How does Wanda manage to win people over like that without having to do a thing? Harold wondered, not for the first time. Charm alone was not enough, no more than beauty—though Wanda had plenty of both, to be sure. Was it her unmistakable laugh, so free and easy that everybody in the room turned their heads to look when they heard it? The enthusiasm she brought to everything she did, even the smallest daily task? Harold had never been quite able to say just what her gift was, but he knew that he sometimes envied it—especially when he had to deal with a difficult client. Wanda would probably have found it the easiest thing in the world to persuade that Oregon hog baron to invest in Silver International—but, despite his best efforts, he had to let the stubborn old goat leave without signing a thing.
Harold noticed the admiring looks the other men gave Wanda as she sat down across from him on the narrow bench. How they would have liked to touch her light-blonde hair! To inhale that smell of peaches and young skin! To put an arm around her slender, supple waist or run a finger along the smooth line of her neck. All of a sudden the air in Mickey’s bar, the haunt of hard-bitten profit hunters, tingled with quite another appetite.
Wanda’s drink had reached the table just before she did, and she picked it up and took a sip the moment she sat down. She wore a grim look on her face.
Harold noticed right away that she was not carrying that silly white apron over her arm. Hadn’t she come straight from work, though? It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. Well, he knew he wouldn’t hear that charming laugh today.
“What was it this time?” he asked. “Am I right to assume that you’re finished with Dittmer’s?”
Wanda frowned. “How did you . . .” But instead of finishing her question, she sighed. “It was Monique Desmoines’s pig trotters!”
“Her what?”
“I got the order wrong. Actually, no I didn’t. If Monique hadn’t made such a song and dance about her dinner party and—” Wanda waved her hand dismissively. “Then the way she reacted—it was ludicrous! All because of a little misunderstanding.”
She was putting on a brave face, but she couldn’t hide the fact that she had been deeply humiliated—the pain was visible in her eyes and her mouth was drawn tight.
Harold raised an eyebrow. The last job that Wanda had lost had been at Arts and Artists, a chic, modern gallery. As he recalled, she had been fired there because of a “misunderstanding” as well. She had only been on the job two weeks when she spotted a shabby-looking fellow packing sculptures away into his bag, and she had raised an alarm. Two cops who happened to be walking past the gallery just then had duly taken the man, loudly protesting, down to the station house. That had been the end for Wanda; the supposed thief turned out to be a well-known sculptor who had come to take some of his pieces back and put out new ones for sale, all with the gallery owner’s permission.
Wanda’s eyes were glittering, though Harold couldn’t tell whether this was because she was furious or fighting back tears.
“Oh, Harry, it’s so awful!” she snorted. “Mason Dittmer never even bothered to listen to my side of the story! I’ll tell you one thing; that’s the last they’ll ever see of me. I’d rather starve than buy so much as a slice of cake from there!” To lend force to her words, she drank down the liqueur in one gulp.
“Mixing up an order is hardly a reason to fire you,” Harold said, trying to downplay the whole episode. Then he looked at her skeptically. “What did you do, send ham instead of salami? But didn’t you say something about pig’s trotters?”
“Well, perhaps it wasn’t such a simple story after all,” Wanda said slowly. She looked down into her empty glass, absorbed by whatever she saw there. A moment later she giggled quietly, deep in her throat. Then she told Harold all about the huge fuss that Monique had made about keeping her secrets and about the sheet of notepaper that Wanda had passed on directly to the cooks. And she told him how they had duly prepared a platter of pig’s trotters, a dish of stewing steak, and a tureen of tripe soup. She also told him how she had decorated the casseroles and dishes herself so that nobody could spoil the surprise.
“I can’t believe it!” Harold said, leaning across the table to Wanda. “Tell me you’re pulling my leg! You must have noticed that something wasn’t quite right!”
She was taken aback. “Of course I thought it was odd!” she said defensively. “But after Monique had blathered on about the Fall of Man and culinary allegories, I thought that pig’s trotters sounded like just the thing. And apart from that, how was I supposed to know that the notepaper she gave me was her weekly order for the down-and-out shelter? I never even saw the menu for her party! It turns out the dishes were all supposed to be dyed black with squid ink.” She giggled nervously. “I would have loved to see the look on the guests’ faces.”