Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

  She ran her hand up his back and let her fingers wander. “It’s nice to see this side of you.”

  “Which?” he seemed suddenly embarrassed.

  “We’re so different.”

  “You and I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “I like it. It’s not bad.”

  He bent down and kissed her. She welcomed him and drew him against her. He pulled her tight, lowered his arms, and held her pressed to him.

  “Do you suppose…” she managed between kisses.

  “Ummm…?”

  “…that we could…”

  “Yes?” He ran his hands down and across her buttocks. She rocked against him, squeezing with her arms.

  “…find a place to lie down?” She leaned away and stared him in the eye.

  Slowly a grin stole across his face. “No,” he said, grasping her tightly, his hands wandering up her back. In the same motion he propelled her into a dance step. His left hand sought her right, and they began to move around the spacious room. He hummed a vague out-of-tune melody in her ear that had no rhythm yet paced her right with him. She closed her eyes and left with him. When she opened them the walls were spinning, light flicking past the windows and the dull green glare of the fish tank. His hands roamed over her, and she felt herself come undone. She wanted his touch.

  She drew away, not interrupting their step, and let her fingers worm between his buttons, suddenly drawing the shirt, tie, and jacket off him in a single urge.

  He picked her right off her feet and continued to twirl. She spun with him, giggling without intention. She floated in his arms, the sensation wonderfully out of control. “Oh, yes,” she said, pressing her breasts tightly against him.

  Then she jerked away, him refusing to let her go entirely, and pulled her dress off her shoulders and down, exposing herself to his skin, pulling him in again. A button ran noisily across the floor. “Oh, God,” she said, trying to excuse herself.

  He had slowed their arc, his lips walking down her neck in delightful pecks and picks, his arms lowering, arching her back until she moved as she had earlier, hair hanging toward the dark hardwood floor. He took her in his lips and she hummed his song. She lost all track. All she wanted was him inside her.

  He lowered her slowly.

  “Not the floor,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he said. And she relaxed.

  “I want you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now. I want you now,” she declared, fighting his belt.

  “It’s okay,” he said, laying her back and undressing her. “We have all the time in the world.”

  Her face was pained with intention. “Please?” She reached out for him as he undressed her. When he had shed his clothes, she pulled him to her. “Please,” she repeated.

  ***

  He had some vodka, so he poured them Kamikazes. He remained naked. She had pulled his button-down shirt around her shoulders. They had settled on the edge of the bed. He thrust a second round out to her and she accepted. “That was wonderful,” she admitted.

  “Extraordinary,” he agreed. “Do you suppose we’re just drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  He playfully knocked the empty glass from her hand. It bounced on the wooden floor. He threw his own against the far wall and it shattered.

  “Why—”

  “A tradition,” he assured her.

  “You see. I told you we’re different.”

  “I found that out.” He kissed her willing lips until she allowed her elbows to unlock and found herself pressed into the bedding. Again.

  ***

  An hour later, she lay awake while he slept soundly at her side. He was not snoring, though his breathing was heavy. She watched as the lights and shadows of passing cars raced across the ceiling. As she rocked her head, she saw the aquarium—the marine aquarium—and the dimly lit table with the ship-in-a-bottle project spread across it. Out there somewhere was Yankee Green, a tiny white ball surrounded by amber parking-lot lights.

  Who was he? Who was he really? Was it his complexity that attracted her, or his simplicity? He seemed to be juggling both, like the two jugglers at the Atrium every morning. It was almost as if he wasn’t sure, and yet he showed none of the insecurities that other men showed. He wasn’t afraid to reveal himself to her. Not quite true, she checked herself. He had been afraid, and yet he had gone ahead and done it. He wasn’t scared of her. He wasn’t even infatuated with her. He was intrigued by her, excited by her. Stimulated. He had the raw uncertainty of a cornered animal. His lovemaking had been eager and yet cautious, a strange combination of passion and concern, as if every touch had to please, every nuance had to have value and meaning.

