He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
‘Got something for you,’ said Bryant, producing the briefing disc from his pocket with a conjuror’s flourish. He held it up between index and ring fingers. The light caught it and opened up a rainbow-sheened wedge on the bright silver circle. Chris looked at the colours curiously.
‘And that is?’
‘Work, my friend. And this season’s shot at the big time. TV fame, as many drive-site groupies as you can handle.’
Chris ran the disc at home.
‘Look it over,’ Bryant told him. ‘Kick back and relax, take off your tie and shoes, pour yourself a shot of that iodine-flavoured shit you drink and just let it wash over you. I’m not looking for feedback for at least forty-eight hours.’
‘Why can’t I just run it now?’ Chris wanted to know.
‘Because,’ leaning closer, with a secret-of-my-success type air, ‘that way you’re keyed up with anticipation and you eat it up at a deeper level. Your brain really sucks it in, just like the forty-eight-hour wait after gives it time to really stew, and by the time we meet to talk about it, you’re ready to boil over with insight.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Old consultancy trick from way back.’
‘This just you and me?’
Bryant shook his head. ‘Three-man team. You, me, Nick Makin.’
‘Oh.’
‘Is there a problem with that?’ Bryant’s eyes narrowed. ‘Something I should know about?’
‘No, no.’
Watching the closing sequences of the briefing disc, Chris turned it over in his head and tried to work out why he did feel there was a problem with Nick Makin. Makin hadn’t exactly come across as friendly, but neither had Hewitt, or Hamilton for that matter, and a lot of Shorn execs had probably heard the story of Elysia Bennett and Chris Faulkner’s sentiment attack.
The disc ended with the Shorn Associates logo engraved into a metallic finish on the screen, then clicked off. Chris shelved his thoughts, picked up his drink and went to look for his wife.
He thought for a moment she’d gone to bed with a book, but as he passed the kitchen he saw that the connecting door to the garage was open and the lights were on. Led by the clinking sounds of tools, he walked through, and around the bulk of the Saab, which was jacked up on one side. Carla’s coverall-clad legs and hips protruded from under the car beside an unrolled oilskin cloth full of spanners. As he watched she must have stretched out to one side for something, because the angle of her hips shifted and the plain of her stomach changed shape beneath the coveralls. He felt the customary twinge of arousal that her more sinuous movements still fired through him.
‘Hey,’ he kicked one of her feet. ‘What’re you doing?’
She stayed beneath the car. ‘What does it look like I’m doing. I’m checking your undercarriage.’
‘I thought you’d gone to bed.’
There was no response other than the creak of something metallic being tightened.
‘I said I thought you’d gone to bed.’
‘Yeah, I heard you.’
‘Oh. You just didn’t think it was worth answering me.’
From the stillness he knew she had stopped work. He didn’t hear the sigh, but he could have cued it, accurate to milliseconds.
‘Chris, you’re looking at my legs. Obviously I haven’t gone to bed.’
‘Just making conversation.’
‘Well, it’s not the most engaging conversational gambit I’ve ever heard, Chris. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up on it.’
‘Jesus! Carla, sometimes you can be so—‘ Anger and dismay at the idea of having a row with his wife’s feet gave ground in a single jolt to mirth. It was such a ludicrous image that he suddenly found himself smirking and trying to stifle a snort of laughter.
She heard it and slid out from under the car as if spring-loaded there. One hand knuckled across her nose and left streaks of grease.
‘What’s so funny?’
For some reason, the irritation in her voice combined with her rapid ejection from under the car and the grease on her nose drove the final nail into the coffin of Chris’s seriousness. He began to cackle uncontrollably. Carla sat up and watched curiously as he leaned back on the wall and laughed.
‘I said what’s so ...’
Chris slid down the wall, spluttering. Carla gave up as a reflexive smile fought its way onto her face.
‘What?’ she asked, more softly.
‘It was just,’ Chris was forcing the words out between giggles and snorts. ‘Just your legs, you know.’
‘Something funny about my legs?’
‘Well, your feet really.’ Chris put his glass down and wiped at his eyes. ‘I, just.’ He shook his head and waved a hand with minimal descriptive effect. ‘Just thought it was funny, talking to them, you know. Your feet.’ He snorted again. ‘It’s. Doesn’t matter.’
She got up from the floor with an accustomed flexing motion and went to crouch beside him. Turning her hand to present the ungrimed back, she brushed it against his cheek.
‘Chris ...’
‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said suddenly.
She held up her hands. ‘I’ve got to wash up. In fact, I need a shower.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
In the shower, he stood behind her and ran soaped hands over her breasts, down across her belly and into the V of her thighs. She chuckled deep in her throat and reached back for his erection, hands still gritty with the last of the engine grime. For a while it was enough to lean in the corner of the shower stall together, locked in an unhurried kiss, rubbing at each other languidly in the steam and pummelling jets of hot water. When the last of the dirt and soap had cascaded off them and swirled away, Carla swung herself up and braced her upper body in the corner while her thighs gripped Chris around the waist and her hips ground against this.
It was an inconclusive coupling, so Chris shut off the water and staggered with Carla’s arms and thighs still locked around him into the bedroom, where they collapsed giggling onto the bed and set about running through every posture in the manual.
Later, they lay on soaked sheets with their limbs hooked around each other and faces angled together. Moonlight fell in through the window and whitened the bed.
‘Don’t go,’ she said suddenly.
‘Go?’ Chris looked down in puzzlement. He had slid out of her some time ago. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here in this bed with you. Forever.’
‘Forever?’
‘Well, till about six-thirty anyway.’
‘I’m serious, Chris.’ She lifted herself to look into his face. ‘Don’t go on this Cambodia thing. Not up against Nakamura.’
‘Carla.’ It was almost a reprimand the way he said it. ‘We’ve been over this before. It’s my job. We don’t have any choice. There’s the house, the cards, how are we going to cover those things if I’m not driving?’
‘I know you’ve got to drive, Chris, but at Hammett McColl—‘
‘It’s not the same, Carla. At HM I already had my rep. I’ve got to carve it out all over again at Shorn, or some snot-nosed junior analyst is going to call me out, and once that starts you’re watching your tail forever. If they think you’re easing up, going soft, they’re on you like fucking vultures. The only way to beat that is to stay hard and keep them scared. That way you make partner, and from then on it’s a Sunday afternoon spin. They can’t touch you. No one below partner status is allowed to call you out.’ A vague disquiet passed over him as he remembered what Bryant had told him about Louise Hewitt and the partner called Page. ‘And partner challenges are few and far between. You see them coming. You can negotiate. It’s more civilised at that level.’
‘Civilised.’
‘You know what I mean.’
Carla was silent for a while. Then she rolled away from him and huddled herself into the pillow.
‘The disc says Nakamura are going to send Mitsue Jones.’