Fiction
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Good Guys
(Another of my Louis Redmond stories, from the Onteora Canon. Sexually, supermen come in two flavors: those whose sex lives are never discussed, and those who seem to be deep in the flesh whenever they’re not actively engaged in saving the world. It never seems to occur to their creators that there’s an Undistributed Middle to be explored.
“Good Guys” is part of my novel Chosen One.)
"You asked Louis Redmond out?" The furrows on Katie Guynemer's forehead threatened to crack her foundation makeup.
Celeste Holmgren nodded. "For Friday evening."
"And he said yes?"
Celeste looked from side to side, to see if anyone else in the cafeteria were listening. "Yes, he did." After he got over being thunderstruck. "Why?"
Katie shook her head in disbelief. Her long brown curls rippled like willow branches in a breeze. "Silly, the man is unapproachable. There are women here who are afraid even to speak to him...men, too."
Well, I approached him and lived to talk about it. "Why? Does he eat babies for breakfast or something?"
Katie's face did something that was part smile and part grimace. "No, but...Silly, you've only been here a few months. Have you ever heard the way they talk about him? He's practically a god here."
Celeste sat back in the hard plastic chair, the second half of her tuna on rye forgotten. If Katie were trying to warn her off Louis, she'd picked a strange way to do it. Still, Celeste wanted any information she could get. She was too new to Onteora Aviation to disregard any source of information about her colleagues in engineering, even if it ultimately reduced to gossip. Katie, secretary to special projects director Roger Morrison for the past six years, was a potential gold mine.
"I was at a meeting with him and Allan Reardon last Friday about the new radar system." She kept her tone casual. "He's impressive. He said very little, but you could tell he never misses anything. He shut Reardon down a couple of times with just a few words. I got the feeling he could have whatever he wants around here."
Katie giggled. "You don't know the half of it, Silly. Reardon's only got that job because Louis doesn't want it."
"Huh?"
"Louis Redmond is the uncrowned king of the engineering division." Katie shivered. "Team leaders have gotten into fights in the hallways over who's going to get him next. He picks his own projects. You know Rolf Svenson?"
"The Simulations group leader? Louis used to report to him, didn't he?"
Katie nodded. "A couple of years back, Allan asked Rolf whether he needed seven or eight people for the Dazzler lab. Rolf said thanks, he'd just take Louis. Allan laughed and said no, he didn't want to overstaff the project!"
Well, I already knew he was good.
"Is he a good guy?"
Katie's animation disappeared. She fidgeted with a saltcellar. "He doesn't socialize with anyone here, Silly. Well, maybe a little with Rolf. When he's here, he's all business."
"Maybe that's why people are afraid of him."
Katie stared at the saltcellar. Around them, the early-lunch crowd was thinning as Onteora Aviation's employees discarded their leavings and returned to their desks.
"Is there more, Katie?"
The secretary nodded but kept her eyes lowered. Celeste waited.
"Do you know the medical park on Fullerton Boulevard, just outside the city?"
Better than I want to. "Sure, why?"
"He spends a lot of his free time there, Silly. Carrying a big sign."
Celeste's hand rose to her mouth. "Oh."
Their conversation petered out. A few minutes later they parted company and headed for their desks.
Alex Wolfson intercepted Celeste in the corridor. She smiled briefly, held down her irritation, and made to continue on.
"Celeste, are you ever going to --"
She slipped past him and walked as quickly as she could. "Not now, Alex."
"But --"
She resisted the urge to run. "I have a lot to do."
"Celeste!" It was near to a scream, and it halted her. She turned and reluctantly met Alex's gaze. The tall, husky engineer was trembling. His eyes were brimming and his hands were clenched white at his sides. "Why won't you talk to me?"
What would the point be? "It's over, Alex. It didn't work. Give yourself a little time to get used to it. Now let me be." She turned again and hurried on, willfully deaf to the sobs from behind her.
At her desk, Celeste checked her E-mail and found seventeen messages, all from Alex. She read the first one, grimaced, and deleted the rest without opening them.
From the moment Celeste opened her townhouse door to find him in a dark blue suit and brilliantly polished Oxfords, Louis was the soul of courtesy. Yet before they'd reached the restaurant, it was clear that he wasn't socially well traveled. He hesitated over little decisions, like whether to offer her his arm, or whether to order for them both. She took the lead several times, where a more worldly man would not have needed the assistance. He didn't appear to resent it but rather to appreciate it, and it charmed her.
The restaurant was Continental and beautiful, dinner was delicious, and their small talk was unforced and plentiful.
When he'd finished his dessert, he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together over his midsection. He wore a look of acuity. "So why me?"
She nearly dropped her coffee cup. "Why not you?" Is this where you open your closet and take me on a guided tour of the skeletons?
