Fiction
Friday, August 25, 2006
Taillights
(An Onteora County romance. If you cock your ear just so, you can hear about 837 gazillion women ranting about how hard it is to find a good man. Stipulated that there are some schmucks out there, but there are about an equal number of self-indulgent, self-absorbed princesses. Beyond both groups, there’s a third that receives little to no attention: the truly superior types of both sexes, for whom a suitable mate can be as elusive as...well...as the butterfly of love.)
"Where will I be sitting?" Jeanne Newton asked.
Art Giordano waved at an unoccupied desk. It appeared to have been recently cleaned. The fabric-covered chair beside it looked new.
Jeanne cast a quick glance at the men at the neighboring desks. All had their heads down over their work. Most wore wedding rings; the exceptions didn't look particularly tasty. All the same, she sashayed past them in her sassiest style, planting one high-heeled foot in front of the other in the deliberate stride of a runway model. A number of eyes rose to assess her figure and dress.
Giordano led her away, past the secretary's station and toward a walled office whose door stood open.
"Time to meet the brains of the outfit," he said.
Behind the wide mahogany desk that faced the door hunched a casually dressed middle-aged man with a pleasant face and a thick mop of dark brown hair. His brown eyes were intent on the terminal screen before him. The founder of Arcologics slid his mouse along the desktop with the delicacy of a microsurgeon.
"Todd?" Giordano said softly.
The brown eyes leaped, skipped off Giordano's face and settled on Jeanne's. "Hm?"
"New associate. Miss Newton, this is Todd Iverson. Todd, this is Jeanne Newton."
Iverson grinned, rose, and offered her his hand. "Charmed." Before she could reply, he said, "What's your specialty?"
"I -- I was an operating room nurse."
"Where?" The eyes bored into hers from well above her, warm but unsettlingly intense. There was no ring on his left hand.
"Onteora General."
"How recently?"
"Until about three weeks ago."
"Excellent." Iverson's eyes flicked to Giordano again. "She'll know what we need to verify the gatekeeper procedures Olympian's been using on our health insurance claims."
Giordano nodded. "My thoughts exactly."
"Have you started already, Miss Newton?"
"Uh, yes, just today."
He smiled brilliantly and came out from behind his desk. "Then it's time you made the acquaintance of our benefits liaison officers. They'll be the source of all your nightmares for the next few months." He indicated the door, and they strode out into the larger office space. Giordano excused himself and moved off.
She surveyed his body furtively. He was considerably taller than she, athletically slender, and visibly charged with vital energy. He was easily the most attractive man she'd seen in Arcologics' offices so far, but his proportions seemed a bit off. His arms looked short for his height, and his waist fell two or three inches higher than seemed natural.
She glanced sideways at his legs. His knees appeared unusually placed as well. His stride was somewhat compact for a man of his height, as if he were just slightly unsure of his balance.
He's wearing high heels.
Though his slacks were long and baggy enough to shroud them, the way the fabric flowed as he walked, combined with his carefully shortened gait, gave the game away.
They have to be four inches high at least. Without them, he'd be no more than five-nine.
He squired her to the Personnel offices and introduced her to several other women, addressing each of them with "Miss" and her surname, and speaking of each in terms complimentary enough to elicit a blush. They glowed in response. All of them regarded him with the gaze by which a woman says I'd do anything at all for you. If they were aware of his footwear affectation, they gave no sign.
Presently they returned to his office. He waved her into a guest chair, settled into his own chair, and, defying all expectation, tilted back, hands behind his head, and swung his feet up onto his desk.
There they were. Laced ankle boots of matte black leather, with two inch platforms and five inch heels. He winked at her as she gaped.
"I knew you noticed," he said. "Any problems?"
"Uh, no, but...why?"
He shrugged. "I like being tall." He raised an eyebrow. "And yourself?"
"Huh?"
"Why do you wear high heels?"
"Well," she stammered, "I guess because all women do."
He shook his head. "No they don't. You've met a dozen or more women here today. Were any of them wearing heels?"
She thought, and shook her head.
"So why you, then?"
"Uh, maybe for the same reason as you?"
He grinned. "Maybe. Or maybe because you were raised to prefer them. Or maybe because you're single -- yes, I noticed -- and you know that men like the sight of a woman in heels, especially a petite woman such as yourself. But it's by choice, right? No one forced you into them before you came here this morning?"
She grimaced. "Yes, it's by choice."
"Good." He pulled those disconcerting boots off his desk and slid forward. "So let's talk about health care cost accounting."
Jeanne returned to her Chedwick flat that evening to find Sarah already at home. Her roommate was dressed to the nines as usual, lounging on their living room sofa with a book: The Uses And Abuses Of Psychiatry, by someone with an Eastern European name. The television was on but unwatched. A newsreader droned unintelligibly in the background.
"So? How was your first day?"
