Ask for Me Tomorrow

“You were B. J.’s friend,” Gilly said. “But you always had a pretty low opinion of him. You treated him like a nice jolly little fellow without a brain in his head.”

“Now what in hell — I mean, what brought that on? What’s it got to do with anything? Even if it were true, which it isn’t—”

“Oh, it’s true. You made it quite obvious and it hurt. I guess it hurt me worse than it did B. J. because he never had any more faith in himself and his ability than you did. I did. I was full of faith.”

“Dammit, Gilly. Get to the point.”

“It’s simple. If I told you what I want Aragon to do, you’d just call me a fool.”

“Try me.”

“No.”

“Negative no?”

She didn’t answer.

“By God,” Smedler said. “I need a drink.”

Tom Aragon closed the iron-grilled elevator door behind him and approached Charity’s desk. He was a tall thin young man with horn-rimmed glasses that gave him a look of continual surprise. He’d come to Smedler’s firm straight out of law school, so most of the time he was in fact surprised. The jobs assigned to him so far didn’t often involve the third floor or the woman who ran it. There was a rumor, though, that she had a sense of humor if it could be found and excavated.

She must have heard the elevator door clank open and shut, but Charity didn’t look up from the papers on her desk or indicate in any way that she was aware of someone else in the room.

“Hey,” Aragon said. “Remember me?”

She raised her head. “Ah so. The new boy from the bottom of the bottom floor. Rather cute. Well, don’t try any of the cutes on me. What do you want?”

“The boss said you’d clue me in.”

“On the world in general or did you have something specific in mind?”

“This Mrs. Decker, what’s she like?”

“You’d better not ask my opinion. She just called me a smart-ass. What do you think of that?”

“I think that’s a leading question which in a court of law I wouldn’t be required to answer.”

“This isn’t a court of law. It’s a nice cozy little office with only two people in it, and one of them just asked a question and the other is going to answer.”

“Very well. Mrs. Decker could be right. You and I haven’t been acquainted long enough for me to judge.”

Charity pushed aside her wig and scratched the lobe of her left ear in a contemplative way. “The junior members of this firm, especially the junior juniors, are usually careful to show me some respect, even a little hard homage around Christmas.”

“Christmas is a long way off. Maybe I’ll work up to it by then.”

“I hope so.”

“Now back to Mrs. Decker.”

“Gilda. Gilda Grace Lockwood Decker. Lockwood was her first husband, a funny little man, looked like a drunken cherub even when he was cold sober. She married him for his money, of course, though Smedler doesn’t think so. Smedler’s an incurable romantic, considering the business he’s in and the number of marriages he’s had. Anyway, Lockwood’s long gone... Gilly did a lot of traveling after her divorce and there was talk of various affairs in different parts of the world. Nothing really serious until she met this guy Marco Decker in Paris. Then it was clang clang, wedding bells again. She wired Smedler to send her money in care of American Express for her trousseau. Some trousseau. She must have bought half the nightgowns and perfume in France. I guess it was too much for poor old Decker. He had a stroke while they were honeymooning at Saint-Tropez. So there was Gilly, stuck with a paralyzed bridegroom in the midst of all those lovely naked young Frenchmen.”

“Why were the Frenchmen naked?”

“My dear boy, it was Saint-Tropez. That’s why people visit there, to see other people naked.”

“It seems like a long way to go to see somebody naked.”

“Well, of course only the ‘in’ people go to Saint-Tropez. The ‘out’ people like you and me, we just take off our clothes and stand in front of a mirror... Well, that’s the sad story of Gilly. She brought Decker home, installed a lot of expensive equipment so she could keep him there and hired a male nurse to help look after him. Et cetera.”

“What’s included in the et cetera?”

“You can bet your life she’s not wasting all those Paris nightgowns. Any more questions?”

“One,” Aragon said.

“Okay, shoot.”

“What joker gave you the name Charity?”

Three

The swimming pool in the middle of the patio was larger than the one at the YMCA where Aragon had learned to swim as a boy. At the bottom lay a ceramic mermaid which no YMCA would have tolerated. She wore nothing but a smirk.

A dark-haired good-looking man in very brief tight swim trunks was cleaning the pool with a vacuum. His movements were tense and angry. He pushed the vacuum back and forth across the mermaid’s face as though trying to obliterate her smirk. At the same time he was conducting a monologue which Aragon assumed was aimed at him.

“Nobody manages this place. It’s simply not managed. Take a look around, just look. Disgusting.”