He tugged open the zipper of his sweatshirt. “You don’t know anything.”
“Are you even trying to write?”
“For your information, I’ve already filled up a legal pad.”
Jake composed at the typewriter, and she didn’t believe him. “Show me.”
He scowled and brushed past her into the house.
She showered, then slipped into jeans and her favorite cable-knit sweater. She’d been so preoccupied with Michel’s collection, Olivia’s skittishness, and trying to anticipate Alexi’s next move that she hadn’t focused on the problem over her head. Jake Koranda had made a deal with her to start writing again, and he wasn’t following through.
At ten o’clock, she went out into the front hallway and unlocked the door that led to the attic apartment. He didn’t answer when she knocked at the top of the stairs. She slipped her key in the lock.
The attic was a large, open space lit by both a skylight and smaller, rectangular windows on two sides. Fleur hadn’t been up here since Jake had moved in, and she saw that he’d furnished it sparsely with a few comfortable chairs, a bed, a long couch, and an L-shaped arrangement of desk and table that held a typewriter and a ream of paper still in its wrapper.
He had his feet propped on the desk, and he was tossing a basketball from one hand to the other. “I don’t remember inviting you in,” he said. “I don’t like interruptions when I’m working.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your creative process. Just pretend I’m not here.” She went into the small kitchen that sat behind a curve of counter and opened the cupboards until she found a can of coffee.
“Go away, Fleur. I don’t want you here.”
“I’ll leave as soon as we have a business meeting.”
“I’m not in the mood for a meeting.” The basketball passed back and forth, right palm to left.
She plugged in the coffeepot and walked over to perch on the desk. “The thing is,” she said, “you’re dead wood, and I can’t afford to have anything pulling me under right now. Everyone in town thinks you signed with me because we’re sleeping together. Only one thing’s going to stop the gossip. Another Koranda play.”
“Tear up our contract.”
She swatted the basketball from his hand. “Stop being such a crybaby.”
Easygoing, wisecracking Jake Koranda disappeared, leaving her face-to-face with Bird Dog. “Get out. This isn’t any of your goddamned business.”
She didn’t move. “Make up your mind. First you say I’m the one who blocked you, and now you tell me it’s none of my business. You can’t have it both ways.”
His feet dropped to the ground. “Out.” He grasped her arm and steered her toward the door.
She was suddenly angry, not because he was manhandling her and not even because he was threatening the future of her business, but because he was wasting his talent. “Big hotshot playwright.” She jerked away. “That typewriter has an inch of dust on it.”
“I’m not ready yet!” He stalked across the room and grabbed his jacket from a chair.
“I don’t see what’s so hard about it.” She made her way to his desk and ripped the wrapper off a ream of paper. “Anybody can put a piece of paper in a typewriter. See how I’m doing it. Nothing could be easier.”
He shoved his arms into the sleeves.
She dropped into the desk chair and flicked on the switch. The machine hummed to life. “Watch this. Act One, Scene One.” She picked out the letters on the keyboard. “Where are we, Jake? What does the stage set look like?”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
“Don’t…be…a…bitch.” She typed out the words. “Typical Koranda dialogue—tough and anti-female. What comes next?”
“Stop it, Fleur!”
“Stop…it…Fleur. Bad name choice. Too close to this amazing woman you already know.”
“Stop it!” He shot across the room. His hand came down on top of hers, jamming the keys. “This is all a big joke to you, isn’t it?”
Bird Dog had slipped away, and she saw the pain beneath his anger. “It’s not a joke,” she said softly. “It’s something you have to do.”
He didn’t move. And then he lifted his hand and brushed her hair. She closed her eyes. He pulled away and headed into the kitchen. She heard him pour a cup of coffee. Her fingers shook as she tugged the paper from the typewriter. Jake came toward her, mug in hand. She slipped in a fresh sheet of paper.
“What are you doing?” He sounded tired, a little hoarse.
She took an unsteady breath. “You’re going to write today. I’m not letting you put it off any longer. This is it.”
“Our deal’s off.” He sounded defeated. “I’m moving out of the attic.”
She hardened herself against his sadness. “I don’t care where you move. But we have an agreement, and we’re sticking to it.”
“Is that all you care about? Your two-bit agency.”
His anger was phony, and she wouldn’t let him bait her. “You’re writing today.”
He stepped behind her, set down his coffee mug, and settled his hands lightly on her shoulders. “I don’t think so.”
He lifted her hair and pressed his mouth into the softness just beneath her ear. His breath felt warm on her skin, and the soft touch of his lips made all her senses come alive. For a moment, she let herself give in to the sensations he was arousing. Just for a moment…
His hands slipped under her sweater and slid up over her bare skin to the lacy cups of her bra. He toyed with her nipples through the silk. His touch felt so good. Ripples of pleasure scuttled through her body. He unfastened the center clasp of her bra and pushed aside the cups. As he slipped up her sweater and bared her breasts, the ripples turned into waves of heat rushing through her veins. He pushed her shoulders back against the chair so her breasts tilted upward and began teasing the nipples with his thumbs. His lips caught her earlobe, then trailed along her neck. He was a master seducer playing with her body, going from one erogenous point to another as if he were following a chart in a sex manual.
