Rhinemann looked relieved. ‘Good man. And whatever you see the rest of the day, don’t show surprise. You understand?’
‘Yes,’ Pearson said. He didn’t understand anything.
‘Can you clear your desk early and leave around three?’
Pearson considered it, then nodded. ‘Yeah. I guess I could do that.’
‘Good. Meet me around the corner on Milk Street.’
‘All right.’
‘You’re doin great, man,’ Rhinemann said. ‘You’re going to be fine. See you at three.’ He entered the revolving door and gave it a push. Pearson stepped into the segment behind him, feeling as though he had somehow left his mind out there in the plaza . . . all of it, that was, except for the part that already wanted another cigarette.
The day crawled, but everything was all right until he came back from lunch (and two cigarettes) with Tim Flanders. They stepped out of the elevator on the third floor and the first thing Pearson saw was another batman . . . except this one was actually a batwoman wearing black patent-leather heels, black nylon hose, and a formidable silk tweed suit — Samuel Blue was Pearson’s guess. The perfect power outfit . . . until you got to the head nodding over it like a mutated sunflower, that was.
‘Hullo, gents.’ A sweet contralto voice spoke from somewhere behind the harelipped hole that was its mouth.
It’s Suzanne Holding, Pearson thought. It can’t be, but it is.
‘Hello, Suzy darlin,’ he heard himself say, and thought: If she comes near me . . . tries to touch me . . . I’ll scream. I won’t be able to help it, no matter what the kid told me.
‘Are you all right, Brand? You look pale.’
‘A little touch of whatever’s going around, I guess,’ he said, astounded all over again at the natural ease of his voice. ‘I think I’m getting on top of it, though.’
‘Good,’ Suzanne Holding’s voice said from behind the bat’s face and the strangely motile flesh.
‘No French kissing until you’re all better, though — in fact, don’t even breathe on me. I can’t afford to be sick with the Japanese coming in on Wednesday.’
No problem, sweetheart — no problem, you better believe it.
‘I’ll try to restrain myself.’
‘Thanks. Tim, will you come down to my office and look at a couple of spread-sheet summaries?’
Timmy Flanders slipped an arm around the waist of the sexily prim Samuel Blue suit, and before Pearson’s wide eyes, he bent and planted a little kiss on the side of the thing’s tumor-raddled, hairy face. That’s where Timmy sees her cheek, Pearson thought, and he felt his sanity suddenly slip like greasy cable wound around the dram of a winch. Her smooth, perfumed cheek
— that’s what he’s seeing, all right, and what he thinks he’s kissing. Oh my God. Oh my God.
‘There!’ Timmy exclaimed, and gave the creature a small cavalier’s bow. ‘One kiss and I am your servant, dear lady!’
He tipped Pearson a wink and began walking the monster in the direction of her office. As they passed the drinking fountain, he dropped the arm he had hung about her waist. The short and meaningless little peacock/peahen courting dance — a ritual that had somehow developed over the last ten years or so in business relationships where the boss was female and the aide was male — had now been performed, and they drew away from Pearson as sexual equals, talking nothing but dry numbers.
Marvelous analysis, Brand, Pearson thought distractedly as he turned away from them. You should have been a sociologist. And almost had been — it had been his college minor, after all.
As he entered his office he became aware that his whole body was running with a slow slime of sweat. Pearson forgot sociology and began rooting for three o’clock again.
At two-forty-five he steeled himself and poked his head into Suzanne Holding’s office. The alien asteroid of her head was tilted toward the blue-gray screen of her computer, but she looked around when he said ‘Knock-knock,’ the flesh on her strange face sliding restlessly, her black eyes regarding him with she cold avidity of a shark studying a swimmer’s leg.
‘I gave Buzz Carstairs the Corporate Fours,’ Pearson said. ‘I’m going to take the Individual Form Nines home with me, if that’s okay. I’ve got my backup discs there.’
