A Fashionable Affair Read online

  “Hi, Steven! How are you?”

  “Hi, Aunt Patsy,” the three-year-old returned with enthusiasm. “Did you bring me something?”

  “Steven,” his mother said despairingly.

  Patsy laughed. “I did. And I brought something for my godchild, too. Hi, Matthew.” The baby gurgled in reply.

  “What is it?” Steven asked.

  “You’ll see when we get home,” Patsy answered, and turned back to Sally. “Is Steve on duty today?” Steve Maxwell was an orthopedic surgeon at Long Island Medical Center on the north shore.

  “Yes, but he should be home for dinner. Michael is coming too. He was sorry to put you to the trouble of coming out, but I’m glad you did. It’s so good to see you.”

  Patsy hadn’t thought he sounded at all sorry, but she refrained from saying so to Sally. “It’s great to see you,” she said instead, and meant it.

  “Michael’s very busy,” his sister explained. “Last-minute tax returns, you know.”

  They chatted comfortably during the ten-minute ride to Sally’s house, a big old colonial with a fenced-in yard containing a gas grill, picnic table, sandbox, and swing set.

  “The house is looking great,” Patsy commented as she looked around the front hall and the living room. “You had the floors done.”

  “Yes. Finally. And we had new linoleum put down in the kitchen. My next big job is to refinish all the doors.”

  * * * *

  Patsy was playing blocks with Steven on the floor of the family room when Michael came in. She didn’t hear him at first. Sally was in the kitchen and had opened the door before he had even knocked. Michael stood for half a minute in the doorway watching her play with the little boy. She had a truck in her hand and was pushing it along a track they had built with the blocks. They were both making rumbling noises and Patsy was crawling on her hands and knees when she noticed a pair of Top-Siders in the doorway. She looked up and met a pair of amused hazel eyes. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Well, I am,” he replied amiably.

  “Uncle Michael! Uncle Michael!” Steven shrieked, and hurled himself forward.

  “Hi there, tiger,” Michael said, swinging him up into his arms.

  “Did you bring me anything?” Steven asked.

  Patsy laughed and got to her feet. “He’s got it down to a science.”

  “Of course I brought you something,” Michael answered. He put his nephew down, reached into his pocket, and removed a small magnet and a penny.

  Steven was absolutely delighted and raced off to show his mother.

  “I brought him a long black cord from an old dress of mine,” Patsy said. “He adored it. He was winding it around every doorknob in the house until we decided to play blocks.”

  Michael chuckled. “Between us, we’re spoiling him to death.”

  Patsy dusted off the knees of her wide-wale corduroy pants and looked at him from under her lashes. They were very lovely lashes, artfully darkened and naturally long—almost as long as his. He really looked very fit in those chino slacks and navy Izod shirt, she thought.

  “Did you manage to soothe your hysterical client?” she asked as she straightened up.

  “Marginally. He got himself into a mess, I’m afraid.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Tried to be clever with his taxes. It’s going to cost him plenty to bail out.”

  “Oh, dear. I can understand why he was hysterical. Can you help him?”

  “If he’ll listen to me. The advice I’m giving him is good, but I rather doubt he’s going to take it.”

  “He sounds like a nuisance,” Patsy said frankly.

  Michael shrugged. “My favorite clients are incompetent nuisances with their affairs in a mess.”

  “Like me?” Patsy asked sweetly.

  “Like you. What’s this racehorse I see you own?”

  Patsy decided to go along with the change of subject. “Ebony Lad? He’s a darling, and he’s done very well this year. He started to come on last fall. Earl Hibbard, his trainer, says he’s a late bloomer. He was a bust at three, and now at four, he’s turning into a winner.”

  “And a tax deduction.”

  Patsy laughed. “Yes. And he’s much more fun than shopping-center shares.”

  “Uncle Michael!” Steven raced back into the room, and in a few minutes he had both adults on the floor playing blocks with him.

  * * * *

  Sally fed the kids first and then put them to bed, so when the four adults finally sat down to dinner, peace reigned.

