by Reed Arvin
She flung her arms around me, holding me tightly. She buried her face into my shoulder, pressing against skin still raw from my capture. I winced, and she pulled back. She pulled down my collar, seeing the red marks from the stretched tape. “My God, Jack, what happened to you?”
“Some guys,” I said.
She reached out and gently touched my face just underneath my right cheekbone. In addition to my soreness from being tied up, I was still a little the worse for wear from my time with Folks Nation. “There’s swelling here,” she said. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.”
“I went back into the Glen to find you, and ran into our friend Darius and his pals. The kidnapping came later.”
She looked up. “Kidnapping? What are you talking about? Who did this to you?”
“I’m thinking your husband, actually.”
She turned rigid. “Charles?”
“I’ve been to see him.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Why did you do that?”
“He invited me. Well, he used Stephens to do it.”
“God, Jack.”
I looked away. “Stephens has a little different version of events than you do. It wasn’t pleasant listening.”
She grabbed my arms, pulling me close. “Before you say another word, I’m sorry I lied to you. I did it to protect someone.”
“If it was me, I’d have to say it was a total failure.”
“I lied to protect Briah.”
I disengaged from her and walked away, leaving her in the doorway. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to have the conversation. It was time to get off the roller coaster. “I tell you what, Michele,” I said, “maybe you should find another guy to help you work through your problems. Somebody with more tolerance for dishonesty.”
She looked at me imploringly. “Explain how that works to me, Jack. My whole life is a lie, and you want me to find the right moment to stop. It doesn’t get easier, you know. It gets harder. There are layers. . .” She stopped, unwilling to continue. She was trapped between the residue of fourteen years of illusion and the growing realization that the game was over. But whatever sympathy I might have had for her difficulty, I knew I had reached my own limits for the way she handled her life. I wanted clarity, and if I didn’t get it, I was going to walk away and not look back.
“This is how it works, Michele,” I said. “You’ve taken the lie as far as it stretches. Maybe it made sense in the beginning. But you can either watch things slowly unravel and take you down, or you can take control of your life and declare your independence.”
She was breathing heavily, obviously frightened. “I’ll lose everything,” she said. “Even Briah.”
“You’ll lose her anyway, if you don’t start telling the truth.”
She looked at me, frustrated. “Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Of course Charles knows about Briah. He knows everything about everyone. But the only thing that keeps her safe is keeping her existence secret.”
I watched her, not wanting to be taken in again. “Talk to me. But if you so much as whisper something that isn’t true, I’m gone.”
“Charles and I were a terrible match, right from the beginning. He knew all the best people from his days at Groton and Yale. From the beginning, it meant everything to him to fit in. God, Jack, he even picked out my clothes. This dress, these shoes, no, not that brooch, you can’t be serious, darling. Down to the fingernail polish.”
“You seem to have moved past that.”
“Yes, the street look is my little rebellion. Charles despises it, but he realizes it has a professional use. I was younger, then. I had no feelings of my own. Charles told me what to feel, even how to think. I believed him, for a while. He was born to the life I was living as an impostor. I assumed what he did was right. He gave money, joined charitable causes. But there was an ulterior motive for every penny. He had a chart of all the best people, and when we were invited anywhere by them socially, he checked them off his list.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with you lying to me about Briah.”
“It has everything to do with her. Years passed, but I couldn’t get Briah completely out of my mind. I decided to look for her, just to see if she was all right. At least that’s what I told myself. I don’t know what would have happened if I had actually found her. But I was clumsy, and Charles found out. He was more angry than I’ve ever seen him. I actually thought he was going to hit me.” She looked away. “It wasn’t that I had a baby, although that was bad enough. It was that his wife was a lying little ghetto girl with an illegitimate child. It didn’t help that the father was a gang member. You simply cannot imagine what the thought of that did to him. He said he didn’t get his Ph.D. to pick up some welfare boy’s trash.” She grew still. “That day was like a death,” she said quietly. “It was the day I learned what kind of man my husband really was. My husband despises the ghetto, Jack. It took me years to find out why, but when I finally understood it, it was like a bolt of lightning. Everything about him—his whole life—suddenly made sense.”
