Free All The Way by Charles Williams

questions at me until I was dizzy. She put on one of the rolls of recorded conversation between him and Chris Lundgren, and played it through. I listened, studying his speech, while she went out in the kitchen and mixed us two Martinis.
    She ht a cigarette, took a sip of her drink, and stopped the machine. “Tell me what you heard.”
    “He’s abrupt on the phone,” I said, “at least in business matters. No asking how the other party is, or about families. He says G’bye just once and hangs up. Your name comes out almost Mer’n . He hits the first syllable of DuPont, and the u is iu . Dew-Pont. He slurs hundred a little more than most people. Hunrd . He still uses Roger once in a while, left over from his service days.”
    She nodded approvingly. “Good ear. Keep it up.”
    We knocked off at seven, changed, and took a cab over to Miami to have dinner at the Top O’ the Columbus. She was a knockout in a dark dress, so very tall and beautifully groomed and poised. It made me feel good to see men—and women—turn to look at her. We sat by one of the big windows looking out over Biscayne Bay and its perimeter of blazing lights.
    You make all these other women look like peasants,” I said.
    She. smiled. “Honing the old technique, Jerry? Why waste it on me?”
    “No. I mean it.”
    “Of course, dear. Conditioned reflexes are like that.” Then she went on. “Now here’s a point we have to consider. Lundgren’s voice, of course, you’ll recognize, but you’ve never heard hers.”
    I sighed. “That’s easy. Until she identifies herself and I’m sure, I can say we have a bad connection and I can’t hear very well.”
    On the way back we ran a test. I got out of the cab at a drugstore not too far away, gave her time to reach the apartment, and called her from the phone booth. She read Lundgren.
    “Chris? Chapman,” I said. I asked how the market had closed, discussed some stock or another, and gave an order or two, and then stepped out of character to ask, “What do you think?”
    “Good,” she said. “Very good.”
    I walked back to the apartment in the warm and ocean-scented darkness, thinking of seventy-five thousand dollars. When I let myself in she was just coming out of the bedroom. She’d taken off the dress and slip and was pulling the blue robe about herself.
    She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe just a shade less abrupt. But it’s a fine point—”
    “Stop worrying,” I said. “I can do it.” I took hold of her arms. Then I was holding her tightly in mine and kissing her as if women were going to be transferred to some other planet in the morning.
    When she could get her mouth free at last, she murmured, “But I thought we’d work for another hour or two.” Then she relented. “All right, Jerry—”
    Enlightened management, I thought, never forgets the importance of employee recreation. If the seal balks, toss him another herring. I started to say something angry and sarcastic, but choked it off. I wanted her so badly I’d take her on any terms at all.
    Afterwards, of course, we did go back to work.
    * * *
    The next day was a repetition of the first. She was relentless. Chapman and Chapman Enterprises and Thomaston ran into my brain until they overflowed. We filled two tapes. I played them back. She questioned me. I played them again. And all the while I was conscious that she herself was taking more and more of my attention. I was thinking about her when I should have been concentrating. I didn’t like it, but there it was.
    We went out again for dinner, and came back and worked until eleven. I made love to her. She was as gracious about it, and as accomplished, and as completely unreachable as ever. I lay in the darkness thinking about her. It wasn’t that she was cold, or that she merely endured it. It was worse. It was so unimportant she had trouble even noticing it.
    Chapman, I thought, might not be the dirtiest bastard who ever lived, but he was the stupidest. I tried