The Wingthorn Rose. Melvyn Chase

started to answer, but didn’t.

      She said, more softly, “I’ll see you on Saturday.”

      “On Saturday.”

      He looked back at the print on the wall. Nothing had changed.

      Saturday night was warm and dry.

      When he drove up to Margot Sinclair’s house, she was sitting outside on the white wrought iron bench near the front steps. She was wearing a simple beige dress, a string of pearls and small pearl earrings.

      She stood up to greet him. Her two-inch heels lifted her closer to his eye level, but she was still so small and slender that, at first, she looked like a child pretending to be a woman. As she came closer to him, she held out her hand and watched him approach, that illusion dissolving into the early-summer air.

      “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

      “I guess so,” he replied.

      She laughed. “I can’t even pin you down on that?”

      “It is definitely a beautiful night. No question about it.”

      “The restaurant isn’t far from here, so we have plenty of time. Would you like a glass of wine before we go?”

      “Sure.”

      “I’ve got a Pinot Grigio and a Merlot. At the moment, that’s my entire wine cellar. What’s your pleasure?”

      “Merlot.”

      She made a quick trip into the house and returned with the wine and two glasses on a round wooden tray. She gestured for him to sit at one end of the bench. She sat at the other end, placing the tray down between them, and poured the wine.

      “To the future,” she toasted, touching his glass with hers.

      He sampled the wine. “This is pretty good for a two-wine cellar.”

      “Anything exciting happening in your life?”

      “Not really. What about your life?”

      She sipped her wine, savored it.

      “I’ve been thinking about making a change,” she said.

      “What kind of change? What are you smiling about?”

      “You looked very suspicious when I said that. The change has nothing to do with you. Not directly, anyway. On Saturday night, you asked me why I was working as an executive assistant when I had a degree in Economics. The answer is: I just wanted to drift for a while. To do something that wouldn’t demand much of me.”

      “And now you’re tired of drifting?”

      “Yes. I’m afraid of what I might become.”

      He wondered if he was what she was afraid of becoming.

      “What kind of job are you looking for? Secretary of the Treasury?”

      “I doubt Clinton needs another woman to worry about right now.”

      Lucas laughed. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask him.”

      “When I graduated from college, I worked at the headquarters of a regional bank for a while—as an economist. The job didn’t pay much, but I had a chance to do what I enjoy most: play with numbers. Modeling, forecasting, regression analysis. Music to my ears.”

      “I never paid much attention to forecasts. I could never get the experts to agree.”

      “Be careful. You almost told me something about yourself.”

      “We were talking about you.”

      “You remind me of a guy I dated last year. He was in the N.S.A. I don’t know what his job was, but practically nobody knows what they do, right? Every time I asked him a question, he would stop and think for a few seconds before he answered. It was like talking to someone on one of those old satellite phones: there was always a delay between my questions and his answers. Finally, after two dates, I asked him what the hell was going on. Of course, he didn’t answer me right away. He stopped, thought for a minute and told me that, when you do the kind of work he does—top secret stuff—you’re always editing what you say to other people, even the people you work with. If they don’t have a need to know, you don’t tell them. So that’s what this poor guy was doing all the time. Making sure that he didn’t tell me something that was Top Secret.”

      Lucas smiled.

      “You do the same thing to me all the time. You’re not a master spy, are you?”

      “If I was, I wouldn’t tell you, would I?”

      “I give up.”

      “Don’t,” he said quickly, and just as quickly regretted saying it.

      She put her hand on his arm. “Giving up is not one of my virtues.”

      She watched his eyes, waiting for another signal.

      He said, as casually as he could, “Why not just take me as I am? Right now, tonight.”

      “I wish I could. You’re a very attractive man and I don’t want to chase you away. But I can’t help it: I want to know you better. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about you. Hoping you would call. Hoping you were thinking about me. But I doubted it. You always seem to have something else on your mind.”

      “I’ve thought about you, too.”

      He felt awkward, uncertain, as if he were an actor at the first, tentative run-through of a new play.

      He put his wine glass down on the tray, leaned forward and took her hand.

      “I didn’t plan on meeting you,” he said.

      “You’re kind of a surprise to me, too. But who cares about plans?”

      She smiled and added, “When I was a kid, I didn’t plan to be this short, but I can live with it.”

      “So we’ll go slow. Okay?”

      “Okay.”

      He leaned back, slipping his hand from hers.

      They sipped their wine thoughtfully for a few minutes.

      Then she put her empty glass next to his, lifted the tray and said, “I’ll be back in a minute. We’ll go to dinner.”

      He watched her go back into the house, smiled at her when she came out.

      At the Italian restaurant, the Chianti was hearty, and the veal and pasta delicious.

      The place was jammed with tables set too close together, with extra chairs added to accommodate an overflow crowd, primarily Italian families, each with several children, as well as assorted grandparents, uncles and cousins. A continuous wave of laughter, shouting and recorded music washed over them. The noise was overpowering.

      After a few minutes of trying to communicate, Lucas said, loudly, “I’m glad you picked such an intimate spot.”

      “Sorry. I usually come here for lunch. It’s a lot quieter in the afternoon. A business crowd.”

      He shrugged, she smiled, as they enjoyed their dinner silently.

      Lucas welcomed the break in the conversation. Things were moving too quickly for him.

      He shouldn’t have called her. She was a distraction. And he wasn’t careful enough about what he said.

      But why should it make any difference? He enjoyed being with her. And it had been a long time since he enjoyed being with anyone.

      As long as he didn’t lose his focus.

      As long as he was careful.

      As long as he remembered that Pennington was the only thing that mattered.

      And that Pennington wasn’t the end