Smoke and Mirrors (9 page)

"I should hope so. This isn't any nine-to-five job, she'll be
staying. I've had a room prepared for her. I suppose I'd better show her, but she'll have to get right to work. Hurry, both of you."

She turned back to the stairs, holding the rail with her good hand. Jeff gave Erin a meaningful glance and followed Kay, ready to steady her if she stumbled again. Once inside, he disappeared into the office and Kay fussily directed Erin to the stairs. Erin wondered what on earth she would do if Kay fell. Drop the suitcase, grab the rail, and hope for the best, she supposed; Kay outweighed her by at least fifty pounds.

Fortunately she was not called upon to put her plan into effect. Kay's steps were slow but firm; she paused to catch her breath on the landing and then proceeded up another flight of stairs to the third floor. "Here we are," she panted, opening a door. "This will be your room."

Erin's image stared back at her from a mirror opposite the door. If she had come into the room at night and seen the reflection, she probably would have yelled and backed out again; the streaked worn surface distorted her features hideously, and patches of silver had worn off, giving her face a leprous look. The mirror and the dresser to which it was attached stood between two windows. They were dormers; the roof slanted sharply down on that side of the room. A braided rug covered part of the worn floor. The narrow single bed was part of a suite, matching the dresser and a chest of drawers; it had once been pretty furniture, with an inlaid design of formalized flowers and leaves, but some of the inlay had fallen out and the veneer was flaking.

Kay dropped heavily onto the bed, producing a squawk of rusting springs that boded ill for the future sleeper. She pressed her hand to her heaving chest and waited for her breathing to slow, while Erin examined her new quarters. There wasn't much left to examine—a big, ugly wardrobe on the wall to her right, a few chairs, and a closed door in the left-hand wall. Life was certainly strange, she thought philosophically. Here she was, translated in less than a day from her small apartment to the dwellings of the rich and famous. But this wasn't exactly the setting she had pictured.

"My room is next door," Kay said. "We'll be sharing the bath, it's across the hall. I hope you don't mind being way up here; the
stairs are no problem for a young thing like you, and it will be convenient for me to have you close by, in case I need help dressing."

So she was expected to act as Kay's maid, as well as her office assistant. Jeff had tried to warn her, and Erin knew she had no legitimate cause for complaint. Hadn't Rosemary stressed flexibility and willingness to lend a hand? Erin didn't mind performing personal services for other people, she had done a great deal of it for her mother, who took a certain rueful pride in her own lack of domestic talent. Erin had been glad to sew on buttons, arrange hair, carry trays, and smooth pillows when her mother took to her bed with a cold or flu.

She couldn't object to assisting an elderly woman, her superior in rank, who was temporarily incapacitated. Nobody had promised her a rose garden—or anything else. She was lucky to be getting a salary, and she suspected she owed that to the streak of sentimentality in Rosemary that Jeff had stressed. She ought to be grateful—but the situation was depressingly reminiscent of the one that had characterized her other job.

She reminded herself that Kay really did need her help, and that she ought to understand. She had broken her wrist once, in high school, when an overenthusiastic teammate had whacked her with a hockey stick, and she remembered all too well how maddeningly helpless one could be with an arm out of commission. Even such simple tasks as tying a shoelace became impossible. She wondered, though, why such a kindly person as Rosemary Marshall would expect an older woman to climb two flights of steep, narrow stairs.

Kay seemed to read her mind. "Rosemary wanted me to move down to the second floor," she said defensively. "She's been after me to do that for years. But we're short on staff—as always—and the guest rooms ought to be kept ready for important visitors. I'm perfectly capable of climbing a few stairs."

"Of course." Erin put her suitcase down. Adjust, she told herself. Be flexible. And for God's sake, try to be cheerful about it. "But it's hard to do some things with only one arm. Like fixing your hair. Would you like me to see whether I can't anchor your chignon a little more securely? It seems to be coming loose."

"We ought to get right to work."

"It will only take a minute. I'm very good at doing people's
hair__honestly. Why don't you sit here, in front of the mirror?

Then you can tell me if I do something wrong."

