CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Sharon entered the apartment and began to strip off her sensible and mind-numbingly boring suit. The jacket landed in the foyer, and she stepped out of the shoes on her way to the kitchen. She poured herself a sherry as she unbuttoned the blouse, and the cream-colored mass of ruffles landed on the floor next to the stove. Off came the brassiere, which settled next to the coffee maker. She wrestled with the pencil skirt as she moved into her living room studio. It was oddly empty without Chester waiting to greet her. She set the sherry on top of the television and peeled off her pantyhose, which she tossed into a corner with an assortment of garments that had accumulated over the week. The panties were the last to go, almost but not quite making it into the bathroom.

She started to run a hot tub, dosing it liberally with bubbles and setting out her razor and other necessities along the side. She lowered the lid of the toilet and sat on top of it, paddling the toes of her left foot in the water. The bathroom was tiny and almost as cramped as the one in the trailer had been, so this maneuver didn't take too much wrangling to execute. She set her drink on the side of the tub and slipped beneath the surface with a pleasured sigh.

One thing she sure didn't miss about her most recent marriage was having to make do with a shower. No matter how you sliced it—or who you shared it with—a shower just wasn't as enjoyable as a long, steamy soak. She lathered up one leg and set about the work of shaving.

Life was good. She was enjoying her work immensely, and the creative juices were flowing. She had turned out four paintings in the last three weeks, and had actually sold two of them! She was pulling in money hand over fist: much faster than she could ever spend it. The van had spent most of last week in the shop getting the shocks repaired, but the nice thing about owning a Volkswagen was that the repairs came cheap. Still, Old Faithful was on its last legs, and in another couple years it would be time to consider a new vehicle. Maybe she could indulge in that dream of the customized Mercedes…

Not yet, she decided. Didn't do to splurge before you gave the dust time to settle. The divorce was scarcely over, after all. This early feeling of affluence would face. It had post-Heinrich. A year after the break-up, she had suddenly found herself having a hard time making ends meet. Daddy had bailed her out.

Daddy… that was the one sore spot. He was getting worse. His agitation over his wife's absence was escalating, and he was loosing more and more of his grasp on reality. He didn't seem to remember Debra or even Clara, and though he often talked about Luke, who had taken to visiting him on Saturdays instead of Sundays, it was always in the terms of a young friend, not a grandson. Once or twice he had mistaken Sharon for her mother, which had hurt in more ways than one.

He was always asking about Al, too, although in that case also he seemed to be confusing his former son-in-law and a pilot he had known during the war. Whoever Captain Calavicci equated too in the old man's mind, however, that person was sorely missed. Pat would reminisce about the days when he used to come and read plays and talk about books. When he was in one of his "moods", he would shout and rant and demand to know where Al had gone. Sharon couldn't explain that Al didn't want to come anymore, even though she understood it perfectly. If she had had any choice, she would never have come either. The visits were too difficult to be borne with anything but grim determination.

Of course, she reflected, it was possible, just possible, that Al was avoiding the Sunday afternoon visits because she had resumed them. That thought almost made Sharon laugh aloud. Of course he wanted to see her! He had proved that during their last encounter in court. It was just odd that he hadn't called since.

He was probably waiting for her to make the next move, she thought. After all, the game was more fun if you took turns making the advances. She couldn't say why she found this courtroom romance so titillating. Maybe because there was something almost taboo about it.

Nancy was working on the appeal. She seemed to take it almost as seriously as Al was: talking about the dog's emotional trauma and pressing Sharon for information about Al's lodgings at his secret project. Sharon wished she wouldn't bother. All they needed was a slapped-together custody appeal that would drag Al back into court so that they could have a little fun. Sharon had tried to explain this to Nancy, but the lawyer had just looked at her like she was crazy.

"If the judge thinks we're wasting his time, he could just award Chester to Al permanently, and you'd have no recourse!" she had exclaimed. Sharon could see the logic there. If they couldn't appeal, then she wouldn't be able to get Al back into court, and their game would be over. She had only just succeeded in getting what she wanted, and she wasn't ready to give it up yet.

Still, she wished Nancy would hurry up. She was finding the singles bar scene to be less than satisfactory, and her lust for her ex had been rekindled. She just wasn't ready to say goodbye.

