In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02]

by Charles L. Grant

  Be honest, she told herself as she dried the sweat from her legs; what would be the worst that could happen?

  For the first time that day she laughed. Genuinely laughed.

  She was alone in the hotel’s health spa, the training tables and machines deserted, the only sound the rippling of the pool on the other side of the translucent glass wall. It suited her just fine. As soon as the attendant trainer realized she knew what she was doing, and didn’t much care for his muscles and smile, he had left her alone, fussing instead over the others, praising form and correcting technique while they panted on the treadmills that did most of the work for them, lifted free weights that nearly popped their neck muscles, or bragged about the laps they were able to do at home.

  They also spent a lot of time glancing at her. Checking her out in the mirrors that lined two of the walls, making small talk, asking if she needed help, and posing as if they had something to pose with.

  She laughed again and draped a towel around her neck.

  Actually, it was kind of flattering, all that attention, all those signals only a baby wouldn’t understand. She didn’t mind it because her attitude more than anything she said drew the lines clearly. Flirting was all right; anything else was out of the question. The best ones knew it and abided; a couple of them, however, were either too stupid or too full of themselves to pay proper attention. They were the price she had to pay.

  And that was all right too.

  She slipped into her flip-flops, drew on her robe, and after making sure she had replaced all the equipment she had used, she hurried out into the hall. Shivered when the air-conditioning slithered over her bare legs. Wished again she had remembered to bring her sweatpants with her. It wasn’t far to the elevator alcove, but she hated being seen like this—leotards cut high, legs gleaming, long brown hair pulled back in a pony tail that emphasized her high forehead, and her large dark eyes. The flush on her cheeks. The bead of sweat she could feel in the hollow of her throat.

  In the spa that was okay; out here, it made her feel much too exposed.

  It didn’t make sense, she knew it, but she was glad when the elevator arrived in a hurry and she was able to step in without anyone seeing.

  That lasted to the tenth floor, when Chet Rainer joined her, slacks and polo shirt and a leather briefcase for his laptop. She stared at the doors, could feel him beside her, checking her over. One of the Gonad Boys.

  “Going to the presentation, Dorina?”

  She nodded. “Soon as I shower and change.”

  He chuckled deep in his throat. “You only have five minutes, kiddo. Why don’t you just go as you are?”

  She smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  “Tell you the truth,” he said, voice lowered to invite her into a conspiracy of two, “it’d be a lot easier watching you than old Sanborn playing with those damn slides.”

  “Well, thank you, sir,” she said, ducking her head in a mock curtsy. “I do appreciate the compliment. But I’m still going to change.”

  At fourteen he left, reached back suddenly and held the doors open with one hand. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  She couldn’t believe it; he actually waggled his eyebrows.

  She stared; he shrugged; the doors closed, and she muttered, “Prick.”

  A slow ride to twenty-three, just her and the red numbers ticking off the floors.

  The strange thing was, she honestly didn’t mind going to these things. True, it did get her away from the office; true, it didn’t hurt to have participation noted in her folder; and true, she found most of the seminars and conferences, the lectures and presentation boring to the extreme, especially since she already knew most of what she heard.

  Yet she also, once in a while, actually learned something new. Something she might use. Something that would give her the edge over the men who patronized her and figuratively patted her on the head and suggested by innuendo and subtle deed that the only way she would break through the glass ceiling was by rising toward it on her back.

  So far it hadn’t happened.

  So far she had done all right for herself.

  So far it gave her great pleasure to show those blow-dried sons of bitches a hint of T and A while, at the same time, she dug their corporate graves back home. She supposed that made her something of a bitch.

  She also supposed she didn’t give a damn.

  At twenty-three the doors slid open and she stepped out, feeling good, loose, breathing easy, muscles tuned, brain oxygen-fed and ready to go. She turned left and strode out of the alcove, listening to the sounds of the hotel rise and fall around her, muted and distant, moving on automatic and automatically moving as far right as she could without actually touching the wall.

  Ten paces later she stopped.

  This was stupid.

  There was nothing to be afraid of.

  The hotel was built around a central atrium that rose twenty-five floors before it reached its first ceiling. Each floor had a gallery that overlooked the atrium, with rooms and other corridors on three sides, the fourth side mostly slanting windows that let in the sun.

  She was alone. No housekeeping carts, no one leaving their rooms, no one strolling around the gallery, leaning over, and calling to someone they could see on the floors below.

  Deep breath, Dory, she ordered; deep breath.

