When She Was Bad

3

Hotel dining room. White tablecloths, tinkle of glass and clatter of tableware, muted breakfast conversations. Striking vistas of Portland through tinted plate-glass windows. From the entrance alcove, Pender scanned the premises and spotted Irene Cogan, wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, sitting alone reading the Oregonian and picking desultorily at a grapefruit.

He crossed the room, his head pounding with every footfall, despite the double padding of his rubber-soled Hush Puppies on a thick gray carpet patterned with the hotel chain’s interlocking initials in burgundy. “Mind if I join you?”

“I like your outfit,” she said, gesturing graciously toward the empty chair across from her. He was wearing a white-on-white guayabera shirttails-out over not-yet-rumpled brown slacks. “Have we been invited to a Mexican wedding?”

“Har de har har,” said Pender, whose interview at the TPP offices down by the warehouse district was to begin in less than an hour and was expected to take all day. He turned to the hovering, white-jacketed waiter. “Screwdriver. Light on the oj, heavy on the Stoli. If it takes, I may consider solid food.”

“Hungover?” asked Irene, after the waiter left.

“Aaaargh! As Charlie Brown used to say.”

“Serves you right.”

“For what?”

“For all the booze you drank last night, what else?”

“Oh, that,” replied Pender, then: “Look, about last night…“

She held up both hands; two silver bracelets jingled as they slid down her long slender wrist. “Please, let’s not talk about it, okay?”

From that high point, the conversation flagged. Irene dissected her grapefruit and skimmed the newspaper; Pender sipped at his orange-tinted Stoli and gazed out the window at the cityscape below. “I’m sure glad this didn’t turn out awkward,” he said after a few minutes.

“Me too,” said Irene over the top of the newspaper. Then she folded it and slipped it into her gigantic Coach bag. “I keep thinking I ought to give Lily a call just to see how she’s doing. I know it’s inappropriate, but-”

“Why inappropriate? I mean, think of that poor kid, waking up in a strange place, not knowing anybody. And it’s probably just starting to sink in about her grandparents-of course you should call her, why shouldn’t you?”

Because she’s no longer my patient, thought Irene. Then she reminded herself that as far as her relationship with Lily was concerned, she’d crossed that line a long time ago. “You know, I think I will,” she told Pender.

“Tell her Uncle Pen says hi.”