CHAPTER THREE

Sharon woke up in the dark, momentarily disoriented. Then she felt the worn nap of the ancient carpet beneath her bare skin, and remembered where she was and why. With a soft sigh that sprung from the contentment of love well made, she rolled towards the heat of the other body occupying the bedroom floor. She groped the sleeping form with nimble and exploratory fingers, and her hand found his hip. It wasn't something you could or would say about most men, but Al had the sexiest hips. Bony and chiseled and handsome. His hips and the curve of his jaw: by far his most alluring physical features.

Not that there was anything wrong with the rest of his body! It was hard to believe that he was five years her senior. His soft, curling hair was still thick and, except for a few wisps at his ears, dark. His small-boned frame was wiry and athletic. He had boundless energy and a laugh as infectious as the bubonic plague. Only the slight paunchiness about his stomach and the strange shadow lurking behind his eyes gave any sign of a man past his prime.

Sharon drew herself nearer, spooning her body around his and tasting the salt skin behind his ear. He mumbled something unintelligible and curled more tightly into the fetal position.

Some men were sleepwalkers. Al was a sleeptalker. She'd found that out the very first date. He said the darndest things, too. Half the time he wasn't even speaking English. Now and then she could catch a few words of Mex: something about a boy, usually. He liked to sing in Italian. Tonight it didn't even seem like words. Just strange, rambling vowel sounds.

Sharon licked his neck, hoping to awaken him. They had made feral, passionate love on the floor with the lights on, then turned them off and occupied themselves with a quieter, almost furtive session. Three bouts in one night wouldn't be a record, but it certainly would be nice.

He didn't awake. He drew his limbs still tighter towards his body and began to shiver, deep convulsions wracking his body. He had a point. It was cold in here.

Sharon slipped away from him and got to her feet. She slid along the floor, wary of the metal rails that she knew were around here somewhere. She found her way to the door and switched on the hall light. In the other bedroom were the blankets from the bed. She picked up a couple of them, and Al's pillow, then returned to the room where her new husband was sleeping.

He was shivering still more violently, his bare back trembling so that its myriad scars rippled. Al had never actually said anything about the marks that marred his all-but-perfect body, but Sharon though she had it cased. She knew a lot about him—well, really, didn't most of the world? He had grown up in a New York orphanage, joined the Navy, excelled at Annapolis, served in Florida during the Cuban Missile crisis. Then he had flow an A-4 in Vietnam, which a lot of women might consider a turnoff. As far as Sharon was concerned he'd had the horror in equal measure to dishing it out. In '67 his plane had been shot down, and that was the last anyone had heard of him until Operation Homecoming in '73. Missing in Action for six years, a nameless nothing at the mercy of the Viet Cong. Sharon was almost certain that that was the reason he bore those scars. Over the last week she had had ample opportunity to examine and reflect upon Al's unclothed body, and gradually she had worked out words to explain the situation to herself. In a war that had seemed nothing but shades of gray, Al had found the one corner of true darkness. The scars weren't beautiful, in fact, they bordered on hideous, but it wasn't fair to hate them. If they were marks of divine justice, then his guilt was expunged by them. If they were signs of the Devil's disfavor, he was a sainted martyr. She couldn't even count them, and goodness knows she'd had enough time to give it a good try.

Al's shaking worsened. Sharon knelt beside him and eased his curl-covered head onto the pillow. Then she shook out the blankets and tucked them around him. With a soft whimpering sound, he grabbed the covers and drew them close to his body. Sleeping like this, his face open and vulnerable and his body dwarfed by the bedclothes, he looked younger than ever.

Sharon, however, was starting to feel her age—a state of mind she loathed with a passion. Her back was sore from sleeping on the floor. She returned to the other room, helped herself to the quilt and her own pillow, then went into the living room to curl up on the couch.

