001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029    030    031     Chapter 10  028-031    032     033     034     035     036     037     038     039     040

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  041
Chapter 11 (10 of 10): The Mayor

Bob winced at the question.  The press conference had been ideal up this point, but it had to happen sooner or later.  He crossed his fingers.

But Rany was polished as a pro.

“I’m glad you asked that question, sir,” he said.  There was a drizzle of laughter.  “I mean that,” he went on, stepping out from behind the protective covering of the speaker’s stand and unbuttoning his coat as if to reveal he had no tricks up his sleeve.

Great symbolism, Bob thought.  An instinctive politician!  He realized he had felt the first tiny electrical surge of excitement that maybe, just maybe this thing could go all the way.  He inched forward on his seat as Bob, spreading his hands wide, began to talk.

“It’s very simple, ladies and gentlemen, and I won’t try to complicate it.”  His voice was soothing yet commanding, and it was full of conviction.  Bob observed with great interest that the audience now gave Roy its total attention.  “There are two basic ideas that form the foundation of this campaign.  One is my belief in the strength of the family as the fundamental unit of society.  On this score our country has somehow lost its way in the last generation and a half or so.  We must find that path again.  I’m not sure how, and this afternoon I’m not going to pump you full of empty slogans about how to rectify this delinquency.  But if you reelect me to be your mayor, you will know with a certainty that I shall be doing everything in my power to make sure our city and city agencies address this problem.

“This point addresses not only family values, but also the second, related pillar of my campaign.  Personal responsibility.  We live free in this country. But we must also live responsible. The one entails the other, and if you sever that connection you create chaos in society.  From the president on down, the statement, “I take full responsibility” can no longer be allowed to remain the meaningless rhetoric it has become, and serve as a convenient escape hatch.   We are responsible for what we do;  and what we do has consequences. People should not be allowed to escape these consequences.  We see in our schools, in our judicial system, and, yes, in the last two years, in our business culture what happens when that becomes the norm.”  The CEOs looked distinctly uncomfortable.  “I believe it is possible one person can do something about that, at least in this city, and I believe I am that person.  I want you to give me the chance to prove it.”

Thunderous applause followed.  People were turning to their neighbors and nodding their heads in vigorous agreement with what Rany had said.  Roy Rany would save them.  The clapping subsided but a restless excitement was sloshing around the room.  Abernathy was beside himself with excitement.  He’d never really heard Rany speak to a purely political gathering, but it did seem the man had the gift.  He was a born orator.

Others in the press followed up on his declaration with requests for details on this point and that.  Rany did a masterful job of fielding their comments without insulting the cynicism of the reporters or tangling himself up in unrealistic pledges.  What he lost in support by not promising them he would instantly transform their lives, he gained twice over in the priceless political coin of credibility, without which no politician could accomplish anything.  Or be elected to the senate in four years.

When Bob opened up the floor to the public, a few students solicited Rany’s perspective on student loans, the city’s faltering job market in the new millennium, and some reminiscences about his own days as a student at the university thirty years ago, long before any of them had been born.  Roy saw this latter interest as a terrific opportunity for him to show this audience he belonged here.

“Is Professor Smyth still teaching, the Latin scholar in the Classics department?” he asked at one point.

“Still here,” a young man boomed from the rear.  “And Professors Gildersleeve and Lodge just retired from teaching Greek last year.”

“I never had those two for a course, but I do remember the names.  I guess in a sense, though, those old Greeks and Romans never really do retire, do they?” he joked.  Everyone broke into appreciative laughter.

Bob could scarcely contain himself.  Rany was working them, brilliantly, actually stroking them.  To be sure, this was the first day of the campaign, and it was a long time from January to November, but things simply could not have gone better this afternoon than if he had personally scripted every word and directed every action.  It was a fabulous kickoff.

It was getting on to five, and the wire services would have to send the feed now if they were going to make the early evening news in-state and the late shows nationally. Bob was gesturing that enough questions had been answered.  “I think that’s all for today, ladies and gentlemen.  You can pick up fact sheets at the exits, and please route all queries to Mr. Rany directly through my office.  My numbers and e-mail are on the sheets.”

A woman who had come in late and was standing in the back persisted in waving her hand for attention.  “Please, just one more question, sir?”

“All right, one more, madam,” Bob said magnanimously and deferred to Roy.   “But this is absolutely the last one.”  Silence fell, and every video camera in the room swung to the rear and fixed the woman in the intense brightness of their lights.  She was shortish, and wearing a white coat.

And then, before the candidate could take cover, she lobbed a grenade  with pin pulled into the campaign.  “Just this final question, Mr. Rany, sir.  Mr. Mayor, who is Michelle?”

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029    030    031     Chapter 10  028-031    032     033     034     035     036     037     038     039

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  040
Chapter 11 (9 of 10): The Mayor

Just before four that afternoon Roy and Caitlin along with Bob mounted a festooned podium at one end of the La Ville’s huge lobby, and an expectant hush descended over the gathered throng.  At first scores of camera flashes popped off in a flurry of photo-taking, and then only intermittently.  The police commissioner, the city comptroller, the party leaders, two CEOs of major corporations doing business in the city, the university’s vice-president for external relations, and a student representative were already on the stage.  Everybody was full of smiles and hearty handshakes, and they all gave the appearance of astonished joy at having finally had this wonderful opportunity for a chance get-together.  Bob went up to the mike and tapped it a couple of times, and then made the obligatory query, “Can you all hear me back there?”  A murmur of assent rolled forward.

