He took her first smoothly, expertly, with more than enough crazed urgency to set her off within seconds. He was strong and he quickly understood what she needed most. He showed remarkable stamina and excellent self-control. He shuddered when she wanted him to and he could get sounds out of her at will. It was like they’d been at it forever; like they knew each other before they’d begun. And then they began experimenting, and to Isobel’s overflowing amazement, everything worked as well as it ever had. And when she could think, she thought she was getting what someone had been missing out on for years. She fell asleep after coming again-wondering whether it was the fourth or the fifth… and awoke still joined with him, awkwardly, at right angles. He was sleeping too. It was just after three in the morning. She watched the rise and fall of his gut. She shivered seeing the white of her leg against his dark brown belly. Walter was her first old man, the first one close to her father’s age. He was a revelation, all right. But was he a one-time wonder? Could he ever do it-quite that way-again? Was it Viagra?
Walter woke up alone. Seven-fifteen. Clara would sleep till nine. He sniffed. Nothing was brewing or toasting now. He creaked out of bed, stepped into his shorts, made his way upstairs. He realized that he was smiling; he imagined his smile painted on, like a clown’s. It occurred to him that he had not thought of his wife-not from the moment Isobel told him to wait. Not when she came to him on the deck, or in the blazing mindlessness that followed, or in the dreams that followed that. That was a first in twenty-five years. Walter felt better than fine. He did not dwell on the fact that he was thinking of Gloria now.
Nobody on the deck. He took the stairway down to the guest room. He found her asleep, on her belly, facing the shower and the ocean. A sheet had drifted over the small of her back, but her shoulders were bare, and most of her backside, and both of her legs, one of them bent at the knee. He noticed a twitch at the top of one shoulder; waited to see it again. Her mouth was open, just slightly. She didn’t look nearly as pretty as she had. Her eyes seemed smaller, her nose somewhat thinner at the bridge, her skin looked like normal skin. He liked her a good deal better this way. She must have heard his boxers hit the floor. She smiled before she opened her eyes. When she saw him, she said, “Oh, m-m-y,” and maneuvered onto her back with her arms outstretched.
Nashville
They arrived at the Nashville airport in late afternoon. The flight from Atlanta was short and uneventful. They looked like any two businessmen in town to make a sale, attend a seminar, or talk about a merger-each with a bulging attache case in hand and a lightweight garment bag over his shoulder. Nicholas Stevenson, the older, bigger man, silver mane expertly layered and routinely trimmed, took long, easy strides. Harvey Daniels, the shorter man, dark-haired, rumpled, nervous, momentarily fell behind, quickened his step, fell behind again.
Through airport windows they saw Nashville blazing with Christmas lights refracted by pouring rain. They didn’t join the line for cabs to the Renaissance or The Hermitage Hotel. Instead, they made their way to the rental cars and took the white Camero reserved for them. “They don’t make Cameros the way they used to,” Harvey griped.
The tallest of Tennessee’s skyscrapers showed off bright decorations. “Sure as hell rather spend the night here,” said Nick. He was thinking of dozens of times he’d been on Music Row, in the bars and clubs that line Nashville’s streets, open night after night, proving, to his way of thinking, that Nashville will always be the musical heart of the South. And he said as much as they drove.
“You go to New Orleans to eat and fool around,” agreed Harvey unconvincingly, not out of any great experience. “You’re right Nick. Nashville is the only place for music.”
The older man spoke slowly, more to himself or to the rain than to the one beside him. He said that young singers and songwriters flood this city. Some have honest-to-goodness talent. Others have little or none. “Kids come along and wash dishes in kitchens in all those bars all the time, dreaming of the stars, and once in a while, one of them makes it. That’s the genuine optimism. That’s the spirit that brings them here. That’s the spirit that gives the city its deep-down sound and its moving force.”
Harvey looked through the drizzle, “Everyone’s getting ready for Christmas.” Then he grasped another, more interesting thought: “You ever been to Branson?”
Nick Stevenson made a slow right turn and said, enjoying himself as he did, “If Nashville’s the cradle of country music, Harvey, Branson’s the nursing home. We went there once. Didn’t like it a bit. It’s like the elephant’s graveyard-except they won’t stop singing.”
He drove the Camero on the darkened, rain-slick interstate to Clarksville, a Tennessee border town close to Illinois and Kentucky-home to the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne division: Air Assault! The signs shouted the mission at the headlights. The Camero pulled off I-24 and they registered at the Holiday Inn, just before you get to the mall and cinema complex. They took separate one-night rooms and paid cash. They signed in as Smith and Jones. An hour later they sat at a corner table in the motel’s modest restaurant.
Debra Melissa Wallis showed them their seats. She figured them to order dinners off the menu; these were not buffet guys. They had things to talk about. They didn’t want to be rushed. The manager, K. J. Singh, often asked her, “How in the world do you know such things?” She told him, “You just know.” She figured these two for a good 20 percent; they were not local yokels. They were from someplace, here for a reason, money in their pockets.
The two were joined within minutes by a younger man, also wearing a business suit, but so bony-fingered and pencil-necked and seemingly fragile inside his clothes that his jacket flapped around him with every move-a scarecrow is pretty much what he looked like.
He smiled at the two at the table, and sat across from them. No names were exchanged that Debra Melissa could hear, no handshakes, although they clearly knew each other. She took their drink order. Scotch for the older gentleman. Margarita for his nervous companion. Amstel Light for the skinny one. Beyond that, not a peep, no small talk at all, just a long, unbroken silence; eyes in the distance, drinks, for the most part, ignored.
The fourth man showed up at seven thirty. He wore jeans, a blue down jacket, and a well-worn, brown, felt cowboy hat. The three stood; the cowboy held out both hands as if to say “no touching,” and they sat.
He threw his coat and hat to a nearby chair, and sat next to the third one, the younger, skinny guy who arrived before he did. The older gentleman and his nervous friend made statements, like quick little speeches. Debra could not hear much, but they seemed to be using a lot of words she’d never heard before. By the time she’d worked her way close enough, all she got was the older one saying “turn yourself in” and the cowboy replying, “Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
They ordered steak and chicken, except for the cowboy, who wanted a caesar salad with hard-boiled eggs. When the entrees were placed before them, they started talking. They spoke until almost ten, the hour when the kitchen closed and the last remaining diners were chased away, when the minimum-wage employees made their way home, a chance to rest, to prepare to do it all over again tomorrow. Debra Melissa stayed to the bitter end, watching discreetly, betting her time on her intuition. These guys are big tippers-she was certain of that.
At the start, the young man sitting next to the cowboy opened an attache case. He removed a stack of papers and publications: charts, spreadsheets, official-looking documents printed in tiny letters on flimsy tissue-thin paper; copies of memos, letters, and e-mails. From time to time the nervous one picked up a sheet of paper from the table, looked at it closely, and seemed to ask a question. Each time, the skinny one or the cowboy supplied an answer, and everyone seemed pleased with that. She heard some numbers tossed around, and for just a moment she was sure she heard “billions.” “I must be hearing things,” she told herself.