In that moment he felt a burst of anger, a kind of male fury that he was pinned down, that she was dominating him, and he wanted to be in control, to take her. He sat up and grabbed her hair roughly, lifting her head and twisting his body. She looked in his eyes and saw instantly.
“Yes!” she said, and she moved sideways, so he could sit up beside her. He slipped his hand between her legs. He felt warmth, and lacy underpants. He tugged at them. She wriggled, helping him, and he slid them down to her knees; then she kicked them away. Her hands were caressing his hair, her lips at his ear. “Yes,” she whispered fiercely. “Yes!”
Her blue skirt was bunched up around her waist. He kissed her hard, pulling her blouse wide, pressing her breasts to his bare chest. He felt her heat all along his body. He moved his fingers, probing between her lips. She gasped as they kissed, nodding her head yes. Then his fingers were in her.
For a moment he was startled: she was not very wet, and then he remembered that, too. The way she would start, her words and body immediately passionate, but this central part of her slower to respond, taking her eventual arousal from his. She was always turned on most by his desire for her, and always came after he did sometimes within a few seconds, but sometimes he struggled to stay hard while she rocked against him, pushing to her own completion, lost in her own private world while he was fading. He always felt alone, always felt as if she were using him. Those memories gave him pause, and she sensed his hesitation and grabbed him fiercely, fumbling at his belt, moaning, sticking her hot tongue in his ear.
But reluctance was seeping back into him now, his angry heat was fading, and unbidden the thought flashed through his mind: It’s not worth it.
All his feelings shifted again, and now he had a familiar sensation. Going back to see an old lover, being attracted over dinner, then getting involved again, feeling desire and, suddenly, in the heat of the moment, in the press of flesh, being reminded of all the things that had been wrong with the relationship, feeling old conflicts and angers and irritations rise up again, and wishing that he had never started. Suddenly thinking of how to get out of it, how to stop what was started. But usually there was no way to get out of it.
Still his fingers were inside her, and she was moving her body against his hand, shifting to be sure he would touch the right place. She was wetter, her lips were swelling. She opened her legs wider for him. She was breathing very hard, stroking him with her fingers. “Oh God, I love the way you feel,” she said.
Usually there was no way to get out of it.
His body was tense and ready. Her hard nipples brushed against his chest. Her fingers caressed him. She licked the bottom of his earlobe with a quick dart of her tongue and instantly there was nothing but his desire, hot and angry, more intense for the fact that he didn’t really want to be there, that he felt she had manipulated him to this place. Now he would fuck her. He wanted to fuck her. Hard.
She sensed his change and moaned, no longer kissing him, leaning back on the couch, waiting. She watched him through half-closed eyes, nodding her head. His fingers still touched her, rapidly, repeatedly, making her gasp, and he turned, pushed her down on her back on the couch. She hiked up her skirt and spread her legs for him. He crouched over her and she smiled at him, a knowing, victorious smile. It made him furious to see this sense that she had somehow won, this watchful detachment, and he wanted to catch her, to make her feel as out of control as he felt, to make her part of this, to wipe that smug detachment from her face. He spread her lips but did not enter her, he held back, his fingers moving, teasing her.
She arched her back, waiting for him. “No, no . . . please . . .”
Still he waited, looking at her. His anger was fading as quickly as it had come, his mind drifting away, the old reservations returning. In an instant of harsh clarity, he saw himself in the room, a panting middle aged, married man with his trousers down around his knees, bent over a woman on an office couch that was too small. What the hell was he doing?
He looked at her face, saw the way the makeup cracked at the corners of her eyes. Around her mouth.
She had her hands on his shoulders, tugging him toward her. “Oh please . . . No . . . No . . .” And then she turned her head aside and coughed.
Something snapped in him. He sat back coldly. “You’re right.” He got off the couch, and pulled up his trousers. “We shouldn’t do this.”
She sat up. “What are you doing?” She seemed puzzled. “You want this as much as I do. You know you do.”
“No,” he said. “We shouldn’t do this, Meredith.” He was buckling his belt. Stepping back.
She stared at him in dazed disbelief, like someone awakened from sleep. “You’re not serious . . .”
“This isn’t a good idea. I don’t feel good about it.”
And then her eyes were suddenly furious. “You fucking .son of a bitch.”
She got off the couch fast, rushing at him, hitting him hard with bunched fists. “You bastard! You prick! You fucking bastard!” He was trying to button his shirt, turning away from her blows. “You shit! You bastard!”
She moved around him as he turned away, grabbing his hands, tearing at his shirt to keep him from buttoning it.
“You can’t! You can’t do this to me!”
Buttons popped. She scratched him, long red welts running down his chest. He turned again, avoiding her, wanting only to get out of there. To get dressed and get out of there. She pounded his back.
“You fucker, you can’t leave me like this!”