  “I’m delighted to see you, Patsy,” Steve said as they ate Sally’s delicious veal parmigiana, “but surprised. You don’t usually spend your Saturday nights so tamely.”

  “Yes,” Sally added, “where’s Don?”

  “Sulking,” Patsy replied.

  “Did you stand him up?”

  Patsy smiled and took a bite of her veal. “Terrific,” she approved. “I told him I was having a problem with my taxes.” She shrugged gracefully. “Really, he was quite petulant. Just like a little boy. Or—no. Little Steven and Matthew aren’t petulant at all. They’re much nicer than Don, in fact.”

  “Exit Don,” Sally remarked dryly, and her husband laughed.

  Patsy took another bite of veal. “Yes,” she said, “I rather think so.” She looked at Sally’s husband. “How do you like the hospital, Steve?”

  His blue eyes blazed. “It’s great,” he raved, and proceeded to tell her all about it.

  Sally, seated across the table from her friend, turned to Michael. “I’ve got a particularly tricky math problem for you,” she said. “One of the graduate assistants brought it to me and it’s a beaut. Will you look at it after dinner?”

  He looked suddenly alert. “Sure.” He began to ask her questions and soon the two were involved in a highly technical, totally incomprehensible conversation.

  “Do you still have that crazy cleaning woman?” Steve asked Patsy, abandoning the topic of the hospital.

  “Who? Oh—May, do you mean? Yes. She still cleans my apartment, and yes, she’s still trying to convert me.”

  “Convert you to what?” Michael asked, and Patsy, glad of an excuse to look at him, turned her head.

  “She’s an evangelical type, always trying to save me from my sinful life. Poor thing, she’s a bit bonkers, I think.”

  “She’s not only bonkers,” Steve said, “she’s damn offensive. I don’t know how you put up with it.”

  “I usually try not to be home when she comes,” Patsy replied. “The day you were in with the children was the last time I actually saw her.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” Steve said impatiently. “Why should you have to flee from your own house? Why don’t you just hire someone else?”

  “Because if I fire her, she’ll be out of work. I mean, who else would put up with her, poor soul? And the money she makes from me supplements her social-security check.”

  “Michael, do you remember Mr. Gerstner?” Sally asked.

  “God, yes.”

  “Mr. Gerstner was another one of Patsy’s sad cases,” Sally explained to her husband. “He taught history at Central High, and he was a disaster. The kids literally ran wild in his room. Once some boys set a pigeon loose in the classroom—a real live pigeon.”

  Steve looked unimpressed. “So? Every school has an ineffective teacher like that.”

  “Patsy felt sorry for him,” Sally continued. “She felt so sorry for him that she stood up in class during the third week we had him and told everybody off. It was quite impressive. Patsy, who never lost her temper at anything.”

  “Did they listen to you?” Steve asked.

  Patsy just smiled.

  “What do you think?” Michael said. There was a look of humor around his mouth.

  Steve grinned. “Everyone’s dream girl. Of course they listened to her.”

  “For the rest of the year,” Sally reported, “that class was angelic. Mr. Gerstner
thought he had died and gone to heaven.”

  “Adolescents can be horribly cruel,” Patsy said. “They don’t necessarily mean to be, but they often are.”

  “Patsy is never cruel,” Michael said, “except to her boyfriends.”

  “I’m never cruel to anyone,” Patsy said firmly. Michael looked amused but said nothing. Patsy felt an unfamiliar flash of annoyance. “Anyway,” she continued crossly, “what do you know about my boyfriends?”

  “Not much,” he replied cheerfully, “except that you’re cruel to them. Look at this Don fellow—cast off because he made the mistake of being petulant.”

  “Well, I don’t see that I have to put up with all sorts of infantile behavior just because a man thinks he’s in love with me.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Michael agreed.

  Patsy’s eyes actually flashed with temper.

  “Haven’t you ever been in love, Patsy?” Steve asked.

  “She’s always in love,” Sally said. “The problem is it never lasts.”

  “That’s true.” For some reason Patsy began to feel depressed. “I don’t know why, either.”

