The Girl in the Face of the Clock by Charles Mathes Page A

exorbitantly expensive medical tests. Now he wanted to take her on what sounded like a vacation. Was a hired playmate allowed to say no? Jane felt obligated and hated it. She had never had a job like this. What were her rights?
    â€œIt’ll be strictly business,” said Perry, misunderstanding her discomfort. “I don’t have any ulterior motives, believe me. I’m not that kind of fellow—no, no, not in this day and age. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I just think it will be fun. We’ll fly first class. I always fly first class. You’ll have your own hotel room and everything.”
    â€œLook, Mr. Mannerback …”
    â€œPlease call me Perry. We’re friends now. Everybody calls me Perry.”
    â€œLook … Perry,” said Jane, “I appreciate what you’re doing for my father, I really do, but it’s just …”
    â€œYou want to be here when they’re doing the tests, don’t you?” said Perry, trying to snap his fingers. “Of course you do. How could I be so stupid?”
    â€œNo, no, it’s not that,” said Jane. “My being here isn’t going to make any difference. Nothing’s going to make any difference.”
    â€œYou mustn’t say that. There’s always hope.”
    But there wasn’t. Not for her father. Her father was gone, Jane wanted to scream. Why couldn’t anybody admit the truth?
    â€œAll right,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’ll go to Seattle with you.”
    â€œYou will?”
    â€œI said so, didn’t I?”
    â€œWonderful,” said Perry Mannerback, clapping his hands. “We’ll have a great time. Leonid, you take Miss Sailor right over to the hospital to see her father, then wait for her and take her home. She’s got to rest up over the weekend for our big trip.”
    â€œYes, Mr. Mennerbeck,” said Leonid from the front seat.
    â€œWe’ll pick you up at your apartment on Monday morning, nine o’clock sharp; our flight’s at ten-thirty. Pack for a few days in case we decide to stay over. We’ll have a lot of fun, you’ll see.”
    Perry marched off into the museum with the same satisfied expression on his face as when he wrote out a check to a struggling Off Off Broadway theatre group or for a child with a leaky heart valve. The limousine inched into traffic. Jane slumped back in her seat.
    There had been altogether too much for her to absorb about Perry Mannerback and his strange, frenetic world in one week. Too many new people. Too many facts. Too many questions. She really did need a weekend to rest, but tomorrow was the evening she had promised to go out to dinner with Dad’s rapacious art dealer, Elinore King. That would be about as restful as a night in a cement mixer.
    Along the way to the hospital, people turned and tried to make out who she was, sitting there in the back of the big black limousine. No, I’m nobody important, Jane wanted to roll down the window and shout. I’m just a poor dope who’s in over her head and doesn’t have the sense to get out.
    Yorkville East End stood out like a castle amidst the elegant apartment buildings of East End Avenue. A few blocks away was the mayor’s residence, Gracie Mansion. In Carl Schurz Park across the street, children played, dogs frolicked, and signs warned of rat poison. Leonid dropped Jane off at the front door of the hospital and went to try to find a place to double-park.
    If Royaume Israel was medical dead storage, Yorkville East End was the front lines of the war against injury and disease. The central waiting room bustled with the kind of well-heeled visitors you expected to see at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the city. Doctors in business suits barked urgent orders into cellular telephones. Others in green scrubs marched down the halls like soldiers on parade. Nurses and orderlies in starched white