Hot Shot

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  But even the logical part of her brain couldn't make her regret what had happened between them. Their joining was everything she had imagined lovemaking should be. For the first time in her life, a man had praised her passion so that she felt joy in her sexuality instead of shame. It was a gift so precious she could barely absorb it.

  He stirred at her side and reached out-lusty, insatiable, just like all the demon lovers she had ever imagined. He whispered her name. His eyes drifted open and he smiled at her.

  She knew then that she loved him. It was more than lust that had made her turn her back on her family for this man. When she met him, she had been dying inside. Her attraction to him was as primal as a drought-starved plant drinking in a summer rain shower. She needed his wildness, his youth, his delirious optimism. She needed his freedom from fear.

  Turning to him, she touched the earring that lay against his jaw. Within minutes, they were making love again.

  The bed was empty when Susannah awakened. She found one of his T-shirts lying across the footboard along with a wraparound denim skirt he must have appropriated from his mother's closet. She lifted the T-shirt to her nose for a moment before she put it on, but it held the scent of laundry detergent instead of his skin.

  After she had dressed, she went into the kitchen to look for him. No one was there, but through the window she could see into the garage. The side door was open, and she spotted him standing at the workbench. Part of her wanted to race across the yard just so she could touch him for a moment. Instead, she went over to the kitchen telephone. Her hands shook as she dialed the number for Falcon Hill. The line was busy. She hung up, grateful for her reprieve. She told herself that she had to try to reach Cal and offer some sort of apology. But she simply couldn't bring herself to call him.

  After drinking a small glass of orange juice, she headed out to the garage. As she crossed the yard, she heard the distant sound of Sunday morning church bells and watched as a beat-up Plymouth Duster pulled into the drive. The engine ground to a stop and Yank Yankowski got out. He came toward her, all knobby wrists and bony face, rather like a stork wearing eyeglasses. His hair looked even worse than she remembered. He didn't have one of those tough, Marine Corps, go-to-hell crew cuts, but something that looked more like David and Ricky Nelson permanently trapped in the fifties.

  His forehead was knotted in concentration. As he came nearer, she could make out his eyes through the lenses of his glasses. They were light brown and vague. She hadn't known until that moment that a pair of eyes could appear so completely unfocused.

  "Hello." She held out her hand politely. "I don't believe we were ever formally introduced. I'm Susannah Faulconer."

  He walked right past her.

  Startled, she watched him disappear through the garage door. One of his socks was navy, the other white. What a curious person, she thought.

  A few seconds later she entered the garage. He and Sam were engaged in a technical discussion. She waited for Sam to turn and catch sight of her. When he finally did, she searched his face for some sign that last night had changed him. He looked no different, but in the seconds that flashed by before he spoke, she imagined that he was remembering what had passed between them.

  "Yank's invented a new game, Suzie. Come on over here. It's great! You've got to play."

  She needed no prodding to move closer to him, and she soon found herself shooting at speeding targets while the men called out instructions. She was so absorbed in Sam's nearness that she barely noticed Yank. His comments were all impersonal, directed toward the game. Despite the fact that he was actually speaking to her, she had the sense that he still didn't really see her. She was only a disembodied pair of hands manipulating his precious machine.

  "The other way," Yank said. "Go to the left!"

  "There!" she cried. "I got one!"

  "Watch out! You're going to get hit."

  It really was fun, she decided, but that was all. Nothing more than a few hours' clever entertainment. She couldn't understand Sam's obsession with this impractical little toy.

  "Come on, give me a turn," Sam said.

  She waved him off. "In a minute. Let me play one more game."

  Yank finally took the game away from them so he could do some troubleshooting on the circuit board. While he worked, Sam gave her a lesson in basic electronics. He pointed out components of the single-board computer to her-integrated circuits and multicolored resistors, tubular capacitors, a power transistor with a heat sink. He talked about miniaturization, and painted a picture for her of a future in which today's tiny microchips would be viewed as large and cumbersome. Some of it she already knew, much of it she didn't. It was a fascinating world, made beautiful by Sam's gift for creating word pictures.