“Why is it?”
She looked at me, her face like stone. “My husband is ashamed to be black,” she said. “He is bitterly ashamed that he is negro. And every time he looks at me, he is reminded of that fact.”
There was a long, bitter silence in the room. At last I said, “You could leave him, you know.”
She shook her head. “I can do no such thing, not as long as there is a Derek Stephens,” she answered. “People think Charles runs Horizn. That’s a joke. Derek Stephens is in charge of every major decision.”
“You’re saying your husband is just a puppet?”
“In the beginning, Charles was merely distant, but not evil. He was more of a machine, I guess. But since he began working with Derek, he’s changed. Derek is a very bad man, Jack. He’s poisoned whatever was good about Charles. They spend hours together, talking and scheming.”
“So why does Stephens care if you divorce your husband?”
“Because I’m an asset to Charles, and therefore an asset to Horizn. Maybe when the IPO is over, he’ll find some way to get rid of me and make Charles look like a martyr. But I have no doubt that he would sooner see Briah killed than have the CEO of Horizn ridiculed by her existence.”
I looked at her warily. “Stephens says Social Services took Briah away from you because you were negligent.”
She shook her head. “How could I be a negligent mother, Jack? I never even left the hospital room with her.” She walked to me quietly, crossing the room to where I stood. She took my hands in hers and lifted them to her face, gently pressing my fingers against her mouth. “I’m sorry, Jack. I lied to protect Briah. It will never happen again.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Forgive me. I’m trying to do too many things at once.” She put her arms around me, and I stepped a little awkwardly, off balance. I limped with pain, and she apologized, taking me by the hand. We walked through the apartment to my bedroom, where I sat on the bed. She gently pulled off my shirt, running her smooth, beautiful fingers over my skin. “Do you have something for that?” she asked. “Any antiseptic or anything?”
“In the kitchen,” I said. “Under the sink.”
She nodded, kissed my shoulder, and went to see what she could find. There was a rustling and she came back, holding a white tube. “This will help,” she said. “It’ll soothe you.” She walked to me, pressing me down on my stomach. “Lie still,” she said, sitting beside me. She rubbed the cool ointment into my skin, gently kneading my muscles. “I’m so sorry they did this to you.” I closed my eyes and let her rub my muscles, gently kneading the sore, overextended joints. I relaxed, and life flowed back into me. She turned me over, and she fumbled with my pants, pulling them down over my hips. I lay in my underwear, bare-chested, and she gently kissed my chest, my stomach, moving her hands over my legs, inside my thighs. I was tired, not just physically, but in my soul. With every moment, I relaxed
more deeply, until I was fluttering just above sleep. I heard her voice, soft in my ear. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”
I fell back on the pillow and closed my eyes. She climbed under my arm, laying her head on my shoulder. Sometime deep in the night—the dark outside was moonless and pitch—I awoke, and, finding her sleeping peacefully beside me, I pulled off the covers, leaving her body stark and beautiful on the white sheet. I watched her sleeping awhile, her chest moving rhythmically up and down. Do you believe her? The question came to me, a whisper in my mind. I watched her face, looking for traces of guilt. Somehow, she became aware of me, because after a few minutes her eyes fluttered open. She came to herself, looked at me, and smiled. “You look better,” she whispered. “I’m glad.”
“I am better,” I said. “Much better.” In that dark, moonless night, I let my fingertips answer my questions, tracing her stomach, moving up toward her breast. She moaned, letting herself fall under my control, giving in to the motion of my hands, my kiss.
