Ask for Me Tomorrow

Gilly went into Smedler’s office. He rose from behind his desk and came to greet her, a tall handsome man in his late fifties. He had known Gilly for thirteen years, since the day she married B. J. Lockwood. An old school chum of B. J.’s, Smedler had been an usher at both of his weddings. He could barely recall the first — to a socialite named Ethel — but he often thought of the second with a considerable degree of amazement. Gilly wasn’t young or especially pretty, but on that day, in her long white lace gown and veil, she’d looked radiant. She was madly in love. B. J. was short and fat and freckled and nobody had ever taken him seriously before. Yet there was Gilly, well over thirty and certainly old enough to know better, iridescing like a hummingbird whenever she looked at him. Smedler decided later that her appearance was, had to be, simply a matter of make-up, a dash of pink here, a silver gleam there, French drops to intensify the blue of her eyes. (He was frequently heard to remark during the next dozen years that it was not politics which made strange bedfellows, it was marriage.)

Except for an occasional business meeting or football game, Smedler saw very little of Gilly and B. J. after the marriage. The divorce eight years ago had been handled by an out-of-town firm, and the only inside story on it had come to Smedler from Charity: B. J. had run away with a young girl. Gilly was rumored to have taken the divorce very hard, though not all the effects were on the bad side. B. J., evidently suffering from guilt as well as his usual poor business judgment, had been very generous in dividing the community property.

“Sit down, my dear, sit down. Here, you’ll be more comfortable in the striped chair.”

He told her she looked lovely (false), that her beige silk and linen suit was very chic (true) and that he was happy to see her (a little of both).

He was, in fact, more puzzled than either happy or unhappy. Her phone call the day before had provided few details: she wanted to hire a young man who could speak Spanish and was trustworthy, to do a job for her, probably in Mexico. Why probably? Smedler wondered. And what kind of job? She had no business interests south of the border or even outside the country, except for a small money-hungry gold mine in northern Canada. But he had been a lawyer too long to go directly to the point.

“And how is Mr. Decker?”

“The same.”

“There is still no hope?”

“Well, my housekeeper prayed for him last night at church. That’s something, I suppose, when you’re as hard up for hope as I am.”

It had been three months or so since Smedler had seen her and she had aged considerably in such a short time. The results weren’t all negative, though. There seemed to be a new strength in her face and more assurance in her manner. She’d also lost quite a lot of weight. Smedler had always admired her sense of style — no matter what costume she wore, it was difficult to imagine it suiting anyone else — and the weight loss emphasized her individuality.

“About your call yesterday,” Smedler said. “It was rather enigmatic.”

“It was meant to be, in case anyone was listening in on my phone or yours.”

“Don’t worry about mine. I have no secrets from Charity.”

“I have.”

“She’s very discreet.”

“As my housekeeper would say, discretion is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Yes. Well.”

“Tell me about the young man.”

“His name’s Aragon. Tom Aragon. He’s twenty-five, bright, personable, speaks Spanish like a native, graduated from law school last spring. I find him a bit pedantic, though that could be simply his manner with me, since I’m the boss. Technically, anyway.”

“How much do I pay him?”

“That depends entirely on what you want him to do. We estimate the time of a recent graduate to be worth so much an hour.”

“Paying by the hour would be too complicated in this case. I’ll need his total services for — well, two or three weeks, perhaps longer. What’s Aragon’s monthly salary?”

“I don’t know for sure. Let’s call Charity and—”

“No. Negative no.”

“I think you may be doing Charity an injustice.”

“More likely I’m doing her a justice,” Gilly said. “Suppose I pay your office the amount of his salary plus a commission for the use of his services. Then I’ll make separate financial arrangements with Aragon. They’ll be strictly between him and me.”

“Why all the secrecy, my dear?”

“If I told you anything further, you’d try and talk me out of it.”

“Perhaps not. Give me a chance.”

“No.”

They stared at each other for a minute in silence, not hostile, but not friendly either. Then Smedler, sighing, got up and walked over to the main window. Clouds were parading across the sky like a procession of spaceships. On the earthbound street below, traffic remained sparse and sluggish. Smedler didn’t look either up or down. This is a damn stubborn woman. Okay, I can be a damn stubborn man.