He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm just not used to female attention, I guess."
She grinned. "We can fix that. Are you having a good time?"
"Yes, very."
"Good. That's the point, in case it whizzed past you."
He chuckled and relaxed. "Software people spend too much time with their computers. After a few years we lose our ability to talk to flesh-and-bloods."
"You haven't had a problem so far."
"That's to your credit, Celeste."
Her face warmed. "Thank you." Their waiter placed the check at Louis's left hand. He laid a credit card on it without looking at it. The waiter whisked it away.
"Eaten here a lot?"
He shook his head. "No, this is the first time. Why?"
Her eyes roamed the restaurant. The decor looked like the work of a major artist. The furnishings and dining appurtenances were of the highest quality. Most of the guests were formally attired. She wished she'd gotten a peek at their bill.
"Where do you usually take your first dates?"
His face went slack for a moment, and she wondered if she might have offended him. Before she could withdraw the question or change the subject, he said "I haven't dated in a long time, Celeste."
How long? And why?
"How did you choose this place?"
He shrugged, his composure apparently restored. "It has a good reputation." The waiter returned with Louis's card and a credit slip. He signed the slip, pocketed the card, and rose. "Shall we go?"
At her door, it was she who was hesitant. He was attractive and powerfully appealing, though he was neither conventionally masculine nor socially assured. He'd been a most pleasant and attentive companion. Yet an imperative inner voice told her that to invite him in would be an error.
He relieved her by taking her hand in a soft clasp and murmuring, "Thank you for a wonderful evening, I'll see you Monday at the office." He glided off into the darkness before she could decide whether to offer him a goodnight kiss.
There were twenty-three messages on her answering machine, all from Alex.
When Celeste arrived at work Monday morning, Katie was on her before the door had closed. "So how did it go?"
Celeste grinned. "We had a very nice time. Join me for lunch and you'll get the gory details."
The secretary looked as if she might explode. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away, babe. Don't forget me."
Celeste's E-mail was jammed with messages from Alex. She deleted them all unread and concentrated on her work. Noon's arrival was brought to her attention by Katie's impatient cough from her cubicle entrance. She grabbed her handbag and followed the secretary through the gray fabric maze to the plant cafeteria.
They'd consumed a large fraction of their chef's salads when Katie said, "Well? Am I going to have to torture it out of you?"
Celeste chuckled. "You know, when I told you about it last week, you got me all revved up. Had me expecting something ominous. It was just nice, Katie. He's a nice guy. A little inexperienced, but very good to be with, and that's about it."
Katie's eyes narrowed. "How was he in bed?"
Celeste gagged on her mouthful of lettuce. "For Christ's sake, Katie, he was so reserved and proper I was afraid even to kiss him goodnight."
The secretary snorted. "Well, then we'll have to wait to find out how he does on that part of the test."
Test? "Katie, it was just a date. I liked him, I enjoyed myself, but we might never have another one."
Katie's mouth fell open. She searched Celeste's face as if she were looking for evidence of demonic possession.
"Silly, how old are you?"
"I'll be thirty-two next month. So?"
"Come with me." Katie wiped her mouth and rose. Celeste followed her to the secretary's desk outside Allan Reardon's office. Katie went to the departmental files, twirled a combination lock and yanked open a drawer. She riffled briefly among the folders, extracted one and opened it on her desk.
"There. See that?"
Celeste looked down at her own name, personnel grade and salary.
"That's you. Now see this?" She flipped through the pages and stopped at Louis Redmond's. Celeste became uneasy.
"I don't think I'm supposed to see this."
"C'mon, where's the harm? Have a look."
Louis was a few months younger than Celeste, and made nearly twice her salary. The company had offered him a contract in perpetuity the year before, with a no-terminations clause. He'd turned it down.
"After thirty, it's not 'just a date' any more, girlfriend. It's a test. There are three parts: the wallet test, the friends and family test, and the bed test. If he passes the wallet test, two out of three is good enough. If he passes all three, you grab him and fight off the competition with a whip and a chair if you have to. I'd say Louis passes the wallet test, wouldn't you? Now look at this." Katie flipped to her own file entry. "That's me."
Celeste peered reluctantly at Kathleen Guynemer's personnel sheet. Katie was thirty-nine years old, single, and made about sixty percent of what Celeste did.
"After I got divorced and started dating again, I was all raw nerves for a while." The secretary's voice had roughened. "I tried to relax by telling myself it was just for fun. This is what that got me. It's a test, Silly. Don't earn your nickname...the way I did."
It was Wednesday before Celeste bumped into Louis again. He immediately asked if she'd like to have dinner with him again that coming Friday. She agreed without hesitation.
The E-mail notes from Alex continued to pour into her computer. She deleted them unopened. At least there were no more in-person entreaties.
