Waltzing at Midnight Read Free Page B

not having the time, about not knowing anything or even caring about politics. For the sake of our long 1
     
    friendship, for the only friendship that I had kept from high school, I finally relented and agreed to work a couple of hours a week for the Rosie campaign.
    That couple of hours a week had turned into a full-time commitment. No, I wasn’t earning any money, but I was definitely having fun. The best part was that it wasn’t just something for me, like a hobby. It was something important. I felt different. I felt renewed, as if on the verge of a whole new life, a life that would be so much more meaningful than what had come before it.
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Chapter Two
    During lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me, eaten between phone calls, Rosie called me into her office. “How’s it going?” she asked, looking up at me with the expectation of good news.
    “Great.”
    “Glad to hear it. Jean, I need a favor. I’m speaking this afternoon at the Women’s Center, and I’ve dribbled coffee on my scarf.” She showed me a small stain on the cherry-colored silk scarf around her neck. “I hate to ask, but do you think you could get it cleaned by two?”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “You’d probably be better spent here, but Tina’s out and I’ve got another meeting in a few minutes.”
    “I don’t mind. You can’t give a speech with a coffee dribble.
    We want you to look your best at all times.”
    She untied the scarf and handed it to me. “Other than that, how do I look?”
    She stood before me in a black and tan suit, black slacks, 20
     
    two-tone jacket with gold buttons, cream-colored shell, a string of colored glass rectangles on her chest—red, pink and clear iridescent tablets that sparkled as she moved. “Fantastic,” I said.
    “I’ll be glad when this election is over so I can relax a little bit about my appearance. Clark almost had a stroke the other day when he saw my earrings were on the wrong ears.”
    I knew Rosie was taking special pains to look good all the time these days. In the two months that I had known her, I hadn’t once seen her looking anything less than meticulous, every hour of the day and night. “Compared to me, you always look like you just walked out of a magazine,” I said.
    “You haven’t seen me at home with the horses, Jean. Besides, I think you’re very attractive. You have the sort of figure and features that don’t need a lot of enhancement, a quite natural beauty.” She looked into my eyes momentarily, then clapped her hands together, saying, “Well, let’s get going. I’ll be back for the scarf at one thirty.”
    “Right,” I said. I flew out to a dry cleaners and waited while they cleaned the scarf, arriving back in time to tie it around Rosie’s neck before she left. I arranged it carefully, puffing it up, leaning it toward the right so that it draped gracefully over her shoulder and covered the top of the jacket lapel. She stood about two inches taller than me, about five-seven. I caught her scent momentarily, light, floral, perfectly subtle. Soap, I thought, or body wash, even shampoo. Not perfume. It was too faint. When I had finished with the scarf, I noticed Rosie’s amused expression.
    “You do that very well, Jean,” she said. “And very thoroughly.
    Thanks. Leave me a note so I’ll remember to pay you back for the cleaning.” To the office at large, she said, “Well, gang, I’m off on another vote-gathering safari. Keep up the good work.
    There’s no stopping us now.”
    At four o’clock, Clark asked me to go to the mall to take over the booth for a couple hours. I called home before leaving. Amy answered. “I have to work late,” I said. “Do you think you can make something for your dad’s dinner?”
    “Well, I could call out for pizza.”
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    “There’s a package of chicken breasts in the refrigerator.
    How about baking them?”
    “I could pick up Chinese,” she suggested.
    “Just put them in a dish and turn on the