Besides the healthy turnout of reporters and camera people there was a surprisingly large crew of young people in the audience.  Bob’s operatives had been busy bees.  It was only early January and the university term had just started, so nobody was panicking yet about papers and midterms.  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bob’s voice was amplified throughout the lobby.  “Before we get started here, I’d like to thank you all on behalf of the candidate and his wife for being here.”  At the same time he gestured grandly towards the anointed couple, secretly grateful that Rae had not put in an appearance.  “A few introductions are in order.  You all know Mr. Mark Pulverino, our police commissioner.”  The man got up from his seat, and there was a smattering of applause.  “And Dr. Tranch, University vice-president for public relations.”  He too stood up briefly, but the applause was muted.  “And the young lady on his right is Ms. Nora Endicott, the representative from the student council at the University.”  Enthusiastic clapping accompanied her rise from the chair, and she waved to her supporters who had packed the area behind the press.   He quickly ran through the other notables.  “Again,” he wound up the prologue to the afternoon’s little drama, “we of the Reelect-Rany Committee are honored to be holding our first press conference of the campaign here at the La Ville.”  He turned and clapped until others in the audience picked up the cue.  He added, without further precision, “This turnout bodes well indeed for our prospects in November.”  Everybody cheered, and a few strategically placed sign carriers hefted aloft their placards commending Rany;  the campaign’s own cameras, equipped with wide-angle lenses so as to exaggerate the size of the audience panned slowly over the festive audience and began purring.

“It is now my distinct privilege and special honor to introduce to you our mayor and our next mayor, Roy Rany.”  This time he clapped hard, and the audience knew what to do.  It was an eager and voluble reception.  “Roy,” he said, sweeping his left arm back in a dramatic semi-arc and beckoning to the candidate, “how about you and your lovely wife Caitlin standing up?”

As they stood up, holding hands, the crowd went into accolade overdrive.  Bob was pleased to note that all the commotion had attracted viewers from the larger lobby area with no inkling of what was going on in the hall.  Flashbulbs started popping once more and motorized drives engaged.  Bob held up his hands as if to plead with this enraptured gathering to modulate its boundless enthusiasm for Roy Rany, the city’s mayor and next mayor.  It was like a mini-convention.  “Rany, Roy Rany — Rany, Roy Rany,” the chanting started, swelling into a dull booming as more and more people caught the words. “Rany, Roy Rany — Rany, Roy Rany.”  Bob and the Ranys stood as if transfixed and let the delicious sound wash over them.  After several minutes of this spontaneous exuberance so carefully orchestrated by Bob’s experienced staff, Roy walked up to the speaker’s stand and grabbed a mike.  “Please, good people, please.”  He was dousing the fire with gasoline.  A new burst of enthusiasm exploded from the crowd as they all rose from their chairs, and this time the chants were accompanied by a rhythmic stomping.

He turned sideways, shrugging his shoulders.  An elated grin spread across his face as he turned back to the mike and said, “Is this a great city or what?”

More excitement and deafening noise from the cranked-up crowd.

Finally the clamor died down and people settled back into their seat.  Bob was thrilled to see the large standing-room only crush in the rear of the room.  “Mr. Rany – Roy – has consented to answer some questions this afternoon.  We’ll begin with the press, and then we’ll entertain any comments from the community at large.”  He handed over the podium to Roy, patting him on the back.  “Remember to keep it short and on the path,” he whispered to Roy.  “No long walks.”  Roy nodded in quick assent.

A dozen hands shot immediately into the air.  The opening questions were friendly and relaxed, eliciting answers to innocuous questions about himself (“I’m not much different from any one of you, except maybe luckier.”), his war service (“I gladly gave my country five years in Viet Nam;  it wasn’t always fun, but I’m proud to have served.”), his relationship with his sister (“Without her constant love and looking out for me, none of this would have been possible.”), and his wife (“No man could be more blessed.”), and the nature of his hugely successful software distribution empire that had turned into a Cinderella story (“I give my sister Rae full credit for being way ahead of the curve on this one.”)

“Sir,” a red-faced stringer yelled, waving his hand, “I’m sure we would all like to hear a little more about your platform.  I realize this is early in the campaign, but the polls I’ve read suggest people aren’t sure of just what you stand for.  I wonder if you could elaborate for us.”  He shoved a tape recorder near Rany.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029    030   031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033     034     035     036     037     038

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  039
Chapter 11 (8 of 10): The Mayor

“You haven’t forgotten that little talk we had before I agreed to manage your campaign, have you?  You were supposed to tell me anything, anything from the past that could snake around and bite us in the ass.  But I don’t recall you told me anything about this drinking problem, if that’s what it is.”

“It was a long time ago, Bob.  I didn’t think it was worth bringing up.  I’ve been pretty much on the wagon for almost twenty-five years.”

“Pretty much?  What does that mean?”

“It means I rarely drink, and never once in that time have I lost it the way I did yesterday.”

“But you used to, is that right?”

“Yes.  I did.  But as I say, that was a long time ago.”

“Did you go the A.A. route?”

Roy had a pained expression on his face.

“Listen,” Bob enthused, “that could be good.  Listen, there was this guy from Iowa in the seventies who was the governor and a very public member of A.A.  People loved it.  Ate it up.  They sent him to Washington as a U.S. senator.”

“And what happened?”

“He stepped down after one term.”

“Stepped down?  Why would he do that.”

“Said he couldn’t take the hypocrisy and the bullshit!”

Roy looked pained, shifted in his seat.

“On that A.A. stuff, I’d rather not get into all that.  I haven’t gone to meetings for a long time.”

“We’ll see,” Bob said.  He activated his handheld recorder and spoke a few sentences into it.   “It’s something to think about down the line.”

Priscilla brought them their grapefruits and coffee.  She put a small pitcher of cream midway on the table.  “We won’t be needing this, honey,” Bob said and handed it back to her.

“Right,” she said.  “Enjoy.  The rest of it’s coming right up.”

Bob signaled for him to hand over the sugar packets he had in his hand.  “No sugar, Roy.  From now on, always think calories.”

Roy looked incredulous.

“You want me to fuckin’ eat raw grapefruit without sugar?”

“You want me to fuckin’ get you back into city hall?”  He twisted the knife a little.  “And the senate?” He paused a beat.  “And who knows what later?”

Resigned, Roy shrugged his shoulders and gave Bob the sugar.  It was no contest, and he’d have to get used to being handled.

Bob’s patter continued.

“On this alcohol thing,” the campaign manager persisted, “did you ever get a DWI?”