What came next was an exquisite blur, a time out of time. Minutes passed, and when we finally joined our bodies she was transformed. She was strong—she demanded everything I had—and ravenous. Everything I had seen on stage—the complete abandon, the giving over to the moment—was present in her lovemaking. There was a wildness to her that night, a desperate, breathless passion. When her moment came, she raised her head, biting her lip, reveling in the pressure, the grip, the friction. I followed just after, and when I opened my eyes, she was looking up at me, smiling, driving her hips into me as hard as she could. And then it was over, and she pulled me down again, deep, into dark, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, Friday, I rose to find Michele dressed again, just as the last time we had spent the night together. She was rumbling around in the kitchen, and I walked up behind her, my bathrobe open. She leaned back against me, letting me kiss her neck. “Hungry?” I asked. She didn’t answer, and I turned her around to face me. “You okay?”
She looked down. “I have to go,” she said. “Charles has a speech at Georgia Tech. I have to be there.”
“He still insists you go through the charade?”
She nodded, clearly miserable. “I hate the thought of one more second with him. It’s unspeakable.”
“I’m going, too.”
She turned to face me. “Jack, that’s not a good idea. If he saw you, it could turn into a confrontation.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. I’m going to see what I can find out.”
She looked at me a moment, but saw my resolve. “All right,” she said. “I have to go. The speech is at eleven, and it’s already after eight. I have to change clothes, make myself presentable for the circus.” She sighed, anxiety etched into her face. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re all going to do what we do, now.” She looked up, kissed me quickly on the cheek, and turned to go. She stopped herself, looked back, and said, “I love you, you know that, right?” She smiled, but there was sadness in her expression. “Don’t say it back,” she said. “It’s easier.”
I walked to her, kissed her forehead, then on the mouth. “Be safe.” I picked up her purse, which she had left in my car when we went into the Glen together. “Your phone’s in here,” I said. “Charge it up. I might need to find you.”
She accepted the bag, and kissed me on the mouth. “Don’t let Charles see you, Jack.”
“Don’t worry.”
Michele left, and I started to get ready. I gave Robinson a final call; once again, I got his cheery, unintentionally ironic message. I left another message, and hung up. A little after ten, the phone rang. I answered, hoping it was Robinson, and heard Blu’s voice. “Jack? Where are you? Where have you been? Aren’t you coming in?” Having so recently talked her out of resigning, I decided it wasn’t the right time to tell Blu I had just escaped a kidnapping. “Yeah, I’m sorry.” I glanced over at my answering machine; its red light blinked insistently. “What have I missed?”
“Nicole Frost just called. She wants to make sure you’re still going to meet her at Georgia Tech.”
“I’m going.”
“She wanted to remind you about meeting her out front ten minutes early.”
“No problem.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m sure. Anything else?”
“I’ve got a list, actually. Oh, and Billy Little called. Twice.”
“What did Billy want?”
“Just for you to call back. He said it was important.”
“Look,” I said, “I’ve got to get moving. Call Nicole back and tell her I’m coming, okay?” It would be better to call Billy later. He would want to know everything, and I wasn’t ready for him to weigh in. If he took things over—and he almost certainly would, given his penchant for doing things by the book—I would be knocked out of the loop. I had nothing against the police, but I’d already decided that if anybody was going to figure out what had happened to Doug and the others on the Lipitran test, it would take somebody under the radar, determined enough to break a few rules. I hung up and dressed, grateful for the time my body had to pull itself back together. Thanks to eighteen hours’ rest and Michele’s ministrations, I felt something like normal as I made the drive downtown to Tech.
Georgia Tech’s campus is nobody’s idea of an idyllic college campus. Distinctively urban, it crouches in the shadow of Atlanta’s skyscrapers, symbolically dominated by the economic power that looms over it. The buildings are antiseptic, more like office parks than comfortable, ivy-covered bastions of learning. I wedged my car into three-quarters of a space and labored up a steep hill toward the Ferst Center, where Ralston was going to give his speech.