Thursday night, forty-nine days after her last encounter with Alex, she bought a home pregnancy test kit and used it. The dark ring at the bottom of the little tube was distinct and unmistakable.
"What did you think of the movie?" Celeste pulled Louis's arm against her and walked closely alongside him.
He shrugged. "I'm not big on tearjerkers. It was pretty decent entertainment, but I have a feeling they distorted the facts of his life a bit."
"Whose? C. S. Lewis's?"
He nodded. "I have a hard time matching the character in the movie with the things he wrote."
"You've read his books?"
"All of them."
He unlocked the passenger door of his pickup truck and helped her into it. Even with his assistance, her stiletto heels made it a challenge.
When they were in motion, she asked, "Do you have any favorite hobbies?"
"Hm? No, I read a lot, that's about it."
"So, how do you pass the time when you're not at work? Just reading?"
He guided the truck through the gate of her townhouse complex, wheeled into a convenient parking place, and killed the engine. "Well, I do a few other things, but nothing you'd call exciting."
I've got to know before this gets any more serious.
Trying to sound casual and failing completely, she said, "Any causes?"
He turned and looked at her without speaking, then let himself out of the truck and went around to her side to help her out. She took his arm again as they began the walk to her door.
"If you were to take Route 231 through the city, turn south onto Fullerton Boulevard, and stay on it for about half a mile, you'd come to a light industrial area. On the southern edge there's a medical park, just a few one-story buildings that share a parking lot. Most Saturdays when the weather is good, you'd find me standing at the entrance with a sign that says 'Pregnant? Please talk to me first.' "
Katie was right.
"Operation Rescue, Louis?"
He shook his head as they mounted the short flight of concrete steps that stood before her door. "No, I don't much care for that bunch. When they're there, I'm not. This is just me, and sometimes another fellow who feels the way I do."
Instead of unlocking her door at once, she turned to face him. He stood with his hands clasped before him. She could read nothing from his face in the dim moonlight.
"And how is that?"
He looked down briefly. "That abortion is a horrible thing. That it should be a last resort, to save a mother's life, not a first to spare her some inconvenience. That most women who have abortions wouldn't, if they knew how they'd feel afterward." He said it calmly, no strain apparent.
"Are you a Catholic by any chance, Louis?"
He stood a little straighter. "Not by chance, Celeste. By mature choice, and by the grace of God."
Something in the words flicked her on the raw. Scorn poured into her voice. "I see. And of course that 'grace' gives you the right to interfere in the mature choices of women you've never met?"
His eyes flared wide. "I interfere in no one's choices, Miss Holmgren. I force myself on no one. I present information and alternatives. Sometimes it seems as if the rest of society is practically shoving women into abortion clinics, rushing them in with no chance to check other options or think about what they're doing. I don't block the doors. I stand beside them with an offer of assistance. If that be interference, make the most of it."
He started away, then faced her again. "By the way, you might have the wrong idea about something else as well. I'm not opposed to abortion because I'm a Catholic. Being opposed to abortion is part of what qualifies me to be a Catholic. Give that a spin on your mental merry-go-round and see where it gets off. Thanks for your company this evening. I'll see you at the office next week."
He strode off into the darkness before she could reclaim her voice.
The week was a slow one. The flood of unwanted E-mail from Alex continued, but it was a minor thing compared to the sadness Celeste felt over the contretemps with Louis. She'd grown genuinely fond of him, and had begun to toy with possibilities.
The few times she saw Louis in passing, he was reserved but courteous. After one such encounter near Katie's desk, the secretary quizzed Celeste about "how it's going with the two of you," and Celeste changed the subject.
Thursday afternoon, she called the clinic on Fullerton Boulevard and asked for an appointment. The receptionist told her to come by at nine AM on Monday. The girl's voice was so cheerful that she might have been making appointments for manicures, rather than for the termination of pregnancies.
Celeste immediately told her supervisor she wouldn't be in the following Monday, hurried back to her cubicle, and tried not to think about it any further. She didn't succeed.
On Monday morning Celeste bathed and groomed herself with particular care, as if to emphasize to herself that what she was about to do to the unwelcome guest in her womb had nothing to do with the rest of her. She drove mechanically through the city to the medical park, taking no notice of anything she saw along the way. When she saw the Operation Rescue activists at the entrance to the parking lot, each one brandishing a garish placard with an angry slogan, she hunched her shoulders and drove quickly past.
The clinic was clean and briskly professional. From the moment she presented herself at the front desk, the clinicians tried their best to make the whole affair an exercise in routine procedure. No doubt it was routine for them. But she was unprepared for the sense of failure, of emptiness, that followed her out the clinic door and back to her townhouse. She spent the rest of the day blotting tears and counting regrets.
The next morning, she arrived at her cubicle to find Alex there.