“Never,” Roy shot back.  “Not that I shouldn’t have a few times …”

“… don’t ever repeat that,” Bob interjected, horrified.  “Not to anybody, even me.”

Roy waved a dismissive hand.

“This is on the level, right?”  Bob came at him again.  “I can’t do damage control if I don’t know the damage.”

“It’s on the level,” Roy assured him.

“How about arrested for intoxication? Brawling? Anything like that?”

Roy shook his head emphatically.  “Nothing.”

“So if I run your sheet I’m not going to find anything?”

“How could you do that?”

“Fifty bucks and a friendly cop or ad-ass in the computer room at headquarters.”

“Ad-ass?”

“Yes.  Administrative assistant.

“Piece of cake.  By the way, friend, you didn’t answer my question,” Bob pressed.

“No, you won’t find anything.  A parking ticket about fifteen years ago, and that’s it.”

“O.K., Roy.  That’s good.  Real good.”

Bob had already excavated his grapefruit and was watching Roy poking without interest in his.

“Since we’re on the subject,” he continued softly.  “Is there anything else you left out of our earlier confessional?  Anything at all?”

He hesitates.  “Nothing.”

Abernathy was only half Roy’s age, but he was cynicism incarnate.  And much too shrewd a campaigner and too knowledgeable about people to have missed the fractional hesitation on Roy’s part.  Or what it suggested.

“You’re lying to me, but I’ll let it slide for now.  Is this something that could queer us?”

“Forget about it,” Roy said.  He tried to sound as though it were nothing, which if not entirely true was probably close enough.

The waitress brought them their poached eggs and dry toast.  “More coffee, anyone?”

They both nodded, and she poured.  “You have a nice day now, and come back see us soon.”  She slipped the bill under the toast stand, and Bob pocketed it.

“That we will,” Roy said, and both of them smiled at her.

They ate in silence.

Bob was like a pit bull with his jaws clamped around a bleeder.  “I reserve the right to revisit this matter of your omissions from the C.V. later.  We live in a world today, Roy, where politicians and would-be politicians are put under electron microscopes.  And those babies can see everything.  Just don’t forget that!”

Roy nodded, but he wondered.  It couldn’t possibly be the case, could it?

They steered clear of the campaign specifics for the rest of the meal.  People stopped by to say hi and chat briefly.  Roy was impressed with the extensiveness of Bob’s circle of acquaintances in journalism, all of them here to cover the afternoon’s news conference.

When they’d finished, Bob left a five-dollar tip.  “I’ve got to go check some things out with Peggy and Pantucci before our meeting.”  He looked at his watch. “It’s almost two now.  Why don’t you come up to my suite in about half an hour, and that’ll give us about an hour before we’re on.  We need to go over the issues, see if we can sharpen the focus a little.  You be sure Caitlin is there with you on the stage.  If Rae doesn’t come on her own, don’t encourage her.”  He held up his hand against the protest he was expecting.  “Not at this stage.”

“I understand,” Roy said glumly.

They were walking through the lobby.  “One more thing, Roy.  I was watching  that impromptu conference when you came down into the lobby.  Be awfully careful about what you say.  When you talk into a single camera you’re stroking millions of viewers who are voters.  You have to keep that in mind.  You know it.  Scheduled conferences we can prep you for.  Don’t shoot from the hip just because somebody draws on you, my friend.”

As they parted company at the elevators, Roy noted through the large vaulted panes of the La Ville lobby that it had finally stopped snowing.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029    030   031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033     034     035     036     037

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  038
Chapter 11 (7 of 10): The Mayor

“Pantucci is the best.  Believe me.  I’ve worked with him before.  They guy knows what he’s doing, and for the money you’re paying him it’s suicide not to listen to what his numbers say.  Actually, except for the Rae thing, you’re polling exceptionally high.  It helps of course that you’re an unopposed incumbent, but we should be grateful nonetheless.  My spies tell me the other party will run a take-no-prisoners campaign. But numbers like Pantucci’s have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies:  just the perception you’re a winner translates that way in the minds of the voters, and everybody wants to vote for a winner.  The polls are like the oracles of Zeus.”

Roy smiled.  “You know, Bob, I took one of those freshman civ courses right here at this university God knows how many years ago, and I remember this old codger in the Classics department droning on in a lecture about oracles in the ancient world.  Yeah, they gave the right answers, but people often misinterpreted them because they heard only what they wanted to hear.  I’ve never forgotten an example that professor gave:  The oracle told this Cronus, the king of Lydia, that if he attacked the Persians he would destroy a great empire.  Great, thought Cronus, let’s go for it.  Too bad he misread the oracle, because the empire he destroyed was his own.  He heard it his way, if you see what I mean.”  He waved a fork gently at Bob.

“I see what you mean, my friend.  I’ve heard the story before.  And for the record, it was Croesus who went to oracle, not Cronus.  Cronus was the schmuck who got the shit kicked out of him.  By his own kid, if you can believe it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Roy said with resentful irritation.  Bob’s foraging mind with its vice-like grip on facts sometimes frightened him.  “Cronus, Croesus.  Who gives a flying fuck, Bob?  It’s the god-damn point that counts.” He shook his head.  “Jeeezus!”

“Right, Roy, right,” Bob soothed. “Not a problem!”  He busied himself shuffling papers and notes. “Not to worry.  No way we’re gonna croesus this baby here.  But we have to listen to what Pantucci says, and we have to factor it into our strategy.”

“You’re right.  On all counts.  My point is simply I don’t want us to be hearing these polls only the way we want to.”

“I’ve got it covered.  That’s what you pay me for.”

Rany was uncomfortably silent.  He jutted his chin out and tugged nervously at his collar.  Bob, sensitive like a hungry shark to nano-drippings of blood in the campaign waters, went for the jugular.

“No secrets from each other, Roy.  Remember?”

“I’m just thinking how we could work Rae into the campaign.  I mean, there must be something she can do, isn’t there?”

“Absolutely.  I’ve been brain-storming with Peggy  — you remember her, right, my right hand?”

Rany nodded.  “Sure.  Peggy.”

