House of Smoke (19 page)

When she comes it’s with her whole body, scalp to soles and all in between, one massive contraction of muscle, pulling his ass to her so tight he’ll be black and blue later.

“Shit, lady,” he says, panting, lying on his back, his torso wet with her sweat.

She wipes herself in the adjacent private bathroom, pees, comes back into the office, puts her clothes back on. He’s already dressed, sans tie.

Sex was good, it’s over, it’s time for business. He takes a sheaf of papers from his briefcase, hands them to her.

“Where do we stand?” she asks, leafing through them.

“We’re a few months away from finishing up our geology studies,” he tells her, “and it’s all looking good.”

“How good?” She’s impatient, and she doesn’t want him to see her being nervous, she never shows a lack of control.

“As good as we hoped for. Better.”

“I feel like Faust,” she says. Her hand is shaking—from holding the papers, not the sex. She never loses control from sex.

“Don’t ever look back,” he advises her firmly. “The people of Santa Barbara County are going to have a world-class oceanography school.”

“I’m going to be vilified. My family’s going to be smeared.”

“Not if you present it the right way. We’ll be the heavies, that’s our job. You go along with the program, you and your family will be fine.”

She runs her fingers through her hair, a nervous habit. “It isn’t a good idea for you to come here anymore, not until this is all settled.” She hands him back the documents.

“Whatever you say.” He puts the papers in his briefcase. “It’s an imperfect world, Miranda. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“I never beat myself up,” she says.

He starts out. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Go out the back way,” she says, leading him to a private exit at the rear of her office.

“Don’t get paranoid,” he cautions her. “It’ll show.”

“I’m in control,” she assures him. “Don’t worry.”

The doorbell is ringing. Kate jumps out of the shower, hurriedly wrapping herself in a bath towel.

“Who is it?” she calls through the front door as she stands in the hallway, dripping all over the floor.

“Juan Herrera,” comes through the door. “I brought those files that you wanted. I was in the neighborhood, and you said you wanted them pronto.”

“Shit,” she curses to herself. She’d thought he’d drop them in the mail, she wasn’t expecting a personal delivery at her apartment. This guy’s faster than Federal Express.

“Just a sec.”

She grabs a pair of shorts and a T-shirt off a chair, pulls them on. Despite her hurried toweling-off she’s still damp from the shower; her nipples are outlined against the white cotton.

He rings again.

“Okay, okay.” They’re only breasts, the man’s a cop, in the line of duty he’s seen hundreds of breasts, plenty of them better than these.

She throws the door open. “Sorry,” she starts to explain, “I was running at the beach and I wanted to wash the sand off …” She stops talking. He’s gaping at her, not able to hide his look.

Her hands go quickly to her breasts, cross-armed. She feels her face flushing.

“Sorry,” he fumbles. “I didn’t … here.”. He thrusts a manila envelope at her.

She reaches to take it; again exposing a wet breast. What’s going on here, she doesn’t mind guys checking her, it’s retro and antifeminist as hell but so what, it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s a compliment, so why is she feeling shy with him? Because he’s a married cop, the big no-no?

“Don’t stand outside,” she says, “come in, my neighbors don’t need to see you standing on my doorstep. A cop,” she adds, having to make some kind of justification.

He comes in, a couple of steps. “How would they know?”

“A blind man could tell.”

He tries to look away from her, but he can’t.

“I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home, such as it is.” She goes into the bedroom, closing the door for modesty.

The apartment has all the personality of a motel room. It’s clean, that’s the best compliment you can give it. Totally sterile, not a woman’s touch in it, not even some personal photos. She sleeps, eats, showers, and shits here, but she doesn’t live here.

She comes out of the bedroom wearing a summer dress that hangs on her loosely. Her bra straps stick out under the shoulders.

“Thanks for the personal service.” Trying to undercut the awkwardness, she asks, “since you made such a special effort, can I get you a beer? I’m having one.”

“No, I don’t … all right, one quick one.”

“Quick isn’t my style,” she joshes him.

They sit catty-corner from each other, couch and armchair, drinking Coors out of the bottle.

