She ordered a drink. “You seem glum. Or preoccupied. Or noncommittal.”
“Nan,” he said, “just business.” He shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“Just glum old preoccupying business?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Everybody wears a nice suit and you try to kill the other guy first.”
She touched the scar on his hand, rubbed it. “Why did you become a businessman?”
“I wanted to make money.”
“Did you ever have any other inclinations?”
“You mean artistic or musical or something? Tapdancing?”
“I don’t know.”
“At the time I had to think of something to do to support my family. I had to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
She sipped at her glass, not sure what to say.
“I was in my early thirties and I needed a new start.”
It seemed impossible that he’d never been able to do whatever he wanted. “Something happened?” she asked.
“Something always happens, Melissa. I’m sure a few things have happened to you.”
“Why do you say that?” She felt the drink warming her cheeks. “You don’t think I’m just some nice young woman who likes talking to you?”
“I think you are nice and young, and what I don’t get is why you’re not married already or with some great guy starting out.”
If you only knew, she thought. “If you only knew,” she said.
“It can’t be that bad.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s not. But I wandered into this place last night and heard you eviscerate whoever it was on the phone, and then you glared at me like I was the problem and I thought, Well, here’s a live one.” She gave him a soft jab in the arm. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He smiled. “You’re something.”
“I better be something,” she teased. “How else am I going to get your attention?”
“You did all right in that department.”
“I noticed before that your back looks like it hurts.”
“I’m okay.”
He was a little defensive. “You just walked stiffly, that’s all.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You hurt it?”
He pulled the same piece of paper from his breast pocket, scanned it distractedly, refolded it, and put it back. “Long time ago.”
Again a silence fell between them. He looked down with a troubled expression. She wanted to kiss his brow. He can’t say it, she thought; he wants to, but he doesn’t know how. She leaned closer to him. “Charlie?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
She kept her hand on his arm, rubbed the material of his suit ever so softly. “Get a room.”
“Here?”
She nodded. “C’mon. You can lie down. I’ll give you a back rub and make charming conversation that you won’t appreciate because you like the back rub so much.”
He studied her, with sadness it seemed, a yearning that pained him. “Melissa,” he exhaled, “I’m an old guy. I—”
She touched her finger to his lips. “Trust me,” she whispered next to his cheek. “We’ll just talk if that’s what you want.”
He sighed heavily, as if unable not to comply, and pulled out his billfold. He slipped a credit card onto the bar, then found a napkin, unclicked his fountain pen, and wrote, as she watched the letters appear, “I need a nice room for two, now. Arrange this, please—and tip yourself $500.” He beckoned the bartender and slid the card and napkin toward him.
The bartender inspected the napkin, blinked his quiet assent, did not look at Christina, then disappeared to the phone.
THE ROOM WAS TOO COLD, and he turned down the air conditioning. They left the lights off, and the last edge of the day fell in through the windows. He sat in a padded armchair and faced her, and she said to herself, Look at his eyes, that’s where you’ll find him. The other things are not him, maybe even a disguise somehow, as you have disguised yourself for him. She lit a cigarette. “I shouldn’t do this.”
“I don’t mind.”
She took one puff, then stubbed it out. She wondered if she could seduce him. She wondered why she wanted to know. “When you were my age what were you doing?” she said.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
He was silent. “I was flying airplanes.”
She was surprised. “What kind of planes?”
“Fighter jets.”
She examined him, trying to connect the statement to the man she saw. “How fast could you go?”
“I did Mach two lots of times. About sixteen hundred miles an hour.”
All she could see was one half of his face. The light caught the wet curve of his eyeball. “Did you fly in the Vietnam War?”
He nodded.
“You dropped bombs?”
“Yes.”
“Missiles and napalm and all that stuff?”
“All that stuff, yes.”
“You saw Saigon during the war?”
“Absolutely.”
“You ever cheat on your wife over there?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
“It didn’t interest me enough.”
“What interested you?”
“Flying.”
“Do you still fly?”
“Only business class.”
“Not a little Cessna or something?”
“There’d be no point.”
He wasn’t giving her much to go on. I’m asking too many personal questions, she told herself. “You have a good marriage, I guess?”
“Good enough.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it’s fine.”
“Did she ever cheat?”
“She might have, yes.”
“Did you mind?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it. Not after … When I was much younger, I might have cared.” He looked out the window. “I was away for some long periods, and there was a lot of uncertainty. It would have been understandable. Generally I’m not a patient or forgiving person, but this was sort of okay.”
There was something he wasn’t telling her or something she had not understood. “You ever ask?”
He shook his head, as if at the insubstantiality of her question.
“Why?”
“I didn’t need to.”
“How long were you gone?”
“Couple of times six, seven months.”
“But this was a long time ago,” said Christina, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Very long ago. Ancient history.”