Right then, she knew she was being bought.
She shoved his hands away from their carefully calculated seduction and jerked down her sweater. “You’re a real bastard.” She rose from the chair. “This was the easiest way to close me out, wasn’t it?”
He stared at a point just past her head. Doors slammed shut, shades pulled down, shutters locked tight. “Don’t push me.”
She was furious with herself for giving in so easily, furious with him, and unbearably sad. “The circle’s complete now,” she said. “You’ve played Bird Dog for so long that he’s finally taken over. He’s eating up what was left of your decency.”
He stalked across the room and pulled the door open.
She gripped the edge of the desk. “Making those crappy movies is easier than doing your real work.”
“Get out.”
“Mr. Tough Guy has a yellow streak a mile wide.” She dropped back down in the chair. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely push the typewriter keys. “Act One, Scene One, damn you…”
“You’re crazy.”
“Act One, Scene One. What’s the first line?”
“You’re out of your frigging mind!”
“Come on, you know exactly what this play’s about.”
“It’s not a play!” He stalked over to her, his expression so tormented that she winced. One of his hands knotted into a fist. “It’s a book! I have to write a book. A book about ’Nam.”
She took a deep breath. “A war book? That’s right up Bird Dog’s alley.”
His voice grew quiet. “You don’t know anything.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“You weren’t there. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re one of the best writers in the country. Make me understand.”
He turned his back to her. Silence fell between them. She heard the distant sound of a police siren, the rattle of a truck pas
sing below. “You couldn’t tell them apart,” he finally said. “You had to regard everybody as the enemy.”
His voice was controlled, but it seemed to be coming from far away. He turned and looked at her as if he wanted to make certain she understood. She nodded, even though she didn’t. If what had happened in Vietnam was blocking his writing, why did he blame her?
“You’d be walking next to a rice paddy and spot a couple of little kids—four or five years old. Next thing you knew, one of them was throwing a grenade at you. Shit. What kind of war is that?”
She slipped her fingers back on the keys and began to type, trying to get it all down, hoping she was doing the right thing but not sure at all.
He didn’t seem to notice the sound of the typewriter. “The village was a VC stronghold. The guerrillas had cost us a lot of men. Some of them had been tortured, mutilated. They were our buddies…guys we’d gotten to know as well as our own family. We were supposed to go in and waste the village. The civilians knew the rules. If you weren’t guilty, don’t run! Don’t for chrissake run! Half the company was stoned or doped up—it was the only way you could make it.” He took a ragged breath. “We were airlifted to a landing strip near the village, and as soon as the strip was secure, the artillery opened up. When everything was clear, we went in. We herded them all together in the middle of the village. They didn’t run—they knew the rules—but some of them were shot anyway.” His face had grown ashen. “A little girl…she had on a ragged shirt that didn’t cover her belly, and the shirt had these little yellow ducks on it. And when it was over, and the village was burning, and somebody turned Armed Forces Vietnam on the radio and Otis Redding started singing ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’…The little girl had flies all over her belly.”
He stabbed his hand toward the typewriter. “Did you get that part about the music? The music is important. Everybody who’s been in ’Nam remembers the music.”
“I—I don’t know. You’re going so fast.”
“Let me in.” He pushed her aside, ripped out the sheet that was in the typewriter, and inserted a new one. He shook his head once as if to clear it, and then he began to type.
She went over to the couch and waited. He didn’t take his eyes off the pages that began sliding like magic through his typewriter. The room was cool, but his forehead beaded with sweat as he punched the keys. The images he’d drawn were already etched in her brain. The village, the people, the shirt with the little yellow ducks. Something terrible had happened that day.
He didn’t notice as she slipped out of the room.
She went to dinner with Kissy that evening. When she returned, she could still hear his typewriter. She made a sandwich for him and cut a slab of the French almond cake left over from the dinner party. This time she didn’t bother to knock before she used her key.
He sat hunched over the typewriter, his face lined with fatigue. Coffee mugs and paper littered the desk. He grunted as she set the tray down and collected the cups to wash. She cleaned out the coffeepot and refilled it so it was ready to go again.
Dread had been building inside her ever since this morning. She kept thinking about Sunday Morning Eclipse and the massacre Matt had witnessed in Vietnam. Now she couldn’t stop asking a terrible question. Had Jake been a helpless witness to a massacre like the character he’d created, or had he been an active participant?
She wrapped her arms around herself and left the attic.
She received her first phone call from Dick Spano later that week. “I’ve got to find Jake.”
“He never calls me,” she said, which was literally true.
“If he does, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“I really don’t think he will.”
That evening, she went up to the attic to tell Jake about the call. His eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw covered with stubble, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept. “I don’t want to talk to anybody,” he said. “Keep them away from me, will you?”
She did her best. She put off his business manager, his lawyer, and all of their secretaries, but someone as famous as Jake couldn’t simply disappear, and after five more days passed, and the callers grew more alarmed, she knew she had to do something, so she called Dick Spano. “I’ve heard from Jake,” she said. “He’s started to write again, and he wants to hide out for a while.”