"Tiring." Jeanne dropped the leather satchel that served her as a briefcase and thumbed through the pile of mail on the secretary. It was the usual assortment of junk mail and bills. There was nothing from Walt. The answering machine's readout showed 0. "Any calls on the machine when you got home?"
Sarah shook her head.
Bastard meant it when he said we were through.
"Any plans for the evening?" Sarah asked.
Jeanne shrugged. "I thought to ring Larry up, but I'm really too tired. You?"
"Well," Sarah said, "I thought I might take you out for dinner, to celebrate the new job." She grinned. "And to pump you about it. Any cuties?"
Jeanne tensed internally. She tried not to let it show on her face.
"Not that I noticed. Nobody who'd meet your standards, anyway."
"Oh? Which part of my standards?"
The part about being richer than you. Except for one, maybe. "You'd probably think they were all pretty dull. They work a lot, don't make much small talk."
"I teach small talk." Sarah Forslund rose gracefully, smoothed her hammered-silk skirt, and slipped into her high-heeled pumps. She was a natural dancer-athlete whose every smallest movement and gesture, conscious or not, was an esthetic delight. Her grace, her classic beauty, her high intelligence, and her family's wealth made Jeanne feel like a member of a lesser species. "Anyway, you shouldn't expect much of that on the first day. Let's go get fed."
Jeanne sighed. "Lead the way, roomie."
Jeanne hadn't been hired for her medical background; Arcologics hadn't been looking for a nurse. Its help-wanted ad had declared an interest in anyone who could pass its intelligence and judgment tests, qualities with which Jeanne was well supplied. No more than a day had passed before she realized how very much she'd need them.
Her work absorbed her completely. The company was as much a maverick as its founder and CEO. Nothing about it fell within the bounds of conventional commerce. She had to learn at a terrifying rate, for the firm's needs were both immediate and considerable.
Though her responsibilities as insurance liaison officer didn't require it, she began to spend large fractions of her evenings poring over the corporate records, trying to make sense of Arcologics's product offerings and its relations with other companies. In its four years of existence, it had marketed a robotic food irradiation unit, a self-contained hydroponics control system, a catalytic air sanitizer, an electrical power conditioner, and a program for solving advanced problems in mechanics. It had entered into co-development agreements with a manufacturer of nuclear reactors, a maker of specialty fabrics, and a statistical reliability assessment firm. It was deep in negotiations with a commercial construction firm that specialized in giant office towers, having won the subcontract to provide the environmental controls for an eighty-story skyscraper to be erected in Rochester the coming year.
Arcologics's activities seemed to be united in only one way: they all showed a profit.
Profit seemed to be Todd Iverson's Holy Grail. He wasn't just Arcologics's founder and chief executive officer; he was also its resident inventor. All its products to date had been born in his mind. A man like that would normally invest emotionally in his creations; he'd be stubborn about pushing them all the way to the market no matter how slender their commercial possibilities might be. Not Iverson. He'd killed several of his own ideas under development despite his lieutenants' enthusiasm for them, when he became convinced that they'd earn too little to be worth pursuing.
The attitude carried over to inter-corporate relations. Iverson handled all contract negotiations personally. He invariably set terms that would return a fifteen percent pre-tax profit to Arcologics, and he never budged from them. He ignored attempts to deflect his attention onto matters of little relevance. He refused to "buy into" a deal: to accept a reduced profit margin on the matter under immediate discussion in return for a promise of concessions on some notional larger deal to come. "We're here and this is now," he would say. "Let's do what we came here to do." He'd never yet failed to carry any point he cared to make.
But if Iverson were mad for money, there were no symptoms of it in his treatment of Arcologics's personnel. He paid above-average salaries, and provided above-average noncash benefits, to everyone on his payroll. He'd rebuffed his own personnel officer for suggesting that there be a cap on annual merit raises. He kept a lawyer in-house, at a generous salary, strictly for the convenience of his workers. He employed three people, most aberrantly, to negotiate with other companies of every description -- again, strictly for his employees' benefit. Jeanne was one of the three.
He was as courtly and considerate to everyone in his office as Walt had been to her at the peak of their romance. They were "Mister" or "Miss" to him, and he was "Todd" to them, without exception. He paid for their coffee and tea. For those who stayed late, he paid for their meals. He swapped small talk, jokes, and personal anecdotes with anyone who cared to do so. No few of his people would jump in front of a speeding truck to protect him.
And he wore high-heeled boots to the office every day, and no doubt everywhere else he went, and no one ever said a word about it.
Larry Lansing put down his fork and flattened his palms against the table. "Something on your mind?" he said.
"No, not really." Jeanne kept her eyes on her plate. She toyed with her scallops in drawn butter, seeking an arrangement that would make them look more like a remnant than an entirely untouched meal. "I'm just a little off my game."
"Does the new job have you down? You haven't said a lot about it."
