Brenda lay down beside him. “I love you, too,” she said.
Brenda checked her watch; it was 8:45. She climbed out of her car and pulled a roll of quarters out of her pocket. She fed quarters into the parking meter in front of the Crown Center and surveyed the structure. It was a classic mixture of grayish brick and glass. Just then, an old couple walked past her. The old man was hunched over, holding the old woman’s arm. Brenda noticed she had an obvious limp and used a cane.
“You must watch out for that crack,” the old man warned his wife.
“Oh, Harry,” she said, “I’m not a child.”
“But I still want to protect you,” he said. They were walking toward a place in the sidewalk where the cement had a two-inch rise. Brenda watched the old woman stop as her husband tightened his arm supportively and helped the woman place her foot up along the crack, feeling until her footing was steady on the other side. Then she stepped over.
Brenda smiled. They’re so sweet together. Glen and I will be like that some day.
Brenda took a small black suitcase on wheels out of her trunk and hurried toward the building.
Once inside the marble foyer, she made it into a waiting elevator, punched twenty-three and waited for the door to close. When she reached the twenty-third floor, the bell dinged and she stepped off. The offices were extravagantly decorated with expensive oriental furnishings. Brenda didn’t normally like oriental stuff, but these were superb.
The receptionist sat at a crescent-shaped desk that had a gorgeous dragon carved on the face of it. The phone rang and she answered, “Morgan Enterprises.” She took down a message and hung up. There was an inlaid mother-of-pearl altar against one wall with an ancient dragon-shaped ship sitting atop it. It was made of elaborately carved ivory. On the opposite wall was thick frosted glass with an etching of a Japanese geisha. She was standing on a cliff; the wind was blowing her kimono and swirling her hair. It was beautiful.
“May I help you?” the young Asian woman behind the desk asked. She had straight, gleaming black hair and the most beautiful complexion Brenda had ever seen.
“Yes. I’m Brenda Brumbaugh from Associated Mutual. I have a nine o’clock appointment with Mr. Morgan,” Brenda said.
“I’ll let him know you’re here,” the receptionist said and with a smile motioned for Brenda to take a seat.
Brenda sniffed a bud vase on the reception desk containing white cymbidium orchids. They were beautiful, but the smell wasn’t very strong or pleasing. Brenda sank into a soft leather sofa. She heard the young woman punch in the numbers on her switchboard and speak into her headset, “Your nine o’clock is here.”
The receptionist walked over. “Mr. Morgan will see you now. I’ll show you the way.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Brenda peered at the young woman. Odd, she looks like she should have those little, silver dangling things in her hair like the geisha dolls have, not a microphone headset. She was lovely, but she’d obviously had plastic surgery on her eyes to make them look more Caucasian. What a shame that she felt it was necessary to change her looks to “fit in,” or to fit someone else’s idea of “beautiful.”
Brenda stood up and began dragging her medical case behind her, but had trouble pulling the wheeled case on the thick carpet. Finally, exasperated with the effort, she picked it up and carried it the rest of the way. She followed the receptionist down a hall making a right turn at the end. Then the receptionist pointed and said, “Continue down this corridor. It’s the third door on your left.” Brenda thanked her and continued on her own to Mr. Morgan’s office. Entering the room, she looked around.
His office was the complete opposite of the elegant outer office. It looked like it had been decorated by Andy Warhol. Everything was in primary colors. A red sofa in the shape of lips was framed by a canary yellow wall. The carpet throughout the room was royal blue. Brenda felt she’d been thrown back into a time warp of the seventies. From the ceiling, a giant Calder mobile twirled slowly, propelled only by the flow coming out of the air-conditioning vent.
“Mr. Morgan?” Brenda called. “I’m Brenda Brumbaugh from Associated Mutual. I’m here to do the medical exam for your new policy.”
“Be right with you,” said a male voice, coming from behind a cracked door. “Fix yourself a drink, if you want.”
Brenda was startled by the offer—it was only nine in the morning. She snooped around a mirrored mini-bar. Suspended above the crystal decanters was a bright-yellow plastic cat holding a real fiddle and a cow jumping over a moon. The moon was lit up, of course.
This guy’s got some weird art. I bet he paid a fortune for this stuff.
Brenda heard him clear his throat and she turned. Mr. Morgan stood there in nothing but his silk boxer shorts, holding a jar filled with urine. He was fiddling with his watch, mumbling something about Kuala Lumpur having an eleven-hour time difference. Brenda was glad there was a lid on it so he couldn’t spill the specimen.
Mr. Morgan was fiftyish, tall, super skinny and surprisingly stylish. His black hair was slicked back and he had a good looking but oily quality about him. His sideburns were gray and his nose, she noticed, had the ruptured vessels frequently indicative of alcoholism. Not a great bet to recommend for insurance.
Brenda was a bit taken back by the sight of him. She’d never had anyone meet her in his underwear before. She told herself it was all part of her job, gritted her teeth and marched up to him.
He smiled at her. “Russell Morgan, at your service.”
“I’ll take that,” she said, reaching for the urine sample. She unscrewed the lid and plopped a thermometer in it.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
“We register the temperature to make sure it’s fresh from the body. Drug addicts like to try to fool us by giving us somebody else’s urine.”
“Was I supposed to be in the buff?” Mr. Morgan asked, smiling.
She shook her head, “No, you didn’t even have to strip down to your underwear, but let’s get started. I have a parking meter ticking away downstairs.”
She unpacked the blood pressure cuff from her medical case and wrapped it around his arm. She squeezed the pump and noticed that with each squeeze he moaned.
“This isn’t hurting is it?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his voice strange.
Is he getting off on this? Brenda wondered as she wrote his blood pressure on the chart. She checked the temperature of the urine, wrote it on the chart, sealed the specimen jar and placed it in her medical kit. She took a measuring tape from her pocket and began measuring his chest.
Brenda started her regular spiel. “The insurance company pays me for the exam. You don’t have to worry about getting a bill. They just want to make sure you’re healthy before they issue the policy. Do you have any questions, Mr. Morgan?”
Mr. Morgan watched her measure his chest, “Yes. What’re you doing that for?”
“It’s just part of the exam,” Brenda said frowning as she scribbled his measurement on the chart.
“That’s not the part of me you ought to be measuring,”