"You were quite upset," Dorfman said. "It was an unhappy ending to a love affair."

"Yes."

"So you might say that Meredith Johnson is the reason you are here in Seattle," Dorfman said. "Because of her, you changed your career, your life. You made a new life here. And many people knew this fact of your past. Garvin knew. And Blackburn knew. That is why he was so careful to ask you if you could work with her. Everyone was so worried about how it would be. But you reassured them, Thomas, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And your reassurances were false."

Sanders hesitated. "I don't know, Max."

"Come, now. You know exactly. It must have been like a bad dream, a nightmare from your past, to hear that this person you had run away from was now coming to Seattle, pursuing you up here, and that she would be your superior in the company. Taking the job that you wanted. That you thought you deserved."

"I don't know . . ."

"Don't you? In your place, I would be angry. I would want to be rid of her, yes? She hurt you once very badly, and you would not want to be hurt again. But what choice did you have? She had the job, and she was Garvin's protege. She was protected by Garvin's power, and he would not hear a word against her. True?"

"True."

"And for many years you had not been close to Garvin, because Garvin didn't really want you to take the Seattle job in the first place. He had offered it to you, expecting you to turn it down. Garvin likes proteges. He likes admirers at his feet. He does not like his admirers to pack up and leave for another city. So Garvin was disappointed with you. Things were never the same. And now suddenly here was this woman out of your past, a woman with Garvin's backing. So, what choice did you have? What could you do with your anger?"

His mind was spinning, confused. When he thought back to the events of that first day-the rumors, the announcement by Blackburn, the first meeting with her-he did not remember feeling anger. His feelings had been so complicated on that day, but he had not felt anger, he was sure of it . . .

"Thomas, Thomas. Stop dreaming. There is no time for it."

Sanders was shaking his head. He couldn't think clearly.

"Thomas, you arranged all this. Whether you admit it or not, whether you are aware of it or not. On some level, what has happened is exactly what you intended. And you made sure it would happen."

He found himself remembering Susan. What had she said at the restaurant?

Why didn't you tell me? I could have belped you.

And she was right, of course. She was an attorney; she could have advised him if he had told her what happened the first night. She would have told him what to do. She could have gotten him out of it. But he hadn't told her.

There's not mucb we can do now.

"You wanted this confrontation, Thomas."

And then Garvin: She was your girlfriend, and you didn't like it when she dropped you. So now you want to pay her back.

"You worked all week to ensure this confrontation."

"Max-"

"So don't tell me you are a victim here. You're not a victim. You call yourself a victim because you don't want to take responsibility for your life. Because you are sentimental and lazy and naive. You think other people should take care of you."

"Jesus, Max," Sanders said.

"You deny your part in this. You pretend to forget. You pretend to be unaware. And now you pretend to be confused."

"Max-"

"Oh! I don't know why I bother with you. How many hours do you have until this meeting? Twelve hours? Ten? Yet you waste your time talking to a crazy old man." He spun in his wheelchair. "If I were you, I would get to work."

"Meaning what?"

"Well, we know what your intentions are, Thomas. But what are her intentions, hmmm? She is solving a problem, too. She has a purpose here. So: what is the problem she is solving?"

"I don't know," Sanders said.

"Clearly. But how will you find out?"

Lost in thought, he walked the five blocks to 11 Terrazzo. Fernandez was waiting for him outside. They went in together.

"Oh Christ," Sanders said, as he looked around.

"All the usual suspects," Fernandez said.

In the far section straight ahead, Meredith Johnson was having dinner with Bob Garvin. Two tables away, Phil Blackburn was eating with his wife, Doris, a thin bespectacled woman who looked like an accountant. Near them, Stephanie Kaplan was having dinner with a young man in his twenties-probably her son at the university, Sanders thought. And over to the right, by the window, the Conley-White people were in the midst of a working dinner, their briefcases open at their feet, papers scattered all over the table. Ed Nichols sat with John Conley to his right, and Jim Daly to his left. Daly was speaking into a tiny dictating machine.

"Maybe we should go somewhere else," Sanders said.

"No," Fernandez said. "They've already seen us. We can sit in the corner over there."

Carmine came over. "Mr. Sanders," he said with a formal nod.

"We'd like a table in the corner, Carmine."

"Yes of course, Mr. Sanders."

They sat to one side. Fernandez was staring at Meredith and Garvin. "She could be his daughter," she said.

"Everybody says so."

"It's quite striking."

The waiter brought menus. Nothing on it appealed to Sanders, but they ordered anyway. Fernandez was looking steadily at Garvin. "He's a fighter, isn't he."

"Bob? Famous fighter. Famous tough guy."