I didn't appreciate being quizzed. "There's a lot of learning involved. Lots of ropes to get hold of." She put down her own fork and sat back. Around them, the Aquarium buzzed with the usual clamor of the Friday evening dinner crowd. The little seafood restaurant's every table was full. Its reliably fresh cuisine and modest prices made it a favorite haunt of Onteora's courting couples and young marrieds.
Ever since she'd admitted her fondness for fish, Larry had taken her there and nowhere else.
His anxious gaze remained on her. "I hope it isn't wearing you out. You've been putting in a lot of overtime."
That sat her up straight. "I haven't said anything about that." Even though it's true. "What makes you say so?"
He cringed at that. "You've been a lot less available lately. I just figured it was probably work."
That's what you wanted it to be.
She sighed faintly. "I guess I have. I've been tired, Lar. I'm not getting enough..."
"Enough what? Rest?"
She scowled. "I don't know."
But it's not the job. I'm more alive in the office than when I'm out with him. A lot more.
Walt was a bastard, but at least there was some substance to him. He had some interests, some conversation. He could see what was around him without my having to point it out and tell him why it mattered. Why am I wasting my Friday evenings on a man with nothing to him? A man who doesn't dare take me to another restaurant? A man for whom I can barely stay awake and can't bear to touch?
The thought that followed from that rose almost to her consciousness. It brushed the surface of her mind before she seized her mental broom and drove it back into the darkness.
He leaned forward and dropped his voice. "Would you like me to take you home?" His tone was so solicitous it made her want to scream.
She forced herself to count to ten. "Maybe that would be best. I really am tired."
He nodded and signaled for the waitress.
At her door, she smiled and turned to put her key in the lock, when he surprised her by reaching for her hand. She stood there, silent and half-paralyzed, while he groped for words.
"Jeanne..." He faltered, collected himself, and produced a plastic smile. "Thanks for tonight." She thought he was about to kiss her, but he merely chafed her hand gently before releasing it, turned swiftly and walked away.
He knows.
She unlocked her door and found the apartment dark. Sarah was still out. She dropped her keys on the phone secretary and slipped swiftly through the darkness to her bedroom. She manage to undress, remove her makeup, and secure herself between the covers, all the lights out, before the tears came.
She dialed Iverson's extension with a microscopically trembling finger.
"Yes?"
"It's Jeanne Newton. I think I have all the claims rejection data assembled, if you'd like to see it."
"Sure would. Come on by." The connection broke at once.
She swept her charts and spreadsheets into a neat bundle, rose, and strode for Iverson's office with all the confidence she could simulate. His door was open. She started to deliver a pro forma knock, saw what he was doing, and halted herself. He seemed not to notice her arrival. She slipped in and slid into his guest chair without a sound.
He was sketching with a charcoal on a huge vellum pad. His charcoal was sharpened to a fineness that would have done credit to a #3 pencil. Its marks were delicately precise, as minute and perfect as the smallest scalpel cuts of the finest surgeon. The sketch was a profile of a middle-aged woman's face. It was more detailed than Jeanne could have imagined possible in so soft a medium. He was drawing a group of fine hairs that lay along her right temple.
She watched in silence as he worked. When he'd completed the woman's hair, he set to work on a headpiece that covered nearly all of it. It was that of a Catholic nun.
Presently he ceased to draw, merely sat staring down at the completed sketch with the charcoal in his hand. She thought to alert him to her presence, decided against it when she saw his eyes brim over.
"What do you think?"
She started. "I didn't think you knew --"
He looked up at last. "Of course I knew. You did call me, remember?" He glanced at his desk clock. "Twenty-seven minutes ago, at that." He grinned. "It's all right to interrupt me. That's what I'm here for."
I got lost in what you were doing.
"So," he said, shoving the gorgeous thing toward her, "what do you think?"
"It's...exquisite." She frowned. "But why charcoal?"
"The saddest medium. Charcoal helps to bring out the somberness of an image. She was always a sad figure, even after she took her vows." He grinned wanly. "Even though that was the one thing she'd always wanted to do."
He seemed unaware of the tears running down his face.
Someone he loved very much. Someone he's lost. To the Church?
"When did she die?"
He shook his head. "She's still alive."
"An aunt?"
Another shake. "My mother."
She suppressed a gasp. He grinned again.
"Don't get the wrong idea. She wasn't a nun when I was born. That came afterward, after my father passed away." He rose and shoved his hands into his pockets. "That stuff can wait till after lunch, can't it?"
"Well, if you say so."
She rose and was about to depart when he said "What's your taste in music like?" He rounded his desk and grabbed a cardigan from the coat tree by the door.
She shrugged. "I like a lot of stuff."
He shrugged into the sweater and cast a speculative look at her. "You've already gotten to play art critic this morning. Want to take a stab at music reviewer?"
"Uh, sure, why not?"
He gestured her toward the door with a sweep of his arm. "Then lunch is on me."
