Mark shrugged. "Why not? We all work for him. I just thought it would be nice to hear what he's like."
Carol took a sip of wine. "You won't hear me say anything around this group," she said, her voice lower. "Not the way this crowd gossips."
Mark nodded. "I know what you mean."
"But enough of work," Carol said. She turned to Mark with a smile. "Tell me about you."
From there it went on. The flirting, the laughing, the drinking. They had a few more drinks and Mark bummed a couple of cigarettes from her-he had quit smoking two years ago, but whenever he drank in a bar the urge always hit. Before he knew it, he was on the dance floor with her and had forgotten all about the group of people he had come in with. He was dancing with her and her flirtations were becoming more obvious. On the dance floor she moved seductively against him, and Mark found himself reacting to her advances. His arms slipped around her waist and when the song was over they headed to a corner booth, their arms draped around each other. "I need another drink," Carol said.
Baxter's had seemingly transformed into a fullscale dance club/pick-up joint. The place was packed. Mark craned his head and tried to find his friends over the sea of people, but he couldn't find them. He glanced at his watch and saw that three hours had passed since Carol had sat down next to him at the bar and started a conversation. In that time he had become so lost in her that he had forgotten all about his friends. The only thing he had paid attention to was her.
He didn't care about the rumors he had heard about her. Or that she was Bernard's secretary. All he cared about was her reaction to him and her seeming eagerness to get better acquainted with him.
Drink orders were placed and they reclined in a corner booth, smoking cigarettes and talking. When the drinks came they relaxed a bit, holding hands, sitting close together. Mark felt a stirring of sexual energy between them and before he knew it she was talking about Bernard. "Working for him is not all that it's cracked up to be. He's been worrying me lately."
"How so?" Mark said, not really paying attention. His fingers stroked her hand.
She looked at him. Her lips were moist and inviting. "I think he's ... I don't know how to explain it."
Mark leaned close to her, their faces inches apart. "You think he's under a lot of stress?"
Carol nodded.
"How much do you know about what he does?"
"A lot," Carol said, her eyes locked on Mark's.
They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, lost in each other.
"And what do you see?"
"Bad things."
The music throbbed loudly amid the roar of the crowd. Mark's heart raced as he gazed into Carol's eyes. She suspects something, he thought.
Carol leaned closer and kissed him.
The kiss didn't come as a total surprise; he could feel the energy building up to it. He kissed her back tenderly and his skin tingled as he felt her arms go around him. He pulled her closer as the kiss grew and everything else was forgotten: the club, his friends, what people would say at work if they found out he had been seen making out with Carol Emrich at Baxter's. All that mattered was being in her arms, kissing her, feeling her close to him.
When the kiss broke Mark looked into her eyes, their faces close together, their lips barely touching. Part of him wanted to say something to her, tell her he knew what was going on with Bernard, but he held it in. Whatever it was she had been on the verge of telling him, it was forgotten. "I don't want to talk about work right now," she said.
"I don't either," Mark said, kissing her again.
"Let's go," Carol said. She reached down to take his hand and brushed the bulging strain of his crotch.
"Yeah, let's go," Mark said. He slid out of the seat and, leading her by the hand, they threaded their way through the smoky, thronging mob. The desire for each other was strong; it propelled them through the club and out into the chilly evening with hungry abandon. Once outside, Mark put his arm around her waist. Whatever hint of a buzz he had gotten from the alcohol was gone now.
He followed her to her condominium in Huntington Beach. The minute they crossed the threshold she was in his arms, kissing him, her fingers fumbling with his clothes. They left a trail of clothing up the carpeted stairs to her bedroom, where they spent the next three hours making love as if it was the last thing they would ever do.
Chapter Fifteen
The first weekend he had ever spent the entire weekend in bed was when he met Carol Emrich.
With the exception of a brief sojourn to his apartment for toiletries and a change of clothes; a brief stroll through the Huntington Beach Promenade early Saturday night; and dinner in a cozy restaurant, Mark and Carol spent that entire weekend in bed. When they weren't making love they were reclining against the headboard, talking, watching TV, nibbling on take-out Chinese food, or simply snuggling. The only time they weren't in bed-with the exception of Saturday night-was Saturday morning and Sunday morning, when they took a long, leisurely bath together.
Mark tried to tell himself that he wasn't falling in love with Carol that first weekend. The more they talked, the more they kissed, the more they made love, the more he had to tell himself that this was simply a weekend fling. It was a meeting of the flesh, a mutual inclination for carnal desire. He wasn't really falling in love with her, and she surely wasn't falling in love with him.
He tried to reassure himself of that fact when he finally left her place Sunday morning. "I'm going to miss you," Carol said, smiling as she walked him downstairs. She was dressed in a red satin bathrobe.
"I'm going to miss you too," Mark smiled back. "But hey, I'll see you tomorrow, right?"
"Of course."
