it, are all either working or letting their answering machines do the talking. And chicken soup is only therapeutic if it’s homemade.” Nick paused to emit another volcanic sneeze. When he’d recovered, he said magnanimously, “Don’t worry about me, Gina, just because I’m putting you through college and paying for your car, your clothes, your apartment and every bite of food that goes into your mouth. I’ll be fine without…any help at all.”
“Oh, God,” wailed Gina. “The guilt!”
Nick laughed. “Gotcha,” he said, groping for the remote control that would turn on the TV. Maybe there was an old Stallone movie on—something bloody and macho.
Gina said a few soothing words and then hung up. It occurred to Nick that she was really going to stay away, really going to leave her own brother to face The Great Galactic Plague alone and unassisted.
There was, Nick decided, no human kindness left in the world. He flipped through the various movie channels, seeing nothing that caught his fancy, and was just about to shut the set off and try to focus his eyes on a book when he saw her for the first time.
She was a redhead with golden eyes, and the sight of her practically stopped his heartbeat. She was holding an urn that was suitable enough to be someone’s final resting place, and there was a toll-free number superimposed over her chest.
With quick, prodding motions of his thumb, Nick used the control button on the remote to turn up the volume. “My name is Vanessa Lawrence,” the vision told her viewing audience in a voice more soothing than all the chicken soup and mentholated rub in the world, “and you’re watching the Midas Network.” She went on to extol the virtues of the hideous vase she was peddling, but Nick didn’t hear a word.
He was too busy dredging up everything he knew about the Midas Network, a nationwide shopping channel based in Seattle. The enterprise was a new one, and one of his friends—an executive with the company—had urged him to invest because he was certain that telemarketing would prove to be the biggest hit with consumers since the tube itself.
Nick shoved one hand through his hair, causing it to stand on end in ridges that reeked of eucalyptus. Undoubtedly, he thought, he was experiencing some kind of dementia related to the virus that had been visited upon him.
Without taking his eyes away from the screen, he groped for the telephone and punched out the office number. His secretary, a middle-aged woman named Harriet, answered with a crisp, “DeAngelo’s. May I help you?”
“I hope so,” wheezed Nick, who had just finished another bout of coughing.
“You don’t need me, you need the paramedics,” remarked the secretary.
“At last,” Nick said. “Someone who understands and sympathizes. Harriet, find Paul Harmon’s number for me, will you please? I’m in no condition to hunt all over for the phone book.”
It was easy to picture Harriet, plump and efficient, flipping expertly through her Rolodex. “His office number is 555-9876,” she said.
Nick found a pencil in the paraphernalia that had collected on the end table beside the hide-a-bed and wrote the digits on the corner of the tissue box, along with the home number Harriet gave him next.
The woman on the screen was now offering a set of bird figurines.
“Oh, lady,” Nick said aloud as he waited for Paul Harmon to come on the line, “I want your body, I want your soul, I want you to have my baby.”
The goddess smiled. “All this can be yours for only nineteen-ninety-five,” she said.
“Sold,” replied Nick.
Vanessa Lawrence inserted her cash card into the automatic teller machine in Quickee Food Mart and tapped one foot while she waited for the money to appear. A glance at her watch told her she was due at her lawyer’s office in just ten minutes, and the drive downtown would take fifteen.
Her foot moved faster.
The machine made an alarming grinding noise, but no currency came out of the little slot, and Vanessa’s card was still somewhere in the bowels of the gizmo. From the sound of things, it was being systematically digested.
Somewhat wildly, she began pushing buttons. The words Your transaction is now completed, were frozen on the small screen. She glanced back over one shoulder, hoping for help from the clerk, but everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be in the convenience store that afternoon, buying bread and milk.
“Damn!” she breathed, slamming her fist against the face of the machine.
A woman wearing pink foam rollers in her hair appeared at Vanessa’s side. “You’re on TV, aren’t you?” she asked. “On that new shopping channel, the something-or-other station.”
Vanessa smiled, even though it was the last thing she felt like doing. “The Midas Network,” she said, before giving the machine another despairing look. “Just give me back my card,” she told the apparatus, “and I won’t make any trouble, I promise.”
“I watch you every day,” the woman announced proudly. “I bought that three-slice toaster you had on yesterday—there’s just Bernie and Ray and me, now that Clyde’s gone away to the Army—and my sister-in-law has four of the ceiling fans.”
In her head, Vanessa heard the production manager, Paul Harmon, giving his standard public relations lecture. As the viewing audience expands, you’ll be recognized. No matter what, I want you all to be polite at all times.
“Good,” she said with a faltering smile.
She took another look at her watch, then lost her cool and rammed the cash machine with the palms of her hands. Miraculously two twenty-dollar bills popped out of the appropriate slot, but Vanessa’s cash card was disgorged in three pieces.
She dropped both the card and the money into the pocket of her linen blazer and dashed for the car, hoping the traffic wouldn’t be bad.
It was.
Worse, when Vanessa reached her attorney’s modest office, Parker was there with his lawyer and his current girlfriend.
Vanessa prayed she didn’t look as frazzled as she felt and resisted an urge to smooth her chin-length auburn hair.
Parker smiled his dazzling smile and tried to kiss her cheek, but Vanessa stepped back, her golden eyes clearly telling him to keep his distance.
Her ex-husband, now the most sought-after pitcher in the American League, looked hurt. “Hello, Van,” he said in a low and intimate voice.
Vanessa didn’t speak. Although they had been divorced for a full year, Parker’s presence still made her soul ache. It wasn’t that she wanted him back; no, she grieved for the time and love she’d wasted on him.
Vanessa’s attorney, Walter, was no ball of fire, but he was astute enough to know how vulnerable she felt. He drew back a chair for her near his desk, and gratefully she sank into the seat.
Parker’s lawyer immediately took up the conversational ball. “I think we can settle this reasonably,” he said. Vanessa felt her spine stiffen.
The bottom line was that Parker had been offered a phenomenal amount of money to
