Gene Wolfe - An Evil Guest

Zelda paused for breath, and Cassie said, “A good show, which this isn’t.”

“But say a year. Just one year. For the final three months of that year Cassie will be making thirty percent more than she’ll make on opening night.”

Sharon said, “I’ve got it.”

“Next point...”

The telephone rang. More quickly than a woman without experience might be expected to, Cassie unplugged it.

“My next point,” Zelda continued, “is that she’s down for two percent of the gross. Not two percent of the profit, two percent of the gross. Let’s say the theater seats two thousand. That’s small but let’s say it. Let’s say that tickets average twenty bucks, which is dirt cheap for a hit show. The gross is forty thou a night. That’s eight hundred over and above salary per night. If there are six performances a week, which is low, one month is about twenty thousand. Should I give you the figure for a year?”

Sharon shook her head. “I can to the math.”

“Meanwhile, her salary keeps going up and up and up.”

“If,” Cassie muttered.

“Not if. Here are my next to last and last, and I’ll make ’em fast. There are months of rehearsal ahead. A bad book can be fixed. Bad songs can be fixed, and dance numbers the same. Shows fold because they don’t have backing. I don’t have to tell you who’s backing this one.”

“Rosenquist?”

“Exactly. Last point, shows fail because the talent’s not there. The redhead in the big brown chair’s going to star in this one. You may think she’s ordinary now — ”

“I’m not blind,” Sharon said.

“When we did lunch, everybody looked. Men, women, even kids, and they kept looking. By the time we’d gotten a table and ordered, I knew I was sitting across from a fortune. Something happened before Red Spot closed. I don’t know — ”

Cassie rose and Margaret said, “What is it, Miss Casey?”

“There’s too much noise in here, too many people talking. I need to be alone, and I’m going out on the balcony for — for as long as it takes me to sort things out. You can go home if you want to, or stay.”

She scooped her cell phone off the coffee table “I know this isn’t polite, but I’ve got to think or scream. Screaming wouldn’t help, so I’m going to step outside.”

Zelda asked, “Is this about signing?”

“You can make coffee or tea, or have a glass of wine. Or leave. Whatever you want. Watch vid.” Cassie opened the French doors through which she had, not long ago, seen a chauffeur shut the rear door of a white limousine.

The air on her balcony seemed purer and sweeter than the atmosphere in her apartment, delightfully cool rather than cold. Autumn was on its way, but today it dallied by the roadside.

She shut the French doors behind her, turned her back to them, and scrolled up a number she had by now memorized.

“This is Gideon Chase, but my telephone is temporarily out of service. I have to sleep sometime...”

It was the familiar message. Cassie pressed OFF.

Five floors below, pedestrians hurried past the narrow strip of lush green lawn in front of the building. Parked cars littered the street, although cars were not supposed to park there. Trucks and buses made far too much noise, and cabs dawdled, hoping to be flagged down by a doorman. Across the street, a man in a dark doorway lit a cigarette, his face visible for a second in the flare of his lighter.

Above it all, an aching blue sky assured her that it cradled Mariah’s island even as it stretched over her dirty northern city. “I hope you’re nicer there,” she told it. “I wish I could be there instead of just playing at it.”

“ARE you ready?” Zelda asked when Cassie stepped back into her living room.

“I think so. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Margaret clearly wanted to hug her but did not. “It was only about ten minutes, Miss Casey.”

Sharon said, “I’m going to report what I hear here, unless you ask me not to.”

“About sleeping with Wallace Rosenquist?”

“I won’t say it like that. I’ll hint. You know.”

Zelda said, “Good publicity, Cassie.”

Sharon nodded. “It will be. They’ll want to come to see you, and maybe see him.”

“I don’t think so,” Cassie said, “but I don’t know. Maybe they will.”

Sharon asked, “Do you want to know what I’ve decided?”

“I ought to feel terribly tired,” Cassie mused. “I know I should, but I don’t. I’m getting my second wind or something. Have you ever wanted to help out somebody you loved, and known that the only thing you could do for him was some tiny stupid thing that was a lot of trouble? And done it anyway? Any of you?”

Margaret nodded.

Sharon said, “Not me.”

Zelda said, “Yes, for Joe-Boy. I don’t think you ever saw him.”

Cassie shook her head.

“He was my son and he was in the hospital, getting ready to go. He wanted one particular toy. I ditched work and went looking for it. It took all day to find it, but I did and brought it to him. He couldn’t talk by then, but he smiled. It was the last time I ever saw him smile. He passed away that night.”

Cassie nodded, finding she could not speak.

“The boss called me in the next day and fired me. And — listen, Cassie. Listen really, really carefully.”

She nodded again. “I am.”

“That was when I opened my own agency. Inside a year I was taking in more than I ever had in my life. Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I didn’t know any of this,” Cassie said. “Thank you. I owed you a lot already.”

Sharon said, “Enough to sign?”

“Yes. And if I weren’t such a bitch I’d have done it straight off.”

Zelda cleared her throat. “I thought I was done, and I ought to be. Now I may queer a deal that would make me rich — but I feel like I’ve got to do this. Remember the note the building guy wrote?”

Cassie nodded, seized by a sudden dread.

“I’ve read it and I’ve got no idea what the heck he’s talking about, but it sounds like it might be personal. I was going to hang on to it until you signed. Or didn’t. Now...” Zelda shrugged. “I guess I’m chicken.”

Margaret took the note and passed it to Cassie.

Five words, written in a hasty scrawl: Infected. He is getting treatment .

“That settles it,” Cassie said. “Have you got a pen?”

SHE waited until they were gone before playing the message the first call had left on her answering machine. The voice was male, deep, and somewhat harsh.

“This is Wallace Rosenquist. I’ll pick you up for dinner at seven. I realize you may not want to join me, and may have other plans. But I assure you that if you will consent to dinner you will learn something to your advantage.”

Usually, Cassie reflected, the question was one of dressing to make the best possible impression. This was more like the blind dates she had suffered through in high school and college. Did she even want to make a good impression?

Perhaps not.

After much thought, she wore her second-best black dress, black pumps, and a little necklace her mother had given her long ago. Those, and her watch.

She had expected him to be prompt, but his white limousine pulled up to the curb at seven fifteen. The chauffeur got out and went into her building without opening the rear door. She was about to turn away when the rear door opened. She waited and watched until her telephone rang.

She picked it up and said hello.

“Miz Casey? This is Preston, the doorman. There’s a driver here who says he has a message for you. I think you can probably see his car out front if you look out your window. The big white one?”