He smiled. “Then there’s no cause for alarm, is there? If she loves him, she’s invulnerable.”
“Then you are taking aim?”
“It’s just a little coincidental maneuver, Anne. No confidence at all I can swing it. But thinking about it keeps my eyes clear and my mind sharp and my waistline under control. If it looked easy, I wouldn’t be interested.”
“Know bow you can show mercy, sir?”
“How?”
“All you really want, you know, is the ego satisfaction of knowing you can lay her if you stalk her properly. But what will that do to her if you do? And to Lee? If you could create the opportunity, make sure you can, then back off from it in the name of honor and decency and all that, then it would be an act of mercy.”
“If the chance ever arises, I’ll give your suggestion some thought, Anne.”
It had been an improvisation. One makes do with the materials at hand. After Larssen had agreed to the price, Aldo had found Roy and told him that he would probably be going over to Miami the following morning and bringing Cramer, Hollister, and Keyes back. Roy said the replacement parts for the aircraft were probably in Miami by now and suggested he run it over and get the work done, stay over, and bring the three men back in the morning. He said he’d feel better about the reliability of the communication equipment when it was fixed up and checked out.
Aldo Bellinger said he approved. He said he would find Lee Rountree to drive Roy out to the airfield, so he could bring the car back. And he had some notes he wanted Roy to give Cramer to study before going over the draft of the agreement. He got the notes out of his room first. He found Lee in the lobby waiting for Liz to come down. As they walked toward the car the improvisation began to take form. He waited until they had backed out of the parking slot and then decided to ride out with them.
At the airfield, he suddenly decided that Cramer and the others might have some questions not covered in his notes. He asked Lee if he would mind taking the notes to Cramer, and because Lee had followed the negotiations from the start, he could answer questions Cramer and the others might have. Lee jumped at it. Another fragment of the big chance. “Sure, Aldo. Glad to do it. Explain to Liz, huh? I can pick up a toothbrush at the Miami airport. Should have thought of it myself. See you tomorrow morning.”
As he drove away, Aldo saw Roy pull the aircraft up into its steep angle of climb, turning toward the northwest, white aircraft with a shark mouth and a high whining roar of power.
So he explained to Liz in such a way that she was grateful for the expression of confidence in her big husband. He spent some beach time with Larssen and then came back and saw Liz in the pool. He changed to swim trunks and came down and joined her. He bought two rounds of planter’s punches, and they went walking on the beach, came back and swam in the pool again, and had a light late lunch under canvas shade on the patio by the pool. He bought two more punches over her protests, picking them up at the thatched bar on the beach, making one a double. Gave her the double. Talked about her husband, about how well he would do, given the chance. Saw her adaze, aglaze with sun and rum and heat, told her there was something he wanted to show her in confidence, a plan for a future project involving Lee. Carried their drinks upstairs, down the long tiled corridor, into the muted cool green blue country of his apartment.
The transition from the innocence of public sunlight to the siesta silence of the apartment had to be made at precisely the right time. To wait too long would spoil the chance. The rum would have become a depressant instead of a stimulant, and all her sense of fun and joy and holiday would have dulled into sleepiness. Had he taken her upstairs too quickly, the privacy and shadowy intimacy of the apartment would have triggered all her warning systems, made her too conscious of all the lovely bikinied flesh exposed, made her constrained and formal and inaccessible. He felt as if he had watched her the way, in the old submarine movies, the captain would watch the depth gauge and level the vessel at the precise reading he wanted.
So when he had unlocked the apartment and taken her in, she brought with her the leggy, careless insouciance, her gigglings, music of the ice in the tall strong drink. He had closed the door and gone striding ahead through the living room into the big bedroom, taken the roll of maps and drawings out of the comer of the closet, rolled the rubber bands off, unrolled them, and carried them over to the broad bed and spread them out on the bed.
“This is going to be your husband’s project, all the way, but don’t give him a clue yet. Come here and hold this side down, Liz.”
She came from the doorway and held the left side of the drawings, one knee on the bed, drink in her right hand. “What is it, Aldo?”
“A joint venture with a Uruguayan named Roberto Perez, on one hell of a great piece of beach twenty miles up the coast from Montevideo. I shouldn’t be telling you this, Liz. Maybe you can’t keep a secret from Lee worth a damn.”
“Pooh! I can so. Gee, it looks big in the drawing.”
“Three times the size of this deal. You two will be living down there quite a while, honey. How’s your Spanish?”
“Like nada.” She laughed in excitement “Wow! It’s fantastic, Aldo.”
“Let me get this top drawing off and show you the map.” He tried to point out detail on the map but had to release his end, and it kept rolling up. As he had hoped, she said, “Here. Let me free up another hand.” She finished her drink, leaned, and put the glass on a night stand. He pushed the sheaf deeper onto the bed, so that she could then stretch out prone, braced on her elbows, and hold the sheaf of drawings and maps flat against the bedspread. He leaned close, his sun-warm flesh against hers, shoulders touching, as he reached in front of her to show her detail on the map.
He casually put his left arm across her back, big hand on her left shoulder. Slowly, slowly, during the eight months he had known her, he had conditioned her to the casual, meaningless, friendly touch, the quick kiss of greeting and parting, affectionate. He had developed the relationship of mutual liking. She was the helpmeet. She and the marvelous boss helped guide the destiny of the splendid young husband. He had deliberately created a flavor of conspiracy. Little ways she could help Lee improve his performance, suggestions that could come more easily from her than from the boss.
“Here’s the secret I don’t think you can keep, woman.”
She turned and looked at him through a tousle of hair, their faces close, her eyes happy and mocking. “You say! Come on, Mister B. Secret like what?”
“Two secrets. On the operating budget I worked out with Perez, my resident representative — the guy who will do the pushing — is in there for about five thou more than Lee gets right now. Not quite five. Forty-seven hundred.”
“Hey! Hey, now!”
“Wait. That’s only part of it. We set up the joint operating structure on a bonus-and-profit-sharing basis. Perez and I get the king-size slices, but Lee would be on the eligible list for seven percent.”
“Of what?”
“Shrewd question. If he goofs, seven percent of nothing is nothing. If he brings it in on schedule, and the payout goes the way Perez’s study indicates, it could be seven percent of three mil.”
She frowned. “Twenty-one thousand dollars!”
“You are a very pretty lady and you are a rotten mathematician. It would be two hundred and ten thousand.”
Her eyes went wide wide wide. “Holy Maloney,” she whispered. He changed the pressure of his hand on her far shoulder very very slightly. It was essential that she not notice it, yet the slight pull had to suggest to her an impulsive response. One does not as quickly terminate an act one has begun. She had to lift her right shoulder out of the way to give him the kiss of gratitude and excitement. That meant taking her right hand off the roll of drawings and maps. They rolled up into a loose cylinder, and in the kiss he settled onto his side, bringing her down too, so that they lay in each other’s arms, face to face on the bed. As soon as he felt her mouth tighten and change, rather than continuing the pressure, he broke his mouth away from hers and said, “You won’t be able to stand it, you know. You’ll tell him. You’ll hint around until he pries it out of you.”