A Key to the Suite by John D. MacDonald Page A

hereyes lighted up and she gave me the most electrical smile in all the world and she squealed, ‘Tommy sent it! Tommy made you bring it to me!’ I hadn’t put any card in it, so all I could do was walk slowly away.”
    “I could kill her! I could
kill
her!”
    “The rest of the average story of my life goes like this. It obligated me to mend my wounds by bashing Tommy about. So I found a chance to pick a fight with him, and he beat the hell out of me. So you can see, Miss Cory, that when a beautiful woman swoons into my arms, my history makes me skeptical.”
    “I’m not beautiful. I’m a dreary, scrawny broad.”
    “And I am a dreary little husband, girl.”
    “Keep using that word tomorrow, Floyd. Husband. I despise poachers.”
    “Go to bed, Cory. Rest up for the battle. When are you coming over?”
    “Midmorning, I guess. Sleep well, my darling.”
    “You too.” He heard the sound of a sigh, a kiss, a clack of hanging up.
    After the light was out he thought, Hubbard isn’t ready, but she is. The thief said, “I was just walking down the street minding my own business and this here wallet bounced right into my hand.”
    But it would be so damned unfair. Jan has so little chance to compete in Cory’s league.…
    Yet he had a vivid textural memory of Cory’s lips, of the sleekness and warmth of her back, of the small hardnesses of her breasts against his chest.
    Who would have to know? Who could be hurt?

Five
    ON THE MORNING OF the first full day of the convention, Connie Mulaney stood one step behind her husband and looked at him in the full-length mirror as he tied his tie.
    “What are you cooking up, Jesse? I want to know.”
    “Cooking up? Who’s cooking anything up, honey?”
    “You have that look.”
    He spun around. “What kind of a look am I supposed to have? I’m under a hell of a lot of pressure. Maybe it shows. I can’t help that. My God, Connie, I’m doing the best I can. I’m working hard. How about that speech last night? You saw how well it went over.”
    “You did very well, dear. You always do.”
    “I’ve got to run a committee meeting, starting at ten.”
    “So you’ve been telling me.” She reached and adjusted the knot of the tie, patted it, stepped back. “That’ll have to do.”
    As they walked toward the nearby elevators he said, “How’dyou get along with Floyd Hubbard? I saw you were sitting next to him.”
    “He’s a very nice boy, Jesse.”
    “Did he seem to like my speech?”
    “He seemed impressed.”
    They stood waiting for the elevator. “Somehow, I can’t get to know him.”
    “Why not, dear? He seems easy to know.”
    “For one thing, he won’t let his hair down. He lays back. Weak drinks and damn few of those. He’s one of those guys who’d check and raise. A damn sandbagger if I’ve ever seen one.”
    As they got onto the elevator she said, “Now, dear, a man can be entirely human and still not go hog crazy at a convention.”
    “Like our grandson says, honey, that fella bugs me.”
    “I don’t see why he should.”
    “No matter where I am, I got the feeling he’s seven feet behind me and off to one side, listening and watching.”
    When they were seated at a table for two and had ordered breakfast, he brought Hubbard up again. “He said he doesn’t know anything about selling, but he’s certainly memorized all that crap in the GAE management manual. One thing he asked me last night. He wanted to know what I thought about the idea of changing over to dividing up the sales force by products instead of into geographical areas.”
    “What did you tell him, dear?”
    “I just told him we’d been up one side of that and down the other up in New York, and I think a good knowledge of an area, and a good warm personal relationship with all potential customers makes more sense than all this crap about knowing one part of the line inside and out. I told him my men are salesmen, not technical consultants.”
    “What did he say?”
    “I