Perhaps that was the trouble: now that she had imagined J being launched, like a heat-seeking missile, it seemed counterintuitive, not to say hazardous, to keep hanging on to him. And yet she knew that this particular crash in erotic enthusiasm was only a detail in the pattern. Her lovers slept beside a precipice that seemed to move closer with each affair. Would the coastal erosion ever stop? Would it go on until she fell over the edge as well and joined the litter of broken bodies on the beach?
Love was all theater of course. She was the eternally dissatisfied director, as well as the star around whom the whole production was built. If the leading man got fired for some reason, there was always an understudy to take his place. Essentially, no one else in the cast mattered. There was no autonomous reason for their existence. They were multiples of zero. She could remember having her one and only Maths epiphany when she was ten, realizing that adding a zero to the end of a figure multiplied it tenfold, but multiplying a figure, however large, by zero, nullified it. That was why she preferred to think of a person as a multiple of zero rather than “a complete zero,” given the radically different roles played by that naughty nought in different contexts.
In J’s case, the relationship was going to be especially brief, since it wouldn’t be expedient to be seen with him after he had performed his little service for her; in fact, sadly enough, Kevin might have to eliminate the danger of any traces that could lead back to her. The trouble with getting people to eliminate traces was that they became a trace in their own right. Who eliminates the eliminator? There had been a time—she had never told anyone about it, and even in private it was a memory she resisted having—when she was capable of taking the initiative all on her own. Thank God the crash was bad enough to destroy all evidence of tampering. She had been so young and so merciless. All the bad things she’d done since had some sort of worldly pretext, but that had been an act of pure hatred. Although it had taken some time to organize, it had somehow remained impulsive, in the sense that her hatred renewed itself so forcefully that it never allowed a moment of reflection. Part of her was still a little shocked by what she had done all those years ago and didn’t want to dwell on it too long. It was so unsophisticated to be shocked by things.
Judging that it was probably time for the big scream, Megan started to gasp and to tense her body. She found herself enjoying the sensation of having J’s head clamped firmly between her thighs and started to arch her back and tighten her grip. She couldn’t help thinking that he probably hadn’t been in such a vulnerable position since his personal combat training at the Green Beret Center for Martial Arts Excellence. Maybe if she twisted suddenly enough, she could just snap his neck and kick his limp body onto the floor. She found herself irresistibly drawn to that prospect. There she was, about to produce the fakest orgasm of all time, but now there was no doubt that she was getting really worked up by her little fantasy.
“Oh, my God,” she said, imagining the sound of his snapping neck, “Oh, my God.”
She clenched her thighs harder and rose higher off the bed. One simple, sudden twist, that’s all it would take.
“Oh, my God…I’m coming!” she gasped, with genuine astonishment.
J hoisted himself up, crawled along beside her still trembling body and collapsed next to her, gently massaging his neck.
“You sure got strong thighs,” he remarked, admiringly.
“Oh, J, you’re an artist,” said Megan. “I can’t tell you how you inspired me.”
“It’s only because I’m so inspired by you, querida,” said J, looking foolishly pleased.
His lisping endearment and his devoted expression instantly irritated Megan.
“Oh, J,” she said, “I haven’t come so hard since, well, since last night.” She smiled, grazing his rib cage with her fingernails.
“Querida, I want to hold you all night in my arms,” said the besotted warrior.
“Hold me, hold me,” said Megan.
“I don’t know if this is just a regular thing for you,” said J, “but I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love before.”
“That’s such a sweet thing to say,” she said. “Of course it’s not a regular thing for me. I’m completely dazzled by how strong it all feels.”
She kissed his chest, managing to extort a small tear from one eye that, after an annoyingly long journey down the side of her nose, finally dripped onto its target.
“Querida!” said the hypersensitive J, devastated that the woman he was holding in his arms, his woman, was crying. “Que passa?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Megan bravely.
Hearing her own fortitude filled her with self-pity and released another precious tear. She plunged into the feeling with all the method at her command—she had done two semesters at the Lee Strasberg Institute before dropping out. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the sorrows that were afflicting her. Just when she had found a sexual fantasy that really worked for her, she was having it taken away. She knew that it wasn’t randomly transferable, but intimately tied up with J being a soldier, with the feeling of having a killer in her power, of having fatally weakened a man enchanted by his own physical strength. All the more reason not to fall into the Delilah Trap, thought Megan, straying from her purpose and returning to more familiar calculations, and leave Samson chained to a couple of blackmailing pillars, ready to bring the whole edifice of her life crashing down around her. After he had done what had to be done, J would have to go. Maybe they could do it one more time; it was only Tuesday, after all. Yes, that would work, one more time tonight in the city and maybe one more time before breakfast. Then she would let go of him. A missile was the exemplary multiple of zero: once it hit the target it ceased to exist. Thanks to Mark, they were a step ahead of their rivals. He had given them all sorts of useful information when he climbed on board Global One, saving them hours of research. His explanation for being in Manchester was completely unconvincing, but after flirting with the enemy, he had obviously decided that his real interests ultimately lay with his wife. He had overheard that Florence was planning to disinherit her own sisters of all the non-Trust property. Greedy bitch.