The idea obviously appealed to Kay; after only a little persuasion, she went to get her comb and brush. She didn't invite Erin into her room, but she left the door open, and Erin could see it had been furnished with a degree of comfort and ruffled charm that made her own room look even shabbier. Which was only as it should be, of course. Quite obviously hers was seldom if ever occupied; the days of big, live-in household staffs were long past. If anything, Kay's room was overcrowded and overdecorated, but that was a question of personal taste. Maybe she enjoyed her aerie at the top of the house and preferred the privacy it afforded. What did she do up here, all alone by herself—entertain gentlemen friends who ascended to her window by means of a rope ladder? Indulge in orgies of pot smoking or Scotch? Erin smiled to herself. If there were orgies of any kind, they probably featured chocolate bars and dirty books— though Kay's definition of the latter, she supposed, would be more PG than X-rated.

She placed one of the straight chairs in front of the dresser, and Kay sat down. After taking out pins and combs Erin began to brush the long, graying hair, deliberately prolonging the process as she saw the lines in Kay's face fade and soften. "My, that feels good," Kay said dreamily.

"Do you always wear your hair in a bun?" Erin asked. "I mean, a chignon?"

Kay's shoulders heaved with silent laughter. " 'Bun' is the right word, honey. I get fancied up for special occasions—I know what's proper—but the good old common bun is the real me."

Her voice was a little slurred, and her eyes were drowsy and unfocused. Finally Erin stopped brushing and began to twist the heavy hair into a neat coil. In another minute Kay would topple gently off the chair; she was already listing visibly to one side.

"How does that look?" she asked.

Kay opened one eye and contemplated her reflection. " 'Most
as neat as I could do it myself. Rosie tried, but she just ain't no good at it. ..." And then, in a loud angry voice that made Erin jump, she said, "Goddamn this lousy hand anyhow!"

Erin's fingers fumbled as she stared in shocked disbelief. She had heard that people under the influence of analgesics or anesthesia sometimes came out with uncharacteristic, even obscene, remarks, but the change in Kay's accent and vocabulary was so dramatic as to be almost frightening.

"Just one damn thing after another," Kay muttered. "They say things allus come in threes, but I swear to God there's been so many. . . . Like she was cursed or somethin'. She'd say that was crazy, but I dunno, seems like it ain't natural somehow. ... So many accidents ..."

"What on earth are you talking about, Kay?"

The speaker had come unobserved and unheard; her voice startled Erin so that the hairpin she was holding stabbed into Kay's scalp.

"I'm so sorry," Erin exclaimed. "Did I hurt you?"

"My fault," Rosemary said. "I shouldn't have crept up on you. Kay, how do you feel?"

Kay did not turn. From the direction of her gaze Erin realized she was looking at Rosemary's reflection in the mirror, as Rosemary was looking at hers.

"What was I talking about?" Kay asked. "I was half asleep. ..."

"You were talking a lot of nonsense," Rosemary said.

"She was fixing my hair," Kay muttered.

"And very nice it looks too. Thank you, Erin, that was kind. Perhaps you can persuade her to rest, and let you take over. She's out of her head from those pills, she isn't used to them."

The suggestion that anyone could take over Kay's work acted like a shot in the arm. Her slumped shoulders straightened and when she spoke it was in the well-bred, unaccented voice Erin had heard before. "Don't be silly, Rosemary; I'm quite all right. I won't take so many of the pills next time. I can't rest, I have to show Erin what to do."

"There's no reasoning with you," Rosemary said. She put an affectionate hand on her old friend's shoulder. It was a gentle
touch, it couldn't possibly have jarred the injured hand; it must have been the expectation of pain that made Kay cringe away.

Kay was crisply
businesslike as she showed Erin around. The change in her manner was so extreme Erin almost fancied she must have imagined that brief, frightening metamorphosis.

The former library had been converted into offices. Makeshift partitions divided it into one large room and several smaller cubicles, and the flat, featureless surface of the newer walls looked odd compared with the dark wooden paneling and casemented windows of the older ones. Kay had her own cubicle, as did Joe, when he was there. Rosemary's office had not been altered, it was a pleasant room next to the library, with deep window seats and a fireplace. The furnishings were old and somewhat masculine in character—leather chairs, engravings of animals and birds on the walls, a dark geometric print covering cushions and windows.

"This was Congressman Marshall's office," Kay explained in a hushed voice. It was an odd way of putting it, Erin thought; the use of the past tense told her that Kay was referring, not to Rosemary, but to her husband. "It's just as it was in his time. Nothing has been changed, not even the curtains. Oh, they've been replaced, of course, fabric fades so badly in sunlight. But it's the same print."