“Cut it out, Meredith,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Fuck you!” She grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling him down with surprising strength, and she bit his ear hard. He felt an intense shooting pain and he pushed her away roughly. She toppled backward, off balance, crashing against the glass coffee table, sprawling on the ground.
She sat there, panting. “You fucking son of a bitch.”
“Meredith, just leave me alone.” He was buttoning his shirt again. All he could think was: Get out of here. Get your stuff and get out of here.
He reached for his jacket, then saw his cellular phone on the windowsill. He moved around the couch and picked up the phone. The wineglass crashed against the window near his head. He looked over and saw her standing in the middle of the room, reaching for something else to throw.
“I’ll kill you!” she said. “I’ll fucking kill you.”
“That’s enough, Meredith,” he said.
“The hell.” She threw a small paper bag at him. It thunked against the glass and dropped to the floor. A box of condoms fell out.
“I’m going home.” He moved toward the door.
“That’s right,” she said. “You go home to your wife and your little fucking family.”
Alarms went off in his head. He hesitated for a moment.
“Oh yes,” she said, seeing him pause. “I know all about you, you asshole. Your wife isn’t fucking you, so you come in here and lead me on, you set me up and then you walk out on me, you hostile violent fucking asshole. You think you can treat women this way? You asshole.”
He reached for the doorknob.
“You walk out on me, you’re dead!”
He looked back and saw her leaning unsteadily on the desk, and he thought, She’s drunk.
“Good night, Meredith,” he said. He twisted the knob, then remembered that the door had been locked. He unlocked the door and walked out, without looking back.
In the outer room, a cleaning woman was emptying trash baskets from the assistants’ desks.
“I’ll fucking kill you for this!” Meredith called after him.
The cleaning woman heard it, and stared at Sanders. He looked away from her, and walked straight to the elevator. He pushed the button. A moment later, he decided to take the stairs.
Sanders stared at the setting sun from the deck of the ferry going back to Winslow. The evening was calm, with almost no breeze; the surface of the water was dark and still. He looked back at the lights of the city and tried to assess what had happened.
From the ferry, he could see the upper floors of the DigiCom buildings, rising behind the horizontal gray concrete of the viaduct that ran along the water’s edge. He tried to pick out Meredith’s office window, but he was already too far away.
Out here on the water, heading home to his family, slipping back into his familiar daily routine, the events of the previous hour had already begun to take on an unreal quality. He found it hard to believe that it had happened. He reviewed the events in his mind, trying to see just where he had gone wrong. He felt certain that it was all his fault, that he had misled Meredith in some important way. Otherwise, she would never have come on to him. The whole episode was an embarrassment for him, and probably for her, too. He felt guilty and miserable-and deeply uneasy about the future. What would happen now? What would she do?
He couldn’t even guess. He realized then that he didn’t really know her at all. They had once been lovers, but that was a long time ago. Now she was a new person, with new responsibilities. She was a stranger to him.
Although the evening was mild, he felt chilled. He went back inside the ferry. He sat in a booth and took out his phone to call Susan. He pushed the buttons, but the light didn’t come on. The battery was dead. For a moment he was confused; the battery should last all day. But it was dead.
The perfect end to his day.
Feeling the throb of the ferry engines, he stood in the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. His hair was messed; there was a faint smear of lipstick on his lips, and another on his neck; two buttons of his shirt were missing, and his clothes were rumpled. He looked as if he had just gotten laid. He turned his head to see his ear. A tiny bruise marked where she had bitten him. He unbuttoned the shirt and looked at the deep red scratches running in parallel rows down his chest.
Christ.
How was he going to keep Susan from seeing this?
He dampened paper towels and scrubbed away the lipstick. He patted down his hair, and buttoned his sport coat, hiding most of his shirt. Then he went back outside, sat down at a booth by the window, and stared into space.
“Hey, Tom.”
He looked up and saw John Perry, his neighbor on Bainbridge. Perry was a lawyer with Marlin, Howard, one of the oldest firms in Seattle. He was one of those irrepressibly enthusiastic people, and Sanders didn’t much feel like talking to him. But Perry slipped into the seat opposite him.
“How’s it going?” Perry asked cheerfully.
“Pretty good,” Sanders said.
“I had a great day.”
“Glad to hear it.”
`Just great,” Perry said. “We tried a case, and I tell you, we kicked ass.
“Great,” Sanders said. He stared fixedly out the window, hoping Perry would take the hint and go away.
Perry didn’t. “Yeah, and it was a damned tough case, too. Uphill all the way for us,” he said. “Title VII, Federal Court. Client’s a woman who worked at MicroTech, claimed she wasn’t promoted because she was a female. Not a very strong case, to tell the truth. Because she drank, and so on. There were problems. But we have a gal in our firm, Louise Fernandez, a Hispanic gal, and she is just lethal on these discrimination cases. Lethal. Got the jury to award our client nearly half a million. That Fernandez can work the case law like nothing you’ve ever seen. She’s won fourteen of her last sixteen cases. She acts so sweet and demure, and inside, she’s just ice. I tell you, sometimes women scare the hell out of me.”