He drove them to a small one-story warehouse on the western edge of the city, about a mile from the Arcologics offices. Another car, a German sedan of venerable years, was parked alongside them. The building was shabby, and lacked an identifying facade, Its windows were heavily begrimed. The large sliding drive-through doors were padlocked shut. He strode to the personnel door without comment and pushed inside.
Funny place for a concert.
The interior of the little warehouse was no match for its exterior. It was as clean as many a private residence. It contained nothing that suggested storage or any other rough use. All its surfaces were padded with eggcrate foam panels. Musical devices lined the four walls. Most were identifiable: keyboards, electric guitars, assorted brass and wind instruments, and a bevy of amplifiers and speakers. Some were more mysterious. A web of cables joined them to a computer that stood beside a large mixing board.
At the far wall, laboring over one of the instruments she couldn't identify, she spied a tall, frail-looking man of perhaps sixty. He was clad in denim, and his rough gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. When he saw Iverson approach, he put down the tool he'd been using and spread his arms in welcome. Iverson embraced him.
"Padrone!"
"Paisano mio!" Iverson replied. He turned back to Jeanne and beckoned her forward. "Miss Newton, I'd like you to meet Sal Acunzo, one of the two best completely unknown keyboardists in America, who does me the honor of playing with me in my spare moments. Sal, this is Miss Jeanne Newton, who's doing us the honor of listening to us today."
Acunzo extended a hand, and she shook it.
"How did he rope you into this?" Acunzo said.
"He promised me lunch."
"Todd! When are you going to learn some new tricks?"
Her employer shrugged. "Why bother, when the old ones still work just fine?"
Acunzo shook his head. "Hopeless. Did you get the bridge of that thing you were working on last week straightened out?"
"Got a new tack to try, but I want you to rip it to shreds for me."
Acunzo flipped a hand. "Lay it on me."
Iverson's eyes roved among the cables that crisscrossed the floor. "Ready for it?"
"Just finished."
Iverson nodded and positioned himself before an enormous console that had more keyboards, switches and dials than any organ she'd ever seen. The older man leaned against an amplifier case and beckoned Jeanne to join him. She perched herself beside him as Iverson did a series of incomprehensible things to the huge device.
Abruptly, without a word of preliminary, Iverson straightened, put his hands to one of the keyboards, and began. The speakers that lined the warehouse walls fountained forth a rippling cascade of glory.
"So," he said around a mouthful of bacon-cheeseburger, "what did you think?"
What sort of test is this?
Jeanne laid her fork alongside her plate and sat back in her chair. "Mr. Iverson --"
"Todd, please."
"Okay." She scanned the little tavern as she chose her words. They were almost alone. A lone customer sat at the bar. The bartender was busying himself with minute rearrangements of his condiment trays.
"Why did you want my opinion in the first place?"
He grinned. "Answering my question with a question is hardly cricket. Don't you know any other artsy types?"
She grimaced. "One or two."
"And from that face you just made, I'd guess that they press their stuff on you at every opportunity. Am I right?"
She nodded.
"Well, why should I be any different?"
Because you're a genius. As much a genius at art and music as at engineering, management, and marketing.
His eyes pressed her for a response.
"I suppose," she said, measuring out each syllable, "I'd say that you just have to know how good you are already. You certainly don't need the praise of a former operating-room nurse. So why did you want my opinion?"
He merely grinned more widely.
"Todd...do you display these gifts of yours to all your new employees?"
"Nope." His grin turned impish and he looked away. "Only the young, single, pretty ones."
She opened her mouth, closed it without speaking, and went back to digging through her chef's salad.
Sarah peered at her over their omelets. "Not hungry?"
"Yes and no." Jeanne stopped stabbing at her eggs and laid down her fork. "More distracted than anything else, I think."
Sarah smiled. "And you can't do two things at once. At least not when one of them is eat and the other is moon over your new boss."
Jeanne sat up straight at that. "Excuse me? Who said anything about him?"
"You did."
"What? But --"
"By not saying anything about him for nearly two weeks now. The word around town is that he's a major hottie, and that he's very, very eligible. And you work directly with him. But I haven't been able to goose a word out of you with a pitchfork, practically since you started there, and that's just not you. So what's the story, roomie?"
Jeanne let her eyes rove around their kitchenette and tried to get her thoughts to congeal.
Sarah's social connections are a lot better than anything I've got. Maybe she's heard something about him. About him and me. God knows, enough people have seen us together.
And I still can't figure out if he's hitting on me.
"You know," Sarah said, "if you don't want him, you could always toss him my way."
Jeanne frowned. "Haven't you met him, Sar?"
Sarah shook her head. "Haven't had the pleasure, as much as I'd love to. Dad invited him to a shindig a few weeks ago, and we didn't even get an R.S.V.P."
So his manners aren't perfect.
"What was the occasion?"
"Just a big backyard party. Dad invites the whole clan, all his business associates, and anyone he's decided he'd like to meet. The non-family invitees almost always show up bearing gifts."