“So you were in the Navy—”
“Air Force, please.”
“Air Force, I mean, then you became a businessman?”
“That’s about right.”
“I’m young enough to be your daughter, which, I realize, I should probably not mention.”
He shifted in the seat uncomfortably. “You are younger than my daughter, Melissa.”
“You never told me about your back.”
“I had some operations.”
“How’d you hurt it?”
He closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened his eyes, he was looking away. “This is not something I discuss much.”
She thought, For all I know he has a terminal disease or something. “Charlie,” she said in frustration, “is there some kind of problem? You don’t want to talk?”
“I’m sorry, Melissa.” He stood up and paced. “It’s about me, not you. You’re terrific. I can tell that, I really can. My mood is not your fault, at all.” He loosened his tie. “I want to be here with you, but I’m worried about wanting to be here with you. I’ve always played by the rules. But I seem to be in some—” He stopped. “It’s not just you, it’s other things.”
She moved over to him, could not help but take his hand and stroke the scar. Neither o
f them said anything. She found herself thinking he must have been a beautiful boy, and then studying him now, a businessman in a lovely suit, distinguished-looking, in fact, despite his limp. She could not explain it to herself, except that it felt right. She pulled at his coat. He was not helping her, but he was not resisting, either. She laid his jacket over the arm of the chair.
“Okay?” she whispered. He said nothing. She undid his tie. Silk. She laid that on the jacket and then unbuttoned his shirt. She heard him breathing through his nose, his lips pressed tight, his eyes troubled. She unbuttoned the shirt and understood that she really did have to help with one shoulder. He had on a T-shirt and she urged him to lift his arms, and when he did, she sensed the salty musk of him, the man-smell, which she liked. He turned to her in the near-dark and she moved her hands over him. A large C-shaped scar and smaller incisions arced across his left shoulder. His spine carried three scars, one nearly a foot long, at the base.
“Is that all?” she whispered.
He closed his eyes.
She knelt down and untied his shoes, pulling them off and setting them to one side, heel to heel. Then she stood and undid his belt matter-of-factly and unbuttoned his pants and let them fall. He stepped out of them slowly. She ran her hands along his leg and suddenly stopped, not believing what she was feeling. The smooth muscle of the thigh was cratered with an entry wound on one side and an exit wound on the other. A lot of it was just gone. She moved her hands down his calves to his socks. She slipped them off. His left foot was missing two small toes. She stood and faced him, laying her hands softly on his chest. She felt him breathe. His skin was warm. I want him, she thought, I do. She slipped her hands toward his underwear and pushed them down until they fell. His penis felt limp, normal. She put her hand underneath it. He had one testicle. Just one. She held it in her hand like an egg and looked at him. His eyes were closed, and he was shaking ever so slightly. She could feel scar tissue beneath the skin of his scrotum. She turned him. One of the surgical scars from his back continued down to his left buttock. Another scar traveled across both buttocks, cutting a groove in them.
“You crashed?” she whispered.
“Shot down.”
“Were you captured?”
He nodded.
“How long were you a prisoner?”
He shook his head.
“Where’d they put you?”
He looked at her.
She touched her finger to his mouth. “Just tell me.”
He closed his eyes.
“Please tell me.”
His eyes stayed closed. No answer came from him.
She pressed her lips against his chest. He was ruined. He was so beautiful. She felt the warmth of his skin. I love this man, she told herself, it’s crazy but I do. She pressed him down to the bed.
“I’m not sure I—”
“What?” she asked gently.
“I’m not a young man,” he apologized. “It’s partly the back, you see.”
She helped him with her mouth and she did not mind, especially because he did not expect her to do this. He twisted in the bed and became full in her.
She slipped out of her clothes.
“Do we have any birth control?” he asked anxiously.
“It’s okay. It’s fine.” She’d worry about that later. The odds were low. She was plenty wet, she realized as she straddled him. She used to have orgasms so easily during sex, but she wouldn’t expect too much, she would just be close to him.
“Not your full weight,” he whispered. “Please.”
She squatted on her haunches instead of resting on her knees and sitting back. “Yes,” she answered, moving up and down the length of him. The rhythm was good. She felt him up far inside of her, and this made her warm and start to shake. His big hands held her hipbones gently, and she took them and moved them up to her breasts, pressing his fingers against her nipples.
“I want to roll over,” she said after a few minutes.
“I’m not sure how well I can,” he said.
“Let’s try.”
She lifted herself off him and lay down on the sheet. He knelt between her thighs, and she kept a hand on him, keeping him hard—hard enough, at least. She guided him, and he lowered himself into her.
“Oh,” he said.
“Hurt?” she whispered.
“No, no. It’s good.”