"She knows how to play him." Fernandez turned away and pulled papers out of her briefcase. "This is the contract that Blackburn sent back. It is all in order, except for two clauses. First, they claim the right to terminate you if you are shown to have committed a felony on the job.

"Uh-huh." He wondered what they might mean.

"And this second clause claims the right to terminate you if you have `failed to demonstrate satisfactory performance in the job as measured by industry standards.' What does that mean?"

He shook his head. "They must have something in mind." He told her about the conversation he had overheard in the conference room.

As usual, Fernandez showed no reaction. "Possible," she said.

"Possible? They're going to do it."

"I meant legally. It's possible that they intend something of this sort. And it would work."

"Why?"

"A harassment claim brings up the entire performance of an employee. If there is dereliction, even a very old or minor dereliction, it may be used to dismiss the claim. I had one client who worked for a company for ten years. But the company was able to demonstrate that the employee had lied on the original application form, and the case was dismissed. The employee was fired."

"So this comes down to my performance."

"It may. Yes."

He frowned. What did they have on him?

She is solving a problem, too. So: wbat is the problem she is solving?

Beside him, Fernandez pulled the tape recorder out of her pocket. "There's a couple of other things I want to go over," she said. "There's something that happens early on in the tape."

"Okay."

"I want you to listen."

She gave the player to him. He held it close to his ear.

He heard his own voice saying clearly, ". . . we'll face that later. I've given her your thoughts, and she's talking to Bob now, so presumably we'll go into the meeting tomorrow taking that position. Well, anyway, Mark, if there is a significant change in all this, I'll contact you before the meeting tomorrow, and"

"Forget that phone," Meredith's voice said loudly, and then there was the sound of rustling, like fabric, and a sort of hissing sound, and a dull thunk as the phone was dropped. The momentary sharp crackle of static.

More rustling. Then silence.

A grunt. Rustling.

As he listened, he tried to imagine the action in the room. They must have moved over to the couch, because now the voices were lower, less distinct. He heard himself say, "Meredith, wait-"

"Oh God," she said, "I've wanted you all day."

More rustling. Heavy breathing. It was hard to be certain what was happening. A little moan from her. More rustling.

She said, "Oh God, you feel so good, I can't stand the bastard touching me. Those stupid glasses. Oh! I'm so hot, I haven't had a decent fuck-"

More rustling. Static crackle. Rustling. More rustling. Sanders listened with a sense of disappointment. He could not really create images for what was going on-and he had been there. This tape would not be persuasive to someone else. Most of it sounded like obscure noise. With long periods of silence.

"Meredith-"

"Oooh. Don't talk. No! No . . ." He heard her gasping, in little breaths. Then more silence.

Fernandez said, "That's enough."

Sanders put the player down and shut it off. He shook his head.

"You can't tell anything from this. About what was really going on." "You can tell enough," Fernandez said. "And don't you start worrying about the evidence. That's my job. But you heard her first statements?" She consulted her notepad. "Where she says, `I've wanted you all day'? And then she says, `Oh God you feel so good, I can't stand the bastard touching me. Those stupid glasses, oh I'm so hot, I haven't had a decent fuck.' You heard that part?"

"Yes. I heard it."

"Okay. Who is she talking about?"

"Talking about?"

"Yes. Who is the bastard she can't stand touching her?"

"I assume her husband," Sanders said. "We were talking about him earlier. Before the tape."

"Tell me what was said earlier."

"Well, Meredith was complaining about having to pay alimony to her husband, and then she said her husband was terrible in bed. She said, `I hate a man who doesn't know what he's doing.' "

"So you think `I can't stand the bastard touching me' refers to her husband?"

"Yes."

"I don't," Fernandez said. "They were divorced months ago. The divorce was bitter. The husband hates her. He has a girlfriend now; he's taken her to Mexico. I don't think she means the husband."

"Then who?"

"I don't know."

Sanders said, "I suppose it could be anybody."

"I don't think it's just anybody. Listen again. Listen to how she sounds."

He rewound the tape, held the player to his ear. After a moment, he put the player down. "She sounds almost angry."

Fernandez nodded. "Resentful is the term I'd use. She's in the midst of this episode with you, and she's talking about someone else. `The bastard.' It's as if she wants to pay somebody back. Right at that moment, she's getting even."

Sanders said, "I don't know. Meredith's a talker. She always talked about other people. Old boyfriends, that stuff. She's not what you'd call a romantic."

He remembered one time when they were lying on the bed in the apartment in Sunnyvale, feeling a sort of relaxed glow. A Sunday afternoon. Listening to kids laughing in the street outside. His hand resting on her thigh, feeling the sweat. And in this thoughtful way she said, "You know, I once went out with this Norwegian guy, and he had a curved dick. Curved like a sword, sort of bent over to the side, and he-"

"Jesus, Meredith."