Not too surprising when the invitation's from Onteora's only billionaire.
"He probably didn't know he'd been invited, Sar. You wouldn't believe how many hours he puts in, or all the, the stuff he does outside the office. He's --" She halted herself just short of the sort of effusive praise that would confirm Sarah's guess.
From the look on her face, it was clear that Sarah Forslund had received all the confirmation she needed.
Jeanne was straining to choose between going to the local art house to see a movie she'd seen before and curling up with a book she'd read twice before when the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Jeanne."
Jeanne's mood went at once from mildly bored to despairing. "Oh, hi, Larry."
"Interested in going somewhere tonight?"
"I hadn't thought about it. What did you have in mind?"
There was a brief silence on the line. "I don't know. I thought you might have an idea."
Well, at least it's not dinner at the Aquarium.
"I'm kinda dry of ideas tonight, Larry. Maybe we should try another night?"
Another silence.
He has to get the message at some point.
"Okay, Jeanne. See you soon. You have a good evening, okay?"
"You too, Lar. Good night."
"Good night."
Jeanne set the phone down with a sense of pointlessness.
I would have liked to go somewhere, do something. Anything. Sarah never has a problem filling her free time with good stuff. She's always full of stories, even though she goes out alone almost every evening. But all Larry ever offers me is the world's most boring crap. Why can't he come up with anything worthwhile?
Why should I expect him to, at this point?
She banished the thought forcefully, grabbed her twice-read romance novel, and headed for her bedroom.
Jeanne did her best to stay buried in work. There was plenty of it; deliberately or not, Olympian Assurances had become a thorn in Arcologics' flesh, regularly rejecting half the claims submitted to it and occasionally more. Her days were evenly divided between reviewing disputed medical claims and phoning various Olympian officers with information, complaints, and carefully phrased threats. It was the only thing in her life interesting enough, and plentiful enough, to keep her from daydreaming about her handsome, charming, brilliant, excessively gifted, maddeningly indirect, high-heeled boss. It worked.
It was close to being the only thing in her life at all. Her free time was spent with her books, her music, and an occasional rerun of a medical drama. Larry had stopped calling. Sarah had taken to spending all her evenings out of the apartment, often leaving only a note asking Jeanne to leave a light on when she retired. Even telemarketers seemed to have decided to let her be. When she came home after a day of work, Jeanne had a completely private world.
She found it peaceful, even refreshing. She'd never minded her own company, but her failed romances with Walt Rustow and Larry Lansing had somehow deflected her from the enjoyment of the things she really loved. She'd allowed herself to become anxious over her advancing age, but why? Time would pass at a rate of sixty seconds per minute whether she was dated, mated or alone. For the first time in months, she felt no need to expose herself to potential suitors.
It came as something of a surprise when Sarah, whose face she'd hardly seen for several weeks, swooped down upon her at the end of a workday and dragged her out to an artists' cafe for coffee and distraction.
"A poetry open mike?" Jeanne said as they sat.
Sarah nodded. "Most of these guys are about as interesting as listening to paint dry, but a couple have really got it. With luck we'll get one or two of them."
The cafe was decently large, yet every table but theirs was full. Except for them, the crowd was exclusively male, but no one had taken conspicuous note of their presence. That they might ignore her was thinkable to Jeanne, but for Sarah's Nordic beauty to go unremarked struck her as unthinkable.
"Is this a gay hangout, Sar?"
Her roommate shrugged. "It hadn't occurred to me to ask."
A waiter in a suede drawstring shirt and black beret asked for their order. Jeanne asked for coffee, Sarah for a fruit and cheese platter. As the waiter made for the kitchen, the lights came down and a similarly garbed emcee mounted the stage and moved to the microphone.
"We have a short lineup for you tonight," he murmured into the mike. "Two new contributors, Danny and Steve --" He paused as a rustling murmur passed over the crowd -- "and Todd whose work you've enjoyed before."
At the last name a round of applause punctuated by scattered cheers rang out. The emcee smiled. "You know, for an artsy bunch, you guys sure seem to like the old forms." That triggered a second round of applause, and a considerable amount of laughter.
"All right, let's get to it." The emcee departed the stage and a tall, husky young man moved diffidently toward the mike.
Danny, the first entrant, hunched over the mike as if he were hoping to hide behind it. He read a free-verse poem about war casualties in a reedy, halting voice. At the conclusion there were a few scattered claps, but on the whole the audience seemed unmoved.
Steve, the second contributor, was a short, slight man of middle age with a tubercular cast to him. He clutched the microphone stalk as if he could barely stand without it. His poem, if it could be called that, was a shrieking, twenty-minute denunciation of greed and selfishness that shaded over into a demand for respect for "the shades that linger, endlessly dying, awaiting the respect that will set them free." There was no applause.
