An Evil Guest (15 page)

Sharon Bench’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Cassie! Tell this woman to let me in!”

The little camera flashed for the final time as Cassie said, “I thought you said it was a man.”

“It’s Sharon!” Sharon called.

“There’s a woman, too,” Zelda reported.

“Wait ’til I get my clothes on.”

The telephone rang.

“Should I get it, Miss Casey?”

Cassie shook her head. “It’ll be one of the neighbors complaining. Let it ring.”

Margaret did, buttoning Cassie’s blouse instead.

Zelda shut the door and took off the chain. “Should I let the woman in, Cassie? She says she’s a friend.”

“Wait ’til I get my skirt on. Then you can let them both in.”

“It’s too big,” Margaret told her when the telephone had fallen silent. “I can fix it for you if you want me to, Miss Casey.”

“Not now.”

“He’s gone,” Zelda said. “He wrote you a note, but I don’t understand it. What about the woman?”

Reluctantly, Cassie nodded.

The security chain rattled, and Sharon burst into the room. “Any news?”

“You’re supposed to tell me.” Cassie pointed toward her worn blue couch. “Sit down. You’re going to referee.”

“Between us?” Zelda asked. “If that’s what you mean, you’d better introduce us.”

“Sharon’s the star of the
Sun-Trib
.” Skirt in place, Cassie dropped into her reading chair.

“Straight news,” Sharon announced. “Gossip, and human interest. Sports. You name it. Seen me on vid?”

Zelda said, “You know, I think I have.”

“Monday through Friday,” Cassie told her. “Channel twenty-three. Afternoons only.”

“Unless I’ve got something really big,” Sharon added.

“Unless she’s got something really big. Sharon, this is Zelda Youmans. Zelda’s my agent.”

Sharon said, “Hi,” and waved.

“Your job,” Cassie told her, “is to decide between us. Zelda wants me to sign for
Dating the Volcano God
. She’ll tell you why she thinks I ought to. But not about her ten percent. I’ll have to tell you about that.”

Sharon nodded.

“I’ll tell you why I think it’s a bad show and a bad contract.”

“Then I decide?”

“Then you decide. Here I go. The show stinks. It’s a turkey from the gitgo. It will maybe, if they’re lucky, play on two or three stages. Could be eight weeks in all. After that, flopsville.”

Sharon nodded.

“That was my first point. Second point. The money’s not anywhere near what I’m worth to—to the people who are organizing things. To the director and the angel. I’d be ashamed to tell you what they’re offering in this contract. I’ve known secretaries who made more than that.”

“She hasn’t,” Zelda said firmly.

“Third point. The angel expects me to sleep with him. He’s—”

Sharon leaped to her feet. “Wallace Rosenquist? He’s romancing you, Cassie? Oh, wow!”

“You know who he is?”

Sharon’s hand had strayed to a pocket of her jacket. “I—oh, my God! This is so big . . . Cassie, Wallace Rosenquist controls half the banks in this city, and from what I hear he could control the other half tomorrow if he wanted to. All the financial people knew he was here the minute his hopper landed. It’s the size of a super tanker, so how could they miss it? They’ve been as jumpy as stray cats ever since. Can you get me an interview?”

“No,” Cassie said firmly, “I can’t. And if I could, I wouldn’t. Should I sign or not?”

“She should.” Margaret’s voice was just above a whisper.

“Hold on!” Zelda snapped. “Wait up, everybody. I get equal time. Can I call you Sharon?”

Sharon nodded.

“Good. Sharon, Cassie’s been talking as if this were straight salary. It isn’t. She had points and I’ve got more. The money’s okay, to start with. It’s more than she was making in
The Red Spot
. That’s Zelda’s point number one.”

Sharon nodded again.

“Number two. For each quarter after the first, her salary goes up ten percent. Say that it runs a year, and a good show will play New York, then London, then Melbourne, then back to Broadway. You probably know that, and by the time it hits Broadway again it may have been running for five or six years. If not more.”

