Promises by Belva Plain Page B

the day on business.”
    He felt a stirring, an unwelcome sense of nuisance. He wished it were possible simply and crudely to tell her not to bother him.
    “I’ve so much to tell you, Adam. I’m sure you’re busy right now—”
    “Yes, I am,” he said.
    “So I thought maybe we might have a sandwich together. Whenever that’s good for you. I’ll be in town all day.”
    “I have an appointment, a business lunch.”
    “Then how about a quick drink, twenty minutes of your time around five? Just for old friendship’s sake?”
    “Randi, we were never ‘friends.’ ”
    “But we can be friends now, or I hope we can. Nothing more than that, Adam, I assure you. I told you when we met in New York that I have no designs on you. You seem to be afraid that I have.”
    She had perhaps not intended to provoke him with the remark, but to his ears she seemed to be making a fool of him, as though he were some sort of male spinster.
    “I assure you that never entered my mind,” he retorted.
    “Good. I was about to wish you well and hang up. So then, will the coffee bar at the Hotel Bradley be all right? It occurs to me that you might not want to go home with liquor on your breath.”
    “I’m free to go home in any condition I please, Randi. What do you think I am?”
    “Five-thirty, then?”
    “Five-thirty.”
    Before he went back to his charts, Adam passed a few minutes to contemplate a brief fall of thick, wet snow-flakes, settling and melting on the windowsill. The slow drift and the gray air were suddenly dispiriting; the energy that had pressed him to work so briskly only minutes ago had left him. What the devil had made him acquiesce to a pointless meeting this afternoon? There was no reason in the world why he should meet her, and there were several reasons why he should not. If there were any way of reaching her, he would call hernow and cancel. And he stood there with his back to the room, staring into the snow.
    Still, she did not seem to have had much luck with her life. You could certainly argue, he reflected, that it was her own fault, and you would be right, but where would that leave common compassion? When you thought about it, a total rejection would really be too harsh, wouldn’t it? And he wondered curiously what she might possibly be planning for herself. An apartment in Randolph Crossing was very out of the way. And what was she doing here in the first place? She had been talking about a choice between California and New York. Perhaps she was about to be married?
    Then he thought, I really was rough with her. And he remembered how agreeably she had spoken to him that time in New York, how she had admired Margaret and asked about their children. No, there could be nothing wrong in giving her a few harmless minutes of his time this afternoon.
    “The last time I saw you, I’m afraid I bored you with my dreary troubles,” Randi said. “Now I can tell you that things are looking better.”
    “I’m glad to hear it.”
    She seemed more familiar to him than she had seemed when they met in New York. She looked midwestern, dressed as small-town women are in the middle of a snowy winter with a thick woolen cap and a heavy windbreaker. But when these came off, he saw a coral choker and a silk scarf printed with cabbage roses.
    “I don’t remember whether I mentioned that I once worked in real estate in California.”
    “You told me.”
    “Well, I’ve applied for a license here, and as soon as it comes through, I have a job waiting. It’s in a small agency run by half a dozen women, but the area’s being developed, and it’s a good opportunity for me, I think.”
    “What brought you back to this area?” he asked.
    “One of the women who run the agency knew my brother, and so the contact was made. Anyway, the Midwest is home, and I decided I wanted to come home. That’s all there is to it. There are two main areas opening up,” she continued with enthusiasm. “One has huge houses that remind me