riding an elevator alone, thinking about lunch.
She shed the vest and took her room service scotch to the window. Her clothing was folded on a chair nearby. He wanted to spend a day in silence, in his meditation cell, just looking at her face and body, as an exercise in Tao, or fasting with the mind. He didn't ask her what she knew about the credible threat. He wasn't interested in details, not yet, and Torval wouldn't have said much, anyway, to the bodyguards.
'Where is he now?'
'Who?'
'You know.'
'He's in the lobby. Torval? Watching them come and go. Danko's in the hall outside.'
'Who's that?'
'Danko. My partner.'
'He's new.'
'I'm new. He's been watching your back for some time now, ever since those wars in the Balkans. He's a veteran.'
Eric sat cross-legged on the bed popping peanuts in his mouth and watching her.
'What's he going to say to you about this?'
'Torval? Is that who you're talking about?' She was amused. 'Say his name.'
'What's he going to say to you?'
'Just so you're safe. That's his job,' she said. 'Men get possessive. What. You don't know this?'
'I heard the rumor. But the fact is I technically speaking went off duty an hour ago. So it's basically my time we're dealing with here.'
He liked her. The more he knew Torval would hate her, the more he liked her. Torval would hate her hotbloodedly for this. He'd spend weeks glaring out at her from under his stormy brows.
'Do you find this interesting?'
She said, 'What?'
'Protecting someone in danger.'
He wanted her to move slightly left so that her hip would catch the glow of the table lamp nearby.
'What makes you willing to do this? Take this risk.'
'Maybe you're worth it,' she said.
She dipped a finger in her drink, then forgot to lick it. 'Maybe it's just the pay. The pay's pretty good. The risk? I don't think about the risk. I figure the risk is yours.
You're the man in the crosshairs.'
She thought this was funny.
'But is it interesting?'
'It's interesting to be near a man somebody wants to kill.'
'You know what they say, don't you?'
'What?'
'The logical extension of business is murder.' This was funny too.
He said, 'Move a little left.'
'Move a little left.'
'There. Nice. Perfect.'
Her skin was foxy brown, hair braided close to the scalp.
'What kind of weapon did he give you?'
'Stun gun. Doesn't trust me yet with deadly force.' She approached the bed and took the glass of vodka out of his hand. He could not stop tossing peanuts in his mouth.
'You ought to eat more healthy.'
He said, 'Today is different. How many volts at your disposal?'
'One hundred thousand. Jam your nervous system. Drop you to your knees. Like this,' she said.
She poured a few drops of vodka on his genitals. It stung, it burned. She laughed when she did it and he wanted her to do it again. She poured a trickle more and bent over to lap it off, to tongue-scrub him in vodka, and then knelt astride him. She had a glass in each hand and tried to keep her balance while they bounced and laughed.
He finished off her scotch and ate peanuts by the fistful while she showered. He watched her shower and thought she was a woman of straps and belts. At some level she would never be naked.
Then he stood by the bed to watch her dress. She took her time, the body armor fastened across her torso, the pants about to be fastened, shoes next, and was fitting the waistband holster onto her hip when she saw him standing in his shorts.
He said, 'Stun me. I mean it. Draw the gun and shoot.
I want you to do it, Kendra. Show me what it feels like. I'm looking for more. Show me something I don't know. Stun me to my DNA. Come on, do it. Click the switch. Aim and fire. I want all the volts the weapon holds. Do it. Shoot it. Now'
The car was parked outside the hotel and across the street from the Barrymore, where a group of smokers gathered at intermission, tucked under the marquee.
He sat in the car borrowing yen and watching his fund's numbers sink into the mist on several screens. Torval stood in the rain with arms folded. He was a lone figure in the street, facing a series of empty loading docks.
The yen spree was releasing Eric from the influence of his neocortex. He felt even freer than usual, attuned to the registers of his lower brain and gaining distance from the need to take inspired action, make original judgments, maintain independent principles and convictions, all the reasons why people are fucked up and birds and rats are not.
The stun gun probably helped. The voltage had jellified his musculature for ten or fifteen minutes and he'd rolled about on the hotel rug, electroconvulsive and strangely elated, deprived of his faculties of reason.
But he could think now, well enough to understand what was happening. There were currencies tumbling everywhere. Bank failures were spreading. He found the humidor and lit a cigar. Strategists could not explain the speed and depth of the fall. They opened their mouths and words came out. He knew it was the yen. His actions regarding the yen were causing storms of disorder. He was so leveraged, his firm's portfolio large and sprawling, linked crucially to the affairs of so many key institutions, all reciprocally vulnerable, that the whole system was in danger.
He smoked and watched, feeling strong, proud, stupid and superior. He was also bored and a little dismissive. They were making too much of it. He thought it would end in a day or two and he was about to code a word to the driver when he noticed that people under the marquee were staring at the car, battered and paint-sprayed.
He lowered the window and looked more closely at one of the women standing there. At first he thought it was Elise Shifrin. This is how he sometimes thought of his wife, by full name, due to her relative celebrity in the social columns and the fashion books. Then he wasn't sure who it was, either because his view was partly obstructed or because the woman in question had a cigarette in her hand.
He forced open the door and walked across the street and Torval was at his side, ably containing his rage. 'I need to know where you're going.'
'Wait and learn,' he said.
The woman looked away when he approached. It was Elise, noncommittally, in profile. 'You smoke since when.'
She answered without turning to face him, speaking from a seeming distance.
'I took it up when I was fifteen. It's one of those things a girl takes up. It tells her she's more than a skinny body no one looks at. There's a certain drama in her life.'
'She notices herself. Then other people notice her. Then she marries one of them. Then they go to dinner,' he said.
Torval and Danko flanked the limo and it moved deliberately down the street in light taxi traffic, husband and wife assessing the prospects of immediate eating places. One of the screens displayed a guide to the street's restaurants and Elise chose the old small reliable subterranean bistro. Eric looked out the window and saw a crack in the wall called Little Tokyo.
The place was empty.