"What do you want?" She set her handbag down as he rose from her guest chair.
He looked down on her ominously from his six foot, four inch height. His face was a thundercloud about to erupt. "I saw you at the abortion clinic yesterday."
Her blood froze.
"Whose child was it, Celeste? Was it mine?"
She straightened and stared him full in the eyes. "It was mine, Alex. That's all you need to know. Now get out."
She turned to seat herself in her desk chair, but he clamped an outsized hand on her shoulder and roughly whirled her about. Terror lanced through her at the sight of the madness in his eyes.
"You killed my child, and you haven't even got the guts to admit to it," he whispered. He moved forward slowly, and she retreated until the backs of her thighs were pressed against the edge of her desk. "I've been begging you to let me speak to you for more than a month, and you haven't had the time to respond, but this you had plenty of time for. Making room for somebody else's bastard, maybe?"
She panicked, swung openhanded at his face and connected solidly. As he staggered backward, she tried to bolt past him, and failed. He shoved her back against her desk with a sweep of one arm and raised the other to strike her. She closed her eyes and whimpered, arms raised against the imminent blow.
It did not fall. Instead there was a sound of scuffling and a crash. When she opened her eyes, she found Alex on his back in the corridor. Louis stood between them.
Alex roared and hurled himself at the smaller man. Louis did something blurrily fast with hands and feet, and Alex crashed onto his back again, even more noisily. Before Alex could rise a second time, Louis grabbed a handful of his shirtfront and tossed him ten feet down the corridor with a flick of his arm.
Louis sauntered to where Alex Wolfson lay, hoisted and tossed him down the corridor a second time, and a third. Every other engineer on the floor stood watching.
"That's so you won't think it was some kind of trick."
The older man lay supine, looking up at Louis in obvious fear.
"I want you to imagine an invisible shield, Alex. A shield that nothing can penetrate. The harder you ram into that shield, the harder it bounces you back. Imagine that shield wrapped around this lady, and imagine it getting very angry with you. If you want to keep all your teeth, you'd better not make that shield any angrier. Now get back to your desk before I kick you there."
Alex picked himself up slowly, his eyes riveted to Louis's face. Just before he turned away, his gaze flicked toward Celeste, and Louis spoke again.
"That shield will always be on the job, Alex. Get moving."
Wolfson fled.
"Are you okay?"
Celeste nodded. "Are you going to get in trouble over this?"
Louis grinned. "Management here shows me a certain deference. Let me know if he bothers you again."
"Is there anything you're not good at?"
The grin soured. "Writing begging letters. Changing the subject. Holding my tongue. Never mind that. What's Alex's problem?"
Celeste pressed her joined hands down in her lap and closed her eyes briefly.
"We went out a few times, just after I joined the company. At first he seemed like a good guy, even if he was a little old for me. He seemed flattered that I was willing to be seen with him. But mostly I was just lonely, and it didn't get better, and eventually I made the mistake of sleeping with him."
She paused to allow him to react, but he continued to listen without expression.
"It didn't work out, but he got needy, wouldn't leave me alone. I told him I didn't want to see him any more, and then it really got bad. Piles of E-mail. Phone calls at midnight. Stuff left on my stoop. I guess he saw me yesterday at...at the clinic."
The blood drained from Louis's face. He half-fell into her guest chair as he searched for words.
"You had an abortion?"
She nodded and forced back her tears. "He must have been there with the Operation Rescue people."
Louis shook his head. "Not Alex."
"What makes you so sure?"
"You don't need to hear about it. Was it his baby?"
She wanted to say anything else, but under the power of his gaze the truth forced its way out of her. "Yes."
Louis looked away. He murmured "I thought, maybe just this once," and then trailed off completely.
In that moment, Celeste saw her decision, the circumstances around it, and its consequences woven into a single tapestry of sorrow that wound about her like a burial shroud. She could not shake herself free.
"Would it have been better for me to bear a child, Louis? Would it have been better for me to abandon my career and become a single mother on welfare? Or perhaps I should have married a man I didn't even like, so the baby would have a father at the expense of his mother's happiness?"
Louis sat in silence for a long time, eyes on the floor.
"There were other options, Celeste. I might have offered you one."
Her mouth dropped open. All her anger and pain were shocked out of her.
"You're not serious."
He rose without speaking, grinned wanly at her and made to leave. She surged out of her chair and grabbed his hand.
"Louis, I've been kicking myself around the block for the way I spoke to you on our last date. I'm sorrier than I can say. If I ever meant anything in my life, I mean this now. I want you to know that it's not too late for us to try again."
A spasm blended from innumerable emotions crossed Louis Redmond's face. What it left behind was the purest desolation.
"Yes, it is."
He squeezed her hand one last time and departed.
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