There was a snuffling sound in the darkness: the dog. Chester walked the length of the couch twice before padding off towards the bedroom. Sharon was just as glad. She wasn't much of a dog person, and even though Chester was terminally cute, he was still a dog. At least he was a more or less well-behaved dog.

Not quite ready to drift off, Sharon let her mind wander back over the evening. She hadn't expected Al to be especially thrilled about her ultimatum regarding his clothing, but some of that stuff had to go. It wasn't like this was a spacious dwelling for two people and a dog. A step up from her bachelor's apartment uptown in that respect, but still too small. The neighborhood was just awful, too. It wasn't that Sharon considered herself elitist, but just look around! Surely a man of Al's position should be living in a better area than this! There were plenty of apartments to let for six hundred a month, and yet Al wanted to stay here, in medieval squalor, surrounded by the dregs of society.

Well, if he wanted to stay here, he would have to pay the price. There just wasn't enough room in the trailer for her supplies, which would have to be moved out of their cupboard in the community center for the summer. So something had to go, and Al had more clothes than any man could wear in a lifetime, let alone a man who spent half his waking life in Naval khakis. His taste in clothing was decidedly bizarre. Sharon didn't mind the zoot suits, hokey though they were. She had no problem with the golf shirts that looked like they had been rescued from the wreckage of the 'fifties. The blazers and turtlenecks that heralded back to the early 'sixties were absolutely stunning. It took a special physique to handle those with class, and Al brought it off to a tee. But the wing-tipped collars and obscenely bright polyester of his not-so-distant disco days had to go.

Sharon had never believed in changing men. She hadn't even tried with her first husband. The long string of relationships since then—going on twenty-four years of liberty that had ended in the eyes of the law at City Hall last week—showed a pattern of selecting the characteristic of the moment, hooking up with a guy who satisfied that need, then moving on when her needs changed. It was a full life, and all that a modern woman could expect by way of contentment.

Al, on the other hand, was so close to her ideal of a perfect mate. He was handsome, charming, witty, forthright, great in bed, free with compliments and desired by other women. If she just tweaked him a tiny bit, here and there, she'd have herself the perfect husband.

Smiling drowsily at the thought, she drifted off to sleep.

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Al awoke to the insistent klaxon of his alarm clock to find himself lying on the floor amid the wreckage of the bed, a hot little mass curled up against his chest. He grinned, ruffling the fur on Chester's head. Then he scrambled to his feet and tried to find the alarm. The predawn grayness was filtering through the blind slats and Sharon, wherever she was, loved to sleep in. Barking his shin on the headboard, Al won through to the bedside table and deactivated the buzzer. A little more acrobatics got him to the light switch, and he surveyed the aftermath of the evening.

His uniform was lying crumpled on the floor, twisted around Sharon's clothing as if the garments, rather than their owners, had been the ones fooling around last night. Grinning at the memory, Al retrieved a fresh one from the closet with only a little difficulty, then fought his way to the bureau for underpants and other necessities.

After a good, hot shower, he was feeling fresh and ready to face the day. Not to mention very self-satisfied. A lot of guys his age, even the trim and healthy Navy types, would've been stiff and sore after spending the night on the floor. Instead he felt more rested than he had in a long time. As he tamed the accursed Calavicci curls, he reflected smugly that there was no great pain without some small gain. Hadn't been all lost time in Vietnam, now had it?

Sharon was asleep on the sofa, the crest of her shoulder just visible over the quilt she was wearing. Al spared her a long, lustful glance. She was a temptress straight from heaven. Just the sight of her lying there like that, with her tousled curls around her face and the white skin vanishing amid the folds of the coverlet, speaking of further milky expanses, was almost enough to make a man cry to Hell with Starbright and call in sick. Maybe he had the "Quinn Flu". Yeah, that was it.

Almost. Whistling softly for Chester, Al moved into the kitchen and opened a tin of dog food. He upended it into the plastic dish, and set it on the counter. Knowing what was happening, Chester came racing from the bedroom, sprung up onto a chair, and from there to the table, then with a running start made it to the counter, almost skidding off the edge. He lunged at his dish, pausing only to give Al's had a worshipful lick. Al grinned and stroked the dog's tiny back.

