The Attraction, page 3
“The hell you don’t,” he snapped. “You owe me more than—”
“Don’t call me again,” Cassandra said, interrupting him.
Before he could respond, she hung up the phone.
For a moment, she simply stood there, trying to sort out her thoughts. Then she noticed Lisa standing beside her, looking at her questioningly.
“Who was that man?” the child asked.
“You’ve never met him, Lisa.”
“Don’t you like him, Mommy?”
Cassandra hesitated, uncertain how to respond. Finally, she said, “I don’t dislike him, honey. I just want him to leave us alone.”
When Cassandra and her daughter arrived home the next evening, the muffled sounds of the phone ringing were coming through the door of her apartment. Fumbling in her purse for her keys, Cassandra swore silently.
“Someone’s calling you on the phone, Mommy,” Lisa said.
“I know, I know,” Cassandra said, still desperately trying to find her keys.
And then she had them. Quickly, she located the correct one and opened the door. The phone was still ringing. Rushing into the hallway, she grabbed the receiver.
“Hello.”
Through the earpiece came the steady hum of the dial tone. She’d reached the phone a fraction of a second too late. Replacing the receiver, Cassandra headed for the kitchen, where she found Lisa standing by the stove, looking impatient.
“What are we gonna eat?” the child asked.
“What would you like?”
“Hamburgers,” Lisa said hopefully.
“We don’t have any buns.”
“Oh.”
“Is there anything else you’d like to have?” Cassandra’s daughter wrinkled her brow. “Uh … oh, I know. Can we have s’ghetti?”
“Spaghetti,” Cassandra corrected her. “There’s a p in it.”
“Yeah,” Lisa replied. “Can we have it?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, boy!” As she so often did when she was pleased, Lisa grinned, pressing her palms together in front of her as if she were praying.
Such simple things can delight a child, Cassandra thought. Spaghetti for dinner, an old carton to incorporate into some imaginary play world, the wonder of a neighbor’s fuzzy puppy. Why do we change so much when we grow up? she wondered. Why do we become rapists and child molesters and builders of nuclear weapons?
Suddenly, she grabbed Lisa and hugged her. “You’re a pretty good kid. You know that?”
Returning the hug as best she could with her short seven-year-old’s arms, Lisa said, “You’re a pretty good mommy, too.”
Cassandra laughed. “Come on,” she said, releasing her daughter. “Let’s see about that s’ghetti.”
As she was reaching for the cabinet in which pasta and other dry ingredients were kept, the phone rang. Annoyed at the intrusion, she hurried to the hallway and grabbed the receiver.
“Hello.”
“I’ve been calling and calling. I thought I’d never get you.”
“Who …” Her voice trailed off, because she’d just realized whose voice she was hearing.
“Why don’t I pick you up at seven,” Clark said cheerfully.
Her thoughts churning, Cassandra tried to think of something to say.
“Cassie, you there?”
Cassie? The only one who had ever called her that had been her grandfather. It had been his private name for her, and hearing it from Clark seemed to defile it somehow.
“Listen,” she said firmly, “I told you not to call me anymore. I have nothing to say to you.”
“We have to talk this over, Cassie—”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
“Look, we’ve got to get together and talk. I’ll pick you up at seven, and—”
“No!” Cassandra shouted.
“Then when?” he demanded. “When are we going to—”
“Never!” she said, slamming down the receiver. She stared angrily at the phone, as if daring it to ring again. Don’t let this jerk upset you, she told herself. He’s nothing but an asshole who delights in being a persistent nuisance. But when she reached up to push some strands of hair out of her face, she realized that her hand was shaking.
After taking a moment to calm herself, Cassandra returned to the kitchen and her hungry daughter, who was sitting at the table.
“Who was it, Mommy?” Lisa asked, studying her mother’s face.
“The same man who called yesterday.”
“Are you mad at him?”
“I—well, let’s just say I got a little annoyed with him.” Before the child could respond, she added “Now, let’s see about getting you some spaghetti.”
She put a pot of water on to boil, then searched through the bottles and cans in an upper cabinet until she found a jar of spaghetti sauce. She was pouring it into a saucepan when the phone rang again, causing her to jump.
“I’ll get it, Mommy,” Lisa said, dashing from the room.
“No, wait—” But the child was already in the hallway, and Cassandra hurried after her. She found her daughter with the receiver to her ear, listening.
“I guess so,” the girl said. “If it’s okay with Mommy.” She listened a moment, then said, “Okay.” She handed the phone to Cassandra. “He wants to talk to you, Mommy.”
Certain whose voice she would hear, Cassandra stared at the proffered phone, reluctant to touch it. Then, becoming aware of the worried look in her daughter’s eyes, Cassandra grabbed the receiver.
“Hello,” she said, the tension in her voice apparent.
“Hi,” Clark said. “I—”
“I told you not to call me again. I have nothing to say to you, and I don’t ever want to see you again.” She hung up.
Lisa was staring at her, clearly uncertain what to make of all this.
“What did he say to you?” Cassandra asked.
“He said he wanted to meet me. He said we could have fun together.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He asked me if I’d like to have fun with him, and I said I’d have to ask you. That’s all he said.”