“Anyway, all morning we’ve been at it about this.  We think Rae’s just the ticket for the over-sixty crowd.  They’re important to us.  They vote in larger proportion than other groups, so it will help a lot if we start off by having the two of you visit some retirement homes together.  You’ll introduce her as your sister.  Old people like to see older people making a difference.  It will identify her in the eyes of an important demographic and give her a specific rôle – I’m talking metaphor here. Then she can run with it by herself.  That way people won’t be worrying about who she is.  No more uncertainty.”

The waitress came to take their orders.

“I saw you on TV last night, Mayor,” she said.  A thousand-watt smile in a pretty face.

“Thank you,” Roy read her name tag, “Priscilla.  We hope it stays that way.  Mayor, that is.  Are you voting age?”

“Yes, sir,” she beamed.  “First time this year.”

“Well, I’ll sure appreciate your vote for me if you can see your way clear to it.”

“I’ve already decided to vote for you, Mr. Rany.”

“What are the other people who work here saying?” Bob inserted.

“They’re all real excited,” Priscilla said.  “They think Mr. Rany is the kind of person you can trust in city hall.”

Unlike the clowns there now?

Bob zeroed in on what she was implying and winked at Roy.

“You can put that in the bank, honey” he said.

She laughed.  “So what can I get you gentlemen?”

Roy had been doing a quick scan of the menu.  “I think I’m going to have …”

“…  slice of cantaloupe, dry toast, one poached egg no butter, and black coffee.  I’ll have the same.”  Bob collected both menus and handed them to the waitress.  She looked uncertainly at Rany.  He nodded approval.

“Thank you.  I’ll be right back with the coffee and fruit.”

“What was all that about?” Roy asked a bit querulously after she had swished off.

“Listen, Roy.  This is as good a time as any.  Peggy and I also spent time this morning going over the out-takes from the news programs last night and this morning.  State and national.  The camera is cruel, no doubt about it.  We’ve decided you’ve got to lose about ten pounds, and you might as well start today, right now.  It’s got to be salads, fish, poached and boiled eggs, fruits, veggies, that kind of thing.  Peggy’s working with a dietician putting together a list of no-nos and yes-yeses.”

“Am I that fat?”

“No, you’re not, Roy.  You look great sitting here in front of me.  But 99% of the people who vote won’t have seen you in person.  They’ll know you from TV and news photos. It may not be fair, but you have to look lean on TV.  Sure, people will tell you they’re not biased, fat is fine, character counts.  The truth in the booth? Fat equals failure, slim equals success.  When you run you can’t afford a few extra pounds.  Not now.  I’m dead serious about this.  We’re also starting you on a regular exercise routine, which we’ll do in public as much as possible.  Jogging, walking, that kind of thing.  Maybe even some skiing,” he said, and then changed course.   “Though that could have the potential of putting an elitist spin on you it if it’s overdone.  In general, though, people eat up wholesomeness, in particular if they don’t have to come up with it themselves but can observe it in the man they’re thinking of sending back to city hall”

“If you say so,” Roy said sheepishly.  He had a pretty good idea what was coming but volunteered nothing.

“Which brings up another thing, Roy,” Bob said with an upbeat smile.  The man was in flow now.  “I wanted to cover this between the two of us, mano-a-mano, so to speak.  No need to involve the rest of the team.”  He scraped phantom crumbs off the white damask, hesitated briefly, plunged in.  “Last night after the official celebrations were done with?  What in the fuck were you up to?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.  “Did I do anything,” he cleared his throat, “like, crazy or something like that?”

“No, you didn’t.  But you sure as Sherlock didn’t act like the person voters want to make their mayor.  They would never put up with this shit.”

Rany sighed with relief.

Bob smelled fresh blood pumping into the water and circled.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030   031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033     034     035     036

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  037
Chapter 11 (6 of 10): The Mayor

Rae was sixteen years older.  She’d always been the resourceful one, the one whose feet were planted on solid ground, the realist, the hard one.  When their father, Gus Rany, had finally died back in 1950, Roy had been just two years old and didn’t even remember the old man.  It had just been Rae and himself against the world. She’d been sixteen at the time, and Social Services being what they were in that distant past in a rural county distant from the capitol, it was not all that difficult for her just to keep Roy and herself on the farm.  The hands had all stayed on, and the wife of one of them had taken care of Roy while Rae finished her final year in high school and got her diploma the following year.  Old Gus knew for a couple of years his time was up, and since his wife had died giving birth to the boy, he had come to rely more and more on his precocious daughter. He’d taught her how the farm was run and made sure the hands knew he expected her to take over when he was gone.  And in two years that cunning old semi-literate tyrant had taught her more about the actual workings of finances and futures markets than she’d have gotten with a Harvard M.B.A.

Finishing high school at seventeen, she’d devoted herself full time to Roy and the farm.  Rae was nobody’s fool, and back in 1951 a high school diploma was still worth a sixth-grade education.  She could read The Wall Street Journal and she could do all kinds of sums, and that’s about all it had taken.  Plus her infallible instincts for timing.  “Ripeness is all,” she had read in one of those Shakespeare plays they still read in high school back in those benighted days, and that deeply practical point had stuck where even the name of the play was gone.  The farm had prospered, and so had Roy.  Rae loved her little brother more than a mother could, and she pushed him hard in school.  She wanted her little brother to be something, somebody.  She had never fully gotten over the patronizing arrogance of the bankers and brokers and the feed lot managers when she first started doing business with them.  A woman – no a mere girl – and one without much education, either.  Nobody was ever going to talk down to little Roy that way.  He was going to be somebody.  She’d make sure of that.

When Roy graduated from high school, at the top of his class, in 1965, she packed him off to the university, where he studied electrical engineering.  On her recommendation he had signed up for ROTC at the peak of its unpopularity on American campuses, but it enabled him to finish college right on schedule in May of 1969.  And he’d been lucky in Viet Nam.  With his background it was natural that he be assigned to command authority over one of the groups servicing the electronics boxes on the Phantoms F-4’s, and thus he had never been exposed to any front-line danger in the pitiless jungle.  But he had the military service on his record, and Rae had enough innate cunning to appreciate how important it would be for political candidates years from now to have served.  Even at the risk of losing her baby brother she had actually urged him to sign up for a second tour when his time was up, and by the time he finished with an honorable discharge, that sorry war was pretty much finished in its own ignominious way.