During the course of that weekend they had decided to keep their relationship under wraps. During the Saturday morning sobering up, they discussed the possible repercussions they would be facing via the rumor mill come Monday morning, and what the long-term effects would be. Mark, for one, was petrified that Bernard would find out. And while she had tried to remain cool about it, he could tell that Carol was worried about it as well. "If anybody says anything or asks, we'll just tell them that we got drunk and danced a lot," she said. "I don't remember seeing anybody from work as we left. For all we know, they could have all split before we even hit the dance floor."
While that was a distinct possibility, Mark wanted to make sure. So when he went to his apartment to gather a few things he had called John Rizzo, one of his coworkers whom he had gone to Baxter's with. "Hey, so what happened to you guys last night?" he had asked.
"You tell me, guy," John said. "It looked like you were having a pretty intense conversation with the Big Chief's secretary. So give me the juicy details."
"What details? We were just talking."
"Just talking, huh? Yeah, and monkeys might fly out my ass."
"It's true. Besides, I tried looking for you guys and you were gone."
"That's because the place got so fucking crowded, you couldn't hear anybody you were talking to. And besides, those people from Quality Control were there and they're as annoying as shit, so we left."
"And you left me?"
John chuckled. "Like I said, you appeared to be having a good time. Besides, you're a big boy I'm sure that after you fucked her, you just drove yourself on home."
It took fifteen minutes to convince John that he didn't do what he really did. The more he tried to convince him, the more he became annoyed with himself for even having to do so. What business was it of John's or any of his coworkers to know who he had done the bone dance with anyway? If it was anybody else, Mark would have admitted it freely, and might have spilled details. Because it was Carol Emrich-a woman with not only a reputation, but who was Bernard Roberts's secretary-meant that he had to keep it under wraps. Because if the guys were convinced it had happened, it would spread and get back to Bernard. Carol had already told him that she didn't want that to happen, and he had his own reasons for not wanting it to get around.
&n
bsp; "Okay, so you hung out and talked for a really long time and got drunk," John finally admitted after Mark kept hammering that point home. "But I bet you wanted to fuck her, didn't you?"
"Who wouldn't?" Mark laughed.
He came away from the phone call feeling fairly satisfied that John was convinced nothing had happened between him and Carol.
That Monday at work proved to be the testing point. With the exception of Shawn Jackson trying to pick the details out of him, nobody asked him about what happened Friday night. As the day wore on Mark grew more relaxed; it was obvious that John believed him and the other guys had either been too inebriated themselves, or didn't care. By the end of the day he left work feeling almost one hundred percent confident that nobody had paid attention to him and Carol at the bar. If anybody in Quality Control had seen them, the story would have been all over the building and he would have heard something. The fact that that hadn't happened was nothing short of a miracle.
He met Carol that evening at Charlie's over drinks and dinner. "How did it go with you?" he asked.
"Fine." Carol smiled at him from across the table. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans that clung to her shapely legs, and a black, long-sleeved sweater. Her hair was brushed back into a ponytail and her makeup was sparse. "Fortunately for me, the people I work with all day don't get into the night-life scene, and don't associate much with the crowd downstairs. None of them know that I sometimes tag along with some of the people in Data Processing, so nobody knew that I had been at Baxter's."
"Not even Bernard?"
"Not even Bernard."
The question had been burning in Mark's mind all weekend and now he was bursting at the seams to ask it. "What did you mean the other night when you said that ... you knew bad things about Bernard?"
Carol looked down at the table, then back at Mark. She looked hesitant. She gave him a weak smile. "Nothing," she said. "I guess I was just drunk."
"Really," Mark said, reaching across the table and taking her hands in his. He leaned forward. "You can tell me."
"I said it's nothing."
Mark decided to shift gears. "Okay. But you can tell me anything you want. I won't ... I won't say anything you tell me in confidence. You can always trust me. Okay?"
Carol nodded and Mark smiled. That seemed to be the end of the subject for the evening.
He thought about it for the rest of the week, though.
Mark and Carol didn't see each other for the remainder of the week, but they kept in touch by phone, talking long into the night. Carol told Mark more about herself than he figured anybody at work ever knew about her; that she had been elected homecoming queen in high school; that she had majored in English Literature in college and actually received a BA in it from the University of Nebraska. "But what kind of job can you get with a degree in English Lit?" she said, laughing. "I surely didn't start out intending to be an executive secretary."
What she had started out doing was moving out to California when she was twenty-two, shortly after graduating from college. She took a job as a proofreader in a print shop, but it didn't pay well. It was the following week, when they were in bed at her place, that she told Mark that she had supplemented her income for a few years as a stripper.
"Really? Who would have thought?" Mark said, his left arm draped casually around her bare shoulders. During the course of the week she told him that she had a younger brother, her father was an electrical engineer, and her mother was a high school teacher. He also learned that she was at least three years older than him.
She slapped him playfully. "I just did it for the money. Thanks to that job, I met a guy at the club who was a recruiter for Free State. He got me my first secretarial position and I was able to quit stripping. The secretarial position paid less, but it was better than that other job I had. Plus, despite all you hear, being a stripper isn't as glamorous as it seems."
"I didn't think it was."
