Free Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy by David Spencer Page B

that,” she said. It was the first time in the entire conversation that she sounded remotely like the Cathy he knew. The moment passed too quickly. “Well,” she sighed, “no doubt you’ll be checking in. I’ll let you know if the information gets more specific, or different.”
    “Of course I’ll be checking in. Dammit, you are angry.”
    “No, really. Just . . . just gearing up.”
    “You’re sure.”
    “Yes.”
    “Really?”
    “ Matt . . .”
    “Okay.” A beat. And then, softly, awkwardly, because he wasn’t always comfortable with it, even though it was the truth: “I love you, you know.”
    “. . .”
    “Cathy?”
    “Boy, you’d better,” she said, and hung up.
    He drew the phone away from his ear at the sharp click!, fighting an impulsive desire to speak her name into the mouthpiece— “Cathy?” —and retrieve her.
    What checked the impulse, curiously, was a comedy bit he’d once heard on a scratchy old vinyl album featuring Mike Nichols and Elaine May.
    In the bit, Nichols plays a poor schnook stranded on the road, trying to call for help from a phone booth. But his call has gotten cut off, and the phone has eaten his last dime (and the days when a phone call cost a dime were also the days without touch-tone dialing and calling cards, so this guy is stranded but good ). He manages to connect with the operator, played by May, who won’t reconnect the call but assures him that if he just hangs up the phone, his dime will be returned to him. Which puts Nichols into a panic since he has no doubt that the dime has long since dropped into the phone’s innards; there’s no way to reroute it to the change basket. The operator argues that he will indeed get his dime back, and then Nichols really becomes desperate. He swears to her that he distinctly heard the decisive clunk all pay phones make when they swallow your change—
    —and, adding to that with the anguish of years, he cries, “I know that sound. I’ve been hearing it all my life!”
    Matt felt like that now. One part of him not quite understanding, wanting to play the conversation with Cathy back, get it right, make amends for—whatever the hell it was he needed to make amends for; the other part saying, Forget it. She’s hung up on you.
    I know that sound. I’ve been hearing it all my life!
    “Matthew?”
    Sikes looked across his desk toward George at the desk opposite.
    “Is anything wrong?”
    Yeah, something’s wrong, thought Matt. That open innocence of Cathy’s seems . . . seems, I don’t know what, diluted. Compromised. The woman whose face lights up at the tactile sensation of theatre tickets in her hand is not quite the same woman I just spoke to on the phone.
    And then Matt thought, Business first, and snapped on a tight smile, holding aloft the piece of paper upon which he’d scribbled Cathy’s information.
    “Maybe not, partner,” he said. “Maybe not.”

C H A P T E R   6
    C ATHY F RANKEL RACKED the receiver, leaned back in the chair, and sighed. Anticipating exhaustion. And worse. Dr. Steinbach had been nice enough to give her access to the phone and whatever else she might need in Dr. Casey’s office, and she wasn’t shy about accepting the offer.
    A soothing office, Casey’s was, in soft earth tones, the swivel chair comfortable, with a substantial cushion for lower back support. She snuggled into it looking abstractedly at the office door. Closed now.
    Procrastinating.
    As long as she didn’t cross to the door, open it, face what was outside, she was safe. Safe from everything but her own thoughts, at least, which inevitably turned toward Matt.
    Matt asking if she was angry. And her various responses: the noncommittal silences; the nos that meant yes. She hadn’t exactly been fair to Matt, but—
    —as if prodded by electric shock, she shot out of the chair, walking purposefully toward the door. Safe from all but her own thoughts was not safe at all. She’d do better confronting the task at