There was a brief hiatus before the third participant stepped out of the shadows toward the mike. His platform boots clapped loudly against the wooden tympanum of the stage. The crowd roared in approbation, and Jeanne suppressed a gasp. Beside her, Sarah hmmm'ed in approval.
Todd Iverson smiled shyly. "Hi, everybody." He held up a single sheet of paper. "I call this one 'Valkyrie'."
Silence fell, and he read.
Their forces loomed, hard, angry, fierce of eye,
My mistress spurred her steed and charged, forbye.
Retainers who had ne'er knelt to a foe,
Pulled hard upon their reins and watched her go.Her battle-cry resounded forth alone,
Her courser's hooves struck sparks from flint and stone.
She did not turn to see the naked plain,
Her yeomen having thought best to refrain.Sword gleaming in her hand, she struck and swore,
The foemen quickly giving ground before,
Such righteous rage boiled from that flaxen head,
That those she did not fell soon mocked the dead.As through the bristling ranks uncompanied,
She drove, with flashing steel and brilliant speed,
Her own behind her muttered at such play,
Alone yet unafraid, to win the day.All quit the field before that angel's rage,
Her foemen and the men who wore her gage,
The foe feared death, her own feared to remain,
To face her and her most deserv'd disdain.And when the plain lay thick with blood and steel,
She sat unmarred, and scanned that crimson field,
Sheathed sword and turned her courser toward her home,
Into her keep she rode, proud and alone.'Twere dark, and grim, and pierced by northern cold,
Strange in that sunlit land, Valkyrie's hold,
Wherein she could await the promised day,
When he for whom she yearned would make his way,A knight of strength and grace, unmarred by fright,
To company her each morning, noon, and night,
Till battle's joys, and life's, could not abide,
They set together on Valhalla's ride.I could but wish to be that worthy knight,
To raise my sword and join her in the fight,
But only a crude seneschal am I,
To dream, to yearn, regret, renounce, and sigh.For heroes notice not the lowly born,
Such mind their place, endure their betters' scorn,
Except alone, when nightfall sets them free,
To dream of other worlds where such might be.
He bowed his head. For several seconds there was a silence as profound as night, and then the crowd came to its feet, clapping and cheering to shake the very roof loose from the walls.
He raised his head once more, and the silence returned.
"Thank you."
And he strode off into the shadows.
"Pretty obviously they had their eye on an art nouveau sort of ambiance," Sarah said. She guided her Mercedes smoothly into the Arcologics parking lot and pulled up alongside Jeanne's battered Honda. Other than their two cars, the lot was empty. "I don't think it developed the way they expected."
"Nouveaux artes," Jeanne muttered absently.
"Hm?"
"It's one of the exceptions," Jeanne said. "In French, all adjectives come after the noun they modify except for those that indicate beauty, age, goodness, or size."
"Oh. Okay." Sarah turned and fixed a concerned look on her. "Going straight home?"
Jeanne shrugged. "I guess so. Why?"
A ripple of mild irritation passed over her roommate's face. "Because you should. You've been working too much. Pushing the outside of the envelope of human dedication." Sarah smiled faintly. "I know you love your job, but there are limits. You're a good friend and a good apartment-mate. I'm not going to stand by in silence while you trash yourself with overwork. Anyone in my family could tell you how that usually works out."
Jeanne opened her mouth, closed it, and studied Sarah's face.
She means it. She's not just reading from a good-roomie script.
"Sar... well, first of all, thanks for caring that much. But it's not what you think. Yeah, I enjoy the work. I spent a lot of years helping to patch up broken bodies, and getting pissed when some prick of a surgeon decided a patient was too unimportant for his best work, or too...interesting to be treated as a suffering human being instead of an experimental animal. Now I'm on the other side of the desk, swinging a money club and making sure my people get the treatment they deserve. I've got to tell you, it's great. It beats any thrill I ever had in an O.R. all to hell. But I don't do it compulsively. I do it because it's the best thing I do... the best thing I have to do."
She bit her lip, torn by her own words. Were they a simple statement of priorities, or an indirect admission that her life had collapsed around a single, monochromatic pursuit?
Sarah peered at her through the darkness. After a moment, she shrugged.
"Can I interest you in a look at how the other half lives?"
Jeanne's brow furrowed. "Are you inviting me to visit the compound?"
Sarah shook her head. "A backyard party. Grandpa said I could have you, but you have to dress nice. Oh, and you can bring a date if you want." She grinned. "Dress him nice, too."
"I, uh, I'll..."
"Just think about it and let me know before Saturday after next. Get home safe, roomie."
Jeanne nodded. "I will."
By seven PM on a Wednesday, even the most dedicated of Arcologics's staff were ready for something else. Jeanne had completed her latest round of case analyses and was about to head home when her phone rang.
"Jeanne Newton."
"Miss Newton, would you please stop by my office for a moment?" Todd Iverson's voice sounded strangely hesitant.
