Encounter in Atlanta

by Ed Howdershelt

cell phone buzzed and he answered it with, "Cade here." "Hey, ol' buddy," said Frank Stearns, "I hear you had some special female company last night. I'm kind of surprised you're up and around at all this morning." 'Ol' buddy, huh?' thought Cade, 'Shields up.' He asked, "Are you in the ops room, Frank?" "Huh? No. Why?" "Do you know if Mandi's back yet?" "Back? What do you mean 'back'? What'd she do, run out on you? Didn't you tickle her fancy?" With a sigh, Cade asked, "Frank, why the hell did you call me?" Frank Stearns laughed and said, "I just wanted to hear your version of things. How'd it go last night, stud?" In a flat tone, Cade said, "Sorry to disappoint you, Frank." Cade let Stearns hear him sigh again and thumbed the off button as he reached for his coffee. As he took a sip, Cade again recalled scenes from the shower and the way that scent of wildflower and honey had seemingly taken over his mind. Pheromones? He couldn't remember reading anything about pheromones having any particular smell, but Mandi wasn't exactly a Jane Average woman, either. Just a brief remembrance of that scent and its effect was enough to cause that effect to occur again. Cade ordered another coffee so he'd have an excuse to remain seated until that effect died down a bit. A rather tall woman at another table noticed his discomfort and pinked slightly when Cade had to reach to adjust himself. She was wearing a barbarian princess sort of outfit that showed a lot of skin and Cade wondered if she thought his discomfort was her fault. His gaze fell to her long legs and he shrugged mentally as he eyed her thighs. Yeah. She had pretty good legs. Sure. It could happen, given the right -- and somewhat closer -- circumstances. The woman's pink became a bit deeper and she turned away nervously. That made Cade chuckle. Why the hell do women wear sexy, skimpy costumes like those if they can't handle the results? Big duh, lady. You have good legs. Men look at exposed female skin. Grow up and deal with it. Whups. Wait one. He peered more closely at the rest of her for a moment. She looked a little familiar... Got it. Add some Klingon makeup and an outfit made of leather, metal stuff, and patches of motorcycle tires. She was the attitude-woman from the dealer's room. But she was at a table with three other women and no men. Where was her Mr. Klingon this morning? Cade decided it didn't matter a damn where Mr. Klingon was, but he stopped eyeballing her legs so his system would relax enough that he could leave the restaurant in time to get to the eleven o'clock writer's panel. A few minutes later he was able to down the last of his coffee and head for the escalators. As he was descending, Cade heard a soft swear word as something ripped behind him. He turned to find a woman kneeling to try to pick up the contents of her purse. The seam of her tight skirt had opened all the way up to her ass and she was scrabbling to pick stuff up before the escalator step reached the bottom. Cade helped her, of course, and they succeeded, then they stepped to one side of the escalator and he held her purse and stuff as she tried to do something about her skirt. "It's too tight," said Cade. "It'll just open up again. Might as well say to hell with it and change when you get a chance." She froze, then gaped irritatedly at him. "Are you saying I'm fat?" Cade eyed her ample bosom and the fullness of her thigh -- not an excessive fullness at all -- and shook his head. "Nope. I said exactly what I meant. That skirt's too tight. It probably won't stay fixed." Her irritated gaze became a glare. "What the hell do you know..?" Shoving her purse and stuff at her, Cade interrupted her impending rant with, "Yeah, right. Forget it, lady. Here. Have fun trying to hold yourself together," and walked away. The writer's panel covered nothing that hadn't been covered before. Cade's main reason for not leaving was that Mandi might come looking for him and it was one of the places he'd circled on the schedule page he'd left for her. With three hours to kill before the next panel, Cade went back to his room by way of the ops room. Mandi hadn't returned, but he learned that his laptop had been marked for return to him, so he retrieved it and used his room's phone line to check email and surf the net a bit. He'd found next to nothing about superwomen the day before. Now there were dozens of sites. All of them had essentially the same pictures -- cuts from the news and scans of the flyer Mandi had handed out -- but a few had pictures