A/N: Thanks for the comments, folks. Most humbly: thanks, and thanks again. Took a short block of vacation this last week, so here's a bonus block o' stuff. The plot thickens, sickens, ignores its GPS, and veers toward Weirdville. Enjoy!
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He was sore but content, exhausted but relaxed. He was falling slowly without moving. Darkness all around, but no chill. He could feel himself breathing.
He could feel her touching him. Susan Gaumont. The girl from Gilliam's.
She whispered, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath on his ear: "Will you keep me safe?"
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There was a woman in his bedroom but not in his bed.
It was Therese, moving about the room, picking a rumpled t-shirt from the floor, a pair of gray boxer shorts, too, drawing the blinds against fading daylight. Severe-faced Therese, who said, when she saw that Fischer's eyes were not only open but at least semi-consciously watching her: "Browning sent me."
Browning once had plans regarding the woman who was Fischer's personal assistant. Said plans dropped flaming into a cold ocean of disappointment at an all-staff holiday party two years back, when Therese had shown up, laughing and chummy, with an attractive woman about her age, said age falling reasonably between forty-five and a decade beyond. "What a waste," Browning had muttered, taking his alpha-male terror of lesbians and retreating into a bottle of scotch. Fischer found out later that the woman was, in fact, Therese's sister. He hadn't bothered to tell Browning.
Presently, Fischer blinked away sleep and asked: "What time is it?"
"You're perfectly capable of telling time, Robert."
He rolled on to his side, checked the clock on his nightstand. The numbers stated, factual black against ethereal blue, that it was six-fifteen. He rolled back unbelieving, stared up at the ivory-white ceiling. Normally, he never overslept. It had to be the pain pills.
Therese was still on the move. She called, from the vastness of the closet: "You've forgotten, haven't you? Tonight?"
Fischer watched her emerge with a shirt and a suit, still on their hangers, watched her feather them out like a toreador unfurling a cape and lay them across the unrumpled acreage at the foot of his bed. She had once been a daring beauty, if not a great one. Compact build, blonde hair she still wore shoulder-length and tousled, classically Dresden-blue eyes. Erosion had had its way with her features but not her energy.
"You're the calendar, Therese, not me," he said. His day was coming back to him. Late last night, he'd finally taken Browning's advice and come home and collapsed. Early this morning, he'd called in excuses for his lack of physical presence in the office and had worked from home. "Work" obviously had transmuted to "sleep."
"Up," Therese replied, and yanked the bedclothes off him.
"Oh, for God's sake—"
He might have been stark naked. No: he was stark naked.
Therese didn't even raise an eyebrow. "Late-afternoon indulgences, Robert? Not your usual style."
She wasn't looking at him, but not out of modesty. She'd seen him nude before. Fischer followed her line of sight. There was a body-shaped indentation in the sheet beside him.
"There was no one here," he said, half to himself.
Therese tsked, shooed him onto his feet and toward the shower. "You might want to have a word with your housekeeping service, then."
At the door of the master bathroom, Fischer turned to see her pick a long dark hair off the pillow next to his.
"What is it I'm forgetting, Therese?" he asked, hollowly.
Now she was raiding his dresser for fresh shorts and socks. "The gala opening of the new wing at the Berryman Museum of Modern Art. The wing for which Fischer-Morrow, Unlimited, has so generously paid." She added, as she augmented her pillaging with a clean white undershirt: "You're giving the opening address, but you've forgotten that, too. Right?"
So much for his father wanting him to stay hidden. "Oh, Christ."
"A prayer. Should go over well with the godless heathens and unwashed masses."
Fischer went numbly off to shower. As he did, Therese moved her campaign to the kitchen. While Fischer washed, dried, dressed, he could hear her poking about in the refrigerator and the cupboards, a slither of metal, a brisk whisking. She had a glass of grapefruit juice and an egg-white omelet with toast plated for him on the breakfast bar before he'd finished with his cufflinks.
"I won't have you drinking on an empty stomach," she said.
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An architect a handful of years back had suffered ("undergone" being far too soft a term) an epiphany regarding the use of hammered aluminum alloy as an exterior building material. He, she, or it had simultaneously seemingly rebelled against the use of the plumb line. Most tragically, he (for brevity's sake) had captured the imagination of the governing board of the Museum of Contemporary Art and, subsequently, the pocketbooks of a number of extremely wealthy patrons of the arts. The end result was the Berryman Museum of Modern Art, the lights from the city and the harbor catching eerily in its pocked metal skin, looking not unlike a steel-cast pile of shopping bags abandoned next to the MCA on the Sydney Harbor foreshore.