  He was patient and caring. Understanding. He held himself back and waited. He had known somehow what she had been feeling, but with none of the fluidity of a seasoned lover. He spent his nights working on his ship-in-the-bottle, just like he said, or else he was very good actor. And he simply wasn’t the type to act.

  That’s it, she thought. He isn’t acting. He wasn’t after any role. The hat had fooled her. She had immediately wondered if he had some mid-forties image of himself: the Humphrey Bogart of the 1980s. But it was nothing like that. She guessed that the hat was really an effort to hide the tiny clearing up on top. Toby Jacobs was no longer twenty-two.

  She supposed the rough edges had been rasped smooth a few years before, when the anxious Toby Jacobs had been fighting his way up. You’re still fighting, she thought. But like me, you’re not certain where that leads. She realized they were more similar than she had earlier thought.

  He stirred and rolled away from her. She let him go, then pulled down under the sheet and snuggled in close against him.

  The warmth of his body felt wonderful.

  20

  The jet touched down in Cleveland at twenty minutes past midnight. Glascock walked down the jetway nervously, wondering what his wife was thinking. Perhaps he should call her, even though Russo had told him to disappear.

  He feared Bob Russo. He regretted having become involved. Ten thousand dollars suddenly seemed very insignificant.

  The airport was nearly deserted. He followed the stream of passengers toward baggage claim. He had no baggage, but he hoped to catch a taxi from the lower level.

  He didn’t see the two men following him.

  Most of the passengers headed toward the carousel, as Glascock continued toward the automatic doors.

  The two men closed the distance and caught up to within a step of him.

  Glascock waited for the doors to hiss open and stepped outside. He felt the bump from behind and thought nothing of it until the needle stung him. “What the…?” He spun around.

  Two men were walking away from him.

  “Hey, you,” he called out, choking on the second word. He felt dizzy. His heart raced out of control. The injected adrenaline went to work quickly.

  He staggered toward a cab, a lumbering bear on its hind legs. A young woman stepped out of his way, a distasteful look on her face.

  “Help,” he gasped.

  And then his heart stopped beating.

  Friday

  August 21

  1

  Her note read, Don’t go anywhere, and don’t eat. I’ll be right back. P.S. I stole your car.

  “How could I go anywhere?” he asked the note.

  He had the coffee going a few minutes later, and then showered. He stood in the swirling steam feeling dreamy. They had made love twice. All he could think about, all he could feel, was the two of them entwined together. You’re not sixteen, stupid, he told himself, but the image wouldn’t go away. For the first time in years he found himself not caring if he was late for work. He didn’t care about Yankee Green. It felt wonderful.

  Relaxed beneath the hot water, the usual tension and tightness in his lower neck nonexistent, he inhaled steam deep into his lungs and felt refreshed
. Would she want to make love again this morning? God, he wanted her right now. Did she have regrets?

  He fed his fish, checked the pH, and added some sodium carbonate. He didn’t talk to them this morning; his mind was elsewhere. Each noise he heard out the open window he imagined as her arrival. He would hurry to the sill and try to see down to the sidewalk, looking for the Volvo.

  He stood next to the spot they had made love and grinned. The first time had been so primitive, clawing at each other, an almost desperate joining. The second had been so delicate and careful, long and warm, with her wrapped around him like wisteria clinging to a sapling. They had been aware of each other’s needs and mutually cautious, holding back, prolonging it, cautiously building something together until neither could resist finishing it. Flooded. Bonded. Clutching at one another in a way only lovers clutch.

  He drummed his fingers on the edge of the cluttered table and allowed himself to slide into the chair. The pieces of the Angel lay scattered about.

