"I heard from the latrine grapevine. Congrats—"
"— so I'm in a position to pass on a bit of good advice to you. You have to push more, Chester, grab onto things when they come along…"
"For chrissake, Adriann, you sound like a bad commercial for crowded streetcars."
"And that sort of thing too. Little jokes. People begin to think you don't take your work seriously and that is sure death in the ad business."
"Of course I don't take the work seriously — who in their right mind could?" He heard a rumbling and looked, but the tunnel was still empty; it must have been a truck in the street above. "Are you going to tell me that you really care about writing deathless prose about milady's armpits smelling the right way from the use of the right Stink-Go-Way?"
"Don't be vulgar, Chester, — you know you can be sweet when you want to," she said, taking advantage of female reasoning to ignore his arguments and to inject a note of emotion into a previously logical conversation.
"You're damn right I can be sweet," he said huskily, not averse to a little emotion himself. With her mouth shut Adriann was pretty attractive in a past-thirtyish way. The knitted dress did wonders for her bottom, and undoubtedly the foundation maker's artifice had something to do with the outstanding attraction of her front piece, but more in underpinning than in padding, he was willing to bet.
He shuffled close and slipped his arms around her waist and patted lightly on the top of her flank. "I can be sweet and I can remember a time when you didn't mind being sweet right back."
"That's a long time finished, boy," she said in her schoolmarm voice and peeled his arms away with a picking-up-worms expression. Chester's newspaper fell out from under his arm, where he had stuffed it, and he bent over mumbling to pick it up from the gritty platform.
She was quiet for a moment after this, twisting her skirt around a bit and rubbing out the wrinkles as if brushing away the contamination of his touch. There were no sounds from the street overhead, and the long, dimly lit station was as silent as a burial vault. They were alone with the strange loneliness that can be experienced only in a large city, of people somewhere always close by, yet always cut off. Tired, suddenly depressed, Chester lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"You're not allowed to smoke in the subway.” Adriann said with detached coldness.
"I'm not allowed to smoke, nor to give you a little squeeze, to make jokes in the office, or to look with justified contempt at our current client."
"No you're not," she snapped and leveled a delicate finger with a blood-red nail at him. "And since you brought it up, I'll tell you something else. Other people in the office have noticed it too, and this I know. You have been with the firm longer than I, so they considered you for the copy chief's job — and turned you down. And I was told in utmost confidence that they are actually considering letting you go. Does that mean anything to you?"
"It does. It means I have been nursing a viper in my bosom. I seem to remember that I got you this job and even had to convince old Blaisdell that you could do the work. You acted right grateful too, at the time — remember those passionate scenes in the foyer of your boardinghouse?"
"Don't be a pig!"
"Now the passion is dead, so is any chance of a raise, and it looks like my job is out the window as well. With dear Adriann for a friend, who needs an enemy…"
"There are things living in the subway, you know."
The voice was husky and trembled, it came suddenly from behind them, from what they thought was the empty platform, startling them both. Adriann gasped and turned quickly. There was a pool of darkness next to the large litter bin and neither of them had noticed the man slumped against the wall, seated there. He struggled to his feet and stepped forward.
"How dare you!" Adriann said shrilly, startled and angry. "Hiding there, eavesdropping on a private conversation. Aren't there any police in this subway?"
"There are things, you know," the man said, ignoring her, grinning up at Chester, his head twisted to one side.