Sanders said nothing.
He came home to a silent house, the kids already asleep. Susan always put the kids to bed early. He went upstairs. His wife was sitting up in bed, reading, with legal files and papers scattered across the bedcovers. When she saw him, she got out of bed and came over to hug him. Involuntarily, his body tensed.
“I’m really sorry, Tom,” she said. “I’m sorry about this morning. And I’m sorry about what happened at work.” She turned her face up and kissed him lightly on the lips. Awkwardly, he turned away. He was afraid she would smell Meredith’s perfume, or
“You mad about this morning?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Really, I’m not. It was just a long day.”
“Lot of meetings on the merger?”
“Yes,” he said. “And more tomorrow. It’s pretty crazy.”
Susan nodded. “It must be. You just got a call from the office. From a Meredith Johnson.”
He tried to keep his voice casual. “Oh yes?”
“Uh-huh. About ten minutes ago.” She got back in bed. “Who is she, anyway?” Susan was always suspicious when women from the office called.
Sanders said, “She’s the new veep. They just brought her up from Cupertino.”
“I wondered . . . She acted like she knew me.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever met.” He waited, hoping he wouldn’t have to say more.
“Well,” she said, “she sounded very friendly. She said to tell you everything is fine for the due diligence meeting tomorrow morning at eight-thirty, and she’ll see you then.”
“Okay. Fine.”
He kicked off his shoes, and started to unbutton his shirt, then stopped. He bent over and picked his shoes up.
“How old is she?” Susan asked.
“Meredith? I don’t know. Thirty-five, something like that. Why?”
“Just wondered.” “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.
“Okay.” She picked up her legal briefs, and settled back in bed, adjusting the reading light.
He started to leave.
“Do you know her?” Susan asked.
“I’ve met her before. In Cupertino.”
“What’s she doing up here?”
“She’s my new boss.”
“She’s the one.”
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s the one.”
“She’s the woman that’s close to Garvin?”
“Yeah. Who told you? Adele?” Adele Lewyn, Mark’s wife, was one of Susan’s best friends.
She nodded. “Mary Anne called, too. The phone never stopped ringing.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So is Garvin fucking her or what?”
“Nobody knows,” he said. “The general belief is that he’s not.”
“Why’d he bring her in, instead of giving the job to you?”
“I don’t know, Sue.”
“You didn’t talk to Garvin?”
“He came around to see me in the morning, but I wasn’t there.”
She nodded. “You must be pissed. Or are you being your usual understanding self?”
“Well.” He shrugged. “What can I do?”
“You can quit,” she said.
“Not a chance.”
“They passed over you. Don’t you have to quit?”
“This isn’t the best economy to find another job. And I’m forty-one. I don’t feel like starting over. Besides, Phil insists they’re going to spin off the technical division and take it public in a year. Even if I’m not running it, I’d still be a principal in that new company.”
“And did he have details?” He nodded. “They’ll vest us each twenty thousand shares, and options for fifty thousand more. Then options for another fifty thousand shares each additional year.”
“At?”
“Usually it’s twenty-five cents a share.”
“And the stock will be offered at what? Five dollars?”
“At least. The IPO market is getting stronger. Then, say it goes to ten. Maybe twenty, if we’re hot.”
There was a brief silence. He knew she was good with figures. “No,” she said finally. “You can’t possibly quit.”
He had done the calculations many times. At a minimum, Sanders would realize enough on his stock options to pay off his mortgage in a single payment. But if the stock went through the roof, it could be truly fantastic-somewhere between five and fourteen million dollars. That was why going public was the dream of anyone who worked in a technical company.
He said, “As far as I’m concerned, they can bring in Godzilla to manage that division, and I’ll still stay at least two more years.”
“And is that what they’ve done? Brought in Goodwill?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you get along with her?”
He hesitated. “I’m not sure. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Okay,” she said. He glanced back at her: she was reading her notes again.
After his shower, he plugged his phone into the charger unit onthe sink, and put on a T-shirt and boxer shorts. He looked at himself in the mirror; the shirt covered his scratches. But he was still worried about the smell of Meredith’s perfume. He splashed after-shave on his cheeks.
Then he went into his son’s room to check on him. Matthew was snoring loudly, his thumb in his mouth. He had kicked down the covers. Sanders pulled them back up gently and kissed his forehead.
Then he went into Eliza’s room. At first he could not see her; his daughter had lately taken to burrowing under a barricade of covers and pillows when she slept. He tiptoed in, and saw a small hand reach up, and wave to him. He came forward.