She closed the door quietly, as upon a shrine.

She went on to explain that although it was convenient for Rosemary to maintain an office in her home, the practice had certain disadvantages. "Especially when, as in this case, we are running a campaign from here. It's a rather unusual arrangement, in fact, but Rosemary prefers it that way, and thanks to telecommunications and computer hookups we can keep in touch with our workers elsewhere. Rosemary has several offices in her district, like the one in Arlington; in other cities where offices have been opened for the Democratic presidential campaign, we share the space and the personnel to some extent, but of course the presidential race gets most of the money and almost all the press. Rosemary refuses to let her office on the Hill be used for campaign practices, she's made a big point of refusing to use taxpayers'
money for that purpose, and it certainly does go over well with the voters."

She introduced Erin to the office workers. There were only four of them—and Erin couldn't help noticing the balance: two men, two women; two blacks, two whites. She made a conscious effort to remember their names. Jan Berger, a stocky, sober-faced blond boy who didn't look a day over sixteen; Anita Valdez, raven-haired and conspicuously plain, with a long thin nose like a heron's beak; Jackson Price, who looked like an ebony version of the linebacker who had engaged in political dispute with Nick, except for his shrewd dark eyes; and Christie Johnson, office manager and political aide—titles she was careful to emphasize when she acknowledged the introduction. Christie was several inches taller than Erin and made rather a point of looking down on her. She was also devastatingly attractive, with features as chiseled as those of a Benin bronze head, and a lean athlete's figure. She wore tight designer jeans and a shirt that might as well have had a designer's name on the pocket; it was cunningly cut to look both sexy and businesslike. All the workers except Christie were part-time volunteers, political-science and government majors from various universities who were earning credits as well as practical experience, and whose training made them more valuable than the average enthusiastic amateur. Christie was the only true professional; as Erin was to learn, she had been one of Rosemary's aides on the Hill. Obviously Christie wasn't afraid of taking a chance, but on the other hand, she had little to lose. If the campaign was successful, she would have taken a giant step up the ladder, ending as aide to a senator rather than a representative.

Kay took Erin into her own cubicle and put her to work. By late afternoon she was hard-pressed to hold on to her sympathy for the invalid. Kay's increasing discomfort, as the medication wore off, was discernible in her tense muscles and tight lips, but surely, Erin thought, pain couldn't be entirely responsible for her alarming lack of organization. Erin barely had time to finish one task before Kay told her to stop doing it and do something else. Though she was familiar with several different kinds of computers, Kay's was new to her, and Kay's instructions only confused her more. If Kay was testing her ability to perform under pressure, she wasn't
doing very well. But she felt sure that wasn't the reason for Kay's brusque manner. Circumstances had forced Kay to open her private files to a stranger, and admit someone else into the world of sensitive information she had taken pride in handling herself. She had to do it, but she resented the necessity, and her innocent assistant, bitterly.

Rosemary finally came to the rescue, appearing in the doorway to announce it was quitting time. "Five o'clock, you poor wage-slaves."

"Since when has five o'clock been quitting time in this office?" Kay demanded. "I want Erin to finish typing these memos, and then she can—"

"Never mind the memos." Rosemary reached over Erin's shoulder and punched the break key. Kay let out a gasp of outrage.

"Now you've lost that one. Honestly, Rosemary!"

"I haven't lost it, it's somewhere in the metal innards of that contraption. And if I have, so what?" Rosemary looked tired, her nose shiny as a mirror and her lipstick blurred. "Close up shop, I said. Erin hasn't even had time to unpack, and I need you to help me. I have to get dressed. "

This time she had taken the right approach. "Oh, the fundraiser," Kay said. "Yes, you'd better hurry."

"Another one?" Erin asked incredulously.

"One of many. " Rosemary leaned against the desk and passed a grubby hand over her face. "The curse of the candidate. The food is boring, the company is boring, the speeches are boring. But without them we couldn't operate. I don't get a lot from the PACs. . . . You do know what a PAC is, don't you?"

"Yes, of course." Mercifully, that was one of the political terms she did know. "Political Action Committees. They were set up by various groups—business, labor, special interests such as education, conservation, animal welfare—"