  “Your love affairs always conformed to whatever book you were reading at the time,” Michael said unexpectedly. “When you were reading Anna Karenina you fell for Derek Forsyte, a Vronsky type if ever I saw one.” Patsy stared at him in astonishment. “Then there was Peter Carteret when you were reading Pride and Prejudice.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Do you know,” Patsy said in awed accents, “I believe you’re right.”

  Sally and Steve rocked with laughter and Michael grinned.

  Patsy thought of the book she had been reading when she fell for Don. “But this is awful!” she said distressfully.

  “Don’t worry about it, Red,” Michael said good-naturedly. “It’s part of your charm.”

  Patsy straightened her shoulders. He sounded like her uncle, she thought indignantly. “Does the psychoanalysis come free or do you include it in your accounting fee?” she asked nastily.

  He didn’t seem to realize he’d been insulted. “It’s free,” he replied, looking directly at her. “Anytime.”

  The fluttery feeling was back in her stomach. His green-gold gaze held hers for a minute, then moved across the table to his sister’s face. “How is Uncle Frank doing?” he asked, effectively dropping Patsy from his sight, his attention, and his conversation. Patsy stared at him in a mixture of outrage, bewilderment, and a new emotion she didn’t quite yet recognize.

  After dinner Michael and Sally huddled over the math problem Sally had mentioned earlier, and Steve switched on the TV. Patsy sat and watched with him, feeling ignored. It was a feeling she was totally unfamiliar with, and one she didn’t like at all.

  Before Steve drove him home, Michael asked Patsy if she would stop by his place in the morning before returning to New York. He had a few things to ask her about her tax records. Patsy opened her mouth to say no. But she said yes, instead.

  Chapter Four

  Sally’s children were early risers—Patsy had Steven in bed with her at seven—and by nine o’clock the whole family was fed, and the grown-ups were showered and dressed.

  “I’m going to rout Michael out,” Patsy said to Sally. “I want to get back to New York by this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” Sally said. “I just hope he didn’t stay up all night working on that problem.”

  “Didn’t you solve it last night?”

  “Not completely. Frankly, I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Michael will, though.” She made a rueful face at Patsy. “And I’m the one with the degree in higher mathematics. I’m also very smart. Michael, however, is a genius.”

  “He was always going to major in math,” Patsy said slowly. “What made him switch to accounting?”

  “Have another cup of coffee before you go?” Sally asked.

  “Okay.” Patsy sat at the kitchen table. The sun was shining in the windows and from the next room came the sound of the baby romping in his playpen. Steve had taken Steven with him to get the morning papers.

  Sally poured the coffee and sat down as well. “It was my father,” she said, “or at least, what happened to my father.”

  “I wondered.”

  “You remember how awful it was, Patsy? There was Daddy, president of his own engineering firm, respected, successful, and then—bam—bankruptcy. None of us had any idea that Cal Perkins had been embezzling from the firm. Or making those terrible investments. He was always good ole Cal, Daddy’s trusted partner. Then Cal was in South America, and Daddy was left to face the music.”

  “Which he couldn’t do,” Patsy murmured sadly.

  “No.” Sally stared broodingly into her coffee cup. “The firm’s collapse was bad enough. Daddy’s suicide was”—she made a gesture—”unspeakable.”

  “I know,” Patsy whispered.

  “Michael couldn’t get it out of his mind that Cal had gotten away with robbery like that for years. He couldn’t believe that an audit hadn’t picked it up. But Cal was clever, and evidently the auditor was not very thorough.”

  “Or as equally crooked,” Patsy said.

  “Or as equally crooked. Anyway, that was when Michael switched majors. Luckily, he had a wrestling scholarship, because there wasn’t any family money left. I think it’s kind of a crusade with him—to catch the crooks and protect the innocent.”

  “The incompetent nuisances with their affairs in a mess,” Patsy quoted wryly.

  “Precisely.” Sally’s thin, intelligent face was very serious. “He’s not too popular in certain quarters, I’m afraid. He stirred up a nest of hornets when he caught Blanco.”