  He could picture his great-grandfather on her deck, shouting commands, wind at his face. He could feel the ship being rocked by swells, tossed by huge waves. He wondered what it had been like on the morning of May 14, 1891, the date the family Bible listed as the day of the man’s disappearance and death. The stories of the Angel’s demise, legends to Jacobs, ranged from a school of whales capsizing the vessel to a mighty gale that snapped her masts and tangled her rigging. Or had his great-grandfather been blown into different seas? Looking at the rigging on the table, he could picture the wrecked Angel out at sea, her parts bobbing in the water, her crew struggling to hold on.

  It seemed to him that the Angel was why his family, for generations, had remained fishermen. His great-grandfather had become a martyr; the family carried on his martyrdom. But here it stopped. Here, in this chair, the last and only male of this generation sat making a toy image of the craft that had determined his family’s fate for the last hundred years. Jacobs no longer felt the guilt he once had. He felt removed from his past. And yet his past still pulled at him. The story of the Angel, romanticized over the decades, gave him a sense of pride, of family strength. It was hard to fully disconnect from the Angel. Perhaps that was why he felt drawn to this table every time he passed by. Perhaps, no matter how hard he tried, a part of him would always remain at sea with his father. Perhaps it was in his blood.

  He used the tweezers to secure the thread through another miniature mast and tie off the rigging, the image of his great-grandfather struggling for life still present in his mind.

  The smell of the coffee returned him to the kitchen. The coffee had cooled enough to drink. He poured himself a cup and changed into his suit, leaving the tie for later.

  She had obviously left early—early enough to go home, change clothes, and shop on the way back. She had fresh croissants and half a dozen gladiolas, which she quickly put in water, using a mayonnaise jar as a vase. She wore a brightly colored flowered skirt, white blouse, and pink running shoes.

  “You look beautiful,” he told her warmly.

  “Thank you.” She beamed. “I feel beautiful this morning. I feel wonderful.”

  “I missed you when I woke up.”

  “I didn’t sleep much.” She sauntered up to him and hugged him, nestling her head against his chest. “I was worried…”—she paused—“that by now you might have second thoughts.”

  “Great minds think alike,” he whispered.

  “None. None for me. No regrets, no expectations.”

  He squeezed her into him. “We part company there. I have great expectations.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” She looked up at him, refusing to release him. “I lied. So do I.”

  They laughed through a continental breakfast of his cowboy coffee and her croissants. So different, they both were thinking. She made him laugh with a contagious youthfulness that was as refreshing as the cool morning breeze that streamed through the open window.

  ***

  It was just after eight by the time he drove them to the Green and began the short tour she had requested. “We are in C, which is easy to remember because it’s in the center of the complex. Like all the other pavilions, C has four ground-floor—or Level One—doorways: north, south, east, and west. In this case, C also has a set of doors over there that will lead into Fun World, and those beyond the Atrium that lead to the Sports Pavilion and on to the convention center and hotel. C was finished three years ago, at the same time that D, E, and F—that whole wing—was added.” She walked by his side, a contented smile curling the edges of her lips.

  It would be a while until he felt secure with her. He kept worrying that she might turn and walk away. “Each doorway actually has eight doors, but we number them in groups anyway. Exits lead outside; junctions lead to other pavilions, though the doorways are numbered consecutively. We numbered them clockwise: one through fourteen on Level One concourses, fifteen through twenty-eight on the upper levels. You get the picture.

  “Like we talked about before, if I want an exit closed I can tell Dispatch; a single computer command will mag-lock all the doors to Exit Three, say, or Junction Four. We have twenty-eight exits, for a total of two hundred twenty-eight doors.” She whistled. “Dispatch also has control over all the service entrances to the mall and all the restricted areas—what we call our service hallways—within the various pavilions.”

  “That must be one heck of a computer.”

  “It is. Specially designed for security use. Best they had when it was installed. I don’t know how I got off on this. This has to be the most boring tour in the world.”

  “I asked, remember. The free-lance article. Money. Survival. If I don’t know the details, I can’t paint an accurate picture. I find this fascinating. You come here and shop and you never consider the other aspects of keeping a small city running.”

