Chapter 43

He walked into work for the first time that day about three in the afternoon, simply to make an appearance and to see if anyone—like Morgan—had called. “How are you feeling?” asked Chet with some concern.

“It’s my back,” complained Eric. “All that damn shoveling. Well, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” He booted up his computer, then thumbed through his email. All he ever got, really, was the stuff that was routed everywhere: the ladies’ room on the first floor would be shut down for repairs from ten a.m. until approximately noon on Thursday; a reminder that all soft drink cans were to go into the appropriate recycling bin in the lunchroom, and so on. Those missives didn’t exactly inspire in him any great yearning for the communal life of the corporation. Instead, they tended to chill his desire to be gainfully employed on a daily, even nine to five, basis.

“That information security woman was looking for you, I think,” said Chet, peering around the cubicle wall that separated the two of them. “She came in and looked around. I told her you were out sick, but then she acted like she was just walking through and not trying to find you.”

“She longs for me,” Eric explained to him. Chet looked as if he didn’t know whether to believe Eric or not. “Really,” said Eric. “They all do. They tell me I’m magnetic. But it’ll wear off in time.” He got up. “I’m dying of thirst,” he said.

As he walked out, he heard Chet say to Rick Lennings across the aisle. “I can’t believe it. He never does any work. They’re going to can his butt.” They were going to can his butt, Eric agreed. But it wouldn’t be because he wasn’t peddling as fast as he could. His fatal error was in being too successful in a convoluted sort of way. He had found out stuff about their information security leaks, but it all hadn’t come down to a simple, easily understood package.

So Kitani was correct. Management wouldn’t back him against Ryan. But why had Ryan turned against him so viciously, even violently? This was the first time Eric had really asked himself this question. Until he had stopped to ask it—now—he had thought he knew the answer: Ryan was jealous of Eric because of Helen. Considering it in a colder light, however, he wasn’t so sure. Ryan might have reacted in the extreme because Eric was getting close to something, some illicit thing in which Ryan was involved—like his connection with either Morgan or Kitani. But he had seen no threads to link Ryan with either of them, just Eric’s own suspicion.

He walked past the water fountain to Helen’s door, where he knocked softly and was told to come in. He entered and closed the door behind him, putting a finger over his mouth to remind her—if she could forget—that her office, too, was bugged. She had been upset when they had found out, then angry—mostly because someone had listened to the two of them making love. Now he knew, because of what Kitani had said the other night, that the abstract ‘someone’ was Kitani. He couldn’t picture Kitani listening to an entire tape of Helen and him making love, and yet, anyone doing a thorough surveillance would have to at least skim their lovemaking, to make sure that no pertinent information was passed over.

“Want to go out and have a cigarette?” he asked her. Neither of them smoked. Her eyes showed some minor appreciation of his little witticism, and she picked up her purse.

“Sure,” she agreed, and followed him out of the building. They found an unsheltered spot near some actual smokers who were braving the weather to satisfy their addiction. “It’s cold,” Helen griped. “I don’t want to stand out here too long and we really still shouldn’t be seen together. You’re blowing your cover. What is it?”

“A guy can be seen with a gorgeous chick any time, any place,” he corrected her. “You were looking for me before.”

“Ryan’s on the rampage against you, complaining that you were arrested in Miami—stuff like that—which I told him at the time, but it seems he forgot. He dislikes you. Says you’re never here. Says you and I lied by not telling him we knew one another.” She put her arms around herself and tapped her feet against the asphalt for the illusion of warming up.

“Nothing I can do about it,” he responded. He pulled her closer to the building and stood in front of her, protecting her from the wind. She seemed to think he was making an overture toward her and she moved away.

“You went to see your ex-wife in Virginia?” she asked, deadpan. He had thought he might be able to slide by on that one.

“Yeah, I had to help her out. I did a good guy thing,” he said.

“Good guy? Did you sleep with her?”

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said.

“To get back at me for sleeping with Ryan?”

“No.”

She punched him in the chest, not like a real punch, because she could punch for real, but like an angry-woman punch. “At least you could lie about that,” she said. She had moisture leaking out of one eye, but he thought it due to the wind.

“I didn’t mean to,” he tried to explain. “It was stupid. Two days and she never asked how David was.”

“You’re entitled to do exactly as you please.”

“You say that because we’re not married. That’s why we ought to be. If I had been able to tell myself, ‘No, I can’t sleep with Michelle, because I’m married to Helen,’ I would have known where to draw the line. I’m just a dumb guy. It wasn’t clear enough for me.” He was in earnest. “So let’s get married and then it’ll be easy for both of us to know what’s what.”

She shook her head. “I don’t like the way you put that, if that was a proposal.” He felt absurdly hurt. Deep inside was the notion that women said ‘yes’ when you asked them to marry you. The marriage proposal was the moment they had been waiting for. He steeled himself to say the L word. He knew that would clinch his sale. She had turned away and was walking off, and he had to trot a few steps to catch up with her.

He grabbed her hand. “Goddamn it. You’re making me wrong again,” he growled. He pulled her around and looked into her eyes. “I love you. I do love you. That’s why I want to marry you. You’re the person I want to have difficult times with.” He leaned forward and tried to kiss her.

She pushed him away. “All right,” she said calmly, then continued to walk determinedly up the path toward the entrance.

He pursued her. “Is that ‘all right’ a yes?”

“It means I heard you,” she said. “It’s a definite maybe.”