Part 35 (2/2)

She left him off at the spot where he was supposed to meet Luke and the rest of his planning team to go over schematics and theory and practice. All of these discussions could happen online -- they did, in fact -- but there was something about the face-to-face connection. The meeting ran six hours before he was finally saved by his impending flight to Nebraska.

Sleepdep came down on him like a hammer as he checked in for his flight and began the ritual security-clearing buck-and-wing. He missed a cue or two and ended up getting a ”detailed hand search” but even that didn't wake him up. He fell asleep in the waiting room and in the plane, in the taxi to his hotel.

But when he dropped down onto his hotel bed, he couldn't sleep. The hotel was the spitting image of the one he'd left in Wisconsin, minus Hilda and the musky smell the two of them had left behind after their roll in the hay.

It had been years since he'd had a regular girlfriend and he'd never missed it. There had been women, high-libido fatkins girls and random strangers, some who came back for a date or two. But no one who'd meant anything or whom he'd wanted to mean anything. The closest he'd come had been -- he sat up with a start and realized that the last woman he'd had any strong feelings for had been Suzanne Church.

Kettlewell emerged from New Work rich. He'd taken home large bonuses every year that Kodacell had experienced growth -- a better metric than turning an actual ahem profit -- and he'd invested in a diverse portfolio that had everything from soybeans to software in it, along with real estate (oops) and fine art. He believed in the New Work, believed in it with every fiber of his being, but an undiverse portfolio was flat-out irresponsible.

The New Work crash had killed the net worth of a lot of irresponsible people.

Living in the Caymans got boring after a year. The kids hated the international school, scuba diving amazed him by going from endlessly, meditatively fascinating to deadly dull in less than a year. He didn't want to sail. He didn't want to get drunk. He didn't want to join the creepy zillionaires on their s.e.x tours of the Caribbean and wouldn't have even if his wife would have stood for it.

A year after the New Work crash, he filed a 1040 with the IRS and paid them forty million dollars in back taxes and penalties, and repatriated his wealth to an American bank.

Now he lived in a renovated housing project on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, all upscale now with restored, kitschy window-bars and vintage linoleum and stucco ceilings. He had four units over two floors, with cleverly knocked-through walls and a spiral staircase. The kids freaking loved the staircase.

Suzanne Church called him from SFO to let him know that she was on her way in, having cleared security and customs after a scant hour. He found himself unaccountably nervous about her now, and realized with a little giggle that he had something like a crush on her. Nothing serious -- nothing his wife needed to worry about -- but she was smart and funny and attractive and incisive and fearless, and it was a h.e.l.l of a combination.

The kids were away at school and his wife was having a couple of days camping with the girls in Yosemite, which facts lent a little charge to Suzanne's impending visit. He looked up the AirBART schedule and calculated how long he had until she arrived at the 24th Street station, a brisk 20 minute walk from his place.

Minutes, just minutes. He checked the guest-room and then did a quick mirror check. His months in the Caymans had given him a deep tan that he'd kept up despite San Francisco's grey skies. He still looked like a surfer, albeit with just a little daddy-paunch -- he'd gained more weight through his wife's pregnancies than she had and only hard, aneurysm-inducing cycling over and around Potrero Hill had knocked it off again. His jeans' neat rows of pockets and Mobius seams were a little outdated, but they looked good on him, as did his Hawai'ian print s.h.i.+rt with its machine-screw motif.

Finally he plopped down to read a book and waited for Suzanne, and managed to get through a whole page in the intervening ten minutes.

”Kettlebelly!” she hollered as she came through the door. She took him in a hug that smelled of stale airplane and restless sleep and gave him a thorough squeezing.

She held him at arm's length and they sized each other up. She'd been a well-preserved mid-forties when he'd seen her last, b.u.t.toned-down in a California-yoga-addict way. Now she was years older, and her time in Russia had given her a forest of smile-lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She had a sad, wise turn to her face that he'd never seen there before, like a painted Pieta. Her hands had gone a little wrinkly, her knuckles more prominent, but her fingernails were beautifully manicured and her clothes were stylish, foreign, exotic and European.

She laughed huskily and said, ”You haven't changed a bit.”

”Ouch,” he said. ”I'm older and wiser, I'll have you know.”

”It doesn't show,” she said. ”I'm older, but no wiser.”

He took her hand and looked at the simple platinum band on her finger. ”But you're married now -- nothing wises you up faster in my experience.”

She looked at her hand. ”Oh, that. No. That's just to keep the wolves at bay. Married women aren't the same kinds of targets that single ones are. Give me water, and then a beer, please.”

Glad to have something to do, he busied himself in the kitchen while she prowled the place. ”I remember when these places were bombed-out, real ghettos.”

”What did you mean about being a target?”

”St Pete's, you know. Lawless state. Everyone's on the make. I had a bodyguard most of the time, but if I wanted to go to a restaurant, I didn't want to have to fend off the dating-service mafiyeh who wanted to offer me the deal of a lifetime on a green-card marriage.”

”Jeez.”

<script>