"Atta boy, killer," he said. "You take good care of the broad, okay?"

Chester seemed to make a snort of acknowledgement that Al chose to interpret as a promise to fulfill the prescribed duty. Satisfied that his bride was in good paws, he grabbed his keys, switched off the kitchen light, and left the trailer.

It was not until Al was on the road, a good twenty miles out of town, that he realized that his clothes were probably still lying in the yard, wherever Sharon had dumped them. He drummed the wheel in annoyance. Women. Always thought they knew best. Well, too bad. She wasn't going to railroad him so easily!

The desert sped past, and at last the barbed-wire-topped walls of the Starbright Project compound rose up in front of the Corvette. Al pulled up at the double gates and dug out his identification for the Marine on duty. It was an annoyance that had reared its head since his promotion from Deputy Administrator. Before that, they had just waved him past, recognizing his distinctive vehicle and equally recognizable countenance. Then suddenly, as soon as he was in charge of the whole Project, they started flagging him down. Al suspected Smythe the Merciless was behind this newly-tightened policy. The worst part was that as Project Administrator he couldn't condone any laxity in security procedures, and so wasn't even empowered to mention the change.

From the outside, Starbright looked like an air field that had had an unfortunate collision with a Ford factory and an elementary school. To one side were runways and helipads, complete with hangars and a machinists' shop. The building to the left, a labyrinth of steel and concrete, was the above-ground decoy. Ostensibly, they were developing faster engines, fitting them into planes and cars, performing endless tests to cut down wind resistance in the former and friction in the latter, while still keeping both safe and maneuverable. That building housed the necessary production works.

In the back of the compound was a low brick structure—the one that resembled a school. It was actually Level Zero, the top layer of the Project that descended a hundred yards and seven stories down into the bedrock. A good cover, it also housed the BOQ for the Marines and the Naval personnel, a daycare for Project employees lacking other arrangements, board rooms, and a restaurant of sorts. In truth, it was little more than a glorified cafeteria, but the food there was better than that served in the below-surface mess on Sub-Level Five.

Every morning, or at least as often as they could both work it into their crowded schedules, Al Calavicci and Tony Wendell had breakfast together in the surface eatery. Today was no exception. Tony, who lived on site and as far as Al knew never actually left, was already waiting for him in the corner booth. He greeted the Administrator with a smile.

"How's the ball and chain?" he asked.

Al smirked. Tony had been married twice, and was always ready to swap some story about an ex. His hamartia was philandering, and like the Administrator he wasn't adverse to a little female company. Al's recent acquisition had changed the dynamic of their conversations a little, but not enough to jeopardize the almost-friendship they had built up. Al wasn't good at making friends: he had learned the hard way that he always picked the wrong people, people who were going to die or take off or, even worse, betray you. For all he knew there wasn't any right kind of person. Friendship was a set-up for pain. It was much safer to build up a network of amicable acquaintances, people with whom you could have a roaring good time or a pleasant meal, even if you couldn't count on them when the chips were down. When trouble came knocking you would have no one to depend on but yourself, anyway, so why set yourself up to have the sting of rejection to cope with on top of your other problems?

"Tony," he said; "have you ever spent the night with a tigress in a pink baby-doll?"

Tony chuckled. "That good, huh?" he asked.

"That good," Al confirmed.

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They squared off over the heap of colorful fabrics like generals squaring off across a broad field of battle. Brown eyes and green met inexorably, clearly communicating that neither party was willing to yield. Oblivious to the tension crackling far above him, Chester patrolled the perimeter of the mass of clothing, sniffing at it curiously. One little paw poked at an especially garish pink shirt.

"They're staying," Al said.

Absolutely not!" Sharon argued. "You own too many clothes, and some of them have to go!"

