Heart Strike

by David Bishop

  Dorothy nodded and smiled. “I don’t know which of them you saw. Can you describe him?”

  “If I wrote it for lit class, I’d say it this way: The old man had straggly white wisps of hair tossed over the top of his head as if they were boarding ropes used by the raiding buccaneers in that old Burt Lancaster movie we watched last Friday after we shared dinner. Burt Lancaster’s your favorite actor, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah. Burt’s a hunk.”

  “You American women are so … open about sexual stuff, even when you’re just being playful about it.”

  “You have the advantage on me. You’re able to contrast such things to your culture. I only know the way it is here. And, yes, Brainiac is tonight. We get together at five.” She put a plate with a slice of warm coffee cake and a fork in front of Faraj.

  “Why don’t you just refer to yourselves as The Brainiacs?”

  “There are five of us, when we all come. We meet twice a month on the second and fourth Tuesdays. The name is singular to represent the group instead of us as individuals. We’re all retired from government or business—no wait, one is a retired professor. May I ask you, given where you’re from, were you surprised that our group includes both men and women?”

  “I would have been when I first came to America. Not so much anymore.”

  “This social mixing of the sexes does not commonly occur where you came from? Egypt, right?”

  “Yes, Egypt, but your point would be true most anywhere in the Middle East. Mine was a conservative family, and for us for women do not freely meet and discuss as equals with men from outside their family.”

  “But you’re okay with it now?”

  “I think so. It took a while, but, sure, it’s fine. From what you’ve told me, you and the other ladies hold your own.”

  Dorothy smiled. “Oh, yes, we at least do that. You like the hibiscus tea?”

  “It’s very good. Ah, another contraction.” He raised his cup and took a drink.

  “I hope I remembered correctly how to make it. Later, I can let it cool, dilute it with seltzer water, and add some mint for an upbeat iced tea. Is that right?”

  “You’re a good student of Middle Eastern teas, my versions anyway.”

  “Do you think, some night at one of our Brainiac sessions, you could come and speak to us about the differences in the American culture and that of Egypt?”

  “Oh, my, there is so much, so many. Where would I start?”

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I’m not trying to pry. Just thought it would be interesting for the group, and you might find some of the comments intriguing. You could choose whichever differences you want to talk about: food, social deportment, or religion, whatever you’re comfortable doing. We could ask questions.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll leave it with you and not ask again. If you decide you’d like to, you tell me. Okay?”

  Faraj nodded as he freed his fork of the last bite of coffee cake. “So, what is it your Brainiac group is striving to do?”

  “Just exercise our brains, I suppose. To resist the lurking evil of dementia. One of the ladies thinks of us as modern philosophers. The two men fancy themselves as problem solvers. Truth is we toss around ideas and thoughts on well-defined subjects we choose in advance. We resolve nothing. Nonetheless, we go about it seriously. Some, who know us, call us fussy old smart people who strut around like peacocks proclaiming nothing about which the world cares.”

  Faraj grinned. “How do you pick the subjects?”

  “We toss out ideas and vote in a rather casual process. And we eat, of course. Eating is the one thing we old people can do as well as young people. Well, nearly as well. We must take care with what we eat and how much of one thing or another. We also carry antacids. Every other meeting, we do a potluck with the host person providing the main course while the others bring an appetizer, a salad—soup during the winter months, a beverage, and a dessert. The issues discussed at dinner meetings are serious difficulties for the world. The alternating months, the Brainiac discusses more playful matters unique to the American culture. For the months when we address more informal subjects each of us brings a favored finger food.”

  “What’s the subject for tonight?”

  “Is being a sociopath an advantage in the pursuit of material accomplishment in the modern world?”

  “Walahi! … I’m sorry. I forgot my manners and reacted in Egyptian Arabic. Let me do it again, in English: Wow. That’s quite a topic.”