  When she finally moved again, she allowed herself to drift toward the gallery’s inside wall, thick and chest-high, with black plastic planters fastened to the outside. To see straight down she would have to lean well over the planters or find a gap between them.

  Every morning, twice every afternoon, twice each night; she did her best to look, trying to ignore the chill that grew in her stomach and the way her legs wobbled and the way her heart doubled its rate.

  Five times a day, telling herself that unless she was monumentally stupid, there was no way she could fall over and fly to the lobby floor. No way the wall and planters would collapse beneath her. No way she would die. No way at all.

  As she reached the first corner, turned left and allowed her left hand to trail along the top of the wall, she heard the ping of an elevator stopping on her floor.

  Another thirty feet to the next corridor.

  She stopped and looked across the gap, watching the inside, glass-walled, bullet-shaped car glide away without a sound. Down; trailing cable behind it, the tiny white bulbs that outlined its form making her dizzy just watching them disappear.

  Down.

  She saw him then.

  Chet Rainer, ambling toward her, smiling broadly, a hand lifted in a tentative wave. The other hand making sure all those blond waves were in place, that the polo shirt was adequately molded to his torso. Casual gestures, designed to encourage her to look him over, it’s okay, we’re all adults here, and we all know what we want once the boring crap’s over.

  He would say he had been sent to make sure she would be there, that her presence, while not required, would certainly be noted by those who counted.

  He had tried it once before. He had let her know that while he was, in fact, a homeboy and she was on his turf, he didn’t hold it against her that she was from the North. An offer, after the meeting, to show her around town. A drink, perhaps, or dinner. Southern hospitality, in the flesh.

  She had turned him down, politely, and he had taken it well. “Maybe next time,” he had said.

  In your wet dreams, she’d thought.

  “Hey,” he called softly, voice not quite echoing across the gap. “Dorina, wait up, okay?”

  She hadn’t moved.

  She wasn’t about to.

  At the corner he leaned over, shook his head as if amazed at the view, and came on, grinning shyly. “Don’t mean to rush you,” he said, letting that Georgia accent turn to syrup before her eyes. “Being Saturday and all, and knowing damn well we’re not up for this crap, they’re cracking the whip.”

  Her eyes narrowed as he approached, pausing again to lean over at the
hip, shaking his head again, then looking sideways at her. Baldly. Appraising. Straightening slowly as she unbelted the robe and let it fall open.

  “I won’t be long,” she assured him.

  “No problem.” He leaned back against the wall. “I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”

  Invite me in is what he meant.

  “Man, you’re still sweating,” he said, a gesture with his right hand. “You work out hard.” Admiration. “It shows, too, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  She smiled and made a muscle with her right arm, looked at it, then looked at him sideways. “I try.”

  He laughed silently. “Want to arm wrestle?”

  She took a step toward him, then away and went to the wall. “Maybe.” Looking straight across the gap was all right. Even glancing down a couple of floors wasn’t all that bad. Her fingers poked at each section of the empty planter. “They need flowers, you know? Everything’s white around here; it needs a little color.”

  He moved to stand beside her. Not too close. He was very good. “It’s that redecorating they’ve been doing. Haven’t gotten up this far yet, I guess.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. And let herself shudder.

  “What...?” His turn to nod, as if exposing her secret and telling her he wouldn’t spill it to the others. “Can’t take the height, huh?”

  “No.” She folded her arms across her chest as if abruptly cold. “I can fly, I can cross bridges, but this stuff...” She shuddered again.

  “There’s a trick,” he said, winking at her. “As long as you can feel the wall against you, it’s okay. Like a psychological thing, you know?”

  She frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  He shrugged. “You know. Like this.” He made a show of bracing his lower body against the wall, gripped the inner edge with both hands, took a deep breath for show, and leaned out, stretching hard so he could see over the planter.

  “As long as you’re in contact with the wall, you feel grounded. No, anchored.”

  His voice drifted as if he were whispering.

  “You want to try it? I’ll hold you. No funny stuff, I swear.”

  Then he laughed and raised his left leg. “See? No sweat.”

  “Right,” she said.

  It didn’t take very long, almost no effort at all.

  She reached down and grabbed his right ankle, snapped it up as she shoved against his left shoe.

  The planter cracked and splintered under his weight.

  He didn’t start screaming for almost two full seconds.

  She walked down the corridor to her room, unlocked the door, stepped in, and frowned. “Damn,” she said. “I’m going to be late.”

