The Mural

by Michael Mallory

  “Something will bring us back together. We’ll find a way.” She began wiggling in his lap, and ten minutes later they were both once more crying out in ecstasy.

  It took another hour for them to separate and get their clothes back on. For Jack, it was a revelation; the intensity of the sex had been something he had never felt before. Somewhat shakily, he started the truck back up and drove onto the highway.

  After a few silent miles, Dani started to giggle. “You need me to sew some buttons back on your shirt before you go?”

  “I’ll just change shirts, but thanks.”

  “Won’t your wife become suspicious when she does the laundry?”

  “Elley doesn’t do the laundry. We have a housekeeper.”

  She reached over and began to massage his chest under his open, buttonless shirt, hardening his nipples.

  They barely made it back to the hotel in time.

  Literally running to Jack’s room, they made love once on the bed, once on the floor, and finally in the shower. It was there, with the hot water streaming down their linked bodies that Jack asked her: “How much longer are you planning to stay here?”

  “Another couple of days. I might hang around longer and see if there are any local historical societies before heading back down to San Diego. If you want, I can see if anyone knows anything about your mural, or the old city.”

  “I’d hate to put you to any trouble.”

  She slowly knelt down, following the contour of his body with her tongue. “I think I’d enjoy it,” she said.

  “There’s nothing left,” Jack moaned as she took him in her mouth.

  He was wrong.

  * * * * * * *

  Several hundred miles away, Marcus Broarty leaned back in his executive office chair and scored a paper ball hoop in the circular file. Seconds earlier the ball had been a follow-up thank you letter from some hungry kid he had interviewed last week. He could not even remember the kid’s name, which did not make much difference, since he was not planning on hiring him. Job-hunters annoyed him. They were nothing but street beggars with neckties instead of cardboard signs, wandering around from company to company pleading for a chance to impress you with their “accomplishments,” then following-up any meeting with the kind of brownnosing missive that he had just used to score two cosmic points. He had never stooped to that sort of thing. His MBA was his ticket. Some of the pricks around here thought it was simply because his aunt was the wife of the chairman of Crane Commercial Building Engineering, but Marcus knew better. He still had to prove that he had the executive stuff after he was installed.

  His firing of the man who wrote MBA: Marc Broarty, Asshole on one of the washroom walls was just one example of his strength. Ditto for the miserable little shit that came up with the joke, “What’s the sound of a buzzard vomiting? BROOOOOOOARTY!”

  The intercom on Marc Broarty’s desk buzzed. Pressing it, he said, “Yeah, babe.”

  “Mr. McMenamin is on line two,” Yolanda’s voice said.

  What the hell does he want now? “Oh, god, tell him I’m...no, no, that’s okay, Yolanda, I’ll take it.” Wrapping pudgy fingers around the receiver, he put it to his ear and jabbed the button. “Emac, how the hell are you? I was thinking about giving you a call.”

  “I’m here now,” Egon McMenamin said at the other end of the line, and since he was using the speakerphone, he was likely not alone in his office. “I was wondering if you’d heard back from your guy up at the site yet.”

  “I don’t have his official report yet,” Broarty answered. “He’ll be in the office tomorrow. I’ll get him on the stick as he gets back.”

  “Well, Marc, I could really use some information now, even if it’s preliminary, anything you’ve got.”

  “Sounds like you’re in kind of a rush.”

  “Not me, Marc, the board. Can’t you call your guy?”

  “I suppose I could,” Broarty said, “though when I talked to him yesterday—”

  “Oh, you’ve already spoken with him, then,” Emac said.

  “Well, yes, but he had not completed his review at the time, and—”

  “Marcus, I’m going to confide in you. It looks like the budget on this project is going to be revised downward, so I need to be able to report back absolutely everything that can be salvaged.”

  Broarty took a deep breath. “Well, the thing is, Emac, it’s starting to look like the buildings out there might need a lot of work.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, um, all this is based on an unconfirmed early report, you understand, but, well, the conditions of the structures apparently aren’t what I’d call great.”

  “I need you to be a little more specific than that, Marc,” Emac said. “If they aren’t great, what are they? Good? Satisfactory? What?”

  Broarty started to perspire. “Well, we might be in a situation where it could take a lot of work for the houses to be brought up to code—”

  “What code are we talking about?”

  “Uh, you know, the building and sa—”

  “Jesus, Marc, don’t tell me you people are using the building codes of Los Angeles to judge those structures by,” Emac snapped. “Most of the castles in Europe couldn’t meet L.A. standards.”

  Rivulets of sweat were running down Broarty’s temples. “I’m sure Jack Hayden is taking that into account,” he said. At least Broarty hoped to hell Hayden was taking it into account, since this was the first time he had stopped to consider such matters.

  “I hope he does, Marcus, because I’d hate to think that we engaged a firm that didn’t have a complete grasp of the requirements of the job.”

  “Emac, Emac, c’mon, you know we’re here for you.”

  “I’d like to think so, but what I’m hearing from you is a lot of vagaries. I have to go into a meeting this afternoon with the men who are paying my salary and your fee for working on this particular project, and I have to be able to tell them either that the Lost Pines Resort development is completely within reach and on track, or that it is going to be prohibitively expense and they should pull the plug. Now which is it?”