  He led her into Pavilion B. “Okay, you asked for it. This was the second pavilion added. Work on the stadium started at the same time, though the stadium took much longer to finish, nearly a year longer. Originally B had no entertainment in it. The concept of entertainment didn’t come until High Star had owned the Green for a couple of years. In fact, it was about the time I joined that someone came up with the idea, after a visit to West Edmonton, as I understand. Anyway, the wild thing about Pavilion B was that, when it opened, foot traffic in Pavilion A fell off tremendously. It was like a ghost town in there. No one had expected that kind of reaction. That’s when the idea for rides came up. Following Edmonton’s lead, High Star experimented by adding several rides in A.

  “The idea worked. Foot traffic picked up again, and merchants’ complaints receded. From then on, it was like dominoes. When we opened C, D, E, and F, we added rides to B. In fact, we lost a major anchor about then, and we converted the empty space into a mini-amusement park, with more than fifteen rides. It’s still the major hangout for teens. You want to see something crazy”—he pointed—“go in there some Friday or Saturday night. It’ll stun you. The place is totally crazy for about five hours.”

  “How about the space shuttle? How did that come about?”

  “The shuttle came as an afterthought. After the loss of Challenger, we were offered an unusual opportunity by a company up on Route One Twenty-eight that did simulation for NASA. With the shuttle program on hold, they needed some quick capital. One of their geniuses happened to shop at the Green, and he came up with the wacky idea of selling us one of their simulation packages as a kind of ride. The package is super-expensive, all computer-driven, computer-animated, that sort of thing. It was way out of our price range. I mean way out. And then Haverill pulled off one of his typical miracles—and the rest of this has to be off the record, I’m afraid. He somehow talked the federal and state governments into giving us a tax concession on the purchase of the simulation, delaying income and property taxes on Pavilion B for three to five years—something like that—all because we were ‘supporting the space program in a time of need, and enhancing the p
ublic’s appreciation of the shuttle program.’

  “Well, whatever he did, it worked. We not only could afford it, but at the same time we made the manufacturer sign a contract promising we would be the only civilian corporation to be offered the simulation, essentially giving us a monopoly on it.”

  “Haverill sounds sharp.”

  “He’s sacrificed almost everything for his career. Keeping Yankee Green fiscally sound has taken more out of him than he expected, I think. He’s a completely different man from when I first came on. He’s something of a loner since his wife left him. Very driven. He’s a nice man who works too hard. I suppose he’ll sell the Green at some point and make a bundle. He deserves it.”

  “His wife?”

  “Since his wife left him, he’s tried to use his work to keep himself busy. But it’s a losing battle. It’s like trying to dig a hole in dry sand: it comes in on you as fast as you can throw it out.”

  She threw an arm around him briefly. “I’m glad to hear you say that. My first impression of you was workaholic. You seem to have twenty things going at one time. Sometimes those kind of people are hard to get to know.”

  “It’s not much longer for me, Susan.” He stopped and glanced around the spacious pavilion. “I depend on this place too much. It’s become too routine, no longer a challenge. I’m out of here soon. Last few weeks, I’ve really begun to feel it. It’s time for a change.”

  “Nothing wrong with change,” she suggested.

  “Nothing wrong,” he said, “except it scares the hell out of ya.”

  “I could use a cup of coffee.” She yawned. “A friend and I were out late last night.”

  Jacobs moved along with her, but his attention was elsewhere: thinking about starting out fresh.

  The metal lattice gate in front of Mykos Popolov’s Greek Deli remained locked in place.

  ***

  Pavilion A, empty except for a few Greyhounds, their numbers dwarfed by the structure’s overwhelming size and openness, reminded Mrs. Popolov of what seemed like a lifetime ago: she and Mykos at the train station, fleeing for their lives. The determined footsteps of the Greyhounds reverberated through the cavernous enclosure.