.”
“But you would marry her, if she’d have you? Because of all that money?”
“Kayla is a wonderful girl. But she’s a girl. She’s very young.”
“Jesus Christ,” Deirdre said.
Peter turned around with his drink in his hand. His penis was waving in the air. He felt so exposed, he wanted to duck, except that there was no place to duck into, and nothing to hide behind. Deirdre put her glass down on the tub collar and hauled herself up. She was exposed, too, but she didn’t seem to mind it.
“You know,” she said finally, “you really shouldn’t treat me like an asshole, because I’m not an asshole. Do you get my meaning?”
“I never treat you like an asshole.”
“You never treat me like anything else. But if you really think I’m going to let you get away with pushing me around the way you push around your debutantes, you’re going to be very surprised. Have I made myself clear?”
“I never push you around.”
“Jesus Christ,” Deirdre said again.
She walked around the tub collar until she got to the towel rack. She got a towel and wrapped herself up in it, tucking the edge between her breasts to make it stay. Deirdre was the only person Peter had ever known who could do that and walk around without the towel coming lose and falling off. She was the only woman he had ever known whose breasts pointed at the ceiling like missiles at a launch pad. He supposed she’d had them done.
“I’m going to get dressed and get out of here,” she said. “You’re beginning to piss me off. But try to remember a few things, will you please?”
“Like what?”