Trojan Horse

by David Lender

  Lydia cocked her head to the side, urged him on with her eyes.

  “But even when I was pissed off at Angie, I never forgot what a kick it was being with her. Right away I could be honest with her. Just be myself and feel like that was the way it was supposed to be. She was someone who made me know that us being together and sharing things was worth believing in.”

  Lydia slid her hand into her hair, tossed it back, and tilted her head toward her shoulder. “Go on.”

  Daniel said, “But you have to move on with your life, don’t you? You can’t meet somebody and decide you’re going to have that. It just has to happen. You can’t be looking for it.”

  “Have you been looking?”

  “Hard to say.” Daniel pursed his lips. “But one thing is sure: I haven’t found anything like I had with Angie. Maybe because I don’t really want to give up what I had with Angie.”

  “Why would you ever want to give up your soul embracing someone else’s?” she asked.

  Daniel felt good hearing that. “How do you know so much about all this?”

  “I guess you could say I’ve had my own hard knocks. But you don’t want to hear about all that.”

  He sat up. “Yes, I would like to hear about it.”

  She was silent, staring as if at something in the distance.

  He opened his mouth to speak again, urge her, then stopped. She was someplace else. Her face showed pain.

  Come on, don’t put me off.

  She abruptly stood up. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “Not at all, I just have to go. I’ll be around all weekend. I’ll see you again. Good night, Daniel, I really enjoyed meeting you.” She said it with a finality that told him not to follow her as she walked off.

  Some lady. Beautiful, world-wise, yet spiritual. And suddenly unfathomable.

  July 5, This Year. Milford, Pennsylvania. Since Angela died, on weekends Daniel immediately thrust himself from bed upon waking. It avoided dozing in that half-waking state between dreams and consciousness, the one in which he had always turned toward Angie and was reassured that everything was as it should be. After her death, he’d turn to face the stinging reality that she wasn’t there, and wouldn’t ever be again.

  So the morning after the party, Daniel sprang from bed and into the shower. He was still toweling off when the doorbell rang. He ignored it, but it rang again a minute later, then again. Damn. Maybe Edward, the guy who took out his garbage and did handyman jobs for him, was under pressure to show some recruits for the Jehovah’s Witnesses again. He put on his robe and went downstairs, resolving to make a good, Christian show of it for Edward’s sake. He answered the door.

  “Good morning!” Lydia called. She was holding a brown paper bag in her hand. “I brought bagels, cream cheese and lox.”

  Daniel quickly got over his surprise. “A European-isher bearing gifts,” he said. He noticed her cotton sweater accentuated her breasts. Sockless in pumps, hair straight and shining, a toothy smile. Great smile. And those big black eyes.

  She showed him the wisdom he had seen last night in the corners of her eyes as she smiled. He admired the firm curve of her cheekbone. He moved closer until he could smell her hair. He noted she wasn’t wearing her perfume today.

  “So are you going to leave a girl standing here all morning or let me in to fix us brunch?” Daniel laughed and opened the door, stepped back to let her in. His eyes stole back to the touchable roundness beneath her sweater. “Where’s the kitchen?” she asked cheerfully as she walked past him, then turned, almost as an afterthought. “Is this okay? I’m not intruding or interrupting anything, I hope.”

  “Not at all. Welcome to my home. The kitchen’s through the dining room, that way.” He pointed, smiling now, wanting her to know he was glad she’d come. He saw her take in the oak-paneled walls of the dining room, slow her pace and run a finger over the Sheraton breakfront. She was luminous, even more so in the daylight. Her breasts looked bigger than he’d remembered them last night, even in the skimpy silk dress she’d worn.

  She glanced back over her shoulder at him, smiled. “It smells of antiques and money. Gatsbyesque, but understated.”

  Once in the kitchen, Lydia asked, “So what’s on the agenda?” She opened her bag and laid out bagels onto a plate she found in the second cupboard she opened.

  “Your move,” he said, remembering her forwardness of the previous night, enjoying her. She continued unloading her bag. Still bagels, now plastic tubs of cream cheese, lox.

