LITMIR.BIZ

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doctor went back into the living room and sank again into the leather armchair. Always he warned patients not to expect too much from cosmetic surgery. If done correctly, once the healing was complete they would look much as their usual selves, only younger or well rested. But for some of them that wasn’t enough; they wanted to look like someone else because they wanted to be someone else. He sighed. They were seeing the wrong kind of doctor, he felt like telling them. They should—

      He heard the apartment door open and close. Sharon—finally! Already he felt better. They could talk things over. She would sympathize with him. Then, after her toenails dried, they could go out and get some dinner at a nice restaurant. Maybe that new place on Amsterdam that served a tasty Caesar salad and genuinely medium-rare steak with garlic potatoes—comfort food. A drink, a good meal, another drink, and the world might seem habitable again.

      Dr. Lucette waited, but Sharon didn’t emerge from the entry hall. Maybe she was waddling carefully, not wanting to get any nail polish on the carpet fibers.

      She was taking her damned time, feeding his irritation.

      At last he noticed a slight change of light and sensed her presence behind him and off to the side. He turned to look up and greet her but instead gasped.

      Someone was standing silently staring down at him, but it wasn’t Sharon.

      ELEVEN

      Outside the window, a cruel winter wind blew icy rain almost horizontally along the narrow avenue. The small patch of sky visible between the buildings across the street was gray as a bullet. Who was it who said weather needn’t affect mood?

      Myra sat at her wide, custom-built cherry-wood desk in her Myra Raven Group office and tried to reason on the phone with Web Thomas without sounding desperate. “I managed to rearrange schedules here at the office so I could be away for the weekend, Web.” Making him feel guilty.

      Not Web. He probably couldn’t even spell guilty. “I wish we could make it, Myra. I talked to somebody on the phone this afternoon, and the place is snowed in tight. She said it’s still snowing upstate.”

      What did this guy want? Did he forget that he was the one who worked to talk her into this? They’d had three dates and he’d pushed her for three days—and nights—at what he called his “cottage” in upstate New York. Then suddenly, like so many before him, he’d changed his mind. Maybe because of something she’d done or said, some way she’d glanced at him. Whatever the reason, she knew he’d come to see her differently. Even through the phone connection she could feel him pushing her away.

      Myra had been very much looking forward to this weekend. She knew that to somebody as rich as Web, a cottage could be somebody else’s idea of a mansion. She also knew from a conversation she’d overheard that he’d recently bought a new all-wheel-drive BMW that could probably cut through snow like an Olympic skier.

      So maybe he didn’t want to risk a new car on icy country roads. “Our company car is a Lexus SUV,” she told him.

      “That would be great except for the bridge.”

      “Bridge?”

      “Yeah, you have to drive across an old covered bridge to get to the cottage, and the weight of the snow caused the thing to collapse.”

      He hadn’t missed a beat; maybe his excuse was genuine. Maybe he was going to suggest someplace other than his cottage. Dinner, a show, a hotel here in town. Or her place, her bed. She was ready to offer her bed if he hinted.

      But he didn’t suggest something else. “Maybe it’s just as well, Myra. I’ve got a load of reports to go over, anyway.”

      That was a laugh. If anyone had a make-work job, it was Web. Worthless Web.

      “Maybe if—” She stopped herself. She had pride—maybe too much of it.

      “Myra? You still there?”

      “Not anymore,” she said, with more bitterness than she’d intended.

      He laughed. “You’re taking this a bit too seriously.”

      She didn’t like his laughter, or his remark. Because she was beginning to take him seriously.

      “Here’s an idea, Myra. Why don’t we just meet at the Royalton about eight, have something to drink, then go on up to a room? The snow is all upstate, not here where we can still get together.”

      Too late. And not even dinner and a show. “A weekend at the Royalton?’

      “Not a weekend. Just tonight. I wouldn’t try to talk you into an entire weekend.”

      “No, thanks, Web.” I don’t want to be your casual fuck.

      “It isn’t as if we don’t know each other well enough, Myra.”

      She didn’t like that last remark, either.

      He didn’t misinterpret her silence. “Why don’t you think about it and call back in an hour or so?” he asked in a forced conciliatory tone.

      “No need for that, Web. I already have my weekend appointments set up, including this evening and tomorrow morning.”

      “I thought you rearranged your schedule.”

      “I was going to,” she snapped.

      “C’mon. You’re a group, Myra—all your advertising says so. You have salespeople to do that sort of work.”

      “I have salespeople because I’ve got a successful agency. And I have a successful agency because I still do myself what I ask my people to do.”

      “Your people. Jesus, Myra! The world won’t stop spinning if you take a weekend off and enjoy yourself. Your people should be able to get along for a short while without you, maybe even sell a few condos and co-ops.”

      She knew he wouldn’t understand. He’d been born to money, gone to excellent schools, then gone to work in the family business—yacht parts or something—and that was the extent of his experience and the limits of his horizons. He hadn’t come from where she came from. Hadn’t even visited. They were good together in bed, but not in the rest of the world. “If you don’t understand,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

      “Now you’re pissed at me.”

      “No, I’m just frustrating you and you’re misinterpreting it as my being pissed. That’s because you’re used to getting what you want.”

      “My, my…coldhearted bitch.” He said it as a joke, but it had steel in it.

      What did he expect? Of course she was angry. Fighting mad, in fact. He had left her no escape route from her embarrassment at being stood up, no way to save face, to maintain her facade. So she became combative. Even a sparrow would fight to the death when cornered. He didn’t think of her as a sparrow. She lowered her voice. “I thought you liked it that way, Web.”

      “Myra, play above the belt. This kind of confrontation makes no sense. Why don’t you think things over, then call me back in about an hour and give me a definite answer?”

      “I’ve got a better idea, Web. Why don’t you call me back—when you have a piece of property to sell?”

      She hung up crisply but without banging the receiver.

      She knew he’d call back. If not today, tomorrow. Or maybe he’d find somebody else for his hotel tryst tonight, start another surface relationship. Myra didn’t care.

      Couldn’t care.

      Standing up behind her desk, she smoothed the wrinkles in the slacks of her business suit, then walked from her office to the sales cubicles where her agents were seated at their desks when they weren’t showing property. The large, blue-carpeted area was brightly lighted by overhead fluorescent fixtures. A door in the far wall led to a reception area with genuine Chippendale chairs and a Sheraton pie crust table. Tasteful oil reproductions

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