Free A Key to the Suite by John D. MacDonald Page A

don’t live as well as I would like to, except when I’m on the expense account, like now. I keep getting all involved in idiot projects, like the one I’m on now, but somebody else thinks them up for me. I very often feel terribly sorry for myself, without any good specific reason. Now you don’t even have to start prying.”
    He could tell that he had startled her, topped her and amused her. “How about spoiled?” she asked.
    “I would have liked to have been, but I was the third of six kids. The first and the last got spoiled.”
    “Floyd, darn you, I like you!”
    “Right friendly of you, ma’m.” They made a small ceremony of shaking hands. “But you weren’t so friendly to Dave Daniels.”
    “Him! Ha! God, how I despise that type! But later I thought that maybe I should have … pulled the punch a little bit. You see, Floyd, when I decided to do this, I knew very well that somebody was going to make the first pass. Somebody always does. I don’t say that arrogantly. It’s a fact of life I live with. And probably like. So I was braced to give the first one such a brush-off, the others would get the message. I didn’t expect … that kind of a pass, exactly.”
    “From where I sat, it seemed sudden.”
    “It was.”
    “What was Dave’s approach?”
    “Do you really want to know? There are a certain percentage of men around, a very small percentage, who try the shock approach. It must work, or they wouldn’t use it. I won’t tell you exactly what he said. He started by saying we were going to take the first chance to sneak away from the rest of the group. He said conventions could be fun. Then he leaned closer and he … went anatomical, and told me the … kind of dimensions I could expect and how long he could make it last. I think I’m blushing.”
    “Good Lord! No matter how drunk I was, I couldn’t ever …”
    “I know you couldn’t, dear. According to his script, I guess I was supposed to go all weak and dizzy and eager. So I just turned toward him and kept my voice down and said if that sort of thing attracted me, I’d have long since bought a Shetland pony. The conversation would be more attractive, and ponies seldom get pig drunk. Then I asked him why he was wasting his time at a convention when he could be cleaning up in the dirty movie business. I used my landed gentry voice. Ah, I can be a wicked bitch. I meant to shatter him, and I guess I did.”
    “He’ll recover. He’ll take an old-fashioned country remedy, and be just fine.”
    “What kind of a remedy?”
    “A woman.”
    “Yes. Yes, of course. But I fear we shall never be friends.”
    “The kind of passes I make, Cory, they’re so subtle nobody ever knows I’ve made one. The system has a lot of advantages. I get a little feeling of guilt, and nobody ever says no. But of course, nothing ever happens either.”
    “You mean you’ve made a pass at me?”
    “It would spoil it if I told you. You see, you have to stay alert, and detect one when it comes along.”
    “And if I happen to detect one?”
    “If you do, for heaven’s sake, don’t let on to me that you have. If I knew you knew, I’d run like a damned rabbit. I’m one of those married cowards, Cory.”
    “I’m glad you are, Floyd. It makes all this … sort of restful. We can kid around, and I don’t have to stay on guard. It’s rare and it’s nice.”
    “Don’t overdo it, now. Hell, let me feel a
little
bit dangerous, woman.”
    “But your wife
does
understand you?”
    “With an eerie frequency.”
    “What’s her name? What’s she like?”
    “Janice. Jan to almost everybody, including me. She’s got a twenty-ninth birthday coming up, and we’ve been seven years married. The boy is four and the girl less than a year. Jan has gold-blonde hair and green eyes and a round face. She’s bigger and heavier than you are. How tall are you?”
    “Five-five.”
    “You look much taller than that!”
    “It’s because I’m a wraith. A