Nightmare Child Read Online Free Page A

with a woman who essentially hated him.
    "Why can't we be the way we used to be?" he said.
    "We didn't use to be any way but the way we are right now, Jeff—me pleading, you evading."
    "Who's evasive when the subject of love comes up?"
    "Oh, God, Jeff, not 'love' again! I'm twenty-four years old and I've slept with four men in my life and one of them could barely get it up—what do I know about love?"
    In that whining tone of his that he despised so much, he leaned forward, palms sweating, head pounding, cheeks ablaze with shame, and said, "You know how much I love you, Brenda. Doesn't that mean anything?"
    "I used to think it would mean an art directorship. To be frank, I mean."
    "Well, that's a fine thing to say, Brenda. That's a fine thing."
    She indicated the small room with a regal turn of her slender white wrist. "Jeff, I almost feel sorry for you. This is the Hubba-Hubba Room. This is where people come to use each other—for sex or for promotions or for a way of alleviating boredom. But nobody, Jeff, nobody falls in love in the Hubba-Hubba Room. Can't you understand that, Jeff? Can't you?"
    He was about to yield to her, collapse inside and make a bitter promise (which he intended to keep) to go up-stairs and talk to Barney right then, when something that almost never happened in the Hubba-Hubba Room happened.
    Behind the bar was a battered old black phone, the type Humphrey Bogart used to speak into when he was playing Sam Spade. It almost never rang (the Hubba-Hubba Room was supposed to be for uninterrupted pleasure), but now it rang as shrilly as the scream of a dying person.
    Brenda said, a touch sardonically, "It won't be for me. Assistant art directors aren't that important."
    He flew to the phone and snatched up the receiver. "God, I'm so glad I got you. You've got to get home immediately."
    Mindy.
    Glancing over his shoulder at Brenda, who was studying her perfect red-painted nails, he said, "How did you know this number?"
    "Your receptionist gave it to me. She didn't want to, the bitch, but then when I reminded her about my uncle— what's her name, anyway?"
    "Who?"
    "Your receptionist?"
    "Sandra."
    "She sounds like a Sandra."
    "How does a 'Sandra' sound?"
    "Snotty. Bitchy. I'm going to ask Uncle Ray to have her fired." Mindy was not bluffing. Mindy never bluffed. Mindy had gotten any number of people at the Foster Dawson Agency fired. "But right now you've got to get home."
    "Why?"
    "Because I saw something."
    "What did you see?"
    Behind him, Brenda stood up and waved. He wanted to lunge at her, hold her from leaving and shout I love you! until she confessed her love for him back.
    Brenda left.
    "Jeff? Are you still there?"
    "Yes."
    "Why do you sound so surly all of a sudden?"
    "Mindy, I'm just buried in work and I really don't have time to—"
    "She's back."
    "Who's back?"
    "Who do you think?"
    Still irritated and forlorn over Brenda's quick exit, he said, "I don't have time for guessing games."
    "I had to take three Valiums. That's the only reason I'm calm. But I started hyperventilating so I got a nosebleed."
    "Please try to make sense here, Mindy. Please."
    "She's back. Jenny. Jenny's home."
    "Oh, Mindy. Mindy. Please call Dr. Moeller and make an appointment and—"
    "She's right next door. At Diane Purcell's home. And about five minutes ago a police car pulled into the drive."
    "What are you talking about, Mindy? Jenny can't be home. We—" He thought of tapped phones. Given all the palace politics of advertising, you couldn't ever be sure. "You know why that's impossible."
    "It may be impossible, but it's true."
    "But—"
    "You get in your fancy- schmancy sports car that I bought for you and you get your buns home. Fast. Do you understand?"
    "But—"
    "Do you understand, Jeff? Right now."
    Mindy hung up.
    He looked miserably about him and thought of Brenda's ironic words. How only he, Jeff McCay , would be stupid enough to give his heart away in the Hubba-Hubba