Weekend by Andrew Neiderman, Tania Grossinger Page B

couldn’t get the same value for the price anyplace else. It was as simple as that. Anything else was a figment of an old-timer’s imagination.
    He stopped short as he saw the expression on Bruce’s face as, champagne in hand, he stood in front of one of the tables of hors d’oeuvres. He had obviously never seen so much food, so elegantly prepared and displayed. Perhaps, thought Jonathan, he might use this observation to advantage. Maybe, if he played his cards right, he could get this medical detective to get so wrapped up in the special delights of the hotel he would forget about quarantines, cholera, and epidemics altogether. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody had succumbed.
    “Okay,” Charlotte said, pausing for effect in the doorway of the now very crowded Gold room. “Pick a winner!”
    “Will you please stop it?” Fern blurted out, embarrassed to even make an entrance at this point with her friend. Charlotte had been much, much too loud on their way down to the cocktail party. Fern was positive the woman in the elevator with her six-foot-tall husband despised her for the obvious way she was flirting with him. Then, to make matters worse, she had practically propositioned the attendant at the information counter in the lobby.
    “Listen, honey, contrary to what you may have heard, good things don’t happen to those who wait. You have to make them happen—especially if you’re looking for action!”
    “I never said I was looking for what you call ‘action.’ ”
    Charlotte turned and looked at her again, very unhappy with the way things were turning out. They had had their first argument in the room about clothes. Fern was wearing a high-neck, long-sleeved, three-quarter-length
shmatta
that even Klein’s basement would have rejected. Her hair, tied back in a bun so tightly it pulled the edges of her forehead up on her scalp, made her look twenty years older than she was. Her makeup, what little of it there was, added nothing.
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” Charlotte told her. She had just zipped up a copy of a bright red strapless featured recently on the cover of
Vogue.
Her cleavage was magnified by a padded bra purchased specially for the occasion. Her auburn hair, recently styled by Mr. Albert of 58th St., fell neatly around the nape of her neck and she had spent nearly an hour painting her face with what seemed to be a pound of mascara, eye liner, shadow, and lipstick. “This is a hunt we’re on, not a retreat.”
    “I’m not comfortable pretending to be something I’m not.”
    “Who’s telling you to be something you’re not? You’re a woman, aren’t you? You’re entitled to some fun in your life. Virginity doesn’t guarantee a long and happy life, my friend. It doesn’t guarantee a thing.”
    “It’s not just a question of virginity,” Fern said, a deep blush accomplishing naturally what all the cosmetics on Charlotte’s counter could never hope to do.
    “Then what is it a question of?”
    “There’s got to be more in the world than just sex. What about love, for instance?”
    “What about it?”
    “To be with a man just because he’s got a you-know-what between his legs is ridiculous,” Fern went on. “I’d rather be by myself. Then, at least, I know I’m not being used.”
    Charlotte quickly dropped the conversation, but was not at all pleased at having burdened herself with a dud. “As if I don’t have enough difficulty meeting someone as it is,” she mused.
    “We might as well get something to eat,” she suggested as she made her way through the crowd to the serving tables. Fern followed reluctantly just as Bruce, trying to balance two plates and a drink, turned around awkwardly and nearly knocked Charlotte off her feet.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry. Excuse me,” he said, his face almost as red as the nearby tablecloths.
    “No harm done,” Charlotte said, holding on to his shoulder for support. “How’s the food?”
    “The best I ever tasted. Those little