"We've been married for ten days, and you're taking over my life already?" Al demanded.

"Get used to it!" Sharon said. "This is my trailer as much as it is yours, and I say that we have got to clear it out a little! How on earth have you accumulated so much junk in nine months, anyway?"

"That's none of your damned business!" Al snapped. "And what I keep isn't your business, either!"

"If it's taking up space I require for other purposes, it is my business!" Sharon said. "You aren't going to need this garbage ever again, so I'm giving you one afternoon to sort through it. You can pick one outfit to keep, if you must, but the rest of it is going to the Salvation Army—IF they'll even take it!"

"This is classic stuff!" Al protested.

Sharon let out a sharp, barking laugh that startled Chester so much that he scampered behind Al's armchair. "Classic? Classic example of why mankind never should have left the trees, maybe!" she said. Marching over to the television, she picked up the keys to her van. "Now I'm going to clear out my apartment," she said. "And when I get back here I expect that garbage packed up in those bags and ready to get out of here!"

There was a silence, during which Al scrutinized her with a deep, penetrating gaze.

"What now?" Sharon demanded.

He smirked. "Anybody ever tell you you're gorgeous when you're worked up?" Al asked.

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"I'm telling you, Tony, the potential for fun when two consenting adults get down on top of a heap of rainbow polyesters…" Al said at breakfast the following morning.

Tony looked up from his scrambled eggs. "You're kidding, right?" he asked.

Al shook his head emphatically. "Could I dream up something like that?" he demanded.

"Yes," Tony said.

"Well, I didn't!" Al protested. "Lemme tell you, that woman is an artist all right, and never mind what she does with her paints…"

"When do we get to see some of Mrs. Calavicci's handiwork?" inquired the architect of deception, quaffing back some orange juice.

Al chuckled. "I don't know if either of us is ready to branch off into performance art," he said.

Tony rolled his eyes. "I mean the paintings," he said. "I don't think I'm ready to see what you get up to in your free time. And I'm not what you'd call inexperienced."

"Oh, paintings, right."

"I mean, your wife's an artist, right? Time to liven up that office of yours. You can't keep it all model planes and fruit salad. Needs a personal touch."

"Hey, it's my personal fruit salad," Al quipped, referring to the display case full of medals that filled one of the admittedly empty walls of his workstation. "I put a lot of time, effort and trouble into those citations."

"I'll just bet you have," Tony teased. "Say, you seen the new brunette in Upholstery yet?"

Al scratched his brow. It was much harder to keep track of the surface staff. Half of them actually thought that they were employed in some vital capacity, and went about their decoy jobs blissfully unaware of the subterranean caverns below them. This meant that Al represented a distant and vague presence to them, very different from the constant supervision that the below-surface staff received. This girl, however, was one to stick in the mind.

"Oh, I think I know the one that you mean," Al said. "Has a pair of pincushions that could…"

"Make Lee Iacocca forget his worries?" Tony supplied.

Al grinned enormously. "Exactly," he said.

There was a pleasant silence as both men spared a moment of fantasy for the woman's curves. Then Tony sat up a little.

"So did you settle it?" he asked. "The fight over the clothes."

"Oh, yeah," Al said. "We compromised. The master bedroom's set up as a studio for Sharon, we've got the bed in the other room, and the Salvation Army has moved into the seventies."

"What did you get out of it?"

"Kept three outfits instead of one, and I still get to use both closets," Al said.

Tony whistled. "Sounds to me like she won," he commented.

"Naw," Al said with a wicked grin. "I get to pick the… entertainment for the rest of the week!"

As both men indulged in a little lecherous laughter, the guy in the next booth got to his feet and strode off. Watching him go, Al tried to place the face. It was the new man from Human Resources. Arrived a fortnight ago, heavily recommended by one of Al's old acquaintances from Briarpatch, now a Congressman for Colorado. It took a little longer for the name to come to him. Penner? Pendragon?

Penvenen. That was it: Penvenen.