  When Yank asked for Sam's help, she watched them work for a while and then reluctantly slipped back into the house to try to call Falcon Hill. The line was still busy, and after several more tries, she concluded that the phone had been left off the hook. She thought about her father's battles with Paige and felt a wrenching inside her as she tried to imagine living without his love. In some families love was given unconditionally, but not in hers.

  She called Cal but got no answer. Eventually she sat down and wrote him a letter, asking forgiveness for the unforgivable.

  Sam came inside for her and announced that he was taking her to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Susannah was about to say that she needed a few minutes to change her clothes, but then she remembered that she had nothing to change into.

  As they walked out the back door, she spotted a dark blue Ford Pinto that had pulled in behind Yank's Duster. "Shit," Sam said.

  "What's wrong?" Had Angela Gamble returned ahead of schedule? What was she going to say to Sam's mother?

  Sam didn't answer her question. Instead, he stalked toward the garage like a man with a deadly mission. Reluctantly, Susannah followed him.

  To Susannah's relief, the woman standing next to the workbench was about her own age-certainly not old enough to be Sam's mother, although her polyester blouse and navy skirt combined with a bad permanent made her look older. She had a pear-shaped build-narrow shoulders, small bust, plump hips. Her skin was beautiful-pale and unblemished-but the faintest shadow of a mustache hovered above her top lip. It wasn't a gross mustache, merely the sort of thing that a stylish woman would have taken care of with a monthly application of depilatory.

  "… all the food groups, Yank. I left you my three-bean salad, but did you eat any? No you didn't. Not one bite. Kidney beans are a wonderful source of protein, but all you eat are chocolate chip cookies. Well, I'll tell you something, mister, I'm not making you any more chocolate chip cookies. No, sir. Not until you start eating right."

  "Leave him alone, Roberta."

  The woman had been so engrossed in her lecture to Yank that she hadn't heard them come in, and she jumped when Sam spoke. Susannah watched as her face filled with color. "Sam. I-I didn't-That is-"

  He walked slowly forward. With his low-slung jeans and bow-legged biker's gait, his advance bore more than a trace of menace, and Susannah didn't blame Roberta for moving back a few steps. He tucked one of his thumbs into a belt loop, and she felt a primitive sexual thrill at the expense of the hapless Roberta.

  "I guess I wasn't clear enough when we had that little chat a few days ago," he said.

  "Now, Sam. I-I just stopped by for a minute."

  "I don't want you here, Roberta. I don't like the way you nag him."

  Roberta attempted to gather herself together. "I can come here if I want. Yank likes to have me around. Don't you, Yank?"

  Yank picked up a roll of solder and bent over the circuit board.

  Sam leaned against the side of the bench. "Like I said. Stay away from here. If Yank wants to sleep with you, that's his business, but keep away from him when he's working."

  Roberta glared at Sam, obviously trying to summon her courage to argue with him, and just as obviously failing. With dismay, Susannah saw the wom
an's chin start to tremble. She hated unpleasant scenes and couldn't help but do her best to put an end to this one.

  "Hello, I'm Susannah." The Faulconer name was well-known, and she instinctively withheld it.

  The woman, obviously grateful for the intercession, came toward her with awkward haste to return the greeting. "I'm Roberta Pestacola. Like Pepsi Cola, but with a 'pesta' instead."

  "You're Italian."

  Roberta nodded. "On both sides of my family-not just one side like Sam."

  Until that moment Susannah hadn't known that Sam was Italian.

  "I'm Yank's girlfriend," Roberta went on. "We're practically engaged." She told Susannah that she was a hospital dietitian and that she did ceramics as a hobby. When she finally paused, it was obvious that she was waiting for Susannah to offer some information about herself and her relationship to Sam.

  "How fascinating," Susannah replied.

  Sam stepped forward and took Roberta's arm. "I'll walk you to your car, Roberta. I'm sure you've got some food groups that you need to go balance."

  Roberta's hand shot out and she gripped the vise on the end of the workbench, less from a desire to stay, Susannah suspected, than from uneasiness at the thought of being alone with Sam. Once again, her distress won Susannah's sympathy.

  "I'll walk to the car with you."