  “Emac, those are kind of extreme choices, aren’t they?” Broarty said. “I mean, isn’t there something in the middle?”

  There was a brief pause before Egon McMenamin replied, “You want option number three, Mr. Broarty? Here it is: that Resort Partners severs its contract with Crane immediately and sues to recoup the moneys already allotted, and then hires another inspection firm that understands what’s at stake and knows what the hell they’re doing.”

  Shit! Broarty had glanced at the photos Hayden had sent but had not studied them. Frankly, he was hoping to stay out of this altogether, except to sign his name on the cover letter of Hayden’s report.

  “I’m sorry, Marc,” Emac was saying, “but I didn’t hear your reply.”

  Broarty coughed. “Actually, Hayden is supposed to be in the office first thing tomorrow mor—”

  “Jesus, Marc, who’s in charge down there? Hayden or you?”

  “What do you want? Do you want me to sign off on the buildings as they stand?”

  “What I want is for you to tell me whether our goal of rehabilitating the existing town is doable. If you sincerely believe it is not, Marc, based on your expertise, then for Christ’s sake tell me. I’d be disappointed, as would the board, but I would accept it. I would, however, hate to find out later that it was a judgment based on faulty information, just like I would hate to offer a good report to the board and then find out that’s not true either.”

  Broarty’s head was spinning. Jack had emailed something to him, presumably photos of the place, but he had not actually looked at them yet. Hayden’s the one who should be dealing with this. But Jack was not back, and the decision, like it or not, was his to make. “First, Emac, I want you to understand that I have not personally been to the site. I do, however, trust Jack Hayden’s judgment implicitly, and based upon the very sketchy details he has se
nt down, prior to his arrival back at the office and the filing of his report, I think you should be able to reach your goal.”

  “So that means I can go to the board and assure them that based on your inspection the plans to rehabilitate the structures in the town are both sound and cost effective.”

  Marcus Broarty closed his eyes and said: “Yes.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know, Marc,” Emac said, his voice suddenly cheerful. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Send along that full report as soon as you can.”

  “You can be sure of it.”

  After a few lame pleasantries, the two men hung up. Broarty replaced the receiver with one hand mopped his brow with the other. Then he turned to his computer and pulled up the emailed photos Hayden had sent him, this time really studying them. By the third one, Marcus Broarty’s stomach felt like a chunk of dry ice had lodged in it. Picture after picture showed ruins of buildings and still-standing structures far beyond redemption, except for the city hall structure. Christ, what was he going to do now? He could hardly call Emac back and tell him that he had bluffed his way to a decision that turned out to be the wrong one.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Broarty pulled up the file on his computer to which he had saved the images and, one by one, began deleting them, sight unseen, as though he had never gotten them. When he was finished, he would go back in and delete Jack’s email as well. This would be his story: he had talked to Jack, but had never received his photos. As for Hayden’s verbal communication to him, well, verbal communication wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Besides, what was the last thing that Jack said? That he was going to investigate further and hopefully find something more encouraging? The word encouraging was good enough for Broarty.

  If the shit really did hit the fan, though, there was always the fact that Jack, if office parties were any indication, was a drinker, so his judgment could be impeached.

  You mean you sent a drunk out to do the inspection? Broarty could hear Emac’s snap.

  Of course I knew about Jack’s problem, he’d reply, but his work in the past, before his drinking got out of control, had always been professional, and, well, I believe in giving people every chance possible. That’s just the kind of manager I am. But of course, in light of this situation, he will be fired immediately.

  Whatever Jack might say in protest would have to be taken against Broarty’s own word; the testimony of a goddamned drunk versus that of an MBA.

  He was starting to feel better as he continued eradicating his system of the photos, finally coming to the last one. On a whim, this one he opened, and was surprised to see the face of a woman, turned out so that she appeared to be facing him directly, looking straight into his eyes, if not his soul. She appeared to smile at him. Goddamn Hayden! Broarty thought, grinning at his computer screen, he emailed the wrong pictures in the first place! Jack was supposed to be photographing buildings, not paintings, or whatever the hell this was. “Goodbye, my dear,” Marc Broarty said softly, as he tapped the mouse to delete it, and in a flash, it was gone.

  No more evidence.

  Broarty sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. Things were going to work out, he felt confident of that. He had protected himself.

  He was about to get up and go to the washroom to freshen up, when he looked back at his computer screen and noticed that the image of the painted woman was still there. “That’s odd,” he muttered. Perhaps Hayden had sent two shots of the painting and he had not noticed before now. Aligning his cursor to the corner of the image, he selected Delete and clicked again. Then his head snapped back.

  Broarty sat looking at the empty screen for a few seconds, then chuckled. A digital glitch; that was all it was. When he keyed for the image to be deleted, some pixels shifted right before it disappeared.

  How else could he explain the illusion that the woman in the painting had just winked at him?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Daddeeeee!” Robynn squealed when Jack walked in the door. She ran and launched herself into his waiting arms. “I missed you I missed you I missed you!”