When he’d returned to the farm in 1973, he and Rae had had a serious talk about what to do.  She was forty-one and tired of the farm, and she wanted to sell it.  She’d like to get a job where she didn’t have to worry all the time and carry the responsibility for other people’s livelihood.  Enough was enough.  Roy had no objections, as he was tied even more loosely to the farm than she was.  They sold everything.  Everything was a single lot, for old Gus and his father before him had been adding a little acreage here and little there to the original farmstead since the mid-1880’s.

Rae got an apartment in town and a job as teller at one of the local banks.  In the fall Roy went back to the university for his M.A. in the new area of Computer Science.  It was Rae, again, who saw the future and encouraged him to pick this field.  In October she had called him and reported that after the accountants, lawyers, and tax authorities had stolen their share, the farm had cleared just over two million, a not inconsiderable sum in the mid-1970’s.  “And half of it belongs to you, kiddo!” she’d said.  When he’d asked what he should do with the money, she’d laughed and told him not to worry about it.  Just keep living the way you are and forget about the money for now, she said.  “I’ve invested all of it in some new little stock called Intel.”

And she had let it all ride till the Spring of 2000!

Roy knew at some level that his campaign manager was right about Rae.  But for now he just wanted to fill in the silence, deflect the strong disapproval written broadly on Bob’s face, and change the direction of their strategizing.  “How can you get polls so quickly?” he asked.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030   031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033     034     035

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  036
Chapter 11 (5 of 10): The Mayor

Roy admired Bob’s glib effortlessness in handling these amoeba-like masses of talking heads that flowed around him in a ceaseless jockeying for position.  He was tall and skeletal, tanned, and had black eyes that glinted in the high wattage of the TV lights.  Women found him irresistible.  But he knew how to keep himself in the background and let the focus fall on his client, the candidate du jour.  “And here he is,” he suddenly said, pointing to Roy.  “Ladies and gentlemen, our mayor and our next senator.”

The mob shifted in lock-step like a flock of starlings or school of fish that had found their true leader. “Sir, sir,” the clamor arose.

“Please, people,” Bob shouted.  “No interviews now.  Please let the man get some lunch.  You’ll all have plenty of opportunity to ask questions at our news conference this afternoon.  Sixteen hundred, right here in the lobby.”

“Sir,” a persistent young woman called; she had a mike in one hand and with the other was beckoning furiously to her audio and  video guy, “sir, just one question!”

Roy smiled at her and looked straight into the camera.  Silence fell over the crowd. “Sure, one question.”

“How does it feel to be running again?”

“It feels just fine,” he laughed.  “We’re off to a good start, and we have every expectation of winning in November.  My record speaks for itself.”

“Will that be your last term as mayor, sir?”

“Now that’s two questions.”  The crowd laughed.  “But I’ll answer anyway.”  He donned a more serious mien.  “Yes, it will,” he began, and in passing saw the creases of worry spreading over Bob’s face.  “But I have plenty of experience from the business world and a strong commitment to taking my message directly to the people.  There are other ways to serve my community and my nation.”  Bob’s face still had that tight and tense look.  “It’s time this country got back to some old-fashioned values, personal responsibility and family togetherness.  That’s the bedrock this campaign will be built on – and any future ones.”

The reporters went into feeding frenzy.

“Sir, sir, does this mean you will be running for Senator Oxley’s seat when he retires?”

Other reporters redoubled efforts to shout the same question at him, but he was firm.  “Thank you, good people, but that’s it for now.”  He had caught Bob’s frantic signals to stop before it turned into an uncontrolled free-for-all, the kind of innocent event that so easily could result in an inadvertent but damaging comment it would take days to sort out.  “Let’s hold off till four o’clock.”  He tried to push through the throng.  “Thank you,” he said as he made his way slowly forward.  A large group of interested bystanders had gathered beyond the reporters, and some of them reached out to shake his hand as he passed.  He smiled left and right and shook hands at random with a select few.  “Roy Rany.  How are you, nice to see you.  I’ll appreciate your vote in November.”

At last he and Bob broke free and headed into the restaurant bar.  It had been Bob’s idea that rather than sit in the suite and eat their meals, he should take as many as possible in public view.  “The exposure is great,” he’d explained.  “Makes you look like just one of the folks.  Before all of this is over, you’re never going to want to set foot in another greasy spoon as long as you live.  Unless, of course,” he added slyly, “you run for the senate.”  They both chuckled.

Not that the restaurant here was hardship duty, but he surmised Bob would be proved right in the end.  As they went to be seated, people continued coming up to him, and he obliged with a handshake and a congenial remark about a child’s dress or the sudden snow or the excellence of the food.

At last they extricated themselves from the trailing well-wishers and got a booth.  Bob had pulled out a sheaf of reports from his valise.

“I’ve got the latest polls here,” he said beaming, “and they’re top of the line.”  He licked his finger and began to thumb through the printouts.  “You’re very high on believability and sincerity.  That’s extremely important.  There’s some fuzziness in terms of what you stand for, though.  We’ll have to try to sharpen the focus there.  Caitlin comes across positively, but there’s some question about Rae.”  He held up his hand as Roy opened his mouth to argue.  “I know, I know, Roy.  But I’ve got to tell it the way it is.  Fifteen percent think she’s your mother, and that’s fine.  But it’s the rest of them I worry about:  ambiguity, lack of clarity – that’s extreme death in the voting booth.  Some of them even thought she was your grandmother.”  He looked warily at Rany.

“But I introduced her as my sister last night when we declared,” he said in a hurt and puzzled voice.