Zelda paused for breath, and Cassie said, “A
good
show, which this isn’t.”

“But say a year. Just one year. For the final three months of that year Cassie will be making thirty percent more than she’ll make on opening night.”

Sharon said, “I’ve got it.”

“Next point . . .”

The telephone rang. More quickly than a woman without experience might be expected to, Cassie unplugged it.

“My next point,” Zelda continued, “is that she’s down for two percent of the gross. Not two percent of the profit, two percent of the gross. Let’s say the theater seats two thousand. That’s small but let’s say it. Let’s say that tickets average twenty bucks, which is dirt cheap for a hit show. The gross is forty thou a night. That’s eight hundred over and above salary per night. If there are six performances a week, which is low, one month is about twenty thousand. Should I give you the figure for a year?”

Sharon shook her head. “I can to the math.”

“Meanwhile, her salary keeps going up and up and up.”

“If,” Cassie muttered.

“Not if. Here are my next to last and last, and I’ll make ’em fast. There are months of rehearsal ahead. A bad book can be fixed. Bad songs can be fixed, and dance numbers the same. Shows fold because they don’t have backing. I don’t have to tell you who’s backing this one.”

“Rosenquist?”

“Exactly. Last point, shows fail because the talent’s not there. The redhead in the big brown chair’s going to star in this one. You may think she’s ordinary now—”

“I’m not blind,” Sharon said.

“When we did lunch, everybody looked. Men, women, even kids, and they kept looking. By the time we’d gotten a table and ordered, I knew I was sitting across from a fortune. Something happened before
Red Spot
closed. I don’t know—”

Cassie rose and Margaret said, “What is it, Miss Casey?”

“There’s too much noise in here, too many people talking. I need to be alone, and I’m going out on the balcony for—for as long as it takes me to sort things out. You can go home if you want to, or stay.”

She scooped her cell phone off the coffee table “I know this isn’t polite, but I’ve got to think or scream. Screaming wouldn’t help, so I’m going to step outside.”

Zelda asked, “Is this about signing?”

“You can make coffee or tea, or have a glass of wine. Or leave. Whatever you want. Watch vid.” Cassie opened the French doors through which she had, not long ago, seen a chauffeur shut the rear door of a white limousine.

The air on her balcony seemed purer and sweeter than the atmosphere in her apartment, delightfully cool rather than cold. Autumn was on its way, but today it dallied by the roadside.

She shut the French doors behind her, turned her back to them, and scrolled up a number she had by now memorized.

“This is Gideon Chase, but my telephone is temporarily out of service. I have to sleep sometime . . .”

It was the familiar message. Cassie pressed
OFF
.

Five floors below, pedestrians hurried past the narrow strip of lush green lawn in front of the building. Parked cars littered the street, although cars were not supposed to park there. Trucks and buses made far too much noise, and cabs dawdled, hoping to be flagged down by a doorman. Across the
street, a man in a dark doorway lit a cigarette, his face visible for a second in the flare of his lighter.

Above it all, an aching blue sky assured her that it cradled Mariah’s island even as it stretched over her dirty northern city. “I hope you’re nicer there,” she told it. “I wish I could be there instead of just playing at it.”

“A
RE
you ready?” Zelda asked when Cassie stepped back into her living room.

“I think so. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Margaret clearly wanted to hug her but did not. “It was only about ten minutes, Miss Casey.”

Sharon said, “I’m going to report what I hear here, unless you ask me not to.”

“About sleeping with Wallace Rosenquist?”

“I won’t say it like that. I’ll hint. You know.”

Zelda said, “Good publicity, Cassie.”

Sharon nodded. “It will be. They’ll want to come to see you, and maybe see him.”

“I don’t think so,” Cassie said, “but I don’t know. Maybe they will.”

Sharon asked, “Do you want to know what I’ve decided?”