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Of all the deadly sins, lust was the one most likely to ruin a man in this life as well as the hereafter, Dan Penvenen reflected, sitting down in a corner of the mess hall on Sub-Level Five. At the counter from which he had just come with his black tea and dry whole-wheat toast stood Calavicci, flirting shamelessly with the girl behind the counter. Penvenen wondered if she, too, was one of his conquests. He was getting altogether too familiar with the staff, and the worst part was that there was nothing that could be done about it.

Had Starbright been an entry-level project, there might have been recourse to higher authorities. These women, however, were not naïve young interns eager to make a name for themselves at whatever cost. They were highly educated and skilled professionals: respected scientists, expert technicians, and graduate-school-trained archivists. Even the blonde serving up artery-clogging slops for the uniformed administrator was a college graduate. If memory served (and Dan was well aware it always did), she had a degree in history and another in drama. She was certainly putting on a good act right now. Surely there was nothing about Calavicci that made him attractive enough to warrant such extravagant attention.

Personally, Dan found him loathsome. A little toad of a man with a bad habit of wandering the corridors drunk at all hours of the night. The closer he watched the lecherous captain, the less he liked him. From flaunting the rules regarding pets to throwing all vestiges of military deportment to the wind, Calavicci was anything but a model administrator.

The problem was that ninety-six percent of the staff loved him. There were a few, no-nonsense types like Doctor Eleese and dignified servicemen like Colonel Smythe, who would have been happy with a more professional leader, but most of the people employed at Starbright had been sucked in by Calavicci's buoyant charisma. He was very good for morale. As long as he continued to produce results, the Committee wouldn't even consider removing him.

Dan watched as Calavicci slid into a booth where three of the girls from the statistics labs were breaking their fast. It wasn't long before three soprano giggles and Calavicci's deep, throaty laugh were dominating the white noise of the room. Dan frowned and focussed on his tea.

Promiscuity was a weakness. Calavicci had allowed Jean Talarski, the wanton assistant manager of Human Resources, to lead him around by the nose for the better part of a month. He had taken up every one of her harebrained suggestions and implemented them with speed and efficiency that Dan would have envied under different circumstances. At it was, the idea that a man could be turned into a puppet by a woman who did no more than crook her finger and wiggle her hip nauseated him.

It was evidence, however, of just how easy it would be to infiltrate Calavicci's inner circle. Dan was fairly certain that Ms. Talarski had learned some illuminating things about the captain during her weeks as his mistress. Given her propensity for gossip, it wouldn't be hard to debrief her.

And perhaps Calavicci's next fling would be with a woman of Dan's choosing.

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He couldn't believe it. He just couldn't believe it. The nerve of that woman.

With clumsy hands, Al poured himself a scotch, staring at the summons that had just arrived. He wanted to call Prendergast right now, but it was ten at night. Damn the mail room and its twelve-hour delay.

She couldn't have him! She couldn't take him! Why was she doing this?

"Chester!" Al called thickly. He was going to get well and truly drunk tonight. Tomorrow he would have to try to figure out a way to keep his little guy, but tonight… tonight…

The terrier came trotting into the kitchen, panting eagerly and wagging his tail. Al fell to his knees, bottle in one hand and glass in the other. Both landed on the floor as he reached out for the dog, gathering Chester to him and lifting him so that their noses were level.

"Hey, buddy…" Al mumbled. "She's tryin' to get you back. We're not gonna let her do it, are we? She can't. She just can't."

In his heart, though, he knew she could. His experiences with divorce had taught him one thing, and that was that women had all the power in family court. Every damned one of them, even sweet little Ruthie who had proclaimed she didn't want anything, had come out the better for the split. If Sharon wanted the dog bad enough, there was nothing Calavicci could do to stop her. It was a lost cause. Al knew he couldn't win.

Since when had that ever stopped him? He'd never won a fight in his life, unless you counted the golden gloves regional championship bout back in the days when the woolly mammoth roamed the plains. He'd never won any struggle really worth winning. All he'd ever managed to do was stay alive, but still he had kept fighting. And he would fight now. If it killed him he would fight, but he knew in the end he'd lose. That was why he needed help.

With his left hand he hugged Chester against his breastbone.

With his right, he raised the bottle to his lips.