  “This is our serious subject potluck meeting. Last meeting everybody brought lighter fare and we discussed how to prevent the terrible teen years from fostering lifelong disadvantages for American youth while driving adults bonkers. Do you know bonkers, the word?”

  “Yes. Just last week, after class, one of the girls referred to the professor as bonkers. I laughed when everyone else did. Later, I consulted my urban dictionary.”

  Faraj heard members of the Brainiac refer to Dorothy as Dot, but he felt Dot was not sufficiently respectful to use when referring to a senior citizen. Dorothy reminded him of his mother in Egypt whom he had not seen in over four years. Dorothy was warm and caring, and gently nagged Faraj about things such as wearing jackets, eating junk food, and doing his homework.

  They shared a second cup of tea and discussed the subject for tonight’s gathering of the Brainiac, although, mostly it was Dorothy using Faraj to try out her persuasions.

  She picked up their plates, rinsed them at the sink, and put them into her dishwasher. “Are we going to stroll along the Riverwalk this Sunday?”

  “Sure. Let’s do. If it isn’t warm enough, we can walk over to Rose Park on O Street and watch the kids play. You like doing that.”

  “You know I no longer drive, but I can walk, just not very fast, and I can’t carry things while I do. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you running errands for me and accompanying me on our Sunday walks. You’re a good man.”

  Faraj looked away momentarily. “I live just two buildings over. It’s no big deal. It is I who should be thanking you, Dorothy, for the dinners you share with me on Fridays. I love your fried chicken and your meatloaf. Those two are my favorites, but I like them all. You’re a good cook. I spend time with you because we’re friends. Without you, I would not have discovered Seinfeld reruns. That show is so funny. I really like the soup Nazi character. I wish he were on the show more often.”

  “Well, I should let you go. You have better things to do than spend your whole day talking with an old woman.”

  “Do you have any dry cleaning you need dropped off?”

  “No bother. I’ve worked that out. I found a location that doesn’t charge to pick-up and drop-off so I won’t need you to take my dry cleaning. Thank you for all the times you did.”

  Faraj spoke back over his shoulder while walking toward her front door. “I don’t mind. It’s right near the grocery where I get your food stuffs so, if your new dry cleaner doesn’t work out, I can start taking it again.”

  At her door, Dorothy hugged Faraj.

  “Enjoy your meeting tonight. I’ll call you Saturday and we’ll decide where to walk on Sunday.”

  Dorothy shut the door and headed back toward her kitchen. Red chattered at her as she entered.

  Chapter 9

  Ryan opted out of breakfast and left the hotel early. He had a morning meeting. “I need to walk and gather my thoughts.”

  Alone, over breakfast, Linda continued to stew about her relationship with Ryan. She was crazy about the man, of that she was certain. Her dilemma was born of trying to square her life with him with the life she imagined wanting before she met him.

  As long as she could spend a few months a year at her beach house in Sea Crest, Oregon, living in Caruthers, Kansas could work. Caruthers offered a sense of extended family, while Sea Crest offered peace and tranquility.

  Being with Ryan meant living in the eye of the hurricane. He was one of th
ose few men who quietly, behind the scenes, changed the course of things. In their current adventure, he was involved in virtually reshaping the world, or at least carrying the water on President Wellington’s plan to reshape the inter-workings of the world. Caruthers and Sea Crest represented things such as day trading, gardening, and lunching with friends, reading, and long walks on the beach. In a word, solitude—without Ryan anyway. Life, anywhere, with Ryan represented a constant diet of bedlam and mayhem, at least it had been since she met him.

  Her problem was she craved both. The constant rub was that each one argued against being satisfied with the other.

  She wanted Ryan to return to her each evening, not disappear who knows where, to do who knows what, and come back who knows when … maybe never. She wanted midnight swims, not midnight murders.

  Is the man capable of such a life?