“Lisa,” Cassandra said, dropping to the child’s eye level, “listen to me now. I don’t want you to have anything to do with this man. Do you understand?”
Lisa nodded, but then a frown came across her face. “Mommy,” she said hesitantly, “I don’t know what he looks like. How can I stay away from him?”
“Be careful with all strangers, Lisa. Don’t ever go anywhere with a stranger. And never get into someone’s car unless you know them. Okay?”
“Okay,” Lisa said, looking quite serious. She cocked her head. “Mommy?”
“Yes.”
“Is the man on the phone a bad man?”
“I …” Uncertain how to answer her daughter’s question, Cassandra let her words trail off. Finally, she said, “I’m not sure, Lisa. He might be. Come on, let’s get back to that spaghetti.”
As they started toward the kitchen, the telephone rang again. “Lisa, don’t answer it,” Cassandra said quickly.
She stood there with her daughter beside her, not more than ten feet from the phone, listening to it ring but not moving. Perplexed, Lisa studied her, apparently trying to figure out why her mother wasn’t answering the phone. Leave us alone, Cassandra thought. Please, just leave us alone.
Abruptly, her confusion and fear vanished, replaced by anger. Whirling around, she took three quick steps to the phone and grabbed the receiver. Unable to be absolutely certain it was Clark, she held her fury in check. “Hello,” she said flatly.
Over the line came only silence.
“Hello,” she said again.
She was about to hang up when Clark said, “Why won’t you talk to me, Cassandra?”
Without saying a word, she replaced the receiver, then disconnected the phone’s modular plug. “Come on,” she said, taking Lisa’s hand. “Let’s have dinner.”
Why won’t he leave me alone? Cassandra wondered as they stepped into the kitchen. Surely he doesn’t think his persistence will pay off. Doesn’t he realize that the more he pesters me, the less desirable he seems?
As Cassandra made dinner, she asked herself another question: Why me? Why was he so determined to—to what? To go out with her? Have a relationship with her? To sleep with her again? She realized suddenly that she had no idea exactly what he wanted.
Why was he willing to be rejected again and again? What drove him? In a completely honest evaluation of herself, she would be forced to conclude that although she was reasonably attractive, a model or a movie star she wasn’t. There was nothing in her appearance or her usually subdued personality that would warrant Clark’s unrelenting persistence.
I’ll leave the phone unplugged for a while, she thought. Maybe he’ll get the idea and stop bothering me.
Although she tried to convince herself of that, a feeling of uneasiness settled over her. It was still with her a few hours later. When she went to bed, she tossed and turned for several hours before falling into an unsettled sleep.
Cassandra overslept the next morning. Groggy after her restless night, she shut off the alarm on the bedside table, then rolled over for a few more precious moments in bed. Half an hour later, Lisa was shaking her, urgently telling her that they were late.
Telling Lisa to get her own cereal, Cassandra rushed through her morning routine, hastily showering, doing her hair, and applying her makeup. After checking herself out in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, she decided her appearance was passable—though barely. Grabbing her purse, which hung on the doorknob, she hurried into the hallway, stopping when she noticed the disconnected phone.
I can’t leave it that way forever, she thought. I’ll be paying the phone bill for nothing. Grabbing the cord, she inserted the plug into its outlet, then hurried into the living room.
“Lisa, you ready?”
Lisa emerged from the kitchen, dressed in her customary costume of jeans and a T-shirt. When Cassandra had suggested once that she wear a dress to school, Lisa had been horrified, insisting that all the kids wore jeans and that to be the only one who didn’t would be unthinkable. Recalling her own school days and how cruel children could be to any kid who was in any way different, Cassandra had not pushed the matter, although she would really have preferred to see Lisa in a dress.
“Come on,” Cassandra said. “If I hit every green light between here and the school and the insurance company, I’m still going to be about five minutes late.”
As she opened the door, the phone rang. She hesitated, uncertain what to do. It rang again, and Cassandra, deciding that she couldn’t just ignore it, hurried into the hallway.
“Hello,” she said impatiently.
“I’m calling to make a date with you,” Clark said.
In the rush to get out of the apartment, she’d pushed Clark from her thoughts, so she was momentarily confused. “You!” she blurted.
“Yes, Cassandra, me. I—”
She cut him off by unplugging the phone.
Then she dashed into the living room, where Lisa waited, her eyes asking an unspoken question: Was it him? Grabbing her hand, Cassandra rushed out of the apartment. In the parking lot, she had to dig in her purse to find the keys to her blue two-door hatchback. After finding them and unlocking the door, she glanced at her watch as she climbed into the car. She was going to be late, very late.
Once more admonishing the child to be wary of strangers, Cassandra dropped Lisa off at school, then drove frantically toward the building in which she worked. She was more than a half hour late when she got there.
The insurance company occupied a modern three-story office building in the Chicago suburbs. After parking the car in the part of the lot set aside for employees, she hurried inside and took the elevator to the second floor. The room in which she worked contained five desks, each with a VDT and telephone headset. Except for hers, all the desks were occupied.