Armored with but a single glass of champagne, Fischer put on what Therese labeled his "grown-up voice," consciously deep and clear and slightly superior, and from a lectern placed at the open run of steps leading to the displays on the museum's first floor bluffed his way through the speech he'd scrawled on the too-short ride over. He took cold comfort from three simple facts: one half of his audience wrote him off as a faceless wallet speaking on behalf of an evil, but rich and gullible, corporation; the second half saw him simply as an idiot mouthpiece for the culturally pretentious; and both halves, together, wanted nothing more than to get to the bar and the hors d'oeuvres.
"Well, that was absolutely terrible," said Terry Ellis, waiting, with a wry dimpled smile and two glasses of champagne, when the applause had smattered away to a murmur of conversation and the exodus for the bar and the art had begun. "Christ. What did you do to your face?"
The shock in his tone was honest. As he took the second glass of champagne, Fischer looked at Ellis reassuringly. He had a circle of friends. A joke: it was much more a circling than a circle. Junior boardmen, young business types of about his age, like ramoras sticking close to a shark, sycophantic, looking for a spot to latch on and feed. All except for Ellis, with whom Fischer had hashed through most of his degree in chemical engineering at university: Ellis, with his spark-fed blue eyes and the reckless curling of his red-brown hair, whom Browning, with a snort, had written off as a gay crush.
"If you'll recall, I'm a rich man, Terry. I hired someone to do it for me."
"Don't fuck about, Rob."
"I was mugged."
"The hell you were."
"No. Really." He recounted the experience as they went up to the exhibit, made a mildly gruesome joke out of the attack, his mistaken arrest, his boorish handlers at the police station. Details regarding Susan he mostly failed to mention. He left her name out entirely.
If Susan Gaumont was really her name at all.
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The irony, certainly intentional, was that at least half of the new wing was given over to the works of some communist or socialist or militant environmentalist, whose name Ellis provided and which name the champagne seemed to erase simultaneously from Fischer's memory, male and late-thirtyish and thin, stereotypically dressed all in black, with a pinched face and a perpetual glower, who looked death at Fischer and his filthy rich industrialist-capitalist ilk throughout the evening. Another man, another artist, Fischer assumed, much like the first, moved quietly through the displays, black-haired and thin all in black, too, watching the patrons with strangely pale hazel eyes.
"Most of his works are recycled, or recyclable, or edible, or something like that." Ellis spoke almost at a whisper. He and Fischer were standing, fresh glasses in hand, with man the first's deathly stare trained at their backs from a no-miss distance of less than fifteen feet, before a piece that looked, neither more nor less, and much like the Berryman itself, like a mismeasured pile of cardboard packing boxes. "The ideas are certainly recycled."
Fischer chuckled into his champagne, drained his glass.
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He ate what his nutritionists told him to eat, allowed them to mold him into an indifferent vegetarian. He let his physical trainers put him through his paces. He grudgingly lifted weights. He enjoyed running and swimming.
But drinking was his. He wondered sometimes, as he approached intoxication, if this was how his mother had felt as the cancer dragged her closer to the abyss. A feeling they might somehow share, from opposite sides of the grave.
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He was an inscrutable drunk. A mysterious drunk. He could hide impairment with great skill behind his too-clear eyes, or so he told himself. So, perhaps, without quite realizing it, he'd had one or several too many when he spotted her. The girl from Gilliam's.
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She, like the second man, was moving quietly through the exhibits. She wore a calf-length black dress that touched her without clinging and left her arms bare; her dark hair was loose against her shoulders and back. For a moment, Fischer watched her from beyond the reach of the champagne and found himself holding his breath.
Ellis had set off, finally suitably fortified by alcohol, to tell their nameless glaring socialist-communist-treehugger what he thought of the man's "art." Fischer was abandoned. More truly, he might have been lost. He approached her obliquely, in casual nearing passes, until he was face to face with her by one of the room's siege windows, narrow and high, a blue-black rectangle of lingering twilight cut into the powder white of the wall, and found he had nothing to say.
