Skirting The Issue. HEATHER MACALLISTER

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СКАЧАТЬ she didn’t know. She leaned closer, but at that moment, someone trying to cut through the line jabbed her with an elbow, then bumped into Tavish and his friend.

      “Hey, watch it, buddy.” Mr. Titanium Glasses made a rude gesture as several of the postcards fell to the grimy floor.

      Not proud, Sam grabbed for one. She intended to give it back—truly she did—but somehow, in the commotion, a strong self-preservation instinct kicked in. She read the printing, “Tavish McLain announces his summer itinerary. In June, he will be on safari and can be reached in care of Mavis Trent Travel…” In July, he’d be summering at a villa in Italy. And so on until Labor Day. Sounded like a great summer. Better than hers, even if she did get the promotion. Must be nice. Sam flipped the card over and there, printed in the upper left-hand corner, was an address.

      It had to be his apartment. It had to be.

      I make my own luck. Well then. If this wasn’t a sign, she didn’t know what was.

      Without giving herself time to reconsider, Sam kept the card and walked out of the post office, hailed a cab, then gave them the address of the apartment.

      The man ran a lottery for his apartment. She couldn’t win if she didn’t play the game.

      AFTER FLINGING WAY TOO much money—guilt, no doubt—at the cabbie, Sam climbed out of the taxi and looked quickly up and down the street.

      Nice neighborhood.

      Who was she kidding? Fabulous neighborhood. The kind where all the apartment buildings had snooty uniformed doormen. Except this one, it seemed. There was no doorman, uniformed or otherwise.

      Maybe he was performing one of those errands everyone seemed to have doormen perform. Sam only knew this from movies and television and not from personal experience. But she could learn. Would love to learn, in fact.

      She pushed open the plate-glass door. And shouldn’t that be a duty of a doorman? she was thinking when her eyes were assaulted by a tableau featuring a man with a pale, hairless chest smack dab in the tiny foyer.

      Actually, he was smack dab on a folding lawn chair as he soaked his feet in a plastic wading pool featuring cartoon fishes. He wore baggy blue polka-dot swimming trunks, which clashed with the blue wading pool, she noted, as well as with the lime-green zinc oxide he painted on his nose. And…could that possibly be the Beach Boys? Yes. Definitely the Beach Boys.

      “Password?” he shouted over “Surfin’ U.S.A.” He slid his mirrored sunglasses down his nose, which got them gunked up with the zinc oxide.

      Password? She should have known good luck always came with a catch. Sam wondered if the password bore any resemblance to the name of a dead president and wished she hadn’t been so generous to the cab driver.

      While she considered her next move, the man cleaned the green stuff off his sunglasses and reapplied more to his nose. “I’m waaaaiiiiting,” he sang. Then he cleared his throat and sang it again an octave lower, adding a theatrical vibrato. “Not bad. Certainly good enough for off Broadway, not that there are many musicals off Broadway these days. But better than the dinner theater circuit, wouldn’t you say?”

      “I wouldn’t presume to say anything.”

      “I noticed.” He slipped the glasses back into place. “Don’t know the password? How about a piece of juicy gossip?”

      “I’ve only got this.” Sam held up the card she’d filched at the post office.

      “So you are here about the apartment. You’re late.”

      “I know, but Tavish didn’t say anything about a password.”

      “Consistency.” He gestured outward, as though reciting Shakespeare. “All I ask is consistency. Is that too much to ask?”

      Sam did a little gesturing of her own toward the beach setup. “I think you ask a lot more than that.”

      He stared at her—or maybe not. With the mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes, she couldn’t tell. “I like you. You may pass.” He waved her toward the elevator.

      “Thanks, uh…”

      “Franco Rossi, at your service.” He assumed the manner of a Spanish grandee, rolling his hand and inclining his head.

      “Thanks, Franco.”

      “Do run along. You’re blocking the light.”

      Oooookay. Sam didn’t need to be told twice. Jabbing the button on the elevator, she stared at the numbers above the door and willed the car to come.

      The Beach Boys swelled for a brief moment then retreated.

      “Who are you?” Sam heard.

      The elevator arrived and she nearly pulled open the doors herself. Escaping inside, she turned and saw a woman talking to the weird doorman, or whatever he was, and another pulling open the heavy plate-glass door.

      “Password?” she heard just before the doors closed.

      Great. More competition. She hoped there weren’t any more rules she didn’t know about.

      2

      THE APARTMENT WAS ON THE sixth floor. Just enough to get a modest workout, if Sam were so inclined. There were only three apartments on the floor and number 6C was at the end. Sam didn’t even have to look at the card. She could hear the crowd the moment she stepped off the elevator.

      What was she doing here? This was hopeless.

      But Sam had been in hopeless situations before—generally those including Josh Crandall…why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? Anyway, some of those had turned out to be not so hopeless after all because she’d persevered and that’s what she planned to do now. She’d persevere herself right into the apartment.

      Sam opened the door. Why knock? No one would hear her.

      The first thing she noticed was that the ratio of women to men was about, well, except for a couple of men who appeared to be brokers, the ratio was ninety-eight to two. The next thing she noticed was that there was a high percentage of blondes in the mix, including a woman with pink-blond hair and matching poodle.

      Sam was very definitely not a blonde.

      People were freely milling around, so Sam acted like she belonged there and milled as well. The apartment appeared to have three bedrooms, though one was currently being used as a combination office and video lair.

      Definitely bachelor pad material. She looked upward, expecting mirrors, but apparently Tavish’s excruciating taste extended only to cowboy vests. Maybe a touch of overkill on the Western look—how many steer horns did a person need?—but, hey, this was great. Fabulous location, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, generously spaced for a New York apartment, and she could always rent out the other bedrooms to help with the rent.

      Would that be a sub-sublet? Was that more illegal than a regular sublet?

      “Where is Tavish?” pouted one blonde.

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