Lost Among the Living(19)

Alex, I thought.

Without a word, the visitor turned away from me and vanished through Casparov’s door, which clicked closed. Only then did I feel my face heat, my breath come short.

I turned to Helen. “Did you see him?”

She stopped typing, and I realized belatedly that she had been clacking away the entire time the visitor—Alex—had been in the room. “See who?” she asked.

“The man who just came in.”

She frowned. “No, and neither did you. We’re not supposed to notice his clients.”

It was true. If Casparov had seen me looking at his client, he could dismiss me. “I didn’t notice him,” I lied outrageously. “I just wondered who he was, that’s all.”

“Well, stop wondering,” Helen said, and went back to work.

I fumbled through my own pile of Casparov’s notes, trying to regain the thread that had been interrupted. Casparov had not said anything; nor had he given me a look. It had seemed like a long moment, but the visitor and I had exchanged a glance for likely a few seconds, nothing more. We had not spoken. There was nothing to be dismissed over, not if I resumed my day. I forced my hands to work, pushed my fingers to type word upon word, not thinking about the man on the other side of the office door. He was lovely—more than lovely, really—but I had Mother’s fees to pay. I could not lose this job.

Nearly an hour later, Casparov’s door opened again. This time I kept typing and did not look up.

“My thanks,” Casparov said in his gruff accent.

“It’s nothing,” came the reply. His voice was low and confident, the two words tossed off even as he walked away.

The legs came back across the room—I was not looking at them, though I could sense them large in my awareness—and passed my desk. Still I did not look up. Still I typed, aware that Casparov was watching us, watching me. I’d never see the visitor again. It was tragic, but c’est la vie.

There was the faintest shush of sound as a piece of paper landed on my desk atop the others.

And then he was gone, without a pause, the outer door thumping closed, leaving me to wonder if I’d imagined it. From the other direction, Casparov’s door closed as well.

Helen kept typing, unmoved. But I stopped and stared at the folded slip of paper that sat accusingly before me. Like a villain in a stage melodrama, I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, feeling the damp perspiration there. I unfolded the note and read it.

Will you meet me in Soho Square, at eight o’clock tonight?

My mouth dropped open. It was madness, pure madness. I would think I’d imagined it, except for the fact that I held the note in my hand. I knew the man not at all; we had not exchanged a word. He could be a madman, luring me somewhere alone to murder me. He could be a Lothario, leaving notes for typists all over the city, then meeting them and despoiling them one by one. I did not know what this man was about, but one thing was certain: I would not go. I could not go.

I tucked the note into the bodice of my dress and went back to typing.

And that night I went home to my flat after work was finished. I took off my work dress—one of the three I owned—and put on the nicest dress in my wardrobe, a lavender wool with buttons up the front and a hemline that fell nearly to my ankles, as hemlines did in 1914. I brushed out my hair and repinned it in a different style, topped it with a modest hat, and put on stockings and shoes. Then I sat on the edge of my sorry bed, my hands in my lap, thinking.

At seven thirty I put on my coat and belted it tightly at my waist. I put on my threadbare gloves. If Alex was a murderer, I found I didn’t much care. And if he was a despoiler, well—at least I’d be despoiled. I was nearly twenty, with no marriage prospects, and perhaps it was time.

Perhaps, I mused, he’d change his mind. Perhaps he wouldn’t even be there. But he was, still in his leather coat and wool trousers, the hat pulled down on his head. He saw me immediately and watched me approach, his blue eyes missing nothing, giving nothing away.

“You changed your hair,” he said when I drew close.

I looked up at him. The sodden cold of April was numbing my cheeks and creeping down the neck of my coat, but he seemed unaffected. “I shouldn’t be here,” I said.

He sighed, as if he knew I was right. “My name is Alex Manders,” he said. “Who are you?”

“If you’re asking my name,” I replied, “it’s Jo Christopher.”

One eyebrow rose inquisitively beneath the brim of the cap. “Jo?”

I shrugged. “Joanna. Though I never use it.” I looked briefly around us, at the evening crowds passing us in the square. “Why am I here?” I asked, though I was unsure whether I asked it of him or of myself.

He turned to face me directly for the first time, looking down at me. I caught the faint whiff of leather, and I knew with perfect certainty that the inside of his leather coat would be warmed by his body, the thought rocking me back on my heels. “You’re here because you’re being asked out to dinner,” he replied.

“With you?” The words burst out of my mouth, incredulous. “Alone?”

He hesitated for the briefest moment, but in that moment I had a glimmer of understanding. Despite his bluntness, he was not telling me; he was asking. The note he’d left me had been a question, not a command. He was asking, and a part of him thought I’d say no.