“I ought to feel terribly tired,” Cassie mused. “I know I should, but I don’t. I’m getting my second wind or something. Have you ever wanted to help out somebody you loved, and known that the only thing you could do for him was some tiny stupid thing that was a lot of trouble? And done it anyway? Any of you?”

Margaret nodded.

Sharon said, “Not me.”

Zelda said, “Yes, for Joe-Boy. I don’t think you ever saw him.”

Cassie shook her head.

“He was my son and he was in the hospital, getting ready to go. He wanted one particular toy. I ditched work and went looking for it. It took all day to find it, but I did and brought it to him. He couldn’t talk by then, but he smiled. It was the last time I ever saw him smile. He passed away that night.”

Cassie nodded, finding she could not speak.

“The boss called me in the next day and fired me. And—listen, Cassie. Listen really, really carefully.”

She nodded again. “I am.”

“That was when I opened my own agency. Inside a year I was taking in more than I ever had in my life. Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I didn’t know any of this,” Cassie said. “Thank you. I owed you a lot already.”

Sharon said, “Enough to sign?”

“Yes. And if I weren’t such a bitch I’d have done it straight off.”

Zelda cleared her throat. “I thought I was done, and I ought to be. Now I may queer a deal that would make me rich—but I feel like I’ve got to do this. Remember the note the building guy wrote?”

Cassie nodded, seized by a sudden dread.

“I’ve read it and I’ve got no idea what the heck he’s talking about, but it sounds like it might be personal. I was going to hang on to it until you signed. Or didn’t. Now . . .” Zelda shrugged. “I guess I’m chicken.”

Margaret took the note and passed it to Cassie.

Five words, written in a hasty scrawl:
Infected. He is getting treatment
.

“That settles it,” Cassie said. “Have you got a pen?”

S
HE
waited until they were gone before playing the message the first call had left on her answering machine. The voice was male, deep, and somewhat harsh.

“This is Wallace Rosenquist. I’ll pick you up for dinner at seven. I realize you may not want to join me, and may have other plans. But I assure you that if you will consent to dinner you will learn something to your advantage.”

Usually, Cassie reflected, the question was one of dressing to make the best possible impression. This was more like the blind dates she had suffered through in high school and college. Did she even want to make a good impression?

Perhaps not.

After much thought, she wore her second-best black dress, black pumps, and a little necklace her mother had given her long ago. Those, and her watch.

She had expected him to be prompt, but his white limousine pulled up to the curb at seven fifteen. The chauffeur got out and went into her building without opening the rear door. She was about to turn away when the rear door opened. She waited and watched until her telephone rang.

She picked it up and said hello.

“Miz Casey? This is Preston, the doorman. There’s a driver here who says he has a message for you. I think you can probably see his car out front if you look out your window. The big white one?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Cassie said.

“Should I let him up?”

“I don’t think so. Is it a note?”

“I’ll see, Miz Casey. Wait a minute.”

There was a lengthy pause during which Cassie sat down; she could hear the voices of two men arguing.

“Miz Casey?”

“Still here, Preston.”

“He says he has to speak to you. He won’t tell me what it is.”

“All right. Put him on.”

Another pause and more argument.

“He won’t, Miz Casey. He wants to come up.”

Cassie grinned. “Please tell him I’m not about to let anyone who won’t talk to me on the telephone come up.”

“I will, Miz Casey.” Preston sounded pleased.

After a brief pause, an accented voice said, “I am Carlos.”

“Señora Casey. What can I do for you, Carlos?”

“You must let me in.”

“I won’t,” Cassie said, and hung up.

There was no local news on vid at this hour. She watched the state news channel instead, waiting for the telephone to ring.

As it did, ten minutes later.

“Hello.” She tried not to sound smug.

“This is Wallace Rosenquist, Cassie. I had planned to escort you from your apartment to my car. An urgent matter intervened. I’d like to apologize.”