Escape into your dreams…
He crossed back to the couch, placed the drink on the coffee table and picked up the Wishbook once more. Again he read the item on Landover. He shook his head. No such place could possibly exist. The promo was a tease, a hype, what the car business called puffing. The truth was masked in the rhetoric. He chewed gingerly at the inside of his lip. Still, there wasn’t all that much rhetoric being used to promote the item. And Rosen’s was a highly respected department store; they were not likely to offer anything that they could not deliver, should a buyer appear.
He grinned. What was he thinking? What buyer? Who in his right mind would even consider…? But of course he was questioning himself now. He was the one considering. He had been standing there, drinking his drink and thinking about how he didn’t belong; and when he had picked up the Wishbook, the item on Landover had caught his attention right away. He was the one who felt himself the outsider in his own world, who had always felt himself the outsider, who was seeking always a way to escape what he was.
And now here was his chance.
His grin broadened. This was crazy! He was actually contemplating doing something that no sane man would even think twice about!
The scotch was working its way to his head now, and he got up again to walk it off. He looked at his watch, thinking of Miles, and suddenly he didn’t want to go to that bar meeting. He didn’t want to go anywhere. He walked to the phone and dialed his friend. “Bennett,” the familiar voice answered. “Miles, I’ve decided not to go tonight. Hope you don’t mind.”
There was a pause. “Doc, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Miles loved to call him Doc, ever since the early days when they went up against Wells-Fargo on that corporate buy-out. Doc Holiday, courtroom gunfighter. It drove Ben nuts. “Look, you go on without me.”
“You’re going.” Miles was unflappable. “You said you were going and you’re going. You promised.”
“So I take it back. Lawyers do it all the time — you read the papers.”
“Ben, you need to get out. You need to see something of the world besides your office and your apartment — however lavish the two may be. You need to let your colleagues in the profession know that you’re still alive!”
“You tell them I’m alive. Tell them I’ll make the next meeting for sure. Tell them anything. But forget about me for tonight.”
There was another pause, this one longer. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. But I’m in the midst of something. I want to stay with it.”
“You work too hard, Ben.”
“Don’t we all? See you tomorrow.”
He placed the receiver back on the cradle before Miles could say anything further. He stood staring down at the phone. At least he hadn’t lied. He was in the midst of something, and he did want to stay with it — however crazy it might be. He took a drink of the scotch. If Annie were there, she would understand. She had always understood his fascination with puzzles and with challenges that others might simply step around. She had shared so much of that with him.
He shook his head. Of course, if Annie were there, none of this would be happening. He wouldn’t be thinking about escaping into a dream that couldn’t possibly be.
He paused, struck by the implications of that thought. Then holding his drink in his hand, he crossed back to the sofa, picked up the catalogue, and began reading once more.
Ben was late getting to the offices of Holiday and Bennett, Ltd. the next morning, and by the time he arrived his disposition was less than agreeable. He had scheduled an early appearance on a merger contest and gone straight to the Courts Building from home, only to discover that somehow his setting had been removed from the docket. The clerks had no idea how this had happened, opposing counsel was nowhere to be found, and the judge presiding simply advised him that a resetting would be the best solution to the dilemma. Since time was of the essence in the case in question, he requested an early setting — only to be told that the earliest setting possible was in thirty days. Things were always busiest with the approach of the holiday season, the motions clerk announced unsympathetically. Unimpressed with an explanation that he had heard at least twenty times already that November, he requested a setting for a preliminary injunction — only to be told that the judge hearing stays and pleas for temporary relief was vacationing for the next thirty days at some ski resort in Colorado, and it hadn’t been decided yet who would bear his docket load while he was gone. A decision on that would probably be made by the end of the week and he should check back then.