"What's the matter? It's true. He really did."

"Not now."

Whenever this sort of thing happened, she'd sigh, as if she was obliged to put up with his excessive sensitivity. "Why is it that guys always want to think they're the only ones?"

"We don't. We know we're not. Just not now, okay?"

And she'd sigh again . . .

Sitting in the restaurant, Fernandez said, "Even if it's not unusual for her to talk during sex-even if she is indiscreet or distancing-who is she talking about here?"

Sanders shook his head. "I don't know, Louise."

"And she says she can't stand him touching her . . . as if she has no choice. And she mentions his silly glasses." She looked over at Meredith, who was eating quietly with Garvin. "Him?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Everybody says no. Everybody says Bob isn't screwing her."

"Everybody could be wrong."

Sanders shook his head. "It'd be incest."

"You're probably right."

The food came. Sanders poked at his pasta puttanesca, picking out the olives. He wasn't feeling hungry. Beside him, Fernandez ate heartily. They had ordered the same thing.

Sanders looked over at the Conley-White people. Nichols was holding up a clear plastic sheet of 35-millimeter transparencies. Slides. Of what? he wondered. His half-frame glasses were perched on his nose. He seemed to be taking a long time. Beside him, Conley glanced at his watch and said something about the time. The others nodded. Conley glanced over at Johnson, then turned back to his papers.

Daly said something. ". . . have that figure?"

"It's here," Conley said, pointing to the sheet.

"This is really very good," Fernandez said. "You shouldn't let it get cold."

"Okay." He took a bite. It had no taste. He put the fork down.

She wiped her chin with her napkin. "You know, you never really told me why you stopped. At the end."

"My friend Max Dorfman says I set it all up."

"Uh-huh," Fernandez said.

"Do you think that, too?"

"I don't know. I was just asking what you were feeling, at the time. At the time you pulled away."

He shrugged. "I just didn't want to."

"Uh-huh. Didn't feel like it when you got there, huh?"

"No, I didn't." Then he said, "You really want to know what it was? She coughed."

"She coughed?" Fernandez said.

Sanders saw himself again in the room, his trousers down around his knees, bent over Meredith on the office couch. He remembered think ing, What the hell am I doing? And she had her hands on his shoulders, tugging him toward her. "Oh please . . . No . . . No . . ."

And then she turned her head aside and coughed.

That cough was what did it. That was when he sat back, and said, "You're right," and got off the couch.

Fernandez frowned. "I have to say," Fernandez said. "A cough doesn't seem like a big deal."

"It was." He pushed his plate away. "I mean, you can't cough at a time like that."

"Why? Is this some etiquette I don't know about?" Fernandez said. "No coughing in the clinch?"

"It's not that at all," Sanders said. "It's just what it means."

"I'm sorry, you've lost me. What does a cough mean?"

He hesitated. "You know, women always think that men don't know what's going on. There's this whole idea that men can't find the place, they don't know what to do, all that stuff. How men are stupid about sex.

"I don't think you're stupid. What does a cough mean?"

"A cough means you're not involved."

She raised her eyebrows. "That seems a little extreme."

"It's just a fact."

"I don't know. My husband has bronchitis. He coughs all the time."

"Not at the last moment, he doesn't."

She paused, thinking about it. "Well, he certainly does right afterward. He breaks out in a fit of coughing. We always laugh about how he does that."

"Right after is different. But at the moment, right in the intense moment, I'm telling you nobody coughs."

More images flashed through his mind. Her cheeks turn red. Her neck is blotchy, or her upper chest. Nipples no longer hard. They were hard at first, but not now. The eyes get dark, sometimes purple below. Lips swollen. Breathing changes. Sudden surging heat. Shift in the hips, shifting rhythm, tension but something else, something liquid. Forehead frowning. Wincing. Biting. So many different ways, but

"Nobody coughs," he said again.

And then he felt a kind of sudden embarrassment, and pulled his plate back, and took a bite of pasta. He wanted a reason not to say more, because he had the feeling that he had overstepped the rules, that there was still this area, this kind of knowledge, this awareness that everyone pretended didn't exist . . .

Fernandez was staring at him curiously. "Did you read about this somewhere?"

He shook his head, chewing.

"Do men discuss it? Things like this?"

He shook his head, no.

"Women do."

"I know." He swallowed. "But anyway, she coughed, and that was why I stopped. She wasn't involved, and I was very-angry about it, I guess. I mean she was lying there panting and moaning, but she was really uninvolved. And I felt . . ."

"Exploited?"