She watched him with a slightly wary frown. She seemed to have cracked the code of his initial maneuvering; now, it appeared, she was waiting for his next move.
Fischer cleared his throat. "Hello."
"Hello." She might have been assessing the damage to his face. Aside from suspicion, her expression was unreadable. At least by Fischer's present powers of alcohol-filtered comprehension.
"I, umm—" he said.
She waited, not replying.
Fischer tried to work his mind clear of the funk of the champagne. "You're in some kind of trouble, aren't you?" he said, finally.
"Pardon me?" Realization dawned in her blue eyes even as her frown solidified. "Oh, no. No. If it's about the other night, I have witnesses. Whatever it is you did to your face, I only spilled a drink on you. Which you deserved, by the way. I never laid a finger on you."
He felt as if they were shouting at one another, though they were speaking at the murmur that seemed to be intrinsic to the room. He felt as if he were that close to losing her, to seeing her walk away. He continued, almost desperately: "I have resources. I can protect you."
Now her frown was incredulous. "From what, Mr. Fischer?"
"His name is Chris, isn't it?"
"Who? What are you talking about? Why am I even asking—?" She glanced at the glass in Fischer's hand. You're drunk, her glance said. "Enjoy the art, Mr. Fischer."
She walked away. Fischer went after her. A second before he touched her arm, as if she could sense the static between his skin and hers, she turned.
To her borderline-offended stare, he tried not to blurt: "No, no, no: wait. Please. You can trust me—"
"Because you're a billionaire? Or because you're paranoid? Why would you want to protect me, Mr. Fischer?"
"Because—"
Because I'm a rich spoiled bastard, and I'm drunk enough to make an ass of myself with a woman I hardly know.
"Should I ask again, Mr. Fischer? Why would you feel a need to protect me?"
Because I've seen your file. Your private information.
He shook his head. "I have no idea." Because you're in my dreams. "I've had too much to drink, and I'm behaving badly. Please accept my apologies, Miss—"
She just looked at him with emotionally flatlined eyes.
Fischer squared his shoulders. "Forgive me. Good night."
He moved away, fully intending to say his farewells to Ellis, or whatever might remain of Ellis after his showdown with their death-stare artist, before having Phil drive him home. He was less than half a dozen steps onto his chosen path when she said: "Wait. Mr. Fischer, wait."
Now it was his turn to turn back. To his credit, he did so without stumbling. Which she might have noticed: she smiled slightly as she re-approached. "I'm sorry," she said. "That was rude of me."
"Not at all." Her eyes on him were a bit too honest. By way of escape, Fischer smiled ruefully at the glass in his hand. "I'm more of a lightweight than I care to admit."
She chuckled; tension loosened from her shoulders. Fischer asked, maybe a moment sooner than he should: "What are you doing here?"
"I could tell you it's none of your business. But, as you're likely to pester me until I confess: remember, Mr. Fischer, I do work for a private security firm."
On cue, she tipped her head slightly to the right, slipped fingertips discreetly beneath the dark fall of her hair. For the first time, Fischer saw that she was wearing an earpiece.
"Speak of the devil—" This, murmured, to Fischer. To the air before her, she said: "Right. I'm on my way." She smoothed her hair, looked back at him with genuine apology. "Will you excuse me, Mr. Fischer?"
"It's Robert. Rob, if you like."
"Robert." She smiled for him. She laid one hand for a moment on his arm, the other against his bruised cheek. She leaned up and tenderly kissed the damaged corner of his mouth. Fischer turned his head, met her in the kiss, fully and deeply. She didn't pull away.
"For chivalry," she said, softly, when it ended, when Fischer once again had full possession of his mouth, a fresh sting in his stitches that he didn't mind a bit. "However paranoid, however misguided." Her eyes on his were star-bright. She might have been looking directly into his skull. "My name is Susan, by the way."
She walked away. He watched her go, feeling, in his intoxication, in, too, the early, easy stages of arousal, a comfortable, dreamlike paralysis. A sense that he couldn't call her back even if he tried, but that, for now, it really didn't matter. He could taste her kiss.
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He didn't dream at all that night. Nothing that he remembered, anyway.
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The next day, exercised, showered, shaved, as precise as a knife in a steel-gray suit, he was back to work in his office. Three minutes after he arrived, Browning walked in. He had a data pad in his hand. He set it on Fischer's desk, turned it so that, for Fischer, the headlines of the Morning Herald were right-side-up, and said, in summary, before Fischer could read or ask:
"There was a theft at the museum last night."