  “Brunch, then a tour.” She looked around the kitchen. “First here, then town.” She smiled and tossed her hair.

  After a brunch accompanied by Mozart—Daniel guessed she’d been an electrical engineer in a prior life, because she’d figured out how to turn on his audiophile stereo system while he was upstairs dressing—and the caviar and burgundy Daniel added to Lydia’s offerings, she jolted in her seat. One of those sudden athletic moves he’d seen last night. The dancer.

  “So I’ll clean up, while you think through the tour.”

  Daniel insisted on helping her despite her insistence to do the dishes herself. In ten minutes the dishwasher was loaded.

  “The house first,” she said. “I was quietly overwhelmed coming in. Show me more. Knock the legs out from under me.”

  I thought I was thinking through our day, Daniel laughed to himself. He shrugged and walked her through the house.

  In the wine cellar she laughed, “After a hard week of merging and acquiring the man comes up here to commune with a few thousand bottles of wine.”

  Upstairs in the attic, he showed her his slant-ceilinged study with its seventeenth-century writing desk and the daybed where he could nap but never did.

  “And what’s this room?” she asked, looking across the hall to a room where the door was closed, marked “PRIVATE.”

  “Angie’s room, although she never spent much time there. It was actually Elsie’s room, the former owner’s.”

  They went inside. The room was cluttered with a mixture of knickknack-laden tables, hard-backed maple chairs with wicker seats, urns, candlesticks and pots on the floor, rugs rolled up.

  Lydia looked around, walked to one side of the room, arms folded. She put her nose in the air as if sniffing for the scent of rain, then smiled at Daniel self-consciously, as though caught in a private moment. “Who was this Elsie?”

  “Elsie Camden,” Daniel said. “She was quite the colorful character. Everybody’s got a story about her, like when fifty-eight years old and divorced she was found on the sofa in Jonathan and Gary’s house with a twenty-nine-year-old gardener the morning after their Fourth of July party.” Lydia smiled with her eyes, looking delighted. “This was Elsie’s study.”

  “It feels good. She must have been an old soul.”

  “What?”

  “An old soul,” she said. “Wise. Been around many times.”

  Daniel observed her skeptically, not sure if she was kidding, then certain she wasn’t.

  “I like it here,” Lydia said, walking to the other side of the room, now treading on the balls of her feet, reverently.

  Her seriousness made it okay, rather than quirky. Like last night. He relaxed again and just took her in.

  Finished with their tour of the house, they set off to conquer the town. “The best antiques are in the big building here we call Forest Hall,” Daniel said. “Sometimes I like to just wander around and look at old things. Wood, china, brass.”

  In Forest Hall Antiques, they clumped up the bedraggled stairs. Inside Lydia became focused, her eyes intense. Daniel followed a few paces behind her. He watched her walk with purpose now, scuffing her pumps on the unvarnished pine floor, taking in the front room of the store with studied glances.

  She disappeared through a doorway to his left. He wandered to it, sure she’d been there from the scent of her hair, then was distracted by a pile of gaslight fixtures. He looked up t
o see Lydia standing in the doorway smiling triumphantly. The sun hit the side of her face and it glowed, that same creamy whiteness he’d seen in the moonlight in Jonathan’s gardens. He wanted to hold her. Lydia walked up to him, a battered leather athletic bag clutched in her left hand. She curled her right arm through his and pressed her face up close to his.

  “Look what I found,” she said. “Something to keep that past of yours in. So you don’t need to discard it; just tuck it away so it won’t sneak up on you so often. But you can still peek in at it whenever you want.”

  Daniel sat back in the sofa in his den, holding his third glass of wine aloft, admiring the color through the crystal, flowing with one of the assorted Puccini arias Lydia had chosen for the after-dinner music. She’d found the good stuff in his cellar. Chateau Margaux 1982. And she knew to decant and breathe it for an hour. With explorateur cheese. He watched her hunching over her cards. They faced each other on the sofa, their chips in a pile between them on the uneven leather.

