Free Condominium by John D. MacDonald Page B

can. I think you ought to cut the price down to where I can take you out of them fast.”
    “How far down is that?”
    “The present state of the market, I’d say that in order to get people to stand still for a hundred and sixty something a month assessment, you’ve got to get down under thirty-five thousand. Furnished.”
    He swallowed hard and fingered his throat. “God; Loretta. It will add up to better than a sixty-thousand-dollar bath, counting everything in.”
    “You made a sixty-thousand-dollar mistake. You are entitled to one of those at your age. If you’d bought only one, you’d have made a twenty-thousand-dollar mistake. If you’d bought six, you’d have—”
    “Please. I thought of buying six. And didn’t.”
    “Praise the Lord for small blessings. Do you want me to go ahead and try to move them?”
    “Probably yes. You are probably right. It would be such a wonderful sense of relief. But I’ve got to talk it over with Nancy first.”
    “Of course. But I think you should move pretty fast. I’ve got some pigeons I can work. Usually I let people … find their way out of their own swamps. But … I don’t know. We’ve worked together and I like you, I guess.”
    “I really value your advice. It’s hard to take, but it’s good, I know.”
    They both got up and moved toward the door, smiling. He shook his head. “It’s going to give Nance a migraine.”
    They both reached at the same instant for the doorknob. Their hands touched, and he took hold of her thin wrist, and then reached and captured the other wrist. Her pale gray glance was apprehensive, swift-moving, somehow ironic. With a quick lift of her head she threw her heavy hair back.
    “Look,” she said. “I’m not much for this kind of thing.”
    “Or me.”
    “I didn’t think so. Greg, honey, it really isn’t an area where I have any confidence at all. Okay? Unhand me, sir?”
    He let go of her. They gave each other clumsy smiles. He said, “I don’t know what the hell I had in mind. That was dumb. I’m not … one of those.”
    “I know. I know. It happens. I give a lot of people the wrong impression. I’m kind of a fake.”
    Their eyes met again. She looked away, uneasily, and then met his direct gaze again. He looked into pale gray, into the shiny black pupils. It was a specific physical impact, an electrical tingle of awareness. She said, hardly moving her lips, “I’m … really not any good at anything like this.”
    “I think because of the way you said you like me …”
    “You are so damned unbelievably young, Greg. You were born way too late for me. I mean even if I wasn’t so jumpy about … getting involved.”
    “I wasn’t asking for anything to happen. I don’t
really
want …”
    “I know. Look. Turn around and go out the door. Okay, dear Greg? Just do that.”
    He took a deep breath and let it out, and turned and went. As he went blindly through her office and out to his car, he could not remember what she looked like. He could not remember what Loretta Rosen, Realtor, looked like though he had known her for several years. He could remember only what the new Loretta looked like. Before his eyes, she had changed into loveliness. Defects had now become the hallmarks of her authenticity.
    He sat in his car and tried to yank his mind back out of fantasy, back to the realities of the waiting admiral, and the reality of taking a frightful bath on the three apartments. But nothing seemed as real or as important as her gray uneasy eyes.
    On the way back to the office he had to drive past Golden Sands again. It looked, from Beach Drive, bigger than it was. It glowed orange and gold in the hot afternoon sunlight. In the occupied apartments the draperies were pulled across the tinted glass doors and tinted picture windows. From desperate habit he picked out the windows and balconies of apartments 2-D, 2-E and 2-F. Once again he heard himself telling Nancy what a great deal it would be. He slammed