His index finger, Fischer saw, was half-obscuring the article in question. "At the Berryman—?"
"No. Not that garbage in the new wing. Something they were storing over at the main building." Browning moved his hand; Fischer read.
It was a gem-encrusted copy of the Koran. For a century it had lain in the wreck of the Titanic. The actual bloody Titanic. Fourteen thousand feet below the surface of an ocean ten thousand miles away. Lying wrapped in premium oilskin, encased in a lead-lined safe and pitch darkness, until the day, only months ago, when millions of dollars' worth of technology and determination had returned it to the light. It had been in storage at the CMA pending display at the museum, one stop in an exultant global touring. Now it was gone.
Still, it had little to do with the running of a prime energy conglomerate. Fischer looked up at Browning questioningly.
"She was there last night, wasn't she, Robert?"
Fischer thought he could feel his pulse slowing. "Yes. Why?"
"I'd like that file back, Robert."
"File—?"
"The folder. The one I left in here yesterday."
He was standing too close. Looming. Fischer pushed back from his desk, stood, walked toward the windows. His voice was flat: "She told me she worked for a private security firm."
"Sure as hell wasn't doing her job, then, was she?"
"No," Fischer said, slowly, to the cumulo-strati near enough to touch, "she wasn't doing her job at all."
She had never told him for certain, outside of a dream, what she did for a living. There was no "remember" about it. He realized that now. He put fingertips to the cool glass, felt the draw of the four-hundred-foot drop four inches beyond.
Behind him, Browning said: "This has gone far enough, Robert. We need to turn that file over to the police."
"So turn it over, Uncle Peter." Fischer turned to face Browning. "If that's what you're so determined to do: turn it over."
"You don't understand, Robert. That file, that folder. The one I left in here yesterday. There was only the one hard copy; the morons in Security had it stored out on their server, and now that server is down with bad blocks. Bad fucking blocks." Browning scratched his temple in frustration; Fischer watched impassively. "Programming is running data recovery right now, but you know how it is: first you have to convince them that you didn't kill the entire fucking system with something you downloaded from Pepe's House of Bargain Shareware, then they spend six hours playing dumb, and then they'll let you know when there's an E.T.A. If there's an E.T.A."
Fischer returned to his desk, tapped the comm button. "Nancy, would you come in here, please?"
Nancy Crawford entered a second later from the door leading to the reception room of Fischer's office, early middle-aged, dark-haired, slate-eyed, solid and formal in a charcoal-gray suit-dress. In the Fischer-Morrow executive pantheon of office gods, she was Stability, the immovable object to Browning's unstoppable force. She halted precisely six feet from Fischer's desk.
He asked: "Did you clean anything off my desk yesterday, Nancy? Before I arrived today?"
"No, Mr. Fischer."
Prompted Browning, from the side: "No tidying-up? No impromptu filing?"
She kept her eyes on Fischer. "If you'd tell me what you were looking for, Mr. Fischer—"
"A black plastic folder."
"No, sir. I haven't seen anything like that." She gave Browning a look like winter granite. See how easy it is sans sarcasm, Mr. Browning?
"Thank you, Nancy."
"You're welcome, Mr. Fischer."
"If it means as much as you think it does, I'm surprised you can't quote the contents of that file from memory, Uncle Peter," Fischer said, after Nancy had gone.
"I have a head for numbers and statistics, Robert. Not for names, addresses: hell, that's what my PDA is for, isn't it?"
Fischer tried. He tried to keep his expression neutral, his face still. He could feel her fingers on his cheek. He could taste her.
Will you keep me safe?
"Yes," he said, softly. He found himself turning again from Browning, suppressing a smirk.
Browning saw. He took a deep breath, breathed it out. Then he came closer. Close enough that Fischer took an involuntary step back.
"Chivalry is a bullshit concept, Robert," Browning said quietly. "An unviable concept. For reasons that should be obvious to a man of integrity and intelligence, it is well and truly dead." His tone, like his expression, bespoke suspicion, anger, and, most terribly, disappointment. "We are dealing with criminals here. You might want to keep that in mind."
He walked out, leaving Fischer to cloud-shadowed silence, early morning light.
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