  As he heard the clock on the Presbyterian Church in town strike 10:00 p.m., Daniel was thinking this wasn’t going quite the way it was supposed to. He didn’t like losing, even if they were only playing for chips. She was a wild bettor, and she seemed to be switching on and off an inscrutability that he now wasn’t sure was solely related to her wanting to adopt a poker face. Beautiful. Fascinating. But a mystery. “I should have called seven card stud again.”

  “Doesn’t seem to matter much what you call,” Lydia laughed. The pot in the middle of the sofa was a moderate one, although it dwarfed Daniel’s dwindling store of chips. Lydia’s winnings were piled up against her crossed legs.

  “So this Yassar, the Saudi prince,” she said, and flipped one card facedown. “I’ll take one.”

  “One?”

  “When you’ve got the cards, you’ve got the cards. So, Prince Yassar, has he told you what he wants you to do yet?” She leaned forward, holding her cards in one hand.

  “Not all of it.” Daniel was wondering if one of the tutors she’d had as a child was a mathematician. Or a professional gambler. Fast Eddie Fauchert. Who is she? One thing, she was quick-witted, and not just at cards. If she said she was a fashion photographer, okay, she was. But she wasn’t some artistic type he needed to explain business to. She’d tracked right along with his explanation of his latest deals, even showing real interest in his potential Saudi project. He reminded himself he’d only met her twenty-four hours earlier. Her transformation over the game only underscored that. “So far he says he wants to undertake a multi-year acquisition program and is looking for one, maybe two key advisors.”

  “I hope you’re better at investment banking than cards.”

  This was violating the code. Using needling to further her advantage. In a minute he might actually start to get angry. He kept his gaze on his cards, but saw in his peripheral vision as she eyed him over her cards. He didn’t reply.

  “Sorry. Just seeing how far I could push you.”

  “So you’ve played this game before.”

  “I only bluff, Daniel, I don’t lie.” Now she seemed to be reading his thoughts, not just his cards. He realized he was getting carried away with wondering about her. Roll with it. Enjoy her. He saw her look at him from underneath her hair, much as she had in Jonathan’s garden the night before, expectant. He felt a tingle.

  Daniel took two cards. Emboldened by two pair, Queens high, he went for the jugular and bet his remaining chips. A moment later it was over.

  “Three Kings,” Lydia said, scooping the pot into her legs. Daniel slid his hips forward on the sofa and reached to put his arms around her. She pulled back, chuckling up at him, “You’re crushing my winnings,” she said.

  He pulled her to him and kissed her.

  July 6, This Year. Milford, Pennsylvania. “Why don’t you hang out here for the day, then meet me back in the City for dinner?” Daniel said. Lydia wore his bathrobe and curled her feet under her where she lounged next to Daniel on the sofa in the living room. His briefcase and the leather duffel bag she’d bought him sat on the floor next to him. He was fully dressed.

  “Sounds delightful. Only I don’t have a shoot until tomorrow. Do you mind if I stay here today and then see you in town tomorrow night?”

  “No, have a great time. I only wish I could stay with you, but I have that lunch with Prince Yassar tomorrow, and I want today in the office to get ready. As I told you, it could turn out to be important. I’m excited about it.”

  “I know.” She pulled his face to her and kissed him. “Are you close to getting hired?”

  “I hope to close over lunch.”

  Daniel kissed her again and stood to go, anxious to get on the road. He checked his watch. Six thirty. I can be in the office by eight and get in a full day’s work. “I’ll call you tonight. If you get lonely you can call me in the office.” She mouthed a good-bye as he pulled the front door shut.

  Lydia sat on Daniel’s sofa, rubbing her cheek on the collar of his bathrobe. This Daniel was a good man with a pure heart, who’d been hurt in a way that touched her. And he respected her, even seemed he could care for her. She felt her heart reaching out to his, had to restrain herself. She looked up the stairway, started up toward Elsie’s room in the attic. She’d see if she could feel that old soul again. Her eyes were moist.