“I have to talk to him. I’ve got a deal that won’t wait. Tell me where he is.”
She tapped a pen on her desk. “I think he’s in Mexico. He wouldn’t say exactly where.”
Dick swore, then bombarded her with a long list of things she was to tell him if he called her again. She wrote them all down and tucked the note in her pocket.
October turned into November, and as the date for Michel’s fashion show drew near, the gossip about her broken contracts refused to die. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the phony stories she’d planted at the end of the summer about her relationship with Jake were continuing to damage her. The gossips said Fleur Savagar was nothing more than a washed-up fashion model trying to start a business on her back. None of the clients she’d been pursuing had signed with her, and each night she fell asleep only to jolt awake a few hours later and listen to the sound of Jake’s typewriter. In the morning, she used her key to check on him, and after a while, it became difficult to tell which of them was the more haggard.
She spent the day before Michel’s show at the hotel, scurrying between technicians and the carpenters setting up the runway. She drove everyone crazy with her insistence on security passes and guards at the door. Even Kissy lost patience with her, but everything rested on Michel’s collection, and Alexi had less than twenty-four hours to do his worst. Fleur called Michel at the Astoria factory to make sure the guards were doing their job.
“Every time I look out, they’re where they’re supposed to be,” he said.
As he hung up, she had to remind herself to breathe. She’d hired the best security company in the state. Now she had to trust them to do their job.
Willie Bonaday burped and reached into his uniform pocket for a roll of Tums. Sometimes he chewed them one after another to help pass the time until the daytime shift took over. He’d been working this job for a month now, and tonight was the last night. Willie thought it was a lot of trouble to go to for a bunch of dresses, but as long as he got his paycheck, he minded his own business.
Four of them worked each shift, and they had the place sealed up tighter than a drum. Willie sat just inside the front door of the old Astoria factory, while his partner, Andy, was at the back and two of the younger men were outside the workshop doors on the second floor where the dresses were locked up. In the morning, the boys on the day shift would accompany the big dress racks on the drive to the hotel. By evening, the job would be over.
A couple of years back, Willie had guarded Reggie Jackson. That was the kind of job he liked. When him and his brother-in-law were sitting around watching the Giants, he wanted to shoot the bull about guarding Reggie Jackson, not a bunch of dresses. Willie picked up the Daily News. As he turned to the sports section, a battered orange van with BULLDOG ELECTRONICS painted on the side drove past the front entrance. Willie didn’t notice.
The man driving the van turned into an alley across the street without even glancing at the factory. He didn’t have to. He’d driven by every night for the past week, each time in a different vehicle, and he knew exactly what he’d see. He knew about Willie, although he didn’t know his name, and he knew about the guard at the back entrance and the locked room on the second floor with the guards stationed outside. He knew about the day shift that would arrive in a few hours, and the dim interior lights kept on in the factory at night. Only the lights were important to him.
The warehouse across the street from the factory had been abandoned for years, and the rusty padlock at the back gave easily beneath the jaws of the bolt cutters. He pulled an equipment case from the van. It was heavy, but the weight didn’t bother him. When he was safely insi
de the warehouse, he switched on his flashlight and shone it at the floor as he walked toward the front of the building. The flashlight annoyed him. Its beam of light spread out in a smear—no clear boundaries, no precision. It was sloppy light.
Light was his specialty. Pure beams of pencil-slim light. Coherent light that didn’t spread out in undisciplined pools like a flashlight beam.
He spent nearly an hour setting up. Normally it didn’t take so long, but he’d been forced to modify his equipment with a high-powered telescope, and the mounting was difficult. He didn’t mind, though, because he liked challenges, especially ones that paid so well.
When he’d finished setting up, he cleaned his hands on the rag he carried with him and then wiped a circle in the dirty glass of the warehouse window. He took his time sighting and focusing the telescope, making certain everything was exactly the way he wanted it. He could pick out each of the tiny lead plug centers without any difficulty. They were clearer to him than if he’d been standing in the middle of that second-story room.
When he was ready, he gently pulled the switch on the laser, directing the pure beam of ruby-red light right at the lead plug that was farthest away. The plug needed only a hundred and sixty-five degrees of heat to melt, and within seconds he could see that the hot ruby light of the laser had done its work. He picked out the next plug, and it, too, dissolved under the force of the pencil-thin beam of light. In a matter of minutes, all the lead plugs had melted, and the heads of the automatic fire sprinkler system were spraying water over the racks of dresses.
Satisfied, the man packed up his equipment and left the warehouse.
Fleur
Chapter 24
The phone call from the security company woke Fleur at four in the morning. She listened to the lengthy explanation from the man on the other end of the line. “Don’t wake my brother,” she said just before she hung up. And then she pulled the covers over her head and went back to sleep.
The doorbell woke her. She squinted at her clock and wondered if florists delivered white roses at six in the morning but decided she wasn’t getting up to find out. She stuck her head under the pillow and dozed off. Out of nowhere, someone jerked the pillow away. She screamed and bolted upright in bed.