IllicitImpulse (6 page)

“And the park bench?”

“That didn’t happen last week either,” she said.

But when? With Tal? Why had he started this?

Now she was sliding the tape recorder back toward him. “What
about you?”

“What about me?”

“The way you asked about whether the top was down, it kind
of sounded like maybe you’ve done that before.”

“In a convertible? No.” Did he even know anybody with a
convertible?

“Or any car.”

“Well, I have done
that
.”

“I’m not talking about one time in college.”

“Neither am I!”

Her brow rose again.

“I’m not!”

“Okay, so you’ve been there and done that. I just figured—”

“You just figured boring old Johnny’s never done anything.”

“No, it’s not like that. I mean, maybe that’s just what you
want. Maybe you’re just not into that sort of thing. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong
or boring or anything.”

He’d said the same kind of thing hundreds of times, hadn’t
he? So why did this bother him so much?

Because she said she and Tal were talking about you.
Probably about how you’d never done anything or been anywhere.

“Besides,” she was saying, “I’m sure you’ve done plenty.”

“Okay then,” he said. He looked down at his legal pad,
trying to find his place. Where had he gotten so sidetracked? “I mean, I’ve—you
know, tied people up.”

“People?”

“Women.” He sat up and dropped the pencil on the legal pad.
“Girlfriends.”

“With what? Scarves?”

“Yes.” Twice. At their request. She didn’t need to know all
that.

“Phone sex?”

He folded his arms. “Yes.”

“Done it outdoors?”

He had. While camping. Just out of college. With the tent
zipped tightly shut, it had been like having sex inside a pizza oven, and he’d
never do it again, but he’d done it. “Yes.”

“Well then! You have been around.”

“I have.” He took up the pencil again and then looked back
up at her. “So you can just tell Tal—”

“No. I don’t think so.” She folded her arms. “I’m done
carrying messages back and forth between you guys. I think you need to talk to
each other.”

“I don’t know about that…”

“I do. It’d be good for both of you, and even better for
me.” She leaned back in the chair. “I’m tired of explaining each of you to the
other one.”

Did he really want Tal to become any more real for him than
he was right now? As it was, he had enough trouble with Tal as a faceless,
shadowy figure who was screwing his best friend.

Instead of, say, you screwing your best friend
.

“I don’t know, Grace. I’m already having to try to stay
impartial, and if I actually met Tal—”

I might wring his neck.

“If you actually met him, you might have an easier time
being impartial. You know, you might even like each other. Wouldn’t it be
easier to be impartial if you don’t hate him?”

That made sense. Dammit.

She looked up at the ceiling. “Oh come on. It’s not like I’m
suggesting a threesome or something.”

John focused on the space between two words in his tangle of
notes. A threesome. If he so much as glanced up, she’d know she’d gotten his
attention and then she’d never let go of it.

She giggled. “I should have though. I bet you’d be more
likely to agree to sitting down if I had.”

He started to draw a line along the margin, still not
looking up.

“You’d get to observe all this in person.”

She was trying to convince him. Did she think he was really
considering it?

Was he considering it?

“Come on,” she said. “I dare you. You’d satisfy all your
curiosity. No holds barred and no questions asked.”

Satisfy all your curiosity. No holds barred.

No questions asked.

It
was
a good opportunity to see how this worked.
There was so much to gain, and now, with Impulse, there was nothing to lose. It
was just observation. It didn’t have to come to any more than that.

John shook his head. It didn’t have to come to any more than
that. But it probably would, one way or the other.

“I’m not having a threesome with you and Tal.” John laughed.
“And I can’t believe I just said that out loud.” He had to be in a dream, the
very realistic kind that came with a clear moral.

Grace shrugged. “Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

John turned off the recorder and wondered whether he should
erase their conversation when he reviewed the tape.

* * * * *

Drained after their long conversation, John didn’t have much
to say as he and Grace made their way out of the interview room. Their
companionable silence only made the building’s quiet more noticeable. A vacuum
cleaner whined in the distance as they walked up to the reception area, where
the cleaning crew had left the lights on.