Seating herself, Cassandra slipped her purse into a desk drawer, then put on her headset and switched on her VDT. As she awaited her first call, Cassandra let her eyes take in the room. Decorated in subdued oranges and browns, it was a reasonably comfortable place in which to work. The floor was carpeted. The desks, typical of modern office furniture, were made of metal and fake wood.
Cassandra’s desk was next to the wall. To her right sat Jennifer Gill, a young blonde woman who had three children and was beginning to swell with the fourth. Jenny’s eyes met Cassandra’s, and they communicated: Good morning. Nice to see you. I notice you’re late. Employees were not allowed to speak to each other except while on break.
Cassandra nodded her acknowledgment. She had decided that the only way to stop Clark from calling her was to get an unlisted number. Taking out the phone book, she looked up the number, then hesitated. Making personal calls was forbidden, and the phone circuits were monitored occasionally by management. Deciding that her chances of getting caught were slim, she reached for the button that would give her an outside line, but just then a call came in.
A woman in Vermont was calling to report that her big double-glazed picture window had been broken by an apparently suicidal owl. Cassandra punched up the details of the woman’s homeowner’s policy on her VDT, then told her to submit the bill for the window’s replacement and that the company would reimburse her for anything above a hundred dollars, the deductible amount of the policy. As she ended the conversation with the woman, she typed this information on her VDT, checked to make sure she had made no errors, and sent it to the computer. Then she called the phone company.
“I’ve been getting threatening phone calls,” she told the woman who answered. “I want to get my number changed to an unlisted one.”
“You might want to consider putting a trace on your line rather than changing your number,” the woman suggested. “With a tracer, we can find out where the calls are coming from. Changing a number can cause a lot of unnecessary inconvenience for you.”
“No,” Cassandra said. “I just want to change it.” She wondered whether she should have told the truth instead of saying the calls were threatening. But then what she’d said wasn’t totally untrue. Although Clark had not specifically stated his intention to harm her, there was definitely something menacing about his persistence.
“Would you like the change made right away?”
“Yes, please. Can you do it today?”
“We should be able to. Is there a number where we can reach you?”
Cassandra gave her the insurance company’s number. As she broke the connection, she realized that someone was standing beside her desk. It was her boss, Nan Cosgrove.
“Personal call?” Cosgrove asked, her expression neutral. Tall and slender, with reddish-brown hair, she looked like what she was—a woman on the way up. Her hair was professionally done, her clothes conservative but quite expensive, her makeup immaculate.
“I’ve been getting bothersome phone calls,” Cassandra explained. “I had to call the phone company. It was kind of an emergency.”
Cosgrove nodded, indicating that she had noted Cassandra’s explanation but giving no clues as to whether she accepted it. “Why were you late this morning?” she asked.
“Uh, my alarm clock didn’t go off.”
“I’d suggest you buy a new one. After all, this is your livelihood here. It’s much too important to let something as inexpensive as an alarm clock interfere with it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said. “I’ll get a new one this evening. I promise.”
“Good,” Cosgrove said, smiling. “I’m glad we agree. It’s always better to get these little things straightened out right away.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said.
Giving her a curt nod, Cosgrove turned and strode from the room. Jenny, who couldn’t help but witness what had transpired, rolled her eyes. Jenny had come up with a nickname for Cosgrove that had pretty much been adopted throughout the department—Nan the Nazi.
Despite having a boss who at times came on like the ruling general in some Latin American junta, Cassandra was reasonably satisfied with her work. It had taken weeks of frantic searching to find this job. Newly divorced, with a seven-year-old daughter to support, she’d been desperate enough to accept any position she could find—scrubbing toilets, cleaning sewers, anything. At least here she sat at a comfortable desk in a modern, climate-controlled office. Things could be worse.
About three-thirty that afternoon, the phone company called to let her know she had a new phone number that would not be given out. Cassandra wrote it on a slip of paper, which she put in her purse. That evening, her phone didn’t ring once.
4
The next day, after getting off work, Cassandra treated Lisa to one of the child’s favorite meals—junk food at a burger place. Sitting at a small table, watching her daughter devour her burger, fries, and Coke, Cassandra decided that such a meal was undoubtedly a nutritionist’s nightmare. It contained lots of fat and calories, a bun made from flour stripped of everything but the starch; some limp-looking lettuce was the closest thing to a green vegetable. Still, Lisa got so much pleasure from eating this sort of thing that Cassandra felt obliged to indulge her from time to time.
“We should eat here every night,” Lisa said as she stuffed a french fry into her mouth.
“You’d get tired of it if we did it all the time.”
The child shook her head. “We could go to McDonald’s one night, then to Burger King, then to Wendy’s, then to …” The girl’s words trailed off as she tried to recall the names of other preferred eating places.
“We can eat burgers out every now and then, but not all the time.”
Looking resigned to the situation, Lisa again turned her attention to her burger and fries.
Cassandra took a bite of her fish sandwich. She felt good today. She’d had no further problems with Nan the Nazi, and Clark could no longer use the telephone to pester her. She was glad now, very glad, that she hadn’t allowed a relationship to develop between them. Had she done so, unaware of his almost childlike reaction to rejection …
