The Third Twin - Ken Follett [86]
He went into the kitchen. Mom was scrubbing the lasagne dish with a wire brush. Dad had gone to his office for an hour. Steve began to load crockery into the dishwasher. “Mom,” he said, “this is going to sound a little strange to you, but …”
“You’re going to see a girl,” she said.
He smiled. “How did you know?”
“I’m your mother, I’m telepathic. What’s her name?”
“Jeannie Ferrami. Doctor Ferrami.”
“I’m a Jewish mother now? I’m supposed to be impressed that she’s a doctor?”
“She’s a scientist, not a physician.”
“If she already has her doctorate, she must be older than you.”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Hm. What’s she like?”
“Well, she’s kind of striking, you know, she’s tall, and very fit—she’s a hell of a tennis player—with a lot of dark hair, and dark eyes, and a pierced nostril with this very delicate thin silver ring, and she’s, like, forceful, she says what she wants, in a direct way, but she laughs a lot, too, I made her laugh a couple of times, but mainly she’s just this”—he sought for a word—“she’s just this presence, when she’s around you simply can’t look anywhere else.…” He tailed off.
For a moment his mother just stared at him, then she said: “Oh, boy—you’ve got it bad.”
“Well, not necessarily.…” He stopped himself. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m crazy about her.”
“Does she feel the same?”
“Not yet.”
His mother smiled fondly. “Go on, go see her. I hope she deserves you.”
He kissed her. “How did you get to be such a good person?”
“Practice,” she said.
Steve’s car was parked outside; they had picked it up from the Jones Falls campus and his mother had driven it back to Washington. Now he got on I-95 and drove back to Baltimore.
Jeannie was ready for some tender loving care. She had told him, when he called her, how her father had robbed her and the university president had betrayed her. She needed someone to cherish her, and that was a job he was qualified to do.
As he drove he pictured her sitting next to him on a couch, laughing, and saying things like “I’m so glad you came over, you’ve made me feel much better, why don’t we just take off all our clothes and get into bed?”
He stopped at a strip mall in the Mount Washington neighborhood and bought a seafood pizza, a ten-dollar bottle of chardonnay, a container of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—Rainforest Crunch flavor—and ten yellow carnations. The front page of The Wall Street Journal caught his eye with a headline about Genetico Inc. That was the company that funded Jeannie’s research into twins, he recalled. It seemed they were about to be taken over by Landsmann, a German conglomerate. He bought the paper.
His delightful fantasies were clouded by the worrying thought that Jeannie might have gone out since he had talked to her. Or she might be in, but not answering the door. Or she might have visitors.
He was pleased to see a red Mercedes 230C parked near her house; she must be in. Then he realized she might have gone out on foot. Or in a taxi. Or in a friend’s car.
She had an entry phone. He pressed the bell and stared at the Speaker, willing it to make a noise. Nothing happened. He rang again. There was a crackling noise. His heart leaped. An irritable voice said: “Who is it?”
“It’s Steve Logan. I came to cheer you up.”
There was a long pause. “Steve, I don’t feel like having visitors.”
“At least let me give you these flowers.”
She did not reply. She was scared, he thought, and he felt bitterly disappointed. She had said she believed he was innocent, but that was when he was safely behind bars. Now that he was on her doorstep and she was alone, it was not so easy. “You haven’t changed your mind about me, have you?” he said. “You still believe I’m innocent? If not, I’ll just go away.”
The buzzer sounded and the door opened.
She was a woman who could not resist a challenge, he thought.
He stepped into a tiny lobby with two more doors. One stood open and led to a flight of stairs. At the top stood Jeannie, in a bright green T-shirt.
“I guess you’d better come up,” she said.
It was not the most enthusiastic of welcomes,