At the front doors, he took her coat and held it so she
could slide her arms into the sleeves, all the while so close that he could
catch the scent of her glossy hair. “Can’t walk you to the car this time,” he
said. “I’ve got some stuff to handle downstairs first.”

Grace turned to face him, replacing her purse on her
shoulder. “Same time next week?”

He nodded. “Sounds good.”

She stepped toward him, as if she were about to give him a
hug, but he backed just out of reach and offered her his hand instead. Before
she could protest, he lifted his chin slightly and glanced away from her,
toward the ceiling, where the security camera watched them, and then back down
at her.

Grace’s conspiratorial smile accompanied a firm handshake.
“Okay then. Thanks for everything.”

“See you next week.”

John unlocked the door with a twist of the thumb switch and
held it open for her, taking another breath of her fragrance as she went by
into the chilly air. He closed and locked the door behind her but didn’t move
away, watching the shape of her moving down the stairs and into the parking
lot.

“Man. Girls like that make me want to play a more hands-on
role with all this testing. Know what I mean?”

The sound of his boss’s voice just behind him made spines of
ice race over his skin. Neil had a talent for sidling up behind him, making him
wonder how long he’d been hanging out and watching before revealing his
presence. With no way to tell how much he’d seen, John was forced to play it
casual and hope that all Neil had wanted was to make politically incorrect
observations about the evening’s last interview. He looked over his shoulder
and offered Neil a neutral glance. His boss generally needed little
encouragement to start a conversation.

“Oh come on.” Neil lowered his voice, as if to protect them
both from another unseen eavesdropper. “Like you’ve never thought about that.”

John shook his head and looked back out into the parking
lot. Was his boss baiting him or did he suspect something? “That kind of
shit’ll get you fired.”

Neil’s laughter was sharp and cynical. “Someone’s already
doing it.”

Shit.
“No way.”

“Seriously.” Neil rubbed the top of his head through
thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “Somebody’s slipping pills out to people.”

Sweat slowly started to bead on the back of John’s neck. “People
like who?”

“Who knows?” Neil sighed. “Friends, ex-test subjects, the
media.”

John straightened. “The media?”

“I don’t know.” Neil shrugged. “I mean, it doesn’t really
matter who else has the stuff. If it gets out at all, that’s a problem.” He
blew out a breath that fogged the front door. “But shit. The media.”

John stared hard at him. The media getting hold of these
pills was a much bigger problem than he had caused. First, there would be weeks
of sensationalist coverage, shock journalism with all the sexual trimmings, and
then the resulting media investigation would reveal what he was doing behind
the scenes. He’d go down in the sort of spectacular crash people talked about
for years.

“Maybe it’s nothing,” said John. “You know how rumors get
around.” He scoffed. “This place is like a high school.”

Neil shook his head. “It’s not nothing. They’re going to
start an audit committee. You know, just to make sure we’re all being good.” He
shoved his hands into his pockets. “There’s no reason to suddenly start that
now unless someone’s already trying to game the system.” He slapped John’s
shoulder. “That’s nothing you have to worry about though. Your nose is always
clean.” Neil turned on his heel and headed back beyond the reception desk.
“Don’t stay too late,” he called over his shoulder. “Good way to get the wrong
kind of attention, and I’m not giving you a raise.”

John watched Neil go, laughing at his own joke until he
disappeared down the hallway. Then John returned to his own office. He’d
secured his other materials already—his notes, the supply of pills for his
subjects, everything—under lock and key, but he had a separate ritual for
Grace. Her tapes went into his briefcase. The legal pad he’d used that night
and a folder filled with other notes followed suit. He checked his office for
anything he might have carelessly left out in the open on his tidy,
squared-away desk.

John leaned on the file cabinet that stood just inside the
door of his office. He pushed his glasses up and pinched the bridge of his nose
between his thumb and index finger. The important thing was not to panic. Panic
would be noticeable. Panic also begat carelessness, and if the auditors didn’t
catch on to his discomfort, they’d certainly pick up on carelessness.

