Better Than This (17 page)

maybe it had as much to do with experience and self-knowledge as it did with the way she looked.

There were only two other couples in the restaurant. One an older couple who had the appearance of people who’d been together a long time and wouldn’t have it any other way. They carried an air of being supremely comfortable in each other’s company. The other couple were younger, and reminded me of Sally and me the last time we were there.

“You think they’ll ever come back one day to repair an ailing marriage,” I joked.

“If they do, I hope it works for them,” Sally said.

The food arrived, and was excellent, though I hardly noticed what I was eating. We talked a lot about the past, and we left the present and the future to take care of themselves. Afterwards we ordered coffee and a cognac each. The fire in the bar was lit and we sat on a couch there in comfort, happy to watch the flames and let the liquor spread its warm glow. After a while I put my arm around Sally and when she leaned against me I could smell the scent of her hair, and her perfumed skin.

The bartender came over to fetch our empty glasses. “Anything else I can get for you folks?”

We had a couple more, and then a couple more after that, and when he asked us a fourth time I looked at Sally. “I think we’re fine, what do you say?”

She grinned a little drunkenly. “I think so.”

“I think we’re going to turn in.”

The bartender smiled. “Sleep well.”

We went on up holding hands as we climbed the stairs, which was something we hadn’t done in a long time.

“Was he being funny when he said that about sleeping well do you think?” I said.

“Why should he be? Did you have something else in mind?” Sally said with a lascivious grin.

As we reached the top of the stairs I leaned to kiss her. She closed her eyes and her mouth parted slightly. We were tentative at first, then the last remaining tension eased and Sally relaxed into my arms.

“It’s a long time since we kissed like that,” I said.

“Mmm. Too long.”

In our room the cover had been turned back on the bed, and a single lamp in the corner cast a soft light. We kissed again. She arched her back a little, pressing herself against my erection, and I lifted the top she wore and raised it smoothly over her head with a fluid motion. I found the clasp of her bra and slid the straps across her shoulders until she shrugged it to the floor then I held her so that I could feel the softness of her naked breasts against my chest, and the smooth curve of her back beneath my hands. I stood back a little and while Sally undid my shirt I ran my thumbs over her hardening nipples.

I bent to kiss her neck, the hollow beneath her ear where her hair was so fine. Sally slipped her hand between us and undid my jeans and I moved to accommodate her as she pushed them over my hips, then I stood back to kick off shoes and socks while she watched me with a playful smile. I hopped on one foot.

“There’s no way to look dignified at this point.”

“I don’t want you to be dignified.”

She pulled me back to her, and lifted her face to be kissed while she reached inside my shorts and grasped my erection firmly with one hand and cupped my balls gently with the other. The coolness of her touch made me draw in my breath.

“I want you naked,” she said, and let me go.

I obliged, and she looked me over from head to toe. If she had been anyone else, I couldn’t have stood there as I did without embarrassment. Even so, enough was enough and I led her towards the bed.

“My turn,” I told her.

I ran my hands across her hips and buttocks. She was wearing a G-string so I could feel the smoothness of naked flesh beneath her skirt. I found the clasp and zip and the skirt fell in a whisper to the ground, then I gently pushed her back onto the bed and removed her panties. Her hair was dark against the bedspread, her skin smooth across her belly to the shadowed cleft between her legs.

“I love you,” I told her.

“And I you.”

I kissed her breasts and travelled down her body. She raised her knees and parted her thighs a little and I kissed between the soft damp folds of her flesh inhaling her scent like a drug. She sighed, her hands playing through my hair.

“I’ve missed you,” she murmured.