  But Sam wasn't having any of it. "Stay out of this, Susannah. Roberta and I need to have a little chat all by ourselves."

  A soft voice pierced through the tension. "Roberta, get that trouble light for me, will you?" Yank lifted his head and blinked a few times as if he had just awakened from a long slumber. "Hold it so I can see what I'm doing."

  Roberta dashed eagerly forward, breaking Sam's grip as she snapped up the light.

  Sam looked at Yank with disgust and turned his attention back to Roberta. "You'd better not start nagging him. I mean it, Roberta. We've got an order for some boards, and Yank has to work out the last of the bugs. I don't want you here when I get back."

  Sam stalked out of the garage with Susannah following him. "God," he said. "That's the worst case of sexual desperation I ever saw in my life."

  Susannah wasn't exactly certain whether he was talking about Yank or Roberta, since neither of them struck her as any kind of prize.

  "I know it's practically impossible for Yank to get a woman to go to bed with him, but I can't imagine being desperate enough to stick it to old Roberta. I'll bet you anything she makes him disinfect it first."

  Their intimacy was still new, and his comment flustered her. "Yank doesn't seem like the sort of person who would be very interested in sex."

  "He's interested, all right. He's the one who wrote that raunchy computer program. But Yank's a lot better with machines than he is with women." Sam threw his leg over the Harley and gave her his cockiest grin. "I-on the other hand-am fantastic with both."

  They ate at a seedy Chinese restaurant where Sam consumed all of his cashew chicken and three quarters of hers. Then they munched on fortune cookies and he felt her under the table. She grew so aroused, she had to beg him to stop.

  On the way home he wheeled the Harley into a deserted school playground. As they dismounted, he held out his hand for her. "Tonight's going to be the last vacation either of us has for a while. We might as well make the most of it."

  He led her over to a free-form structure made of tractor tires and she sat on top of one of them. The area was lit by a pair of floodlights that threw exaggerated shadows of the equipment across the playground. It was chilly, and she zipped the windbreaker Sam had given her. As she looked up, she saw that the stars were obscured by either clouds or smog, she wasn't sure which.

  Sam saw something quite different in the night sky.

  "We're going to unlock the power of the universe, Suzie. You and me. Not just for the big honchos in their ivory towers, but for everybody. We're going to give ordinary people the power of the gods."

  She shivered. "I don't know if I want that kind of power."

  "That's because you're still afraid of your own shadow." His voice grew quiet. "Do you know what Yank's machine is going to give you? Do you know?" He gazed at her so searchingly, she felt as if she had no secrets left. "It's going to give you courage."

  She gave a shaky laugh. "Just like the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz."

  "Just like that."

  "I don't think you can get courage from a machine."

  "You can from this one. If you want it. But you've got to want it bad, Suzie." He leaned back against one of the tractor tires. "The order for the forty boards doesn't just mean we're in business, you know that, don't you? It gives us a chance to put ourselves to the test. Not many people get that kind of chance. We have to get more orders, run some ads. And we're not going to make the same mistake MITS is making with the Altair. We're not offering any kits. Every board we sell is going to be fully assembled and top quality."

  His plans were so unrealistic that she was deeply disturbed. It was all very well to talk about the power of the gods, but the truth of the matter was that he had a machine nobody knew they wanted, and it was being built in the garage of a woman who did the hair on corpses. How could he stake his future on something like that? How could she stake her future?

  "Parts are expensive," she said noncommittally. "What will it cost to build forty boards?"

  "With discounts, price shopping-I figure around twelve thousand. Then we have to have cases made. Something plain, but sturdy. I've already got a guy working on a printed circuit board to make the assembly easier. Have you ever seen one?"

  "I think so. I'm not certain."

  "It's a fiberglass board covered with a thin layer of copper. The copper gets etched away until only narrow paths of it are left on the fiberglass-like tiny wires."

  "Copper conducts electricity," she said. "At least I know that much."

