Worst Case Scenario by Michael Bowen Page A

the hired help enough to find out that you’re about the only one here for the conference that hadn’t hightailed it out of town.”
    â€œRelative?” Michaelson asked. “Friend? Associate?”
    â€œFriend,” Gallagher said. The syllable was almost a moan, Gallagher’s voice throbbing with pain as he spoke it.
    â€œI’m very sorry for your loss,” Michaelson said. “I don’t know that I can offer much consolation. I only met Ms. Bedford in passing. But if you think it would help to talk to someone who was here this weekend, I’m happy to do it. If you’re staying over, perhaps tomorrow morning would be a good time.”
    â€œExcuse me for interrupting,” Marjorie said, “but it occurs to me that if I weren’t here, you two would be having your talk immediately, and I think that that’s what ought to happen.”
    â€œNo, no,” Gallagher said almost shyly. “I know three’s a crowd. I just—”
    â€œNot a bit of it,” Marjorie said, her voice a model of brook-no-nonsense feminine firmness. “I’ve had Richard’s undivided attention for the last four hours, and I can certainly share him for the next ninety minutes or so.” She glanced at her watch. “Just give me a chance to comb my hair. Richard, I’ll knock on your door in seven minutes.”
    With that she strode toward the elevators, exuding a regal confidence so complete that footmen trailing in her wake would have seemed superfluous.
    His head spinning a bit from the delicate finesse that had turned his intended confrontation of Michaelson into a three-party conversation without his ever quite realizing what was happening, Gallagher stood with Michaelson for over a minute, waiting to no purpose he could discern. He couldn’t have been expected to know that by “combing my hair” Marjorie had meant closing the connecting doors between the adjoining rooms that she and Michaelson had. The weighty suitcase that had caught Pilkington’s attention when Marjorie checked in lay open on the bed in Marjorie’s room, its load of thirty-two brand-new hardcover books displayed for random perusal. The clear implication was that Marjorie wouldn’t be using that bed herself. She didn’t really think that this would scandalize Gallagher, but she saw no reason to take any chances.
    ***
    â€œWhy did she break the first two off?” Marjorie asked Gallagher once they were well into the conference in Michaelson’s room that they’d arranged improvisationally in the lobby. Michaelson realized that this was a question he wouldn’t have considered asking. He was surprised and intrigued when it pulled a smile from Gallagher.
    â€œShe thought I was too good for her,” he said. “Swear to God. Buried one wife, six kids going from a Sunday-school teacher to a fighter pilot to a bouncer in a roadhouse, just a big old salesman who got lucky, and she acted like I was a combination of Joe Willie Namath and Robert E. Lee.”
    â€œMost women I know,” Marjorie said carefully, “would have found a way to deal with that.”
    â€œMost women aren’t Sharon.” Gallagher took a long drink from a bottle of Budweiser. “She saw a picture of me from ’Nam in my ranger outfit and she couldn’t get over it. Like I was a Green Beret or something. I told her I was nothing special, maybe half a step above an MP, but it was just exactly like talking to that wall over there. There wasn’t any way I was gonna make myself into a normal human being in her eyes, so I had to hope she’d get herself up into the same kind of category she was putting me in.”
    â€œWhich meant a job back on the inside,” Michaelson said.
    â€œYessir. She never really got over losing her NSC job. She had decent enough jobs after that, but she couldn’t stay interested in something where the most important