She was wet with desire, and shortly she grew impatient and pulled me up to kiss her mouth again, parting her thighs as I lay over her and wrapping her arms around me. She yielded easily as I slipped inside her and for a few moments we lay together, hardly moving, absorbing the sensations of intimate closeness again. Then we began to rock with a smooth unhurried rhythm. We knew each other’s bodies, and how to please each other. She raised her hips a fraction so that I could move against her most sensitive area and she gasped a little. Supporting my weight on my hands I looked down at her parted lips, her closed eyes. She breathed in time with our movements. I ran my hand over her breasts, her sides, then sank down to kiss her again and she reached around to feel me moving in and out of her. Her legs tightened and she clenched the muscles in her abdomen, and as she began to climax I released myself and we held onto one another tightly.

I slept a dreamless sleep and when I woke it was morning, and sunlight streamed through a gap in the curtain. Sally was still sleeping and I pulled back the cover to look at her. Her hands were loosely clasped over her belly and a faint contented smile lay softly on her face.

On the twenty-third, the morning I was due to make my final presentation at Spectrum, I woke at five-thirty with a start. The last image of a dream I’d been having was branded in my conscious mind. Larry Dexter stood grinning at me, holding out something in his arms. I moved closer with my heart pounding, sweat breaking out on my palms, my eye irresistibly drawn to the bundle he proffered. I couldn’t make out what it was, except that it was wrapped in a blanket of some sort and that every now and then it moved. Dexter’s grin grew wider and he urged me to go ahead, take it. I reached out nervously and drew back the blanket and underneath it was a newborn baby. It turned towards me and began to cry, a loud rising wail, and I stumbled back in surprise and horror. The baby’s face was that of my father, with half his head shot away, streaked with blood. I cried out and Dexter’s taunting laugh echoed around me but when I looked again it wasn’t Dexter at all, but Sally.

“Jesus,” I said to myself. My heart was still beating too fast, my body was clammy from sweat and the duvet on my side of the bed was twisted and thrown back. I lay there for several minutes thinking about the dream, wondering what it meant.

When I got up I dressed in “I-shirt and shorts. My clothes were hanging in the closet all ready in a suit bag. When I was ready to leave I went around to Sally’s side of the bed. She was still asleep, her face half covered by her hair, and I bent and gently moved it from her cheek. She looked peaceful with her eyes closed, breathing gently and I didn’t want to wake her,

though it would have been nice to have her wish me luck. Since we’d returned from Mendocino we’d recaptured a little of the ease we’d once had with one another. Things weren’t so good with Marcus. Everybody at the office was flat out on the Spectrum pitch and you could feel the tension in the air. Nobody was under any illusions as to what this would mean for each and every one of the people at Carpe Diem, win or lose. There was a sense of frenetic activity, of everybody holding their collective breaths as the day drew closer, and all of this only served to remind both Marcus and me of the bank’s hovering presence, and the discord between us that had brought us to this point. I figured that explained his cool manner, the undercurrents of unspoken feelings and I decided that until we had the Spectrum account in the bag there wasn’t much I could do about it.

All I needed was this one account.

Before I left I leaned down and kissed Sally’s cheek softly. She stirred and mumbled something under her breath.

I was at the pool by six. The girl on the desk smiled a greeting when I swiped my membership card and she glanced at the screen in front of her where my details came up.

“Hi, Nick. Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said.

“I’ve been kind of busy.”

“You swimming today?”

“I think so.” Sometimes I did a circuit class or worked in the gym for a change.

“We have a new step aerobics class starting next week. The instructor is awesome. You should check it out.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Okay, have a good swim.”

Nice girl. Pretty, maybe early twenties. Like all the staff at the health club she had the healthy glow of the young and fit. They rotated who was on the desk in the mornings, and I don’t think I’d seen that particular girl for a month at least, but she greeted me by name and knew I didn’t always hit the pool. She couldn’t have done it if my card hadn’t flashed all my details on the screen. They were probably using a fairly simple software pack age, but it was that kind of business application that was continuing to change the world. What made me smile, however, was the Spectrum logo I glimpsed in the corner of the screen. It seemed like a good omen.

