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As Naomi passed her secretary's desk, she stopped to pick up an Express Mail package that had just arrived, and in the process knocked a magazine onto the floor. “I'll get it,” her secretary said, as she reached down.
But Naomi had already picked it up, her critical eye caught by the series of candid photographs on the page that had fallen open. She felt a prickle go up the back of her neck—an instinctive reaction that told her more clearly than any focus group when she was onto something big. Her Sassy Girl! Profile, full-face, three-quarters—each photograph was better than the last. On the floor of her secretary's office, she had found her American Beauty rose.
And then she scanned the caption. The girl wasn't a professional model, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. She flipped to the front cover and frowned. “This magazine's six months old.”
“I was cleaning out my bottom drawer, and—”
“Never mind.” She turned back to the photographs and tapped the page with her index finger. “Make some phone calls while I'm in my meeting and see if you can locate her. Don't make any contact; just find out where she is.”
But when Naomi returned from her meeting with Harry Rodenbaugh it was only to discover that her secretary hadn't been able to come up with anything. “She seems to have dropped out of sight, Mrs. Tanaka. No one knows where she is.”
“We'll find her,” Naomi said. The wheels in her mind were already clicking away as she mentally shuffled through her list of contacts. She glanced down at her Rolex oyster watch and calculated time differentials. Then she snatched up the magazine and headed into her office. As she dialed her telephone, she looked down at the series of pictures. “I'm going to find you,” she said to the beautiful woman looking up from the pages. “I'm going to find you, and when I'm done, your life will never be the same.”
The walleyed cat followed Francesca back to the motel. It had dull gray fur with bald patches around its bony shoulders from some long-ago fight. Its face had been squashed to the side, and one eye was misshapen, the iris rolled back into the cat's head so that only the milky white showed. To add to his unsavory appearance, he had lost the tip of one ear. She wished the animal had chosen someone else to follow along the highway, and she quickened her steps as she turned into the parking lot. The cat's unrelenting ugliness disturbed her. She had this illogical feeling that she didn't want to be around anything so ugly, that some of that ugliness might rub off on her, that people are judged by the company they keep.
“Go away!” she commanded.
The animal gave her a faintly malevolent look, but didn't alter its path. She sighed. With the way her luck had gone lately, what did she expect?
She had slept through her first afternoon and night in Lake Charles, only dimly aware of Dallie coming into the room and making a racket, then making another racket when he left the next morning. By the time she had come fully awake, he'd been gone for several hours. Nearly faint with hunger, she had rushed through her bath, afterward making free use of Dallie's toiletries. Then she had picked up the five dollars he had left her for food and, staring down at the bill, made one of the most difficult decisions of her life.
In her hand she now carried a small paper sack containing two pairs of cheap nylon underpants, a tube of inexpensive mascara, the smallest bottle of nail polish remover she could find, and a package of emery boards. With the few cents that remained, she had purchased the only food she could afford, a Milky Way candy bar. Thick and heavy, she could feel its satisfying weight at the bottom of the paper sack. She had wanted real food—capon, wild rice, a mound of salad with blue cheese dressing, a wedge of truffle cake—but she had needed underpants, mascara, salvation for her disgraceful fingernails. As she had walked the mile back along the highway, she thought of all the money she had thrown away over the years. Hundred-dollar shoes, thousand-dollar gowns, money flying from her hands like cards from a magician's fingertips. For the price of a simple silk scarf, she could have eaten like a queen.
Since Francesca didn't have the price of a scarf, she had decided to make the most of her culinary moment, humble though it might be. A shady tree grew beside the motel, complete with a rusted lawn chair. She was going to sit in the chair, enjoy the warmth of the afternoon, and consume the chocolate bar morsel by morsel, savoring each bite to make it last. But first she had to get rid of the cat.
“Shoo!” she hissed, stomping her foot on the asphalt. The cat tilted its lopsided head at her and stood its ground. “Go away, you bloody beast, and find someone else to bother.” When the animal wouldn't move, she expelled her breath in disgust and stomped toward the lawn chair. The cat followed. She ignored it, refusing to let this ugly animal ruin her pleasure in the first food she'd eaten since Saturday evening.
Kicking off her sandals as she sat down, she cooled the bottoms of her feet in the grass while she dug into the bag for her candy bar. It felt as precious as a bar of gold bullion in her hand. Carefully unwrapping it, she dampened her finger to pick up a few errant chocolate slivers that fell out of the wrapper onto her jeans. Ambrosia... She slid the corner of the bar into her mouth, sank her teeth through the chocolate shell and into the nougat, and bit through. As she chewed, she knew she had never tasted anything so wonderful in her life. She had to force herself to take another slow bite instead of stuffing it all into her mouth.
The cat emitted a deep, gravelly sound, which Francesca guessed was some perverted form of a meow.
She glared at it, standing near the tree trunk watching her with its one good eye. “Forget it, beast. I need this more than you do.” She took another bite. “I'm not an animal person, so you don't have to stare at me like that. I've no affection for anything that has paws and doesn't know how to flush.”
The animal didn't move. She noticed its protruding ribs, the dullness of its fur. Was it her imagination or did she sense a certain sad resignation in that ugly, walleyed face? She took another small bite. The chocolate no longer tasted nearly as good. If only she didn't know how terrible hunger pangs felt.
“Dammit to bloody hell!” She jerked a chunk off the end of the bar, broke it into small pieces, and laid them on top of the wrapper. As she placed it all on the ground, she glared at the animal. “I hope you're satisfied, you miserable cat.”
The cat walked over to the chair, bent his battered head to the chocolate, and consumed every morsel as if he were doing her a favor.
Dallie got back from the course after seven that evening. By that time she had repaired her fingernails, counted the cinder blocks on the walls of the room, and read Genesis. When he came through the door, she was so desperate for human company that she jumped up from her chair, only restraining herself at the last moment from running over to him.
“There's the ugliest cat I've ever seen in my life out there,” he said, throwing his keys down on the dresser. “Damn, I hate cats. Only animal in the world that I can't stand is a cat.” Since at that particular moment, Francesca wasn't too fond of the species herself, she didn't offer any argument. “Here,” he said, tossing a sack at her. “I brought you some dinner.”
She let out a small cry as she grabbed the sack and tore it open. “A hamburger! Oh, God
... chips, lovely chips! I adore you.” She pulled out the french fries and immediately shoved two into her mouth.
“Jeez, Francie, you don't have to act as if you're starving to death. I left you money for lunch.”
He pulled a change of clothes from his suitcase and disappeared into the bathroom for a shower. By the time he returned in his customary uniform of jeans and T-shirt, she had appeased her hunger but not her desire for company. However, she saw with alarm that he was getting ready to go out again.
“Are you leaving already?”
He sat down on the end of the bed and pulled on his boots. “Skeet and me have an appointment with a man named Pearl.”
“At this time of night?”
He chuckled. “Mr. Pearl keeps real flexible hours.”
