Love Me or Leave Me

Pamela packed her briefcase, knowing that she wasn’t in a mood to work after she got home, but what else was there to do? With her three-quarter-length leather coat on her arm, she headed for the elevator, and as she reached it, saw Lawrence approaching her.

“Lawrence, if you say one word to me or touch me, I will get an order of restraint against you for harassment. What you did last night was unconscionable. No decent man would have done what you did. Now, please move aside.”

“Look, I was just—”

“You are harassing me.”

She stepped into the elevator, pushed the button and prayed that he wouldn’t trail her to the basement garage where she’d left her car. Relieved that he didn’t follow her, she put on an Aretha Franklin CD and sang along with the diva as she drove, her spirits livelier than at any time since she’d missed her date with Drake.

At home, she warmed up the remainder of the previous evening’s lasagna, made a salad and sat down to eat her supper. The telephone rang as she chewed the last morsel of it, and she debated whether to answer it, thinking that Lawrence might call her at home. However, the identity of the caller aroused her curiosity and she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Pamela. This is Drake.”

At the sound of his deep, mellifluous voice, her left hand slammed against her chest as if to decelerate the beating of her heart, and she let the wall take her weight.

“Hello, Drake,” she said, as coolly as if her head wasn’t spinning and her heart was beating normally. It was his call, and she wasn’t going to make small talk. She waited for him to tell her why he’d called.

“I’m not satisfied with the way things are right now,” he said. “I’m in Baltimore, and I’d like us to have lunch tomorrow, if you can make the time. I’m going home to Eagle Park later in the afternoon.”

Hmm. Cut-and-dried, as usual. She didn’t believe in being coy, and besides, she wanted to know why he hadn’t returned her calls to his home and to his cellular phone.

“All right. Can we lunch at about twelve-thirty, and would you come by my office for me?”

“Uh… Sure. Be glad to. I’ll see you at twelve-thirty.” She wondered at his seeming hesitation.

“I’ll be ready. My office is on the ninth floor. See you then.”

Again, he seemed to hesitate. “Right. Till tomorrow.”

For a while, she stared at the receiver that she still gripped tightly. Then, like a robot performing a programmed task, she hung up in slow motion. If she had ever had a more unsatisfying conversation with a man, she didn’t remember it. Oh, well. By this time tomorrow, I will know where I stand with Drake Harrington.

She dressed carefully that morning, choosing a burnt-orange woolen suit with a beige blouse and brown accessories. She rarely wore makeup at work, but she did so that morning, settling for lipstick the color of her suit, and though she longed to wear her hair down, she put it into the French twist that she wore at work and on the air. Along with her makeup-repair bag, she put a vial of Poem, her daytime perfume, in her briefcase, said a prayer for the day and headed for work.

She tried to prepare herself for the moment when she would see him. He’s not the be-all and end-all, and if he fades out of my life, someone else will move in, she told herself. However, when her secretary announced him and she heard his light tap on her door, she swung around, hitting her knee on the edge of her desk and sending pain shooting through it.

“Come in,” she managed to say.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

They stared at each other until he laughed—whether from nervousness or embarrassment, she couldn’t tell. He had always been most handsome when he laughed, and she sat there, mesmerized and as still as a catatonic.

“We’re behaving like strangers,” he said, walked over to her, bent down and brushed his lips across hers. Her lips parted involuntarily, and he straightened up and stared down at her, his face devoid of expression.

“I guess we’d better go,” he said at last. “Where’s your coat?”

“I’ll get it. Are we driving or walking?”

“I thought we’d walk to Lou’s Ristorante. The weather’s reasonably mild. Okay with you?”

“Fine. I like Lou’s.”

Her door swung open. “Don’t get uptight. This is about… Oh!”

“What is it, Lawrence?”

“Uh…nothing. I can…er…come back later.”

“Excuse me, man,” Drake said. “I don’t want to interfere with your romance. I can come back later.”

She whirled around and glared at Drake. “You don’t want to what? Where the devil did you get that idea? There’s not a damned thing between this man and me, and if he doesn’t stop harassing me and lying about me, I am going to have him arrested.”

Lawrence backed toward the door. “I’ll…uh, see you later.”

“Not so fast, buddy,” Drake said in a tone that would have halted the toughest street habitué. “Did you lie to me? You told me that you have a relationship going with Pamela, and that she stood up her dinner date in order to go to a movie with you. How did you know she was meeting me for dinner?”

Her lower lip dropped, but she quickly restored her aplomb. “Give me one reason, Lawrence, why I shouldn’t indict you for lying about me. This isn’t the only time you’ve done it.”

“Look,” he said, hands up and palms out, “you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“No,” Drake said, his facial expression stern and harsh, “but you can blame him for not having any integrity.” He turned to Pamela. “We’d better be going. If you have any more difficulties with this fellow, report him to the police. After you,” he said to Lawrence, effectively ordering him out of the office.

“When did Lawrence tell you that?” she asked Drake after they seated themselves in the restaurant and gave the waiter their orders.

“When I saw him last evening at an alumni meeting. Both of us attended graduate school at the University of Maryland. He worked on the campus paper. How did he know you were having dinner with me?”

“He asked me for a date, as he frequently does though I’ve yet to say yes, and I said I had a dinner engagement. I suppose he’s seen us together and assumed I was meeting you.”

He leaned back. “Right. What happened to you, and why didn’t you call me?”

“I stopped at that filling station just before you turn into Milford, got an oil change, my front and rearview windows washed, and my tires checked. A few minutes after I turned off the highway, both of my front tires blew out. Fortunately, I was on that ramp, so I wasn’t driving fast. I walked the two miles back to the station, and—”

“Why didn’t you use your cell phone and call me? I would have gone there and helped you.”

Her right shoulder flexed in an automatic shrug. “I forgot it and left it on the desk in my office. When I got to the restaurant, you’d left, and the maître d’ implied that I had bad manners for having stood you up. I called your home from a pay phone in the restaurant, but you weren’t there. Henry took the message.”

“I haven’t been home since then, so he hasn’t seen me.”

When both of her eyebrows shot up, he explained. “I stayed in Baltimore that night with Russ and left for Ghana the next morning. I got back Tuesday night. Incidentally, did you ask the station attendant to check your tires to see what happened?”

She nodded. “He said someone slashed them, probably while he and I were inside the station straightening out my bill. He said a yellow Cadillac drove up, but when he went back outside, it had left, and the driver didn’t make a purchase.”

His fingers moved back and forth across his chin in the manner of one deep in thought. “Sooner or later, you’ll know who did it. A yellow Caddy is hard to hide.”

She fidgeted beneath his direct gaze, uncomfortable because of her reaction to him, but also because she couldn’t fathom his demeanor.