  “Mmm.” Patsy stirred her coffee. “Who are his girlfriends?” she asked, completely changing the subject.

  “There’s been a succession,” Sally replied, “but since college, he hasn’t been serious about anyone. They’ve all been just—diversions.” She sighed. “I wish he would get serious about someone. He should have his own kids, and not be spending all his paternal instincts on mine.”

  “Mmm,” Patsy said again.

  “You too.” Sally eyed her friend. “It’s time you stopped living like a butterfly and started thinking of settling down. You adore children.”

  “Like Michael, I have yours.”

  “Well, I’m not going to nag. I know you have a fairy-tale life and make millions of dollars, but I also know the real you, the person behind that incredible beauty of yours.” She rested her chin on her hands and looked thoughtfully at said incredibly beautiful face. “I know we were teasing you last night, Patsy, but hasn’t there ever been anyone you wanted to marry?”

  “No,” Patsy admitted regretfully. “There have been men I thought I was in love with, but to be honest, I never had any urge to marry. Which is funny, when you think of it, because I do want to get married; I do want children. But it has to be the right man, and so far ...” She made a helpless gesture with her hands.

  “I know. I was so lucky to find Steve. Without him, the world wouldn’t make sense—if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” Patsy said. “I do.”

  “I used to wonder sometimes what it must be like to be you, to live inside such a flawless body. Everything always seemed so easy for you. Anything you wanted, you got—with just a smile. The whole world was always in love with Patsy Clark.”

  Patsy’s brown eyes were somber. She brushed a stray golden-red curl off her forehead and said, “It isn’t always good to get things too easily.”

  “I suppose not. I said that to Michael once, you know, about wondering what it must be like to be you.”

  “Oh? And what did he say?”

  “He said a very strange thing—a very perceptive thing, I think. He said that great beauty can sometimes be a burden, that a great many people will never get beyond the beauty, will be so affected by it that they’ll totally fail to find the person underneath. He said it must often be difficult to be that person underneath.”<
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  There was a brief silence, and then Patsy said “That was a rather perceptive comment.” Even to herself her voice sounded odd. She pushed her coffee cup away and rose. “Well, Sal, thanks so much for the hospitality, but I’d better be pushing on.”

  “Okay,” Sally said equably. “Do you want me to ring Michael and tell him you’re on the way?”

  “That might be a good idea. I don’t want to rout him out of bed.”

  “Will do,” Sally promised and walked Patsy to her car. It was nine-thirty when Patsy pulled out of the driveway and started across the island toward the south shore and Michael Melville.

  * * * *

  Michael was renting a house in East Hampstead, and at precisely five minutes after ten, Patsy rang his front doorbell. Receiving no answer, she rang again. His car was parked in the driveway, so she knew he must be home. She was just preparing to ring again when she heard a voice saying, “Okay, okay, I’m coming,” and the door opened.

  Michael stood in the doorway, wallet in hand. He was wearing a bathrobe over his pajama bottoms. His hair was tousled and he was unshaven. His feet were bare. He stared at Patsy. “I thought you were the paperboy collecting.”

  “I’m not,” she answered helpfully.

  “No, I can see that.” He rubbed his head. “Sorry, the doorbell woke me up.”

  “Didn’t Sally call to say I was on my way?”

  “No.”

  “Oh she must have gotten sidetracked.” There was a pause before she added, “Do you keep all your clients hanging about on the doorstep like this?”

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and held the door open wider. “Come on in. What time is it?”

  “Ten o’clock. It’s easy to see there are no children in this house.”

  They were standing together in the hall, he rubbed his head again and yawned. “I was up half the night with that damn math problem.”

  “Hmmm. Do you always look this ghastly in the morning?”

  At that he grinned. “Come into the kitchen. I need a cup of coffee.”

  “Several, I should think,” Patsy murmured. She followed him into an old-fashioned kitchen and watched as he assembled the coffee things. “I’ll make it,” she offered. “Why don’t you go shower?”