“How long have you lived here?” he asks. Now that she’s decent he’s more comfortable, his coat is open, revealing the gun snug against his hip.

“Chez Kate? Six months, eight. I don’t know, it’s home.” She takes a hit from her brew. “Not!” Another swallow; this beer’s disappearing fast.

“You’re too busy,” he offers politely.

“Too lazy. I keep meaning to find a decent place, but something always comes up, if it isn’t one thing, it’s another.” She’s about to joke “I need a wife,” but catches herself. A remark like that would not be appropriate at this particular moment.

He is a handsome fellow, which nobody can deny. She certainly can’t.

She drains her beer. “Can I get you another one, since I’m getting myself one anyway?”

“Sure.” He tosses her his empty bottle.

She takes two more out of the refrigerator, church-keys the tops, and as she turns to take them back into the living room he’s standing there, right behind her, so close she almost bangs into him.

The thought that flashes through her mind is, This is the wrong thing to do, and the right man to do it with.

“Cheers,” she says, and as she leans forward to hand him his bottle her arms go around his neck instead and she’s kissing him, a full kiss, their tongues massaging each other’s, his arms around her, one on her back, the other moving down to her ass, stroking it, oh Jesus, fuck me right here, standing up, on the counter, in the sink, on the floor, anywhere, anyhow, quick or slow, he’s a cop, you jerk, a
cop
for chrissakes!,
and
he’s a married man, where is your self-respect, where is your sense of worth? Do you have any, any at all?

She wants him; badly.

So it turns out there are no rules, no rules you can’t break.

The phone rings.

They both jump. Some beer sloshes out of the bottles.

“Sorry about that,” she says, handing him a wet bottle while shaking the foam off her hand. She’s breathing like she just ran a ten-K.

She takes the phone off the wall, facing him, smiling. He’d been hard, she could feel him through her dress. “Kate Blanchard,” she says into the receiver.

“Hello, Kate. It’s Cecil Shugrue,” the voice on the other end announces. “From Fiesta. Do you remember?”

“Sure,” she says back. She’s been waiting all week for him to call, checking her messages every day, hoping he’d be on the machine. So of course he calls now.

“How’s it going?” he asks.

She can feel all the air seeping out of the balloon.

“Oh fine, fine.”

Juan has drifted back into the living room.

“I’m in town. I thought maybe we could get together, have dinner. If you’re not busy, that is, I realize I’m calling late, but I thought in case … I’d like to see you,” he tells her.

She can tell from the way he said it that he really does.

“Kate?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Something has to give. “Hang on a minute.”

She lays the receiver on top of the phone and walks into the living room, where Juan is sucking at his bottle, trying to act nonchalant and not doing a very good job at it.

“It’s a client,” she lies. Usually she lies easily, it’s a part of the job that doesn’t cause her any sweat. This one does. “Who needs to see me, right away.”

It’s simple—one’s married, the other isn’t. If Juan has to have her, he’ll come back. Otherwise, it’s better they don’t get started. She needs to keep him as a useful source, on the inside. That could be a problem if they became lovers.

“I’ve got to be going anyway,” he says, his voice flat.

She walks him to the door. “Thanks for bringing me that stuff. I really appreciate your doing it.”

“
De nada
. Remember, you didn’t get it from me.”

“I’ll call you.” That sounds weird, what with them all tangled up thirty seconds ago, and the phone off the hook right now. “To let you know what’s going on—with my case.”

“If you want.”

“I mean if anything comes up you should know about.”

“That would be good.” He turns and walks away, straightening his tie and buttoning up his jacket.

That was close, she thinks. About ten seconds; or less.

She goes back into the kitchen, picks up the phone.

“Sorry for the delay,” she says to Cecil. “As it so happens, I just had a cancellation in my incredibly busy schedule, so I’m completely free.”

Sixty-plus-year-olds don’t have a sixteen-year-old’s on-call hardness, it’s an immutable fact of life; but for his age, John Wilkerson is more than satisfactory in the sack.

They’re in his five-hundred-dollar-a-night suite at the San Ysidro.