‘Is this your coy way of saying you’re going AWOL, my dear?’ Suzanne asked. The black veins bulged unspeakably on top of her bald skull; the lumps which surrounded her features quivered, and Pearson realized one of them was leaking a thick pinkish substance that looked like bloodstained shaving cream.
He made himself smile. ‘You caught me.’
‘Well,’ Suzanne said, ‘we’ll just have to have the four o’clock orgy without you today, I guess.’
‘Thanks, Suze.’ He turned away.
‘Brand?’
He turned back, his fear and revulsion threatening to turn into a bright white freeze of panic, suddenly very sure that those avid black eyes had seen through him and that the thing masquerading as Suzanne Holding was going to say, Let’s stop playing games, shall we? Come in and close the door. Let’s see if you taste as good as you look.
Rhinemann would wait awhile, then go on to wherever he was going by himself. Probably, Pearson thought, he’ll know what happened. Probably he’s seen it before.
‘Yes?’ he asked, trying to smile.
She looked at him appraisingly for a long moment without speaking, the grotesque slab of head looming above the sexy lady exec’s body, and then she said, ‘You look a little better this afternoon.’ The mouth still gaped, the black eyes still stared with all the expression of a Raggedy Ann doll abandoned under a child’s bed, but Pearson knew that anyone else would have seen only Suzanne Holding, smiling prettily at one of her junior executives and exhibiting just the right degree of Type A concern. Not exactly Mother Courage, but still caring and interested.
‘Good,’ he said, and decided that was probably too limp. ‘Great!’
‘Now if we could only get you to quit smoking.’
‘Well, I’m trying,’ he said, and laughed weakly. The greasy cable around that mental winch slipped again. Let me go, he thought. Let me go, you horrible bitch, let me get out of here before I do something too nutso to be ignored.
‘You’d qualify for an automatic upgrade on your insurance, you know,’ the monster said. Now the surface of another of those tumors broke open with a rotten little chup! sound and more of that pink stuff began to ooze out.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘And I’ll give it serious consideration, Suzanne. Really.’
‘You do that,’ she said, and swung back toward the glowing computer screen. For a moment he was stunned, unable to grasp his good fortune. The interview was over.
By the time Pearson left the building it was pouring, but the Ten O’Clock People — now they were the Three O’clock People, of course, but there was no essential difference — were out just the same, huddled together like sheep, doing their thing. Little Miss Red Skirt and the janitor who liked to wear his cap turned around backward were sheltering beneath the same sodden
section of the Boston Globe. They looked uncomfortable and damp around the edges, but Pearson envied the janitor just the same. Little Miss Red Skirt wore Giorgio; he had smelled it in the elevator on several occasions. And she made little silky rustling noises when she moved, of course.
What the hell are you thinking about? he asked himself sternly, and replied in the same mental breath: Keeping my sanity, thank you very much. Okay by you?
Duke Rhinemann was standing under the awning of the flower shop just around the corner, his shoulders hunched, a cigarette in the corner of his own mouth. Pearson joined him, glanced at his watch, and decided he could wait a little longer. He poked his head forward a little bit just the same, to catch the tang of Rhinemann’s cigarette. He did this without being aware of it.
‘My boss is one of them,’ he told Duke. ‘Unless, of course, Douglas Keefer is the sort of monster who likes to cross-dress.’
Rhinemann grinned ferociously and said nothing.
‘You said there were three others. Who are the other two?’
‘Donald Fine. You probably don’t know him — he’s in Securities. And Carl Grosbeck.’
‘Carl . . . the Chairman of the Board? Jesus!’
‘I told you,’ Rhinemann said. ‘High places are what these guys’re all about — Hey, taxi!’
He dashed out from beneath the awning, flagging the maroon-and-white cab he had spotted cruising miraculously empty through the rainy afternoon. It swerved toward them, spraying fans of standing water. Rhinemann dodged agilely, but Pearson’s shoes and pantscuffs were soaked.
In his current state, it didn’t seem terribly important. He opened the door for Rhinemann, who slid in and scooted across the seat. Pearson followed and slammed the door.