  * * * *

  5

  S

  o,” Lisse said, “you’re a writer, huh?”

  John grinned. “Actually, I’m a CPA.”

  A small place off St. Peter, open to the street, barely large enough for its seven tiny tables, barely large enough for its bar. No band, just a cleared space against the bare brick wall in back for a stool, an amplifier, and an old steel guitar resting on its stand.

  A perfect place, if only because it was clear neither had expected the other to make good on the charade for the old man in white.

  She stared. “You’re kidding. A CPA?”

  The sun was down, the sky not quite dark. In the streets a few people, not many but growing, walking without haste from corner to corner, plastic cups in one hand, plastic plates of food in the other. Standing a while and listening to the rock and country and Dixie and lounge that pounded and drifted from the open-face bars. Applause and laughter and moving on to the next, lingering here and there, stepping inside for a while, listening, always listening before moving on.

  But at a distance, over the voices, beyond the running lights of the strip shows and the melodramatic lights of tourist voodoo, never quite tempting, never quite repelling, there was always the blues.

  A harmonica’s cry, a clarinet’s call, a bass guitar vibrating softly like a silk and sticky web; more at home here than the other sounds, the other songs, no matter what the posters said; more at home with paint peeling from moldy plaster walls, soggy litter on the streets, broken cobblestones, canted doors, a single lamp in a high window blurred by rippling muslin curtains.

  John heard it.

  He almost felt it.

  “Hello?” Lisse reached over to touch his arm. Her hair was down, spilling over her shoulders, her white linen shirt. She was older in here. Pleasantly so. “I say something wrong?’’

  “No, sorry.” A brief, apologetic smile. He looked at his empty plate, glanced at her, and forced a shudder.

  She laughed.

  He hadn’t expected to have to pull the legs and heads off the shrimp he had ordered, and her teasing hadn’t made his stomach feel any better. Finally she had done it for him, deftly, chattering the whole time about absolutely nothing that mattered and making him feel welcome.

  It was an odd sensation these days.

  “So, you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?”

  “Not much to tell. I did mostly taxes—”

  It was her turn to shudder comically, hair rippling, her eyes giving the lie to the scowl at her lips.

  “—and one of my clients was this guy, he’s about sixty now, who used to be a librarian until he figured he could write better than some of the books he had to buy. He studied it, you see. He figured he could make more writing nonfiction than fiction.” He spread his arms. “And he did. Started with some articles for magazines and such, then wrote a book that did all right, wrote another, and the next thing you know . ..” He snapped his fingers. “The man’s got more money than he knows what to do with.”

  “That,” said Lisse solemnly, “would never be my problem.”

  For seven years John had watched the receipts and forms cross his desk, watched the blanks fill in, watched the refunds flow, and three days after his thirtieth birthday, tax season over and a chance to breathe for a change, he told George Trout he didn’t think he could stand doing this for the rest of his life.

  George claimed he knew how he felt.

  John didn’t doubt it. Not for a second.

  Patty, on the other hand, told him it was only turning thirty that had made him think that way. It would pass. He was good. The money was there and getting better. Besides, Ace, what the hell else are you good for? She hadn’t put it quite that way, of course, but the meaning was the same.

  “No kids?’’ Lisse asked as she raised a hand—two fingers, two beers.

  “Not then, no.”

  “She have a job?”

  “Real estate shark.”

  She frowned.

  “That’s what I called her. She had a way ... I don’t know how to explain it. She had a way of spotting people who were ready to spend without really thinking. Like a shark circling, see? Her commissions were amazing. She had firms all over the state and down into Kentucky begging her to come with them.”

  “So ... so you could have quit for a while, no trouble?”

  He could have. He hadn’t. That wasn’t how he had been raised. Old-fashioned, without question, but he knew no other way.

  Until, one afternoon, George had presented him with a challenge. Take some notes he had, write an article, he was in the middle of a book and couldn’t take the time and couldn’t pass up the money. George would show him the ropes, give him all the help he needed.

  It worked.

  It worked four times.

  But four times do not a career make.

  The beers arrived, and John lifted his bottle in a silent toast. Lisse didn’t respond.

  “What?”

  She nodded, and he twisted around just in time to see the old man in the white suit, standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the narrow street. The pedestrian traffic bad increased dramatically, and it took a moment before he realized it was indeed the same man from the hotel.

  There, in a gap, hat in one
hand.

  There again, in another gap, hat on his head.

  And gone.

  He turned back. “I guess he has a crush on you, huh?”