All these misfortunes: Florence’s manhunting triumph and appropriation of all their father’s personal property; her own loss of a lover to the higher purpose of a total victory over her loathsome half-sister and, above all, the cumulative burden of always having to be strong and sharp and in charge and one step ahead, suddenly engendered the breakdown she had been straining to achieve. Her eyes streamed, and her trembling, sobbing body clung ever more tightly to her protector. She had gone to see a therapist once who irritated her so much that she had quit almost immediately. He used to interrupt what she thought were rather amusing anecdotes, giving him a glimpse of a world that he would never have access to in his own right, by saying things like, “And where is little Megan at this glitzy party? Where is she hiding?” Now, unexpectedly, his voice and his ridiculous questions came back to her and she let out a wail of real pain.
J was completely helpless, as Megan had imagined he would be, holding the weeping body of the woman he loved.
“Querida, please,” he pleaded. “I will do anything to stop you crying. Just tell me what is wrong.”
Megan sobbed a little longer and then sat up, reached for the box of handkerchiefs beside the bed and blew her nose.
She put her head back on J’s shoulder, and continued to cry more quietly. She had found little Megan now, hiding in the cupboard, and when she spoke it was in the strangely young voice of a frightened, distrustful child.
“Anything?” she whispered.
“Anything,” said J. “I swear, anything at all.”
By the time Florence’s plane landed in New York, everyone on board was in a state of tension and uncertainty, except for Dunbar, who was profoundly asleep, resting for the first time in days and safe for the first time in weeks. The papers had all been duly signed with Braggs in London and there was nothing more to do
for the moment. Florence decided to wait until her father woke up naturally, letting Chris and Wilson go ahead to their hotel. They agreed to meet on Wednesday morning to discuss their strategy for the following day and for Dunbar to reinstate Wilson as his counsel, if he chose to. While Chris and Wilson were driven by a desire to take back control of the company, Florence was divided between following them to a deserved but doubtful victory and completely protecting her father by taking him back home with her to Wyoming. She felt that what he needed was a deeper renunciation of power, not a restoration to power. Why not just take the plane on, and leave Wilson and Chris to fight for justice on their own? Why should her battered father be dragged through another corporate battle?
Florence waited patiently on the plane. She knew that the jet rental company would happily provide another pilot and co-pilot and that she could probably take her father home in time for breakfast and immerse him in an atmosphere of calm and love. She could give him a room with a big log fire burning in the grate and wide windows looking out on to mind-emptying views of silent fields and snowy woods, all contained by a parapet of distant mountains; a scene more likely to heal his mind than a stack of binders filled with bar charts, legal arguments, and spreadsheets. And yet, it was not her decision to make. Even if her intentions were the opposite of her sisters,” her methods could not be the same. She could not abduct her father, even to heal him. She must ask him, when he finally woke, what he wanted to do.
—
Abby was more disturbed by the police inquiry into Peter Walker’s suicide than she had been prepared to show. In fact she had been close to panic while she waited for Global One to take off. During that agonizing delay, she toyed with the idea of blaming herself for the intemperance of pulling the trigger on that silly lighter and precipitating all these international complications, but as the plane reached its cruising altitude somewhere over Irish airspace she realized, with a rush of indignation, that Walker had in fact been asking for his punishment by behaving in such a pusillanimous way. It was almost an act of kindness to set him alight, showing him that his terror of being burnt was much worse than the reality of being wrapped for a few seconds in a mantle of blue flame, like a baked Alaska, or a Christmas pudding. A normal person would have snapped out of it, or fought back, but Walker was a neurotic mess, a man who’d made a living out of having no idea who he was. What could one expect from such a degenerate specimen?
Although the allegations against her were clearly ridiculous, it was important to prepare some kind of defense. The key was to agree on a story and to enforce it. Notwithstanding her little sister’s rather blatant crush on Kevin’s latest recruit, it was obvious that Jesus would have to take the fall. She couldn’t sacrifice Dr. Bob, who was about to become a director of the Trust, and it was easier to keep Kevin, who’d been with her for years.
Yes, that’s what had happened: against their collective pleas, J had set light to the hapless comedian, not burning him at all seriously, but certainly acting overzealously to make sure that Walker was telling the truth. In his defense, they had all been beside themselves with worry about her aged father facing almost certain death as he wandered through the snowy wastes of Cumbria, lured by a sad combination of his own confusion, Meadowmeade’s breathtaking incompetence, and Walker’s pernicious addiction to alcohol. If J—at this point Dr. Bob could testify that Jesus was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after his heroic service in Iraq, and had actually mistaken Walker for an insurgent in a terrifying flashback to an episode of barbaric torture inflicted on him in the backstreets of Baghdad—would agree to pay his debt to society and spend a couple of years in prison, several million dollars would be waiting for him on his release. The more Abby thought about it, the more she calmed down. It was normally the kind of crisis she would have dealt with in her sleep, but the whole thing had been blown out of proportion by the tension surrounding the privatization of the Trust.