She wrapped her arms around him. The scars rolled under her fingers. She knew he wouldn’t last long. “Come on,” she whispered to him, “come on now.” He started to move, and the motion wasn’t smooth, had a hitch in it, went sideways a bit. She slipped one of her hands down so that her fingers pressed against him as he went in and out. “Please,” he breathed in surprise, “keep doing that.” She could feel the sweat come to his skin, his breathing quicken. “Come on now,” she told him. “I want you to.”
He pressed into her more rapidly, and she could feel the broken motion of him, it must have been hurting terribly, because of the sweat, he was laboring against some kind of pain, but she had faith in him, and she let her hands travel up his knotty back until they were around his neck, and she lifted her head up to his and looked into his wide-open eyes, knowable as blue even in the dark, and thrust her tongue into his mouth as deeply as she could, because she did love him, she loved him right now, she would never know him, but she understood now what kind of man he was and she loved him for it, for you can tell so much about a person quickly if you let yourself, and she just pressed her tongue into him to tell him she loved him and that she understood a part of his being a prisoner, for of course that was what she had been, and they felt this sadness in each other, she was sure, and she wanted to give herself to him and help him to go past the pain, the wetness flowing out of her now everywhere, urging him to press, to push as hard as he wished, and now he seemed to understand that she would take whatever was necessary for him to get it done, and so she pulled at him and begged him to go as hard as he could and promised him and kissed him and then he went fast and hard, and suddenly she felt the crazy feeling come into her head, the tension rise inside her, rise on up and shake her as he pounded her in his pain. She clenched breathlessly and fell backward, flooded with release, at the same time feeling the quickening in him, the sweat coming off his ribs and knotted back, his body shaking with razor agony, and then he cried out in wretched urgency and thrust deeply into her and shook, his head back, eyes shut, teeth bared, absolutely still—frozen, rigid, hard. And then in the dark he tipped his head back down toward her, exhaled, and opened his eyes. She saw exactly what he had so carefully hidden from her and from everyone else for so long—she saw that this man had once been a killer.
THEY LAY UNDER THE SHEETS for almost an hour. He said very little, and she worried that he was silent out of disappointment or remorse. She took his hand and kissed it, and he cupped one of his hands behind her neck and pulled her close to him. She licked at his nipple, bit it softly. Then he said, “I think you brought me back to life here.”
She was quite pleased by this but said, “You were plenty alive, believe me.”
He glanced at the clock. “I could lie here for three days, Melissa.”
“Do you have to leave?”
“I have a long day and then a trip on Thursday.”
“China?”
“Yes. I’m going to try to fix that factory problem.”
“Don’t you have earnest young vice-presidents to do that for you?”
He let out a gravelly sigh, as if this was not the first time he’d been asked the question. “Sure. But then they know about the problem, which means the whole world also knows.”
“Can I see you when you get back?”
“Yes.” He sat up and dropped his feet to the floor. “I think that’s definitive.”
She pressed herself against his warm back. The sex had been pretty okay for the first time, but this wasn’t just going to be about sex, she could see. More complicated than that. He made her feel safe, that
was the thing. She’d have to tell him her real name, but later, after he cared for her enough. When she was ready. And maybe he can help me, Christina thought.
WHILE HE SHOWERED, she looked through his coat pockets, not to steal but to find something, anything, that told her more about him. I can’t help it, she thought. A pen, a paper clip, a piece of Hong Kong currency. Then her fingers found the folded paper he’d been reading in the hotel bar. She listened to the shower run and clicked on a light next to the bed.
Industry group: Telecommunications
Sub-industry category: Telecom component manufacturing
Company: Teknetrix
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS A CONFIDENTIAL ANALYSIS PREPARED EXCLUSIVELY FOR MARVIN NOFF’S WEB SITE SUBSCRIBERS. PLEASE CALL OUR HOTLINE FOR DAILY UPDATES.
A hostile takeover bid by MT of Teknetrix seems inevitable. The companies make virtually the same components, except that Teknetrix’s quality is much higher: Signal clarity, component speed, and burn-through are significantly superior in their product line. But the telecom supplier industry has been forced toward cheaper components as manufacturers struggle to squeeze costs wherever they can. In this sense MT would be buying Teknetrix’s brand loyalty and distribution networks as much as its manufacturing capacity.
Teknetrix is rumored to have a new microprocessor, the Q4, in very rapid development, but the company is also said to be behind in the construction of its new factory in China. Management is perceived to be lean but too entrenched. The guesswork here is that the Teknetrix board, which doesn’t own much stock, can be forced by shareholder pressure into a sale and that MT can digest Teknetrix within the next eighteen months, increasing both its market share and stock price considerably. Recommendation: Sell Teknetrix, accumulate MT.
She didn’t know what it meant exactly, just that it was not good. Maybe this accounted for his gloominess earlier. She heard him turn off the shower, and she slipped the paper back.
Afterburn: A Novel Page 35