Listen to yourself. You don’t even know there are
auditors yet. You only know what Neil’s heard, and that’s not airtight
information at all.

He let his glasses drop back down onto his nose and took a
deep, centering breath before he turned out the lights in his office. He
wouldn’t let Neil or his wild rumors bother him.

They did bother him, though, and by the time he got home,
John was forced to admit that his efforts to shake off his nascent paranoia
were not working. He sat on the couch and stared at his BlackBerry for what
felt like a long time before calling Grace. Just as he started to wonder if it
was too late to call, she answered.

“Hi.” She sounded cheerful. Not too late then.

“Hey.” What was he really calling for? He didn’t even have a
suggestion, much less a plan. “Hey, Grace, it’s John.”

She laughed. “I know it’s you. You’re on the caller ID.”

“Right. Of course.”

“So what’s up?”

“Listen, I was thinking.” That was all he could say for
sure, wasn’t it? That he’d been thinking. “I wanted to— I was thinking of a
little change in plan.”

“About the threesome?”

Was she teasing? He couldn’t tell over the phone.

“No, not that.” He pressed his palms together and found them
slick. “I meant about moving our meetings.”

“Oh. Like moving them earlier?”

In the background, a man’s voice asked, “Is that your
friend?”

It wasn’t what he’d thought Tal would sound like. Not that
he’d imagined anything in particular.

Grace’s muffled voice broke into the muddle of his thoughts.
“I am on the phone.” Then, more clearly, she said, “Sorry. Did you want to move
them earlier?”

“Actually, I was thinking we could do it here. At my place.”

“Right.” She chuckled. “And you mean the interview, and not
the threesome.”

John laughed in spite of himself. “That’s right.”

“You sure? I still think it’s a good opportunity. You know,
scientifically.”

He could imagine her teasing smile. And then he imagined
Tal, right there, watching her as she teased her friend about a threesome he’d
never have.

Well, at least he wasn’t freaked out about the audit
anymore.

“No threesome. So do you want to meet at my place?”

“Sure. Same time and all?”

“Same time.”

“Cool. I’ll be there. Night.”

* * * * *

What were they doing?

Very much awake in bed, as he was sure Tal and Grace were,
John stared at the shadows on his ceiling. His thoughts had organized
themselves into a neat little circle, starting with the audit committee, moving
through the risk management analysis of his arrangement with Grace and finally
winding up with what she and Tal might be up to. The third leg of his mental
relay race was the longest, now that his mind had seized the image of the two
of them putting on their live sex show in front of Tal’s office window. The
idea of watching them excited him with its subversive novelty.

No holds barred. No questions asked.

John turned over onto his side. No, no, no. That was
definitely crossing a line.

So what were they doing now?

John flung off the covers and stomped into his kitchen for a
glass of ice. He sucked a slim cube into his mouth and crushed it between his
teeth. Much better. He started on another one as he sat on his couch.

Damn Neil. If it hadn’t been for him spreading rumors about
an audit, he’d probably be asleep by now. John chewed the ice cube until
nothing was left. Good thing Grace hadn’t given him her usual hug. Nosy jackass
would have had a field day with that.

He raised the glass to his lips and shook another ice cube
into his mouth. He slid it back and forth with his tongue, hoping the chill
would distract him from the holding pattern of his thoughts. Instead the
combination of the cold and the obstruction in his mouth pushed his mind back
toward Grace.

She’d thought the Impulse wasn’t working when she took Tal
into her mouth. It had taken its time, he supposed, especially after working so
quickly the first time. It definitely hadn’t been an hour from Bank to Tal’s
place, if John was right about where Tal lived. So what had she done
differently?

He swallowed what remained of the ice. Of course.

He took the rest of the ice to the bedroom and sat on the
bed. Eager to share his discovery with Grace, he reached blindly toward the
nightstand for his BlackBerry. The screen came to life when he thumbed the
center button. He pulled up the string of his text messages with Grace and
typed,
Figured out why pills were slow
.