She was generally cheered up by the thought of what money could do. If the death of nature could be monetized in the form of carbon tax and a lively trade in pollution credits, what on earth had made her imagine there wasn’t a financial solution to a silly old private suicide? It just showed how stressed she was at the moment. She really owed it to herself, when this was all over, to take a month off in Canyon Ranch, even if it meant rescheduling the spring.
—
“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?” said Wilson.
“Yup,” said Chris, “no end in sight.”
Their car turned onto Madison Avenue and began its run uptown through a gauntlet of shops glowing luxuriously in the winter darkness. Chris was already missing Florence. She would always be the woman he loved without reservation: the one he loved and liked, the one he’d be proud to go out with and happy to stay home with, the one who was exciting and reassuring at the same time. They had been together all the time over the last few days and although they were due to meet the next morning, that phase of the journey was over. She would be in her apartment tonight and soon enough back home with her family. On the way over from London, in what had felt like a last chance to have an intimate conversation, they congratulated each other on their restraint, with a mixture of humor and regret that showed how close they had come to abandoning it. Agreeing on how wise they had been only made him long for her more than ever. Chris felt that they were entitled to kiss as a reward for the self-control they had shown in not having kissed already. In fact, given how well they had behaved, they might as well move in together and have some children. If it was so painful and confusing doing the right thing, why not do the wrong thing instead? He had somehow contrived to feel the stab of a breakup without having had the joy of a reunion.
“Part of me thinks that this latest wave of love is tied up with her unavailability,” said Chris. “When we actually lived together, we broke up every few months.”
“Sometimes, it seemed like every few hours,” said Wilson. “I remember going on a trip to China with Henry and when we got back we said, ‘Gee, the kids are still together!’ It turned out you’d broken up and got back together while we were away.”
“Sure,” said Chris, “but it’s different now.”
He paused to remind himself of the irony and futility of getting on so well with a happily married ex-girlfriend with two children and a kind and quietly impressive husband. He was relieved when the car turned down 76th Street and stopped outside the entrance of the hotel. He longed to disperse his melancholy in the bustle and practicality of arrival.
“Who knows?” said Chris.
Wilson reached out and touched his forearm in silent solidarity.
—
Dr. Bob had insisted on having a car of his own to pick him up at the airport. He urgently needed to talk with Steve Cogniccenti. A good deal of planning had gone into even scheduling the call. They were going to speak at 11:15, by which time Steve would be on his way home after a dinner he was attending without his wife, alone in the back of his car, partitioned from the driver, ready to give Dr. Bob up to fifteen minutes of his attention. Dr. Bob had ordered a proper old stretch limo so as to be partitioned as well. When he arrived on Global One he usually caught a free ride, or at least ordered a normal car that looked as if it was designed to carry half a platoon of marines through the war-torn streets of Mogadishu, rather than something from a documentary about the history of rock music, but fortunately his fellow travelers were too preoccupied to notice or comment.
Although he had dozed for a couple of hours on the plane, he was so profoundly exhausted by the last week that he was beyond stimulation. With any luck once he got back to his apartment he would collapse completely, sleep for ten hours, and then hit the Adderall the next morning with some effect. He might sound stupefied to Steve, but there was only one major piece of news to communicate: Dunbar was back in play.
Since it was 11:02 and Steve was fanatically punctual, Dr. Bob allowed himself to close his eyes and to rest his mind. He c
ould think of nothing that he ought to be thinking about, which was just as well, given that he couldn’t think at all. For the last week he had been unable to stop thinking; now he had hit a wall and couldn’t begin to formulate a thought.
Shit! He must have fallen asleep. Where was he? He stared bemusedly at the cheap cell phone squawking in the black leather seat beside him. Then he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and grabbed it greedily.
“Steve!” he said, rather too loudly and suddenly.
“Bob! What happened? You fell asleep, right? I was about to hang up.”
“No, not at all,” said Dr. Bob, “I only just got in the car and had to get the phone out of my bag. We landed a little later than expected.”
Dr. Bob wondered why he was bothering to lie. He was a much more abstemious liar than the Dunbar sisters, feeling that unnecessary lies just multiplied the danger of discovery. He normally would have admitted to falling asleep, but Cogniccenti created an atmosphere of paranoia. Despite his specious bonhomie he gave the impression of perpetually searching for weakness, like a polar bear pounding the ice to dig out a seal cub nesting under the surface.
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