of sight with the snap of a finger. Let’s not get into what sort of leader I was. I don’t want to remember those days.”
“From what I know of you, you were a good leader, Paul. Rainey said you were the best and the brightest.”
“ ‘Was’ is the key word.”
“Paul, none of that matters. I mean, people have died, but you had no way of knowing they would die. I don’t believe that it was your fault for one minute, and I don’t see how you can believe it either. You defeated Martin Fletcher fair and square, and he couldn’t see his own guilt because he’s narcissistic.”
“Martin doesn’t hate me because I defeated him. He hates me because he thinks that I violated the warrior’s code he imagines he lives by. That I cheated and I wasn’t man enough to come after him head on. That I was responsible for his collapse.”
“Cheated him?”
“He thinks I framed him.”
“Did you?”
“It would have been dishonest, against the code, and a coward’s way out. But-”
“But?” she asked.
“But maybe sometimes things have to be done around corners. I mean, we make choices that seem better than the other alternatives.” He looked at her to see if he was saying too much, or not enough. Why burden her with his personal cross? “Hindsight is twenty-twenty. But in his mind I’m a coward, and maybe he’s right. I shouldn’t have arrested him. I should have shot him between the eyes while he was sitting across a table from me. Eye to eye, man to man. That the man would have understood. But I just didn’t have what it took. That was the right thing to do. Then I would deserve…” He stopped and looked at her. There were tears in his eyes. “I would deserve…”
“Everything you’ve thrown away.”
Suddenly Paul began to tremble, and he looked distressed, as if he were going to vomit, but he just began to cry, silent tears streaming down his cheek. Sherry held him tightly while his arms hung limp, and he cried like a child. He cried for a long time as she held him.
When he stopped crying, she could feel the wall going back up.
“See what a leader I am? I’m sorry, I’d better go.” He shifted his weight away from her.
“Why?”
“This really isn’t a good idea… I mean the wine and everything. I guess I should apologize for…”
“I could quit the job. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Do I look like someone who can’t find a job without making the boss? Plus you’re temporary here.”
“You’re serious?” Paul stared at her, studying her, suddenly seeing her differently from the way he had before.
“Dead serious.”
“Boy, are you setting yourself up for a disappointment.” He managed a nervous smile.
Paul stood beside the bed while Sherry undressed him slowly in the darkness. He was almost embarrassed. She peeled off the shirt, the pants, and the rest, and as she did, she covered the skin she was exposing with kisses. She ran her tongue over the bullet scars as she found them, nipped at the skin with her teeth, gently. Paul shivered; his wounded leg shook involuntarily, and he felt as if he were going to fall down, but he remained standing until she led him into the sheets. Then, with her back to him, she lit a candle and removed her clothes and draped them over the dresser slowly as he watched from the bed. It was like some wonderful adolescent dream. She turned, and as she did, her softly contoured buttocks became a triangle of dark pubic hair, and her shoulders gave way to her perfect breasts with small, dark nipples. She knelt into him and pressed her body against his torso. He kissed her breasts and her neck and pulled her down. They embraced and rolled toward the center of the bed, and Paul trembled like an awkward schoolboy about to get his first taste of love.
Later they were lying beside each other-he smoking a cigarette, she tracing words he couldn’t decipher on his chest with her finger. For the first time in five years he felt safe, if only for that moment. In a small apartment in Nashville, far from the stone walls outside his cabin, which he had assumed could shelter him. Even though she had said it didn’t bother her, he put the cigarette out after a couple of drags.
“You have a beautiful body,” she said. “For an old man, I mean.”
“So how old are you?”
“Small talk?” she giggled. “You know how old I am. You pulled my file and read it. I saw it open on your desk.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to…”
“Make conversation?”
“Something like that.”
She snuggled against him and twirled his chest hair with her finger. “My turn to open up? Okay, fair’s fair. Let’s see what my file didn’t tell you. My father was a biology professor, and my mom was Amerasian and taught painting. Only child. Spoiled rotten. Good childhood. Believed in Santa Claus until I was in junior high. Boy, did I feel like an idiot. Betrayed by my own parents, by commercial interests, by the media. Now, tell me about your childhood.”
“Boring stuff.”
“After I finish, okay? Will you?”
Paul nodded.
“You’re the fourth man I’ve ever slept with. That’s due to a natural shyness, not lack of want. Bert, my high- school sweetheart and first husband, was the first.”
“You’ve been married.”
“Yes. It lasted through our freshman year, when he found his next true love. Then I had this year-long rebound with my western-civilization professor who looked like Mussolini. Then I had a long romance with an archaeologist in graduate school, and now there’s you.”
“It’s been a while for me, too.”
“I can imagine. Living on a mountain in Bear Butt, Wyoming.”
“Montana.”
“Same thing. What, they don’t have girls there?”
“My wife, Laura, was the last. Been about six years, I guess.”
The memory of the last time they had made love sank a shaft through his soul. It was something he had managed to repress. Was it sex? No, it had been something else. Anger, rage, and pain. God, had that been he? How could he have done that to Laura? He remembered her face, the tears, which had given way to a look of betrayal, hurt, and finally something close to blind hatred.
He felt as if he had been shot through, hollow, and there was a taste in his mouth that was coppery, acrid. He wanted to get up and run, but he was affixed to the spot. Later that same night there had been a terrible fight. He remembered how it had started… it was too painful… was that why he hadn’t remembered?
“You all right?” she asked, shattering the thought.
He smiled as best he could through the curtain of pain and confusion. What else had he repressed that was crucial? What else? Why did he think of Barnett and Hill so much? He had hardly known them. Had he? Suddenly there was a swarm of memories swirling so fast that he couldn’t see them clearly, but he had the sense that they were important.
“Hope this was worth breaking the fast for.”
Paul laughed nervously-distracted and filled with anxiety and… fear. “It was, Sherry. This was wonderful for me.”
“Your childhood. Remember?”
Not now! Jesus, not now. Something important is happening.
Sherry sat up and looked down at him, realizing something was wrong. “Are you all right? What the hell is going on? Did I say something?” There was pain in her voice. “Paul?”
“I’m fine.”