"Something like that. Manipulated. Sometimes I think maybe if she hadn't coughed right then . . ." Sanders shrugged.

"Maybe I should ask her," Fernandez said, nodding her head in Meredith's direction.

Sanders looked up and saw that she was coming over to their table. "Oh, hell."

"Calmly, calmly. Everything's fine."

Meredith came over, a big smile on her face. "Hello, Louise. Hello, Tom." Sanders started to get up. "Don't get up, Tom, please." She rested her hand on his shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. "I just came by for a moment." She was smiling radiantly. She looked exactly like the confident boss, stopping to say hello to a couple of colleagues. Back at her table, Sanders saw Garvin paying the bill. He wondered if he would come over, too.

"Louise, I just wanted to say no hard feelings," Meredith said. "Everybody had a job to do. I understand that. And I think it served a purpose, clearing the air. I just hope we can go on productively from here."

Meredith was standing behind Sanders's chair as she talked. He had to twist his head and crane his neck to look at her.

Fernandez said, "Don't you want to sit down?"

"Well, maybe for a minute."

Sanders stood to get her a chair. He was thinking that to the Conley people, all this would look exactly right. The boss not wanting to intrude, waiting to be pressed by her co-workers to join them. As he brought the chair, he glanced over and saw that Nichols was looking at them, peering over his glasses. So was young Conley.

Meredith sat down. Sanders pushed the chair in for her. "You want anything?" Fernandez said solicitously.

"I just finished, thanks."

"Coffee? Anything?"

"I'm fine, thanks."

Sanders sat down. Meredith leaned forward. "Bob's been telling me about his plans to take this division public. It's very exciting. It looks like full speed ahead."

Sanders watched her with astonishment.

"Now, Bob has a list of names for the new company. When we spin it off next year. See how these sound to you: SpeedCore, SpeedStar, PrimeCore, Talisan, and Tensor. I think SpeedCore makes racing parts for stock cars. SpeedStar is right on the money but maybe too right on. PrimeCore sounds like a mutual fund. How about Talisan or Tensor?"

"Tensor is a lamp," Fernandez said.

"Okay. But Talisan is pretty good, I think."

"The Apple-IBM joint venture is called Taligent," Sanders said.

"Oh. You're right. Too close. How about MicroDyne? That's not bad. Or ADG, for Advanced Data Graphics? Do either of those work, do you think?"

"MicroDyne is okay."

"I thought so, too. And there was one more . . . AnoDyne."

"That's a painkiller," Fernandez said.

"What is?"

"An anodyne is a painkiller. A narcotic."

"Oh. Forget that. Last one, SynStar."

"Sounds like a drug company."

"Yeah, it does. But we've got a year to come up with a better one. And MicroDyne isn't bad, to start. Sort of combining micro with dynamo. Good images, don't you think?"

Before they could answer, she pushed her chair back. "I've got to go. But I thought you'd like to hear the thinking. Thanks for your input. Good night, Louise. And Tom, I'll see you tomorrow." She shook hands with them both and crossed the room to Garvin. Together she and Garvin went over to the Conley table to say hello.

Sanders stared at her. " `Good images,' " he repeated. "Christ. She's talking about names for a company, but she doesn't even know what the company is."

"It was quite a show."

"Sure," Sanders said. "She's all show. But it had nothing to do with us. It's for them." He nodded toward the Conley-White people, sitting across the restaurant. Garvin was shaking hands all around, and Meredith was talking to Jim Daly. Daly made a joke and she laughed, throwing her head back, showing her long neck.

"The only reason she talked to us was so that when I get fired tomorrow, she won't be seen as having planned it."

Fernandez was paying the bill. "You want to go?" she said. "I still have some things to check."

"Really? What do you have to check?"

"Alan may have gotten something more for us. There's a possibility."

At the Conley table, Garvin was saying good-bye. He gave a final wave, then crossed the room to talk to Carmine.

Meredith remained at the Conley-White table. She was standing behind John Conley, with her hands resting on his shoulders while she talked to Daly and Ed Nichols. Ed Nichols said something, peering over his glasses, and Meredith laughed, and came around to look over his shoulder at a sheet of figures he was holding. Her head was very close to Nichols. She nodded, talked, pointed to the sheet.

You're cbecking the wrong company.

Sanders stared at Meredith, smiling and joking with the three men from Conley-White. What had Phil Blackburn said to him yesterday?

The thing is, Tom, Meredith Johnson is very well connected in this company. She bas impressed a lot of important people.

Like Garvin.

Not only Garvin. Meredith bas built a power base in several areas.

Conley- White?

Yes. Tbere, too.

Alongside him, Fernandez stood up. Sanders stood and said, "You know what, Louise?"

"What?"

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