“You’re marvelous,” he tells her. “You’ve got a body like a twenty-five-year-old,” he adds.

“It was good for me, too,” she says, warmly. “Thanks for the compliment,” she adds. As if she doesn’t know that most twenty-five-year-old women would kill to have her body.

Now she can enjoy dinner without the specter of sex and conquest hanging over their heads. She’s going to need strong support from big shots in the environmental movement when Hopkins goes public with his plan; the locals will have ten thousand cows. Wilkerson will be an important ally.

They have dinner at the Wine Cask. She makes him pay for their roll in the hay by ordering an ’85 Romanée-Conti La Tache, which runs $450 a bottle.

“I spoke to Dick Hartstein earlier this afternoon,” he tells her over dessert. “He’s the editor for the Environment section of
The New York Times
, very important man. They’re going to do a feature on this project. Everybody and his brother will want to, but they’re the ones you have to take into account. And the Friends Of The Sea magazine, of course, but our lead time is three to six months. The
Times
will be a matter of weeks. They’ll be sending one of their top photographers out, and they’ll require a picture of you as well.”

“I’m not doing this for publicity,” she says abruptly. “The foundation operates behind the lines. The less that people know about us, the better.”

“I understand completely,” he tells her. “But it can’t be avoided,” he states. “This is a very big deal.”

“If you say so. I defer to your judgment. But as low-key as possible, please.”

“I’ll let them know. I’ll come along, of course, to insure that everything is done in the best of taste. Nothing sensational—nothing except you,” he can’t refrain from stating.

“You’re sweet.” She smiles at him, a dazzler, a smile that could light up a ballpark.

She needed to be with him tonight, to set things up. He made it easy by coming at her up on the ranch, but she would have found a way. “We could still come off looking bad,” she says, her smile turning into a frown.

“How in the world could anybody knock what you’re doing?” he asks incredulously. “You’re establishing a world-class research and teaching facility.”

“What do you think the hard-core environmentalists will do when the big corporations start donating money to this? Because that’s where it’s going to come from, it always does. What are people going to say when RJ Reynolds or Chevron write big checks for this?”

He shrugs. “It’s the nature of the beast.”

“Not in these parts.”

She sips her dessert wine. “You should have seen what went on when we applied for the rezoning on this,” she continues. “This man from one of the local environmental watchdog groups was up there ranting and raving like this was the greatest rape of the land since they strip-mined West Virginia. We don’t even mention a specific project, but he was absolutely against us. And the worst part is, my mother-in-law sits on the board of his organization and is their biggest contributor.”

In anger she knocks back the rest of her drink, which she immediately regrets; you don’t drink a great Sauternes like it’s a bottle of Pellegrino.

“The environmental movement can lose sight of the big picture sometimes,” he agrees, “and I say that as a committed, vigilant environmentalist. You have to know what’s intrinsically wrong and what is benign. There are extremists in every facet of society,” he explains, “including ours.

“Listen, Miranda,” he continues. “No one in the world can doubt your environmental credentials. Not after today.”

“I wish.”

“This is a promise,” he tells her, “from me to you. If you ever have a problem with an environmental organization, any group, for any reason, I’ll defend you. I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you and tell whoever it might be where the hell to get off.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t bat her eyes at him but she does slip her foot from her shoe and give his ankle a quick toe job under the table.

“You have my solemn word,” he vows. God, what a woman. He’s becoming aroused again, just from the touch of one stockinged foot.

Three tables over, so close you could almost pass a bottle of wine back and forth but just far enough away so that you can’t hear the other table’s conversation, Kate is having dinner with Cecil. He’s dressed like a regular person this time, he left the cowboy stuff back at the ranch. More comforting is the fact that there’s no ring on his left hand.

She did the right thing. She told herself that as she watched Juan walking away from her apartment, when she was drying her hair and arranging it, when she was selecting a suitable dress to wear to dinner.

Juan had gotten her hot. It was glands, no question. At least she hopes that’s all it was. Maybe she’ll find out with Cecil here, later. Maybe he’ll light a fire under her. She’ll supply the matches, she’s primed.