"Uh, sure, be right there." She clapped the handset back into its cradle, grabbed her rucksack and trotted through the rows of empty desks toward Iverson's office.
She found him standing, clutching a sheet of correspondence-sized stationery and squinting at it as if he couldn't make out what it said. She stopped in his doorway and delicately cleared her throat. He started and swiveled to smile at her.
"Please, come in and have a seat." She perched at the edge of one of his guest chairs. He gestured with the paper. "I, uh, have a little problem, and I was hoping you could help."
Is he sick? "Sure, Todd, anything at all." She tried to smile reassuringly.
"I, uh, have to go somewhere Saturday after next," he said. "A social engagement. A party. Forgive me for making it sound like a chore, but if I thought I could decline the invitation, I would. I think I would. See, uh, I'm not going to know anyone there, and I'm just...not too good among strangers. If you're, uh, free that afternoon, would you consider coming with me?" He opened his eyes comically wide. "I'll try to make sure you have a good time."
Jeanne's mouth fell open. Despite her most earnest efforts, she emitted a squirt of astonished laughter.
Iverson grimaced in pain. "I guess not, eh?"
She almost leaped out of her seat. "No, no! I'd be overjoyed to be your date!" She laughed again, in pleasure and relief. "You just had me worried about you. I figured this was about a health claim of yours."
The creases in his face immediately relaxed. His whole body seemed to loosen, as if he'd been relieved of some invisible weight. He released an explosive sigh.
"Thank you, Miss Newton. I'd been telling myself --"
She held up a hand. "Stop right there. I forgot to mention the conditions."
The worry lines returned at diminished force. "Oh, I assure you that --"
"Todd!"
He lapsed into silence.
"For such a smart guy, you sure have a hard time recognizing when to shut up." He grinned bashfully and studied the floor. "It's not about what you were thinking. First, you have to agree to call me Jeanne. At least when we're not in the office, okay?"
He nodded. "Okay."
"The second one I'm going to hold for the moment. Third, there's something we have to do first."
"What's that?"
"Dinner. Now."
He laughed. "Okay. How about Grucci's?"
"You're on."
"Did you really think I might say no to you?" Jeanne forked up a medallion of veal.
Iverson shrugged. "I didn't let myself think about it."
She suppressed a snort to save her mouthful. She laid down her fork, chewed and swallowed, and said deliberately, "I would have agreed to go anywhere with you. I was just surprised that you would want to go anywhere with me."
It was his turn to gape in surprise. He sat back, laid his arms flat along his chair's armrests, and studied her face.
"Why not?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Before answering, she scanned the restaurant. There were few diners, it being fairly late on a midweek day, and no one particularly nearby, but she didn't want to say anything that might be overheard to his embarrassment.
"You have to know," she murmured, "how all-stops-out impressive you are. I've seen you excel in half a dozen different fields already, and I have a feeling I ain't seen nothin' yet. On top of that, you're good looking, charming, considerate, and more generous toward your employees than Sarah is willing to believe. You're so far ahead of me in every way that I can barely even see your taillights. Why would a...a major hottie like you want to go out with me?"
He sat silent for several seconds. "Who's Sarah?"
"My roommate."
"Oh." He stared at the table, visibly composing himself to reply.
"Having second thoughts? I do tend to shoot my mouth off in socially awkward ways."
He chuckled. "No, it's not that. Miss Newton --"
"What was my first condition?"
Another chuckle. "Sorry. Jeanne, have you ever had the misfortune to be, well, courted by someone who bored you to tears?"
She cackled. "Have you been keeping watch on my apartment?"
He smiled. "Then you know what it feels like not to be able to deal with a companion you just can't admire. But what if that were all you could date? Men who were flat-out unworthy of a moment of your time? What do you suppose that would do to your attitude toward men?"
"Nothing good, admittedly. But Todd," she said, "I've been on the other end of the stick, too. My last serious romance was with a man who kept complaining about having to 'drag me along,' as if I were a dead weight on his arm. Aren't you at all worried about my doing that to you?" She braced herself for his response.
"Maybe I would be," he said in a measured voice, "if I hadn't had the chance to observe you as I have. You spoke of my excellences before, but apparently you have no idea of yours. You meet people on their own level. You see and you hear without any barriers or preconceptions. You aren't frightened by what's outside your experience. You fight for what you think is right. And you don't back down from your convictions. How many more assets does a woman need?"
Her breath came short and blood fountained into her face.
"How can you think so well of me?" she whispered.
He shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. "How can you not? Isn't it possible that you think too little of yourself? That you've been dating down? That you're single not because you don't meet anyone else's criteria, but because you've never allowed that you meet your own? Jeanne," he said in a cracking voice, "you're not just a former operating room nurse who got fired because she mouthed off to one too many arrogant asshole surgeons!"
She could not speak.