  CHAPTER 5

  JULY 5, THIS YEAR. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia. At 9:00 a.m. Prince Yassar entered the corridor to King Abad’s office. Two Royal Guards bowed to him as he knocked on the door. He waited next to the silent men for a response to his knock, wondering if they ever imagined he sometimes toyed with the thought of changing places with them for a day. Let them carry the tedious responsibilities of government into the king’s office. Allow Yassar the peace of the simple task of merely standing at attention for a twelve-hour shift. He heard a murmur from behind the door and opened it.

  “Morning,” King Abad said, without looking up from the papers on his desk. “You’re the first to arrive.”

  “Good morning, Abad. How are you?”

  “Tolerable.”

  Yassar knew the feeling. “Perhaps that’s the best a ruler can do in these times. Even one of royal blood.”

  King Abad looked up. “Yes, Yassar. Perhaps.”

  Yassar sat down in a chair beside the king’s desk. He adjusted his robe and put on his reading glasses, then pulled five photocopies of the papers from one of his files and gave them to the king. Yassar was relieved the others hadn’t arrived, grateful for a few moments of familial peace. The two men worked contentedly, side by side. Over the next ten minutes Crown Prince Abdul arrived, then Prince Naser, the Oil Minister, and then Prince Hashim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. They all took seats around a conference table.

  Yassar spoke almost before they had settled, anxious to get the objectionable preliminaries over with. Yet another confession of his inability to resolve the country’s economic problems. His relatives and fellow leaders looked at him.

  He groaned to himself. “It is with regret I must report to you our continued failure,” Yassar said, meeting each pair of eyes in turn, showing no attempt to hide from the responsibility he felt. “If only we had been right in 1973.” The others averted their eyes. All except King Abad.

  “That was not your fault,” Abad said softly.

  “Maybe,” Yassar nodded, but felt a sting of pain behind his eyes. “Nonetheless, if the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, as the Americans refer to it, had worked, we wouldn’t be…”

  “‘In this mess today,’ as the Americans say,” Prince Naser, the Oil Minister, said.

  “Yes,” Yassar continued. “If we OPEC members, with almost forty percent of the world’s oil supply, couldn’t sustain high world oil prices as a group, how can we expect to sustain our individual economies on our own?”

  No one responded.

  He regretted asking the question, one he so often asked himself, sensing it made him appear to be making excuses. “So on to my report. A f
ew statistics first.” Yassar lowered his head, spoke from memory, as if by not consulting his notes he could spare his eyes the burn of shame. No use. The facts were branded into his psyche. “We will end this year with over 100 billion U.S. dollars of internal debt. Even now less than two-thirds of our population over 15 years old can read and write. Over a quarter are non-citizen aliens, here only to work, yet accounting for over half the private sector work force. And yet, despite our efforts to help our young Saudis compete for the jobs that will make us prosperous again, foreign workers—who are willing even to flip hamburgers for less and less—are increasing their hold on the job market even faster.”

  “How does the Saudization plan go?” Abad asked.

  Yassar shrugged, felt another rumble in his chest. “All the disincentives we’ve created toward hiring foreigners—increased work visa charges, denial of work permits for certain jobs, even prohibitions on purchasing automobiles—have had very little impact.” He paused and looked at them through heavy eyelids. “And that isn’t the worst of it. You all know the social situation. Our young Saudis are being swept up in this extremist religious fervor. Sheik bin Abdur is striking a chord with his demands for the expulsion of all foreign workers from Saudi Arabia and the return of all jobs to Saudi nationals.” The simplistic idea has seductive appeal. Would that we could be so bold as to implement it.

  The other ministers looked at Yassar to continue. But it was the king who spoke. “With oil prices back down to thirty dollars per barrel we’re in a losing struggle.”

  Yassar took it as his cue, relieved his unburdening was over. On to the future. The redemption he’d conceived from these stagnating ills. “That brings us to our project—Project Deliverance—with our fellow OPEC members. It’s time to implement it. We and the other members of OPEC have largely the same profile—we have huge oil and gas reserves, but all we do is pump them out of the ground. Our industry peers refine them, ship them and sell them to their customers for further processing into end products, like chemicals and plastics, or sell them through retail outlets like gas stations.”