“I know.  I was there, and I heard you.  Lesson number one, Roy. You should know this by now.  I mean, this is your third campaign.  People generally believe what they see, and most of all they believe what they want to believe.  Not what they hear or what they read, or even know.  The vast majority of voters – and these are the folks we’re trolling for – make up stories about you in their heads, especially if it’s based on what showed up on TV.  It’s not something they decide to do, and in fact if you ask them about it they’ll deny it.  But it’s a fact.  Trust me on this one.  Rae just doesn’t look like your generation, and that’s all there’s to it.”

“I hear you, Bob.  But Rae is in,” he persisted.  “It’s not negotiable!”  He moved his silverware around.

First Caitlin, now Bob.

He simply couldn’t kick Rae loose.  He wouldn’t.

TO BE CONTINUED

]]> http://laohutiger.com/2012/03/16/revenge-should-have-no-bounds-035/ Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:25:41 +0000 laohutiger http://laohutiger.com/2012/03/16/revenge-should-have-no-bounds-035/  [If you have not already done so, you must
read the Introduction
before proceeding.]

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030   031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033     034

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  035
Chapter 11 (4 of 10): The Mayor

 “Oh, shit, Cait,” he said.  “Is this really the right time?”

She said nothing but held his gaze without blinking.  He broke the contact first.

“Look,” he cleared his throat, “nothing happened.  No women.”  There was a palpable lack of conviction to his words.  “At least I think not,” he added softly.

“You see, that’s exactly my point,” she said, putting the drink on a side table and leaning over in her turn towards him.

“I said nothing happened.”  Defensively.

“But we don’t know that for sure, do we?  Anyway, that’s beside my point, and it’s all in the past.  I do trust you on that score.  What I’m worried about is that you don’t actually remember what happened all evening, do you?”

He would not look at her.  His head was bowed toward the rug where he seemed to seek for answers in the intricate ply of the carpeting.

“I know,” he finally said.  “It scares me, too.”

“Honey,” she turned on the sweetness, “you can’t do that now.”  She came over and sat opposite him on the bed;  she took his hands in hers.  “You have a declared candidacy and you have a very specific platform you’re running on.  You know you could lose this thing.  And then where would our future plans be?”  She gave his arm a companionable squeeze.  “You can’t be taking chances like that.  You can’t say one thing and then act otherwise.  People just won’t stand for hypocrisy and recklessness in a candidate.  It’s not the good old days anymore.  You’ve got to be in control and you’ve got to show people you’re in control.  You don’t do that by cutting loose.  You know I’m not talking just women here.”

“You’re right,” he said.  “I know you’re right.  I know.”

She stroked his forearm.  “The past is past, and nobody is going to find out about that.  And you’ve proved over the years you don’t need the alcohol; you know you do much better without it.”

“I don’t know what got into me last night,” he said, shaking his head.  “It was stupid.  Unbelievably stupid.  It won’t happen again.”

“I know it won’t, baby.”  She wanted to believe him, and she kissed him on the cheek.  The scent of him excited her.  “Now go get dressed,” she said thickly.  “You don’t want to keep old Bob waiting, do you?”

She moved back to the other chair and picked up her drink again.

Some of the bouncy confidence he had shown when he marched out of the bathroom had evaporated like the moisture from his skin, but getting dressed would clothe him in it once more.  He unwrapped the towel and let it drop to the floor;  standing with his back to his wife, he surveyed the closet.

Great ass, she mused and took a swallow.  Still.

Roy Rany was fond of clothes.  He still had the body to wear them and he certainly had the money to buy them.  Bob had drummed into him that in modern American politics substance was all but meaningless unless it was ‘packaged’.  And the packaging began with the candidate himself:  don’t dress like a dandy, but don’t be too conservative, either.  The tieless chino interview in loafers and no socks might be appropriate on some carefully staged occasions, but a day like today called for suit mode.

He surveyed the full closet.  He selected a two-button worsted and hung it on the dressing stand.  A belt in brown Italian leather would go well.  From the dresser drawer he pulled out a solid white shirt with European ridged collar and button-sleeves.  A pair of tan oxfords would complete the ensemble.  Gazing upon himself in the full-length mirror attached to the closet door, he donned long black socks, underwear, shirt, pants, shoes, and cinched up the belt.

“What tie would go well here?” he called to Caitlin over his shoulder.

“How about that red one I got you in Chicago with the little blue and yellow rectangles on it?”

He held it up for a test against the white of the shirt.  “Perfect,” he said happily, and folded up the collar so he could loop it around his neck.  He tied his normal Windsor, and put on the coat.  Turning, he shot his cuffs and asked, “Well?”

“Knock ‘em dead, baby!  You look sensational.  Just like a mayor!”  She wasn’t lying.  A subtle proprietary sense washed over her:  he’s still a looker and he’s rich, and he’s all mine, he really is.  All mine!  And that’s the way it’s going to stay.  “His whores,” she reflected, “had no fuckin’ idea who they were messing with.”

She tightened and relaxed the muscles in her thighs a couple of times.  “I love you, baby!”

He smiled at her and bent over for a gentle kiss on the mouth.  “I love you, too, honey.  We’re in this together.”

She walked him to the door and gave his tie a final little tug before he started down the hall.  His bodyguard closed around him like outriggers and walked him to the elevator banks.

Bob was waiting for him by the reception desk, surrounded by reporters and other flacks.  He was jawing without interruption into the hydra-headed mikes that kept sprouting from the milling body.  The equipment people were fiddling with gain-buttons and zoom-levers, and the pretty people were staking out claims near Bob so they could be seen to be reporting.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030     031     Chapter 10  028-031     032     033

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  034
Chapter 11 (3 of 10): The Mayor

On the former side was money, lots of money, the life-blood of any political campaign in modern America.  He had plenty of financial support from the local political establishment and the city employee unions.  Most of the top rainmakers in the private sector were in his corner and their solid contributions said so:  lawyers, construction firms, paving companies, garbage collections – that vast herd of any large American city feeding at the trough of public contracts and services.  And there was always his own considerable fortune, not to mention Caitlin’s.  She was ready to put up with another four years as mayor’s wife in the expectation that when this coming term, which he would win, was over and done with, it was on to national politics for both of them.  Oxley, one of the state’s U.S. senators, had recently announced his retirement in four years, and Caitlin and Roy had, in their way, already begun to run for that office.  He was still good-looking, almost youthful, and he still knew how to make a good suit look better.  He was photogenic, as were his wife and children.  Standard issue for the media version of the perfect family.  And he would start a rigorous exercise regimen today.  No more booze, just meat and yogurt.

