“ That’s right.” She pushed a swinging door aside and stepped into the modern kitchen. Her father loved the old house, but he’d had the kitchen completely redone. Cobalt blue tiled floor and counters, stainless steel range and oven that would be at home in the best of the world’s restaurants. She spent a lot of time in here with him, cooking, talking, laughing. The kitchen was his unofficial office, and on a small breakfast table sat his laptop and numerous papers.
“ He’s still working on that book? I thought he’d given it up,” Kevin said.
“ Still at it,” she said.
“ Nobody will ever print it,” he said.
“ I’ll get it printed. I still have a lot of clout in the publishing industry.”
“ Even so, it’ll never sell. Nobody cares about a race of people that died out two hundred years ago.”
“ They’re not all dead, but that’s not the point. It’ll sell because it’s good. People will want to know their story, how they lived, what they believed, because through them we learn more about ourselves. This book is so well written it would make you cry. He makes them come to life.”
“ Give me a break. Nobody wants to hear that Columbus killed the Caribs. Nobody cares about naked Indians. Nobody wants their idols trashed.”
“ Columbus didn’t kill them.”
“ You know what I mean. He started it.”
“ That’s like saying if my father gets drunk on your rum, your grandmother’s responsible. If she hadn’t had your mother, your mother wouldn’t have had you, and you wouldn’t have bought the rum. Where’d you get it by the way? You surely wouldn’t try and slip a case of rum by customs while you were smuggling in the coke.”
“ Margarita, last trip. I stopped by my place on the way over.”
“ You can set it by the sink,” she said, wondering if getting the rum for her father was the only reason he’d stopped off at his apartment.
“ Fine,” he said. By the time he’d laid the case on a long tiled counter she was leaving the kitchen and headed for the hallway. He turned to follow.
She heard him behind her as she entered the guest bedroom at the end of the hall. She opened a bureau drawer and took out a mirror and handed it to him. She eased the drawer shut with the eager anticipation she always felt when she did a test. It was the only time she allowed herself to use the drug.
“ Are they ready to ship?” she asked.
“ They sent five kilos with me. It’s all up front, to show their good faith. They want my principal to know they’re ready to go. Soon as I call them, the goods will be in route.” He untucked a shirt tail and wiped the mirror off. Then he blew his hot breath on it and wiped it again.
She pushed the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears as he lay the mirror on the bureau and pulled out a brown glass vial from his shirt pocket. She wet her lips with her tongue as he unscrewed the cap, and she started drumming her fingers against her thighs as he tapped the vial against the mirror, spilling out some of the white powder.
She sucked in her upper lip and gently bit down on it as he pulled out a credit card and a blue hundred dollar bill from his shirt pocket. He set the bill on the bureau and divided the cocaine into two equal white lines with the credit card. He picked up the blue bill and started rolling it up.
“ Put it away,” she said. “We’ll use mine.”
“ Got a problem with the local currency?” he said, tucking the bill back into his pocket.
“ The paper on these is better, they roll nicer.” She rolled the green US hundred dollar bill. She approached the mirror, put the rolled bill to her left nostril and inhaled. Then she did it again with the right. She closed her eyes, inhaled a deep breath through her nose and let the cocaine rush to her brain.
“ Well?” he said after a few seconds.
“ Exhilarating. You’ve done very well.”
“ I try.” He sounded smug, and from the tone of his voice she knew the real reason he’d stopped by his apartment. She could never prove it, because she’d never met the Salizars. It had to be that way, both because of her father and because there was no way they’d ever deal with a woman.
She opened her eyes and nailed him with her stare. He met her eyes with his own and for a few seconds they were locked together, a contest of wills. He grinned, looked away and she bit into her lower lip, enjoying the euphoric high and resisting the triumphant smile. The bastard had stolen some of her cocaine.
“ You made the papers again,” he said.
“ Really? What was it this time?”
“ Picture of us leaving the Red House Ball last week.” His voice had a haughty kind of sneer in it that put her on her guard.
“ And what else?” she asked. There was no reason the paper would print a week old picture. She was popular, but not that popular.
“ Headline implied that there might wedding bells in our future.”
“ That’s not so bad then,” she said.
“ Why did you agree to marry me?” he asked.
“ You’re exciting, you take risks, you’re in love with me, you come from a solid British family, you’re great in bed and you’re the only person in the world that understands me.”
“ We are good in bed together, aren’t we?” he said.
“ Yes,” she said, but she’d had better. Of course she could never tell him that. Because like all men, when he wasn’t serving his ego he was trying to serve his penis. And like most men he never seemed to get either one right, where the penis wanted to go, the ego followed, dragging along the wagging tail of a man, like an eager puppy anxious to please.
“ Why do you do it, the coke I mean? Don’t you have enough money already?”
“ I’ll have enough when I’m satisfied,” she said.
“ I’m sorry, I’ve spoken out of turn. It’s just that it doesn’t mix too good with our other business.” He looked at his watch. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. Life was never simple. She heard the tapping of the vial on the mirror again and exhaled, opening her eyes.
“ I won’t do another.” She was about to say more, but she was interrupted by the phone ringing in the other room. “I’ll be right back.” She dropped the rolled hundred on the bed. She left the door open on her way out and she was conscious of him watching her backside as she made her way down the hall to the living room. She knew he was licking his lips as her body moved beneath the tight summer dress, not a wiggle, not a bounce, but a natural, almost innocent teenage movement that locked men’s eyes onto her like they were radar trained. But she was no teenager and she was no innocent. They knew it and she knew it.
She turned back and saw him as he sat on the bed, she smiled, flicked the long hair out of her eyes again with her right hand as she picked up the phone with her left. “Ambassador Street’s residence,” she said with a Spanish accent, mimicking her Venezuelan maid.
“ Dani Street, please.” She recognized the smooth voice of George Chandee, only this night he didn’t sound as smooth as usual.
“ It’s me,” she said into the phone with her own voice. She looked down the hall, Kevin was off the bed and leaning in the bedroom doorway, staring down the hallway, watching her. She knew he could hear her every word. He looked at his watch. He wanted to do the cocaine, but he’d wait for her.
“ So you have an extra fiance I didn’t know about?” Chandee said over the phone.
“ I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“ A man named Broxton.”
“ Where did you meet him?” her voice turned wary.
“ On the plane. He told us about his marriage plans right after the bomb went off.”
“ Say again,” she said.
“ He said he was going to marry you.”
“ Not that, the other.”
“ The bomb?” Chandee said as Dani clenched her fist around the receiver and shot Kevin a cold glare.
“ Yeah, that.”
“ A bomb went off on the plane. We had a frightening flight. For awhile I didn’t think we were going to make it.” Now she knew why he wasn’t his usual smooth self.