"I touched a nerve with that, I know," he said. "But you had to know I'd check into your background before agreeing to hire you. Everything about those incidents struck me as entirely to your credit. I wanted you onboard before I ever saw your face. After we met, I had to know if we might...well...be more than just employer and employee to one another. So I tested you.
"I test everything, Jeanne. I test myself, I test my ideas, I test my subordinates, I test my collaborators, I test the market, and I test my own damned patience until I can't stand myself any longer. It's got to be that way. Too many people depend on me for too many things. I can only afford to be wrong once in a long, long while. If I were to get myself wrapped around you without being pretty sure it was going to work, God alone knows what sort of hash I would make of things. So I made a point of testing you. I showed you everything that's scared away the other women I've courted. And you hung in there."
Her eyes brimmed over. She stretched a hand blindly across the table, and he took it.
"Todd," she whispered, "if I let myself fall in love with you..."
"Yes?"
"...it has to be the real thing. Not a convenience, not a fling, and not some sort of sympathy trip. If you don't think you can fall in love with me, you have to set me straight before I... I..."
He squeezed her hand. "I don't think that will be a problem."
They sat like that, unspeaking, for a long while.
Presently he said, "Are you ready to tell me about that other condition?"
"Maybe later," she said. "After you've taken me home."
"But --"
"Your home. From here. Tonight." She grinned impishly. "There's more to compatibility than mutual admiration, and I want to know now."
He stared hard into her eyes, nodded, and signaled for the waiter.
They stepped through the arch of roses that gated the huge Forsland grounds hand in hand. Spread before them was a wonderland of luxuries: a hedge topiary stippled with seating and buffet stations; a set of terraces, atop which stood an elegant, brightly lit pavilion; a display of statuary in a range of styles; and several beautifully sculpted mini-gardens centered on koi ponds. Among them all, dozens of elegantly dressed guests strolled, sat, or stood in clumps.
Todd gawked as delightedly as a small boy. Jeanne smiled.
"The very rich are different from you and me," she said.
He chortled. "Yeah, they have a lot more money."
"You're pretty well fixed yourself. You could live like this if you wanted to."
"Not quite, babe. Anyway, I still have a lot of work to do. Old Anders has done his bit. He can kick back and relax." A puzzled look crossed his face. "You know, you never did tell me about that remaining condition, but here we are."
She shrugged. "It can wait."
He raised an eyebrow. "Come on!"
She pulled his head down to her and whispered in his ear. He snapped upright, eyes wide.
"You're kidding!"
"Call it a nurse thing."
"But --"
"Todd, you can take the nurse out of the hospital --"
He grimaced. "But you can't take the hospital out of the nurse. Okay, just give me a little while to adjust to the idea."
"Not too long, sweetie. I've been waiting." She grinned wickedly. "Oh, you can leave your boots on. I let you wear them here, didn't I?"
He noted the gleam of lust in her eyes and shuddered.
A waiter approached and asked them if they'd care for refreshment. Todd asked for white wine, and Jeanne for a mimosa. Moments later they were ambling, drinks in hand, toward one of the koi ponds when she spied Sarah, playing assistant hostess to a knot of Onteora Aviation executives.
She squeezed Todd's hand. "Give me a minute, sweetie?" He nodded, and she scampered across the great lawn as daintily as high heels would allow.
"Sarah!"
Sarah Forslund's head whipped around. "You came!" she squealed, and ran to embrace Jeanne, the OA execs frowning at her back.
"It's gorgeous, Sar," Jeanne said. "Thanks ever so much for the invite. Are you planning to introduce me to any movers or shakers?"
Sarah nodded. "Anyone you want, roomie. But they're mostly kinda old and kinda married."
Jeanne smiled crookedly. "Can't win 'em all, I guess."
"Did you bring anyone?"
Jeanne nodded. "Want to meet him?"
"Of course!"
They strolled across the lawn to where Todd Iverson stood. His back was to them. He was studying a pair of intertwined figures in marble as if he were calculating how to improve on it.
"Sweetie?"
Todd turned to face them, and Sarah gasped.
"The poet!"
"And a lot more," Jeanne said. "Sarah, I'd like you to meet Todd Iverson, chief executive officer of Arcologics. Todd, this is my roommate Sarah Forslund."
Todd bowed slightly and offered his hand. "Charmed." Sarah stood goggle-eyed, hardly thinking to take it.
"Mr. Iverson," she said in an awed voice, "the whole county is agog with talk about you." Her eyes flicked quickly to Jeanne's and then back to Iverson's. "You can't imagine how much I've wanted to meet you." She gave him a ten-million watt smile, fully equipped with champagne, hot tubs, and satin sheets.
Jeanne stepped to Iverson's side and slipped a possessive arm around his waist. He looked down at her and settled an arm protectively along her shoulders.
"Oh you'll get a lot more chances to get to know each other, Sar," she said. "He's with me."
(0) Comments • Print Vers. • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
| <<- Two Flash Fictions | Tit For Tat ->> |