  * * *

  Around ten, Linda walked into town to do some shopping. Before leaving the room, she pursed a can of aerosol wasp spray. Ryan had encouraged her to carry it instead of mace. “It sprays farther,” he’d explained, “and if you spray that in a man’s face, he isn’t going to keep coming toward you.”

  She loved the streets of Paris. The shops of art and clothing, the chairs and tables on wide sidewalks outside charming cafés, their daily specials on chalkboards. The distant Eiffel tower gently confirming this was Paris, France, not Paris, Texas.

  Over the next two hours, while moving from one store to another, she became increasingly aware of one man. He was about six foot three. Six foot tall and three foot wide with a narrow nose on a broad, pockmarked face. He never entered any of the ladies boutique shops she visited. But when she returned to the street, he would invariably be looking in the window of a nearby shop other than the one she had exited.

  He was dark complexed, maybe in his mid-thirties or perhaps his early forties. She hadn’t been close enough to see the color of his eyes. She didn’t want to stare, but he seemed out of place standing outside shops that mostly sold things in which men had no interest—until worn by a woman.

  He’s a peanut M&M in a bowl of regular ones.

  In one shop, she bought a cinnamon fragrance candle from a heavyset woman with glasses on a gold chain around a beefy neck. In another, after choosing a red garter belt, she noticed a sheer pair of black nylons with a seam up the back of the leg—they screamed French. She chose a blouse off the rack, one with a low squared scoop neck, and carried the items into a fitting room. It wasn’t good form to try on nylons but she wanted to see if she liked a seam up the back of her leg. She put them on along with the garter belt. She liked the look and was certain Ryan would. She stuffed the panties into her purse, kept on the garter belt and nylons, and carried the blouse and the packaging for the nylons and garter belt to the cashier.

  Back on the sidewalk, that same man stood four shops away on the opposite side of the street.

  On her way back to the hotel, she crossed the Paris Saint-Martin Canal which connected to the River Seine. She stopped to read the plaque that told of Napoleon I commissioning its creation in 1802 to bring drinking water and goods by boat into Paris. A block after crossing, she stopped for lunch in one of the small sidewalk cafés. After finishing her quiche and soup, she waved off the pastry tray.

  Walking without panties felt different. Nothing showed, well maybe a little extra wiggle, but doing so made her feel sensuous. She imagined Ryan would like her new intimates. He would be her dessert, an indulgence guaranteed to burn calories, not add them.

  She did not see the man when she exited the restaurant and not as she walked back to the hotel. She smiled at the silliness of her unfounded concern. The man had undoubtedly been waiting for a woman frequenting stores on the same street she shopped—a coincidence.

  There he is.

  Crossing the next side street, she glanced to her right. He stood about ten yards away, alone. She was still two long blocks from her hotel. After walking another half block she stopped suddenly, turned, and looked back. He wasn’t following her. She again put aside her concerns over his first being near where she shopped, and here on her way back to the hotel. She had been in both those places—and she wasn’t following him. It meant nothing, certainly nothing convincing.

  She crossed the street to the sidewalk outside her hotel and walked around toward the side entrance, the one closest to their room. A different man stood near the top of the handicap ramp, three, maybe four, steps from the side door into the hotel. The door she planned to use to get inside. He was shorter than the other man, but similarly stocky, a sweaty looking man dressed in a suit with a manner unpleasant enough to draw her attention.

  He smiled.

  Don’t smile. Your face looked better without it.

  She took out her room key that also opened the hotel’s side entrance to the first floor. She closed her purse, clutching it with the hand that held her key. She would not open the door into the hotel with the man close enough to rush her once she did. She slid her other hand into her purse, removed the cap from the wasp spray, swung around, took two steps and stood facing him from about twelve feet.

  He did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. He grinned. The menace was not in his grin, but behind it. She was the focus of his gaze. He reminded her of the character actor Peter Lorre. If he spoke, she imagined his voice would have a hard whispery quality reminiscent of the Slovakian actor.

