doing a good job, or whether someone higher up had examined her record and found it satisfactory using the percentage of appeals rejected as the criterion.
Susan looked at the photograph of the Bennington girls on her shelf—Jennifer Ollwood was standing next to her in the picture—then shifted the frame slightly.
She picked up her purse and left her office, stopping at the adjacent office, of Appeals Officer, Grade IV, Veronica Haynes, a black woman who, Susan had decided, believed that the only people who should receive aid from the state were the aged in the last few weeks of their terminal illness.
“If anybody asks, Veronica, I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Veronica smiled at her. “Couple, as in two? Or several, as if you’re going out for coffee?”
“Several, wiseass,” Susan said, smiling, and walked to the elevators.
On the way down, she looked in her coin purse and found that it held two nickels and a dime.
Somewhat reluctantly, the proprietress of the lobby newsstand, an obese harridan with orange hair, changed two dollars into silver for her. Susan found an empty telephone booth and went in.
Jennifer answered on the second ring. Her voice seemed hesitant.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“That didn’t take long.”
“I hurried. What’s up?”
“Are you planning to come this way anytime soon?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” Susan said.
But I could. Daffy asked me please, please come to her husband’s birthday party.
“I’d really like to see you,” Jennie said.
“And I’d like to see the baby,” Susan said.
“Bryan has something he wants you to keep for him. For us,” Jennie said.
So that’s what this is all about. Damn him!
Bryan was Bryan Chenowith.
If I had a file on him, he would be categorized as “Father of (illegitimate) child, residing with mother. Employable, but not employed.”
“How’s the baby?” Susan asked.
“Wonderful!” Jennie said, her voice reflecting the pride of the new mother.
“I can’t wait to see him,” Susan said.
“Then you can come?”
“Daffy’s having a birthday party for Chad,” Susan said. “On Saturday. She’s called me twice, begging me to come. You know what I think of him.”
“Is it too late to change your mind?” Jennie asked, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Philadelphia’s not far from here.”
“I could call her,” Susan said.
“In for a penny. In for a pound,” as they say.
“That’s a ‘yes’?”
“I want to see the baby,” Susan said, as much to herself as to Jennie.
“Will you stay with Daffy?”
“No,” Susan said. “Probably the Bellvue.”
“You’ll drive down Saturday morning?”
“Right.”>
“I’ll call the hotel and tell you when and where to meet me,” Jennie said.
“You don’t want to tell me now?”
“I’d better come up with a plan,” Jennie said, giggling.
“Okay. I’ll be at the hotel after twelve, I guess. Why don’t you call me about one?”
“I will.”
“Is there anything I can bring you?”
“No. Thank you, but no. We’re doing fine.”
Said the noble bride from the deck of the sinking ship.
“Well, then, I’ll see you over the weekend,” Susan said.
“I really love you, you know that,” Jennie said, and the phone went dead.
Susan made two more telephone calls before going back to her office. The first was to Daphne Elizabeth Browne Nesbitt, who was also in the photograph of the Bennington girls on Susan’s bookshelf. She told Daffy that her plans had changed and that she now could come to Chad’s party, if that would be all right.
Daffy said she would have the crème de la crème of Philadelphia’s bachelors lined up for her selection.
I was afraid of that. It was another reason I didn’t want to come to your asshole of a husband’s birthday party.
“I would rather snag my men on my own hook, Daffy. Thank you just the same.”
“Don’t be silly,” Daffy said. “Advertising pays. Ask Chad about that. And besides, we have to stick together, don’t we? Help each other out?”
Oh, do we ever!
“Right,” Susan said. “See you Saturday.”
Then Susan called her mother and told her that she had changed her mind about going to Chad Nesbitt’s birthday party in Philadelphia over the weekend.
“Well, baby, I’m very glad to hear that,” Susan’s mother replied.
“Mother, would you call the Bellvue and see about a room? It’s so close to the weekend that I’m afraid—”
“No, I won’t,” her mother replied. “But I will call Mrs. Samuelson. She’s very good at that sort of thing.”
Mrs. Dorothy Samuelson was her father’s executive assistant, and she was, indeed, very good at things like that. It was what Susan had hoped her mother would do, pass the buck to Mrs. Samuelson.
Now that she had committed herself to Jennie, she would need