“Wasn’t that your first date with him?”
“Second, if you feel the need to count,” Julia said, chewing her pizza. “Take it from a divorced woman, Meg. It’s better to recognize a dead-end street before turning into it, because those U-turns can be absolute murder.”
“Do tell.”
“You really want to hear about it?”
“I would.”
Julia looked at her, expelled another sigh.
“Last Saturday night, Richard asks me out to dinner, my choice of restaurants,” she said. “I suggest Emilio’s, you know it?”
“Sure,” Megan said. “That Italian place in Santa Clara with the courtyard in back. Very romantic.”
“Which is the reason I picked it… that and the cuisine,” Julia said. “Easy question, okay? What’s Italian cooking supposed to be except this”—she gave the pizza in her hand a demonstrative little shake—“or some kind of pasta dish? Fettuccine, ravioli, lasagna. Maybe veal scallopini. A basket of homemade bread or rolls on the side, a cannoli for desert, nothing too creative. Am I reaching some unreasonable level of expectation yet?”
“Not to me.”
“Bam!” Julia said, doing a fair impression of Emeril Lagasse. “In Richard’s world, asking a date to choose a restaurant doesn’t necessarily mean she’s also entitled to choose her own dish. Most especially not if it contains repulsive, unfashionable carbs.”
“Uh-oh.” Megan had to grin. “He’s one of those?”
“Hold the bun,” Julia said with a nod. “You know how I am, Meg. The reigning Miss Individuality. If he says so right off, no sweat, I find another restaurant. I’ve got nothing against him believing a certain diet works, but don’t foist it on me with a lecture about unburned calories.”
Megan was shaking her head. “Did he happen to notice you’re in pretty fantastic shape?” she said.
“Not the way he might’ve if he hadn’t blown his chances that night, let me tell you.” Julia frowned. “I walked out on him, Meg. Left him right there at the table and hailed a cab home.”
Megan’s eyes widened with surprise and amusement. “No.”
“Yes,” Julia said. “He kept insisting I eat the lobster or grilled fish. And he talked over me—overruled me — when I tried making my preference of Ziti al pomodoro clear to the waiter.” A frown. “That was the last unbearable, embarrassing straw. I’ve only answered his phone calls once since, and that was to tell him to forget my number.”
Megan threw her head back and laughed. “God,” she said. “And I thought my history with men was a road littered with wreckage.”
Julia looked at her.
“Goes to show there’s always a person waiting to outdo you,” she said, laughing a little, too.
They ate quietly. Megan worked away at her scone as Julia got through eating her slice and then reached into the pizza box for another.
“Enough about my life,” Julia said after a bit. “What’s with yours these days?”
Megan shrugged, sipped.
“Work,” she said.
“No play?”
“No time.” Megan sighed. “It’s taken everything out of me just trying to settle into the new position. And lately our projects with Sedco have developed some speed bumps. The Caribbean fiber deal sticks out… Do you know about it?”
“Some,” Julia said. “I heard my father mention it once or twice when Dan Parker was still on their board. He’s like a member of our family. Almost a god-uncle to me.”
Megan nodded her awareness. “There’s a guy that replaced him on the board of directors, A. R. Baxter — that’s Andrew Reed, great-great-grandson of the famous privateer — FYI. He’s constantly wanting to reevaluate and clarify points of contractual agreement. He’s a stubborn pain, and it makes for long, hard days of meeting with our own lawyers and executives.”
“Is Baxter the reason for your conference this afternoon?”
Megan shook her head.
“That’s a different can of worms,” she said. “I felt we needed another huddle to work out a plan for making nice with the Pentagon.”
Julia looked at her. “Because of what Tom Ricci did in New York,” she said.
Megan nodded, sipped away at her coffee. Again, the subject of the abduction hung unaddressed between them. Ricci had assembled the Sword task force that had tracked Julia to the cabin in Big Sur. He had pressed the search and gotten her out himself and left the man who’d led the hostage-takers dead. But Ricci alone knew exactly how that man died. Ricci alone was in the room with him, behind a locked door, in the minutes before he died. And what Megan wanted to say now, and didn’t, was that whatever occurred behind that door had seemed in some indeterminate way to spiral out into what took place those many months later in New York City.
“Tom’s name is bound to come up, sure,” she said instead, trying with her even tone to reduce his importance as an issue, make it sound as if he wasn’t at the very center of things. “We’ll have to decide what to do about him when Pete gets back from the islands.”
“Has anybody been in touch with him since he was suspended? Anybody from UpLink, that is.”
Megan regarded Julia for a few seconds, struck by the too-light, almost singsong quality of her voice right then, thinking maybe more than one of them here wanted to downplay the matter.
“Pete’s tried calling him,” she said. “Not with any success, though. At least these past few weeks.”
“He doesn’t answer his phone?”
“Doesn’t answer, doesn’t return messages, won’t give us a clue what’s going on with him.”
Julia tilted her head curiously.
“That seems kind of odd,” she said.
“Come on.” Megan couldn’t hide her skepticism. “Tom Ricci being incommunicative?”
Julia was looking at her.
“I mean Pete not going to see him where he lives,” she said. “I’d always heard they were tight.”
The expression on Megan’s face went from skeptical to just plain blank. She was unsure why that hadn’t entered into her thought processes. But it hadn’t. She didn’t know what to say, and found herself glad to see Julia reaching for slice number three, apparently satisfied to let the whole thing ride. Besides, a quick glance at her watch told her it was almost time to get going.
She drank some more coffee, ate some more scone, examined herself for crumbs again, discovered a few tiny specks on her skirt, and was brushing them off when she noticed that one of the burger-munching teenagers at the nearby table had turned to watch her, his attention glued to her hand as it moved over the lap of her skirt.
She drilled a cold stare into him and he snapped his eyes away.
“Did you get a load of him?” she said, looking aghast at Julia.
Julia chewed a mouthful of pizza, swallowed.
“That’s amore,” she said.
Megan made a face. “What?” she said. “Getting ogled by a high school kid with acne on his cheeks?”
Julia shrugged.
“At least he didn’t hold the bun,” she said with a sly grin.
Devon’s nightly set at Club Forreál would begin with a shadow dance.
A minute or two before she made her entrance, the DJ would key up something with a heavy beat and a smooth walking bass, and the lights would pulse in rhythm over and around the empty stage. Then she would step from the wings in a slight, clingy bikini top and sarong that gave her an illusion of nakedness in silhouette.
She was limber and acrobatic getting into her dance. As the men around the stage watched her slink out in front of the screen, they would realize she wasn’t all skin, and that would build on the tease while her movements became more explicitly sexual. The stage was large, with a couple of runways, and she was skillful at using every inch of it.