All this on the plus side.

The column of negatives was a bit fuzzier.

He’d had to let go the campaign manager for his first two elections.  The man’s greed had grown positively indecent, and in the brazen course of carving out empires of private enterprise under the public umbrella of the Rany machine he’d finally drawn the drooling attention of federal prosecutors living high off the post-Enron hog.  Thank God it now looked as though none of that slime would stick to the administration.  This new man, Abernathy, was a micro-managing Caligula, was running a tight ship, and was probably worth the money.  But Jake Mohre, his cryptic link with the many fiefdoms of city politics like police, fire, roads, and so forth, could turn into a complication.  Rany was grateful for his get-things-done ethos but questioned some of the ethics involved.  Like Cassius, Mohre had that lean and hungry look, all right, and he thought too much — such men are dangerous.  Too much personal ambition there.  And Roy really would have to watch his own drinking, and other aspects of his private behavior that could flush the whole campaign down the toilet.  Along with the booze, he’d simply have to give up that seductive item from Aspasia’s.  He simply had to.

Roy sighed, and turned off the stream of water.

He opened the door and a fog bank of steam created a halo effect around him as if he were a hero emerging into the light.  Too bad the photographers weren’t around to capture this emergence of the great man.  Caitlin noted in a corner of her mind that he’d have to watch his weight, but was still a very good-looking guy whether you factored his age in or not.  For some reason she’d never quite understood, he got a big kick out of toweling off in the nude in front of her, letting the equipment slap back and forth with noisy ostentation.

They’re really all such peacocks, she thought, chuckling inwardly.  Pea-cock-s.  That’s a good one.

A heat-seeking missile when it came to locking in on his moods and thoughts, Caitlin watched him intently from the sofa while pretending to only the mildest interest.  To hide his discomfort, he went over to her and nuzzled the vee between her shoulder and neck.

She gave him a reassuring hug.

“I’ve got to get ready.  Bob wants to do lunch around twelve thirty, and then it’s meetings before the news conference at four.”

“Don’t forget the coffee, honey,” she reminded him.

He drank some, still standing there in the nude.  “You going to be O.K. the rest of the afternoon?” he asked.

“I’ll be just fine,” she answered.

“It’s important you’re there with me at the press conference.  Can do?”

“Of course I’ll be there.  Do we have dinner plans?”

“Fluid as of now.  But you’re coming along, right?”

“Sure, Roy.  I’ll be ready.  What would you like me to wear?”  He would never tell her, but he had once told her it pleased him when she asked.  It was a small price.

“I’ll come back up here and get you shortly before four.  Now I’ve got to hustle,” he said and pecked her on the cheek before turning to the fussy business of dressing.

It was perhaps a bit early, but what the hell?  She fixed herself a Bloody Mary from the well-stocked bar and sat down in one of the luxurious fauteuils that dotted the bedroom. She always enjoyed watching her husband power-dressing, an amusing display of his shaky narcissism in action.

“Hey, baby,” he said as he saw her.  She was reclining in a lazy slouch, drink in hand, watching him with half-closed eyes the way a well-fed cat might deign to look at a mouse it could have had a lot of fun batting around before the kill.

“What’s up?”

Now he was all cheer and eagerness to follow up his triumphant announcement of the previous evening.

“Well, not what I was hoping for,” she purred.

“Huh?”  He followed the line of sight her eyes had established on his crotch.  “Oh,” he laughed nervously.  “Yeah, up, I get it.  But no time now, honey.  Bob’s waiting for me downstairs.  Maybe later.”

She ignored the facile lie.

“Roy, we’ve got to talk,” she said after a moment.

“Talk?  About what?  Can’t it wait?’

“No, it can’t.”

He wrapped a towel around his pelvis and sat down on a chair beside the bed.  He leaned forward on the edge expectantly, the body language unmistakable in its insistence that he had very little time to give her.

“What happened last night?”

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030     031     Chapter 10  028-031     032

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  033
Chapter 11 (2 of 10): The Mayor

For a man who was rather complicated and had certainly demonstrated his high intelligence in the academy as well as the business world, she thought, he could be astonishingly ingenuous at times.  “I suppose,” she mused to herself in silence, “he’s no different from the rest of us.  We all believe what we want to believe, and then hope it will all somehow turn out for the best in the end.”

“That’s because you bring it out in me, babe!”

He wiggled his head hard against her and grabbed her buttocks with both hands.

The phone rang.

“Let me get that,” she offered, slipping away from his grasping hands.

He let go, and sat back on the bed.  He ran a hand through the thick hair that commentators had recently begun to remark on as a kind of trademark.  When a portion of it lay across his forehead they said it made him look both boyish and wise at the same time.

Caitlin held out the phone to him.  She covered the voice pickup and pointing to it said in a mimic whisper, “It’s Mr. Campaign Manager, dear.”

Roy rose from the bed.  “Bob,” he said cheerfully.  “We really did it last night, didn’t we?”

“We sure did, Roy.  You were very impressive.  Have you read the morning papers?  You made the Wall Street Journal and even the national news in the New York Times.  Not too shabby, I’d say.”  But he didn’t offer details on how it was probably as much a matter of all the free dinners and drinks he’d kept the local stringers in as any truly novel platform Rany had articulated last night.  The important thing was that the liberals read the Times to find out what they should believe about November and the conservatives had the Journal for issuing them their political marching orders.  One gun, double barrel.  All that money was already doing its talking, and Bob was going to see to it that that same money just kept right on talking them into the United States Senate.  “We’re off to a terrific start.”

“Say, that’s great, Bob.  It was pretty exciting last night.”

