“Go with you?” He glanced around the cramped, windowless room. “And give up all this?”
The following week, Jennifer and Ken Bailey moved into larger offices in the five hundred block on Fifth Avenue. The new quarters were simply furnished and consisted of three small rooms: one for Jennifer, one for Ken and one for a secretary.
The secretary they hired was a young girl named Cynthia Ellman fresh out of New York University.
“There won’t be a lot for you to do for a while,” Jennifer apologized, “but things will pick up.”
“Oh, I know they will, Miss Parker.” There was heroine worship in the girl’s voice.
She wants to be like me, Jennifer thought. God forbid!
Ken Bailey walked in and said, “Hey, I get lonely in that big office all by myself. How about dinner and the theater tonight?”
“I’m afraid I—” She was tired and had some briefs to read, but Ken was her best friend and she could not refuse him.
“I’d love to go.”
They went to see Applause, and Jennifer enjoyed it tremendously. Lauren Bacall was totally captivating. Jennifer and Ken had supper afterward at Sardi’s.
When they had ordered, Ken said, “I have two tickets for the ballet Friday night. I thought we might—”
Jennifer said, “I’m sorry, Ken. I’m busy Friday night.”
“Oh.” His voice was curiously flat.
From time to time, Jennifer would find Ken staring at her when he thought he was unobserved, and there was an expression on his face that Jennifer found hard to define. She knew Ken was lonely, although he never talked about any of his friends and never discussed his personal life. She could not forget what Otto had told her, and she wondered whether Ken himself knew what he wanted out of life. She wished that there were some way she could help him.
It seemed to Jennifer that Friday was never going to arrive. As her dinner date with Adam Warner drew closer, Jennifer found it more and more difficult to concentrate on business. She found herself thinking about Adam constantly. She knew she was being ridiculous. She had seen the man only once in her life, and yet she was unable to get him out of her mind. She tried to rationalize by telling herself that it was because he had saved her when she was facing disbarment proceedings, and then had sent her clients. That was true, but Jennifer knew it was more than that. It was something she could not explain, even to herself. It was a feeling she had never had before, an attraction she had never felt for any other man. She wondered what Adam Warner’s wife was like. She was undoubtedly one of the chosen women who, every Wednesday, walked through the red door at Elizabeth Arden’s for a day of head-to-toe pampering. She would be sleek and sophisticated, with the polished aura of the wealthy socialite.
On the magic Friday morning at ten o’clock, Jennifer made an appointment with a new Italian hairdresser Cynthia had told her all the models were going to. At ten-thirty, Jennifer called to cancel it. At eleven, she rescheduled the appointment.
Ken Bailey invited Jennifer to lunch, but she was too nervous to eat anything. Instead, she went shopping at Bendel’s, where she bought a short, dark green chiffon dress that matched her eyes, a pair of slender brown pumps and a matching purse. She knew she was far over her budget, but she could not seem to stop herself.
She passed the perfume department on the way out, and on an insane impulse bought a bottle of Joy perfume. It was insane because the man was married.
Jennifer left the office at five o’clock and went home to change. She spent two hours bathing and dressing for Adam, and when she was finished she studied herself critically in the mirror. Then she defiantly combed out her carefully coiffured hair and tied it back with a green ribbon. That’s better, she thought. I’m a lawyer going to have dinner with another lawyer. But when she closed the door she left behind a faint fragrance of rose and jasmine.