A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

belongs.”
    “Bridget it will be. And on the briefing, start with you.”
    “After I get you lined away. First I want the measurements. Men shouldn’t be so big. I do not mind being made to feel dainty and fragile, but not this dainty and fragile.”
    It is something I have had to get used to. “Six feet four and a quarter, Bridget. Two hundred and eighteen pounds. And I will be thirty-one on the twenty-fourth of next July. I am vice-president of the Harrison Corporation.”
    “And unmarried.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Well, it shows a little. Sort of. Anyway, dear Fletcher told me you were when he told me to be nice to you on account of you are not matched up with any female and social situations seem to go better by twos, so I am your girl, sort of. So you better chide me for being a little drunk, and maybe give me a hurt look. You know you look more like thirty-five.”
    “Gosh, thanks.”
    “I expect it’s from being so big. Now about me, I am now leading this here mad gay life I dreamed about. It is like this. Long, long ago when I was a mere child of sorts, I won a short story contest and so, natch, I wrote a novel. But it was stinky. And then I sold some nauseating gloop to the love magazines, and then I packed up, I did, and I went to New York, I did, and freelancing was too too rough so I went on a magazine and I wrote how-to things. How to keep mealy bugs out of your screened terrace. What to do about adolescent acne. And then I got married and I should have researched something called how to stay married because it was going terribly sour after only five months and then he resolved it on the Sawmill River Parkway by slewing off it into a big maple tree; and that was November last year, and now I am a fledgling with Brainerd Associates, which is a small and very rich and very discreet public relations firm. Over there, talking to Fletcher Bowman, you will see a terribly sincere man named Guy Brainerd. The one with the bald head and all the chin. He is my boss man. Mike Dean pays the firm a fabulous sum every year to make Mike Dean a wholesome household word, and I have been assigned to the Dean account, and so I was brang down on the airplane like one of the brass.” She turned and gave me an odd look and said, “Don’t get things mixed up, Samuel. I am pretty damn good at what I am doing.”
    “I’m sure you are.”
    “This empty-looking head is not that empty. I don’t know why you make me feel I should explain myself. Anyhow, look over there at the end of the pool, at the gal with the sleek blond hairdo and the sleek blond manners and all the jangle bracelets and the poison green shorts tailored to that saucy little rump. That is Elda Garry and she is a lady editor on Blend, and we have her almost talked into running a great big warm feature on Mike Dean, his philosophies and philanthropies. Elda and my boss are having a thing, and it has been going on for some little time now, and it is very handy for them to come down here, and I suspect I was brought along to make it look a little better, maybe. Guy’s wife is pure undiluted bitch, and isn’t it funny that in getting away from her, he’ll run right to more of the same? Golly, I bet you didn’t know you’d get briefed this good.”
    “It’s thorough,” I said.
    “Let us continue. The guy Elda is talking to is Cam Duncan. He’s a lawyer and he works for Mike.” I had noticed Duncan when we were introduced. He was in his thirties, a tall, shambling, frail-looking man with mouse-colored hair and an engagingly ugly face and a crooked and charming grin. “He’s a honey bug,” said Bridget.
    “How about the ageing ranch hand?” I asked. “The one talking to Mrs. McGann.” He was a faded man in weary khakis and a big pale sombrero, with a cud in his cheek. I hadn’t quite caught his name when we were taken around, but Puss had caught it and given a little squeal of delight and the man had told her he hadn’t seen her, by