He refrained from asking her how she moved up in her secretarial positions. She freely divulged the information. And the more she opened herself up, the more he realized that Carol Emrich was a victim of office innuendo; she had been far better as a secretary than her predecessor. She got a raise four months into the job. Another supervisor in her division liked her work, and three months later she was at a bigger desk, at a higher position, with more responsibilities and higher pay. And over the next four years she climbed up through various positions, each one better than the previous one. "I know what they say about me at work," she said. She looked up into Mark's face. "I know you probably heard all ... all those-"
"Stop," he said, putting a finger to her lips.
She took his hand and kissed it. She sniffled, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I've never fucked anybody to get a job before. Never! The guy that hired me into my second job in Quality Control fired his secretary to get me. The secretary he had was a fucking idiot. The woman couldn't type worth shit, couldn't compose a memo, didn't know how to file-she was completely worthless. She had been at that desk before he had gotten that job and he was trying to help her improve her skills, but it wasn't working. So he had her fired and he brought me in." She paused. "It turned out she was friends with Terry Stewart in Q.C. They were like this." She held up her hand, index and middle finger crossed together. "Gayle, the woman I replaced, was convinced I got the job because I was young and pretty, and she was old and fat. Old and fat had nothing to do with it. She was stupid. But that didn't matter to Terry. Her friend had been fired and she was convinced that I had something to do with it. After all, my boss-Greg Donahue-was a man, and you know how men react around women who look like me." Carol burst into tears.
Mark awkwardly tried to comfort her. He put his arms around her, feeling stupid for not knowing what to do or say. "Carol, it's okay," he said.
Carol's voice hitched as she stifled the tears. "No, it's not okay. I didn't ask to be born with a pretty face, a ... a ... good body. B-but ... I was, and every man I've dealt with takes one look at my boobs, and then my face and they fall all over themselves trying to give me what I'm trying to work honestly at getting. And they always want something in return. I've been living with ... with ... shit like this all my life. I'm tired of it!"
She cried some more and all Mark could do was hold her, comforting her the best he could. After five minutes or so her crying subsided into sniffles.
"If it makes you feel any better," Mark said, brushing her hair back from her face and tilting it up to meet his. "I am not with you because of the way you look. I really like you for who you are."
"Oh, Mark," Carol said, her fingers touching his face. "That's really sweet, but-"
"No buts," Mark said. He brushed a tear away from her cheek and kissed her. "I admit I may have been swept up in your beauty last week, but as this week has gone by I've gotten to know the person inside." He tapped her chest above the swell of her breasts. "And the person I've gotten to know is the person I've fallen in love with."
Carol looked up at him, taken aback. Christ, I've said it now, he thought. He had been telling himself for the past week he wasn't falling in love with her, but he had to face the facts that he really was. He felt his pulse quicken.
"Are you serious?" Carol asked, gazing up at him, her eyes imploring him to tell the truth.
He nodded, swooning from the realization. "I am."
"Don't lie to me if you don't mean what you just said."
"I mean what I just said," Mark said, drawing her closer to him, holding her close.
What transpired next was best left to the expression of the physical action of love.
The Christmas season was a wonderful time to be in love.
For the next few weeks, Mark Wiseman and Carol Emrich spent as much time together as they could. They were like two kids in a candy store. Weekends were spent at either Carol's condo in Huntington Beach, or at Mark's Costa Mesa apartment. Weeknights were spent on the phone talking, or in corner booths in darkened restaurants
talking over coffee. As Christmas approached, they grew closer and closer. Carol finally admitted that even though she had never slept with anybody to climb up the corporate ladder, she did admit to an affair with Bernard Roberts. "But it's over," she said one night at his place. "I haven't seen him since late November. I don't know what I saw in him in the first place."
Mark was a little surprised to hear the confession, but he hadn't been shocked. After all, Bernard had alluded to an affair that summer, although at the time Mark had no idea it was with his secretary. It was obvious then and now that he had regarded Carol as nothing more than what the rumor mill in Free State had trumped her up as: a cheap whore, a status fucker, a woman whose only worth was what lay between her legs. Carol had known about the rumors that Terry Stewart had started and was hurt by them, but she also knew herself for who she was. "It doesn't matter what others say about me," she said one night. "After all, I have my friends outside of work. They're more important to me than what people here say. I have my life, which is more important than anything I will ever accomplish in this fucking company. But I've got to ad mit, after hearing sick lies about yourself for four years, they eventually get to you."
For the first time in six years, Carol wasn't flying home to Nebraska for the Christmas holiday, but she was taking the week between Christmas and New Year's off. Mark had already told her weeks before that both his parents were dead, that they had been killed in an auto accident. He revealed a little of his past, but not the part about his curse. He figured that when the time came for the moon to wax, he would simply pretend to be ill and unavailable. He said nothing about the murders, or Bernard's blackmail attempt.
But they did talk about Bernard Roberts. Extensively.
He came up in conversation a few times a week, always in an unfavorable light. Carol described him as a manipulative, controlling man. "He's somebody who takes advantage of people," she said. "I saw it when I was with him, and God knows why I stayed with him."
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