The pool wasn’t busy that morning. While I pulled on my cap and goggles I scanned the traffic trying to decide between fast and medium. There had been a time in the not too distant past when I could have done my hundred in the fast lane without too much trouble, but I wasn’t as fit as I had been then and I didn’t want to kill myself. A half-dozen or so older people were using the slow lanes, ploughing up and down like ships on a long voyage. I had the impression they could go on for ever and sometimes it seemed as if they did. Back and forth, back and forth, arms rising and dipping almost in slow motion, touching the end and turning in a fluid movement, on and on they went. A guy perhaps in his mid-seventies emerged from the changing rooms. His skin was wrinkled and a little loose, and he had the skinny legs and vanishing butt of the elderly, but he looked loose and limber and when he dived into the pool he could have been twenty years younger.

In the end I took one of the fast lanes and I powered through my first five lengths like a torpedo, until I started to feel the burn from muscles unused to this kind of punishment. After a few more I was gulping air into my lungs on every second stroke. I knew I should’ve opted for a medium lane, but I shut out the pain and waited for the rush that is the reward for pushing it out when you hit the barrier. After twenty lengths I was about ready to give up. Fatigue dragged at my arms and legs like heavy weights and my chest was aching. I struggled to keep up the pace but after a couple more lengths my fingers scraped the end of the pool and I didn’t think I could go on.

It was only determination that overcame physical limitation. I heard the voice of a drill sergeant in my mind. I told myself I was a weakling.

You’ve let yourself get slack and sloppy! You swim like a drowning dog! Get that head down and kick those feet! What the hell do you think this is? You think life is a stroll in the country? You want those people to see a sissy when you walk in that room this morning?

MOVEYOURFUCKINGSELF!

If nothing else I was distracted from the pain that was stretching hot fingers across my back and shoulders, and the burning sensation of lungs starved of oxygen. I hit the far end and did a rolling turn and when I came up endorphins burst into my brain, engulfing me in a natural high that was like strapping on a power pack. I did another five lengths at full speed, until even endorphins couldn’t quell the signals my body was sending me and when I hit the home end again I put my hands on the edge and hauled myself from the water in one move and sat gasping on the edge, chest heaving, head down.

When I looked up a woman was resting her arms on the side in the lane next to me. I’d spoken to her a couple of times and I knew she had a highpowered job with a PR firm downtown. She grinned.

“Feel good?”

“I’m a little out of shape, but yes, it feels great,” I said.

“Big day?”

“Big day.” I got up and started for the changing rooms.

“Knock ‘em dead,” the woman called after me.

I grinned to myself. As I passed the slow lanes the old people were still there, and still looking for all the world like they could go on for ever.

I drove to the office and parked in the basement in my usual slot. Breakfast was a blueberry muffin and double espresso from the coffee stand on the ground floor of our building. It was still only seven-thirty and the woman who ran the stand was just opening. When the building was converted only the shell of the old brick warehouse had been left intact. Now the central open space reached up three storeys and was filled with light from skylights that had been installed in the roof. Steel stairways linked the perimeter walkways of the upper floors. The intended effect was semi-industrial chic, though sometimes when I looked up at the metal grid of the walkways I was vaguely reminded of a prison.

I let myself in the office and disarmed the security alarm,

then ate my muffin at my desk while I powered up my laptop and went through my presentation one more time.

I was still going over it when Marcus arrived. He started to walk past my office then changed his mind and doubled back.

“You’re in early,” he commented. He glanced at my laptop screen. “What time are you presenting?”

“Eleven. Take a look. I made a few changes.” I ran through it quickly, highlighting the parts I’d worked on over the past couple of days. Of course he was familiar with most of the creative input because it was he and his small team who’d worked it up. “It’s good, Marcus,” I said when I was finished.

“Yeah,” he agreed without enthusiasm.

“You could try to sound a little more positive.”

He looked at me searchingly. “I wish I had your confidence.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, though I suddenly thought of my dream and felt an echo of unease. “How’s Alice?” I asked, to change the subject. It was the first time her name had come up since her exhibition.

He appeared awkward at being reminded of that night. “She’s fine,” he said cautiously.