  Neither of them moved and neither spoke. Then the Lorre lookalike took two steps, shrinking the space between them. Not in a rush, but in a steady straight line. The distance between them melted like space between a hunting lion and a panicked young wildebeest.

  He didn’t rush at her. He didn’t speak. He just stared. Then he took another step in her direction. Close enough to whisper and be heard.

  Linda jerked the wasp spray clear of her purse, ending the motion by spraying him straight in the face. She stuffed the can back into her still-open purse and dropped it to the ground. After that she proceeded as Ryan had taught—strike first, without warning. She drove her knee hard into his groin. She opened her hand, spreading her thumb and index finger as wide as she could, and brought her hand up from near her waist, jamming the webbed area hard into the front of his throat. Ryan had taught her to resist the temptation to go for a big windup.

  He’d said, “That gives a capable man the time to recognize the move, block it, and regain the advantage.”

  The man lost his balance, and Linda thrust both her arms straight out, her hands open. The impact through the soles of her palms into his chest delivered a combination strike and push. Hard. Ryan insisted she imagine her arms as pistons thrusting to full extension. The man staggered back. The railing of the ramp struck him somewhere just below his butt. He tumbled backward over the railing and landed hard on the hotel’s paver walkway.

  Damn. It worked.

  His hands returned to his eyes. He rolled onto his side, clearly shaken by the suddenness of Linda’s action and his impact with the pavers.

  While he struggled to recover his vision and get on his feet, Linda scooped up her purse, turned one-eighty, took out the cardkey, inserted it into the card reader, and entered the door into the hotel hallway.

  She looked back.

  He was on his feet. His hand grasped the rail. After a long squint, he looked toward the hotel door.

  By that time, Linda had closed the glass door, opened her purse, grabbed her phone and taken a picture of him.

  Still clutching the rail, he glared at her. After a few minutes, he walked away. His hand on this throat, his gait uneven.

  Feeling shaky, Linda went directly to her room. She tossed her purse on the coffee table, went to the minibar and got out a cognac. She twisted the cap off, dropped it on the counter, and drank the full content of the small bottle in one toss.

  If she told Ryan right away, showed him the man’s picture in her phone, he would leave on some campaign to find the guy. As she calmed, she smiled. She had plans for when Rya
n returned to the room. Plans she wasn’t about to have ruined by an encounter with some jerk she assumed was only hitting on her.

  * * *

  Two hours later, calmer, Linda heard a cardkey click into the lock and watched the door to their room open. She anticipated Ryan entering and he did. She smiled and went to him. He moved toward her until they were close enough to be one.

  She welcomed his kiss, participating enthusiastically. The penetration of his tongue was sudden and deep, hard, but strangely, simultaneously, easy of feel. She moved her head invitingly, beseeching his further exploration. He stepped back and put his warm hand on her cheek. In contrast to the thrust of his tongue, his palm caressed.

  She let him direct the kissing while she unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra. He withdrew his tongue while she freed her skirt. It fell onto the pile begun by her upper garments. She remembered smiling when she stuffed her panties into her purse and left on the red garter belt and the new black nylons with the seam up the back.

  Ryan’s eyes pored over her. She turned on her heels and walked away. Not far. Just to the dresser. She left her back toward him and lit the new cinnamon-fragrance candle. She used the mirror above the dresser to glance at his reflection.

  She walked back and they kissed again. She returned to the dresser, kept her legs straight, shoulder-width apart, leaned her forearms onto the level surface, and slowly, rhythmically moved her hips. “How do you like the French nylons? I went shopping while you were out.”

  “Come back here and I’ll show you how much.”

  The cinnamon fragrance filled her nostrils as she turned to see Ryan standing naked. His center extremity shortened the distance between them. She held her shoulders back and moved to one side, letting the flickering glow dance across her skin.

  Chapter 10

  Henri Benoit found a shady parking space at the Marriott Hotel in Paris, turned off his engine, and dialed the hotel’s main number.