  "Right. And fiberglass doesn't. The components fit into slots on the board. The right components, elegant design, and you've got a single-board computer. I figure we should be able to complete each board for around three hundred dollars. Pinky's going to pay us five and sell them for seven. We'll plow the profits into more boards, and before long we'll be able to produce a self-contained computer-terminal, monitor, the works. One of these days we're going to blow FBT right out of the water."

  "Do you have twelve thousand dollars?"

  "Yank and I have about two thousand between us, but I had to use some of that as a deposit for the printed circuit boards. A guy I know offered me eight fifty for my stereo system. That's about it."

  With three thousand dollars, Sam thought he could take on FBT. She loved him, and so she concealed her dismay. "Did you try the banks?"

  "The banks are run by morons. They don't have any vision. They're fossils. Monumental dinosaurs."

  He had obviously tried the banks.

  She lifted up her sandal and let the sand that had collected under her toes drift out. "What are you going to do?"

  He gave her a searching look. "It's what are we going to do, isn't it? You're part of this. Or are you planning to run home to daddy and Calvin?"

  The schoolyard lights caught the amber flecks in his eyes. She shivered. "That isn't fair."

  "I don't give a shit about fair. I want to know. Are you in or out?"

  "I want to be with you, Sam."

  "That's not what I'm asking."

  He was backing her into a corner, and she was frightened. Awkwardly, she slid down off the tire and looked beyond him to the dark borders of the playground. "I don't have any money. In case you were counting on it, you should know that I can't help you. My father controls everything."

  "I don't expect money from you," he said angrily. "That's not why I want you with me. Goddammit! Is that what you think I want from you?"

  "No, of course not." But just for a moment, she had thought exactly that. "I don't have anything, Sam-no clothes, no money, no place to stay."

  "I didn't ask for a frigging dowry! We'll ge
t you some clothes and you're staying with me. Are you in or out, Suzie?"

  He was so certain, always so certain. The darkness at the edge of the playground suddenly seemed to be full of menace. "I told you. I want to be with you."

  "You can't be with me and not be part of this."

  What was she going to say? She was a practical person. The only impractical thing she had ever done in her adult life was fall in love with Sam Gamble. "It's not that simple." She turned away from him, but he came right up behind her.

  "Bullshit. I want to know!"

  "Don't bully me!"

  "I want to know, dammit! Don't keep throwing up all these artificial barriers. Do you have the guts to go through with this or not? Do you have the guts to put yourself to the test?"

  She spoke rapidly, pushing out the words before he could stop them. "It's not just a matter of guts. I have to be practical. I need to support myself."

  "That's not the most important thing! Supporting yourself isn't the most important thing. You don't need money or clothes. Those are just excuses. It's your soul. That's what's important. That's all anybody really has. Don't you see? If you want your soul to survive-if you want it to grow and thrive instead of shriveling up and drying out like it was doing in that mausoleum at Falcon Hill, you have to dare. You have to give the world the finger, and you have to dare."

  How he could talk. How this man could talk. She hugged herself against the night and the chill and the menace at the edge of the playground.

  He caught her arm. His eyes blazed. "Suzie, listen to me. We're living on the threshold of a new society-a whole new way of doing everything. Can't you feel it? The old ways don't work anymore. People want information. They want control. They want power! When you look at Yank's circuit board, all you see is a collection of electronic parts. But what you should be seeing is a wave-this little wave way out in the water, far away from shore. This little hump of water that's just starting to form. But this little hump of water keeps coming closer. And the closer it comes, the more it starts to pick up speed. And then, pretty soon you look up and-Christ!-its not a little hump any longer but a great big wall of water that's risen up so high you can see it looming against the sky. You can see a white crest starting to form on the top like a crown. And that white crest is getting bigger and it's starting to churn and curl over at the top. And then you hear the noise. This tidal wave of water is picking up speed and it's starting to roar. And before long it's gotten so loud you have to hold your hands over your ears. That's when you start stepping backward. You don't want the wave to knock you down, and you're stepping backward faster and faster. And then-that's when you realize it. That's when you realize that no matter how fast you run, that motherfucker is going to slam right down on top of you. It's going to slam right down on top of everybody in the world. That wave is the future, babe. It's the future, and it's Yank's machine. And once that wave hits, none of us will ever be the same again."