  “I missed you too, punkin,” Jack said, hugging her tightly. Glancing over at their nanny, he added: “Hi, Nola, how’s everything going?”

  Nola Gutiérrez answered by rolling her eyes. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Jack?” she asked.

  “Sure. Just hold on a second.”

  Once Jack was able to peel himself away from Robynn, he took Nola into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it something with Robynn?”

  “No, no, not with him,” she said in heavily accented English. It always amused Jack that Nola confused her gender pronouns. “Daniel was sent home from school again.” Daniel, Nola’s son, had just started middle school and was not having an easy time of it. He had been sent down to the principal at least once a week over the past month, usually for fighting. Jack had seen Daniel enough to know that he was not a bad kid, but like so many others he was dealing with pressures coming in from all sides, while living in a neighborhood that was heavily gang-influenced. Nola was a strong woman and was handling it the best she could, but Jack knew she had her hands full with the boy, particularly since she had to devote so much of her time and attention to Robynn. “I’d like to go home now, if that’s all right.”

  Normally, Nola did not leave until Elley arrived home, even if Jack was already there, but today he said: “Go on ahead. Robynn and I will be fine here. I hope everything is okay.”

  “Gracias.” Nola grabbed her purse and headed out as Robynn pulled Jack back into the dining room and showed him a drawing she had made that morning. It depicted her in the middle holding the hands of two big stick people, standing out in a field next to a house, under a bright yellow sun. Jack easily recognized himself—Robynn always used an orange ochre color crayon to color his light chestnut hair—while the other figure’s dark hair and enormous red lips signified Elley. Jack was always amused by the way his daughter managed to make her mother look like The Joker. Robynn’s own self-portrait was all eyes and hair and teeth and a line under her nose representing her scar. The three stick people walked happily in the sunshine with huge smiles on their face.

  If it could only be like this. “This is beautiful, punkin, can I keep it?”

  “Mm-hmmm.”

  Once she had started in on another drawing and was working on it intently, Jack snuck away and called in to the office. At the other end of the line Jonelle, the receptionist, flipped through his messages for the last couple of days. None were terribly important, so Jack asked her to hold them until he came in tomorrow. “Does Mr. Broarty need to ask me anything?”

  “Let me check,” Jonelle replied, and transferred the call to Yolanda Valdera, who greeted him warmly and then said: “I don’t know if Mr. B. needs you or not. He’s had the door closed most of the day. I know that Emac called earlier.”

  “Do you know what he wanted?”

  “Not a clue, but right after the call was when the door closed.”

  “Oh.” Jack could not decide if that boded well or ill. Marcus might have worked up the balls to tell Emac that Wood City was a disaster zone, and if so, he was probably basking in his new-found authority. Or he might have been browbeaten by Emac for something or other and went into hiding, should anyone else call. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” Jack said. “I’ll be in early.” He hung up and went to the kitchen and grabbed a Sam Adams from the fridge. It was 4:39...close enough to five-thirty. Then Jack retrieved his laptop, which was still by the front door, and carried it into the dining room, setting it up on the other end of the table Robynn was using to draw. He winked at her when she looked up. Powering up, he then pulled his microcassette out of his pocket, plugged in the earpiece, and played his notes back, transcribing them on the screen, minus the bits of commentary that were nobody else’s business. A slow typist, Jack had to rewind and play back certain parts over and over again, but two beers later, he was finished. He would put th
e notes on CD and take it into the office to finish his report there. Before powering the laptop down again he made sure that he also had copies of the pictures on the CD.

  It was nearly seven by the time Elley got home, and by that time there were five empties lined up near the sink. “Looks like I missed the party,” she said, glaring at them.

  “Hi, Mommy!” Robynn called, racing into the kitchen, her new drawing in hand.

  “Hi, sweetie. This is a lovely picture, Robynn. Now go in the other room, okay? I need to talk to Daddy.”

  Jack Hayden had never felt so busted in his life. It was not simply the beers, though they were bad enough when he was supposed to be watching Robynn. But he harbored an irrational fear that Elley had somehow found out about Dani, and what they had done up in San Simeon...and done, and done, and done...until Little Jack had throbbed like it he’d stuck it in a hornet’s nest. Maybe he had. As soon as Robynn was gone, he said: “Look, if it’s about the empties—”

  “I have to go to New York for several days,” Elley interrupted. “I have to leave tomorrow.”

  “That’s a bit sudden, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t thrill me to the marrow either, but we’ve just landed a big new account and the company is based in Manhattan, so we’re throwing a kind of welcome party for them. I’ve been working on it all day.”

  “Shouldn’t they be throwing the welcome party for you?”

  “They’re paying for it. I’m not sure they realize that yet, but the cost of the party comes straight out of the fee they’re paying us. It’s our way of showing what we can do for a new client, impress them with a dog and pony show.”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “The event’s on Friday, so we’ve got a few days to make the final arrangements and set everything up, and then I’ll have to stay the weekend, maybe even into next week, to meet with all of the executives.”

  “You the only one going?”

  “Of course not. Blaise is coming as well.”