from the car-juggling event and the parking lot afterward. He turned off his laptop and put it in his backpack. Mandi's luggage was still in his room, but there was nothing about her that he wanted or needed to know so badly that it would justify opening her bags. Cade made himself a coffee and flopped on the bed to see what was in the day's news. Quite a bit of it on several channels was nothing more than a recap of yesterday's events and repeated reruns of the video footage. Scanning up the channels, Cade found an old movie and half-watched it as his mind chewed through the previous day's events the way he'd lived them and survived some of them. But his mind kept returning to Mandi. Her face, hair, shoulders, legs... the sound of her voice... her smile... He realized that some of what he was feeling and thinking came from her natural attractiveness and having spent the day and most of the night with her, but it seemed to Cade that he was feeling quite a bit more than he should for so short a time together. That led him to wonder why, which somehow led him back to her wildflower and honey scent. Cade got up and went to the bathroom, but the maid had already cleaned the room and taken Mandi's towel. No matter; the scent was still etched in his mind. 'Etched.' he thought, returning to the bed. 'Yeah, that was a word for it. Unforgettable was another. Too much so?' Could there be something about her scent that... well, that was as 'super' as the rest of her? That maybe had left some kind of indelible chemical mark on his brain? With a chuckle, he caught himself and changed course. If it had left such a mark on him, was it necessarily a bad thing? It would conjure explicit memories of her. Cade's mind flashed on Mandi's exquisite legs and lovely face and he decided that he could definitely live with that sort of a mark on his brain. Unless Mandi -- or her scent, or whatever else about her -- created disruptions of some sort, no biggie. That was essentially his last conscious thought as sleep again overtook him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cade woke to the sounds of a phone ringing and pounding on a door, groggy as hell and thoroughly disoriented. His watch read almost six o'clock. When he tried to stand to go to the door, he staggered and fell back on the bed. Dizzy as hell, too, and weak as a kitten. He made another effort to stand up and headed for the door again. When he turned the handle, John and a guy from Phil's team seemed startled to see him, then John rushed forward and steered Cade back into the room. The other guy closed the door and followed. John sat Cade down in the chair by the desk as the other guy answered the phone and said, "Yeah. He's here. I think he might be sick, though. Yeah. Okay." Turning to John, the guy said, "Doc Crandall's got the duty today. Do we need him?" Glancing up, John said, "Don't know yet. Stand by." Facing Cade, he asked, "Cade, what's wrong with you?" With a terse shake of his head, Cade said, "Just woke up, that's all." "You look as if you've just climbed out of your grave." Looking up, Cade said, "Well, gee, thanks." The guy on the phone snorted a laugh as John studied Cade's face rather critically. "I'm okay, John," insisted Cade, "Just tired, I guess." "Just like that, you got tired?" Shrugging, Cade said, "Guess so. You know I was up late." Checking his watch, John said, "Well, then, you've got most of an hour to get to the ops room. Tonight's Mandi show starts at eight and we want everybody in place ahead of time." "She's back?" "Yeah. She's going over a few things with Phyllis." Nodding, Cade said, "Okay. Half an hour. Got it." "You sure you're okay?" Sighing, Cade stood up, spread his arms, and said, "Hey, I'm up and I'm dressed. I'll be there." Once he was alone, Cade made himself a wakeup coffee and downed most of it on the spot. A look in the mirror confirmed John's appraisal; Cade looked as if he'd risen from a sickbed. He felt that way, too; dog-tired and faintly trembling, he turned on the shower and shed his clothes. The shower seemed to help a bit. Cade leaned against the wall and did several fast pushups under the spray to get his blood moving a bit faster. As he turned to face the spray he used some
of it to rinse the staleness out of his mouth and discovered an intense thirst. After drinking what seemed like a gallon of water, the thirst eased somewhat and Cade finished washing up. His coffee seemed to beckon to him as he dried himself. Cade slugged down what was left of the stuff and made a fresh cup, then went to get