And now, a day later, my meetings done for the day, a rendezvous with Tom, Henry and Cassidy planned in the hotel’s bar in some twenty minutes, I debate telling Heidi about the note. But what good would it do? It would throw Heidi into a nosedive, that’s what it would do. Having proof that the girl was abused—or at least a claim of abuse—would be enough for Heidi to suggest we keep her. Forever. Like the damn kittens. They’re staying.
There’s a knock at the door. I barely register the sound before Heidi, over the phone, snaps, “Who’s that?” and I lie, claiming, “Room service,” because I refuse to admit that Cassidy offered to stop by and proofread the offering memorandum—the company profile and financials for some asset we’re trying to sell—before we all head down to the hotel bar for a nightcap.
I move from the bed and to the door, telling Heidi how I ordered room service. How I was staying in for the night to finish up the offering memorandum which I was supposed to finish last weekend. How I ordered a turkey club sandwich and cheesecake and how I might tune in for the end of the Cubs game, if I finish the offering memorandum in time.
I slide the door open and find, as expected, Cassidy on the other side, bright red lipstick delineating her lips so that I can think of nothing but those lips.
I raise a finger to my mouth and silently whisper Shh.
And then, louder, so Heidi can hear, “Did you bring any ketchup?” and watch as Cassidy stifles a laugh.
I’m going straight to hell, I think as I thank the bogus room service attendant and slam the door closed, grateful when Heidi says she’ll let me go so my food doesn’t grow cold.
“Love you,” I say, and she says, “Me, too.”
I toss my phone onto the bed.
I watch Cassidy move across the room with gall. As if this is her room. There’s no hesitation about it, no hovering in the doorway waiting to be invited in. Not with Cassidy.
She’s changed her clothes. Only Cassidy would change from a dress into a dress for a nightcap, replacing the formal black suit with a Grecian style dress, fitted and sleeveless, the color of rust. She sits on a low yellow armchair slinging one long leg across the other, asking first about the offering memorandum, and then about Heidi.
“She’s good,” I say, pulling up the offering memorandum on my laptop and handing it to Cassidy, careful not to touch as the computer passes between hands. “Yup, she’s good.”
And then I excuse myself before I say it a third time, forcing my eyes to stay on her eyes and not her legs or her lips, or her breasts in the rust-colored dress. Not big. But not small, either. The kind that work well on Cassidy’s lissome frame. Too much extra baggage would throw the whole thing off. She’d be disproportionate, I think as I stand, staring at the display of hotel freebies on the bathroom’s black sink—shampoo, conditioner, lotion, soap—as I rip open the soap and wash my face, splashing cold water on the skin so that I’ll stop thinking about Cassidy’s knockers.
Or her long legs.
Or the lips. Red lips. The color of a cayenne pepper.
She calls to me from the adjoining room, and I step from the bathroom, patting my face dry with a towel. I slide into my own low yellow armchair beside hers, and pull it up to the round table.
We go over the offering memorandum. I focus on words like shares and stocks and per unit, and not the manicured hands that work their way across the computer screen, or the skirt of the rust-colored dress hovering mere millimeters from my leg.
*
We head downstairs when we finish, standing side by side on the elevator. Cassidy leans close to me to mock a man riding downstairs with us, a man with a bad toupee, as she elongates her neck and laughs out loud, her fingernails grazing the skin on my forearm.
I wonder what others think of us: me with a wedding band, her without.
Do they see us as colleagues in New York on a business trip, or something more than that: me the adulterer and her the mistress?
In the hotel’s bar, I snag the steel side chair so that Cassidy is forced onto a low sofa with Tom and Henry. We drink. Too much. We talk. Gossip. Make fun of coworkers and clients, which is far too easy to do. Satirize spouses, and then claim to be kidding when someone’s wife becomes the butt of a joke.
Heidi.
Cassidy sips from a Manhattan, leaving ruby red lip marks along the edges of the cocktail glass, and says, “See this, gentlemen, is the reason I’ll never get married,” and I wonder which it is: that she refuses to be the butt of some joke, or refuses to mock the one she vowed to love in good times and in bad. Sickness and health. So long as they both shall live.
Or maybe it’s the whole monogamy thing that dissuades her.
And then, later, in the john, a completely sauced Henry accosts me with a condom. “In case you need this later,” he says, and he laughs a haughty laugh with that lewd sense of humor that is Henry Tomlin.
“I hardly think Heidi and I need birth control,” I say, but I take it anyway and slide it into my pants pocket, not wanting to be crass and leave it on the bathroom sink.