The usual collection of Tech students—the T-shirted, shorts-wearing future of America—was milling around between classes. The steps to the Ferst were alive with them, a mélange of denim, bare midriffs, and backpacks serving as background to a much smaller group of freshly scrubbed, impeccably dressed money managers, like Nicole. The brokers, smiling at each other with anxious, toothy grins, stood out among the students like architectural relief. Having themselves been recently released from the hallowed halls of learning, they already looked a million miles apart, from a different planet. They were still young—at least they clung to a healthy residue of youth—but unlike the students, the unwritten message tattooed across every forehead was this: sleep later. To the left of the hall, there was a collection of local news vans, satellite dishes perched on their roofs. The upcoming IPO for Horizn was attracting the business media like flies.
Nicole was on the stairs of the hall, chatting brightly to a handsome, prosperous-looking man in his late twenties. She was smiling, her shoulder-length black hair pulled back. She wore a pale blue dress, hemmed just above the knees, and matching, toeless heels. She had always been thin, but now, she was absolutely waifish. It made sense, considering she probably hadn’t taken a lunch break in three years. But the glossy mouth and bright, intelligent eyes that had kept many an underclassman up at night dreaming were still intact. When she saw me, she brightened, if possible, a few more watts. She walked over, stopped, squinted at my face, then reached up to pluck off my sunglasses.
“Jack?” she asked. “My God, what happened to you?” I started to answer, but she waved me off. “You don’t have to say a word, Jack. It’s those clients of yours. They’re horrible. Honestly, I don’t see how you can do it.”
“Yeah, I guess thieving CEOs don’t usually have much of a left hook.”
“Jack, how awful of you.” Carefully, she put my sunglasses back on my face. Then she straightened my collar with her free hand. The friction on my neck—still sore from the taping—wasn’t pleasant. “Look at you, darling. Have you lost all your ties?”
“Burned them for fuel,” I said. Nicole and I went back a long ways, but I wasn’t going to open up the last couple of days to her. “Let’s go get some seats.”
Nicole grimaced. �
��You pain me, Jack. You really do.”
We climbed the stairs and entered the building, which was an angular redbrick affair with an Italian marble sculpture out front. A crowd was filing through the open atrium into the auditorium, and we followed in, taking seats two-thirds of the way back, stage left. Two video screens were integrated high up on the stage proscenium, one on each side. “Full house,” Nicole said. “And there are the cameras.” A gaggle of reporters were standing around just off stage at the front of the hall, their cameramen perching video equipment on their shoulders.
“There he is,” Nicole said, pointing to the front of the hall. There, stage right, was Ralston. He was standing with his back to the crowd, talking to a tall, gangly man in an ill-fitting suit. I watched Ralston for a while, thinking about being with his wife, quieting the pangs of guilt with the realization that their relationship had been a sham for a long time. The nature of their mismatch went deeper than the fact that she had lied about her background. They were from different eras as much as from different classes. Ralston might be chronologically older, but he was far more modern. Michele was emotionally a romantic, attached by her art to a time when love felt like destiny instead of Ralston’s dry chemistry. Ralston was the new man, and so his brand of evil was new, far removed from the barbarism of Atlanta’s mean streets. He didn’t have the sullen, dispossessed anger of Folks Nation. He was simply tired of morality, as if, in his carefully and scientifically considered opinion, the whole idea of it had worn itself out and ceased to be relevant. His was a flat hate, without passionate chasms and valleys. Ghetto hate was alive, unpredictable, and, therefore, something that could be changed and healed. Ralston had become a simple machine for consumption, like the virus he had staked his fortune on treating. Sitting there surrounded by his ideological children, I felt distinctly out of place. You believe in a certain kind of world, Jack. Good guys and bad guys. Maybe that was it. Maybe there were no good guys and bad guys anymore. Maybe there was just deciding what you could tolerate in yourself, and then doing it. Maybe I was a dinosaur and the Nightmares and Ralstons and Stephenses and smart, attention-span-impaired kids from Georgia Tech were going to leave the rest of us in their hermetically clean, genetically engineered, dust.