The red light blinked on another line.  “Bob, let me put you on hold for just a sec.  I think it might be Rae on another line.”

“She’s just calling to congratulate you, Roy.”  Bob sounded relaxed but the very name Rae jacked up his blood pressure more than a few points.  She was the one serious reservation he had about managing this campaign.  But while Roy was as malleable as warm putty on just about everything else, he’d been all adamantine obduracy on the matter of Rae;  he had made it unmistakably clear that she was at the center of things and would remain so until he was sworn in for his third term.  And probably long after, Bob had come to believe.  “We need to get together with everybody and discuss things before the press conference this afternoon. It’s set for four so we’ll make the evening shows.  Are you free for lunch?”

“Lunch is fine, Bob.  I’ll meet you in the lobby in about sixty minutes.”

“Sixty minutes it is.  See you then.”  Bob hung up.

Roy switched the line.  “Yes?”

“Oh, Roy,” it was Rae, sounding as happy as a bug in a rug.  “You did it again!  Gus would have been proud out of his skin about this, kiddo.”  He could tell she was choked up.

“I know, Rae.  And don’t you forget who made all this possible.  You did.”

“Nonsense,” she said.  “We did it together, you and me together, like always.”  It flashed through his mind that he should say something about Caitlin as a partner in this enterprise, but he let it slide.  Not the right time.  And he felt uncomfortable.  “I just wanted to call you and touch base,” she added.

“I’m happy you did.  We’ll get together later.”

“Great, little brother.  Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he said.

He hung up the phone.  Thoughtfully.

“Rae?” Caitlin asked.

“Yes,” he answered absently.

“And?”

“And?  She just wanted to congratulate me, Cait.  And get together later this afternoon.”

“I see.”  Dry and disbelieving.

“For God’s sake, Cait, she just wants to talk to me.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“It’s the way you said it?”

“The way?” she queried pliantly.

“Yes, the way.  Like she was going to steal me from you.”

“No chance of that, dear.” She came close to him.  “Let’s not argue about this.”

She’d have to downplay the Rae thing.  Her head understood Roy’s unshakable loyalty to his sister, but her heart kept worrying it like a greedy bitch with a bone.  There were times when she felt she would probably not be his first choice to stay if the three of them ever ended up in a political life raft designed for two.

“I agree,” he muttered.  “Let’s not.”  He hugged her.  “I need a shave and a hot shower.”  Even more he needed a few minutes by himself.  “How about pouring me some coffee?  O.K.?”

Caitlin dipped her head in silent acknowledgement, swiveled on her long legs, and marched out into the living area to get his coffee.

As the hot water pelted down on him and he soaped the fumes from his pores he began mentally spread-sheeting assets and liabilities.

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029
030   031     Chapter 10  028-031

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  032

Chapter 11 (1 of 10): The Mayor

Part 3

The Next Six Months: Murder

There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.

   Shakespeare Hamlet IV.vii.126-127

Roy Rany — mayor, mayoral candidate, potential senator, husband, father, playboy, nauseous — was in a general funk.  His head was stuffed with mashed potatoes, and something that felt like Gorgonzola lined his teeth and palate.  Unappealing as the sensation was, he wished the real problems were as mild, and as easily remedied.

He sat in the semi-dark of a curtained room in a suite at the La Ville and dangled his feet over the edge of the bed; he tried to recall details of last night’s party after the party in somebody’s suite.  He surveyed the ambient elegance, an incongruous picture of his rumpled Armani suit draped like toss-away rags across a chair and scattered on the deep carpeting amid the rich appointments and expensive furniture tastefully spread out in the huge bedroom.  He fumbled for an aspirin bottle on his nightstand.  He poured water into a cut glass from a carafe and washed some pills down in one gulp.  His Rolex displayed, to his dismay, that it was already 11:30.

It had been a long time since he’d let himself go quite the way he apparently did last night.  Sure, he’d let off some steam a couple times during the last few months, what with the campaign starting to heat up and all, but last night was … well … it was all pretty much a blur in his mind:  raucous laughter, racy women (but not his wife), raunchy good ol’ boys, rivers of booze.  He scratched his chest and pinched the pasty flesh.  It was true, as Bob Abernathy, the sleek campaign manager he’d recently hired at an astronomical salary, had cautioned, he had put on some weight.  But not that much, really.  What can you expect at 55?  The metabolism slows down.  Trouble was, those relentless cameras couldn’t care less and made a pound out of every ounce.

But back to last night again:  in the harsh mental glare of fragmented recall it couldn’t possibly have been as much fun as it had seemed at the time.  He was going to have to watch this indulgence in alcohol.  Especially now.  He’d kept it well in check for a long time, and perhaps it didn’t hurt to cut loose once in a while.  Blow the soot out of the pipes – that kind of thing.   Last night didn’t count.  It wouldn’t happen again.  He had the discipline and the will power.

He felt around the sheets and blankets for the TV remote.

“Cait!” he yelled.  “Cait!”

“Honey?”  His wife came striding in from the living room, pushing open the door and letting in more light. “I see we’re finally awake,” she said.  She started picking up the pieces of his suit he’d dribbled on the floor the night before and shook out the coat and pants before hanging them up in the closet.  She stroked the shoulder of his coat.

“Where’s the remote, babe?”

“Probably where we left it last night.  Or don’t we remember?”

He shook his head and squinted against the pounding light.  He hated it when she used that sarcastic ‘we’ in this way.  Just hated it.  And Caitlin, the loyal wife across all these years, knew it all too well.

“When we came back to the suite, we insisted on watching the early show on CNN.  To see if we’d made it on the national scene.  We really don’t remember that?”

“No,” he said.  It came out more meekly than he had wanted it to.  He was hardly in a mood to begin the day with an argument.  Arguments seemed more and more to have become a common means for them to communicate.

“And we don’t remember wanting to call Rae’s room?”

“Rae?”  He was genuinely puzzled.  And a little scared.  Blackout!  He had no recollection of this whatsoever.  “Why should I want to call my sister in the middle of the night?”

Caitlin folded her arms and looked down on him.  “Isn’t that what we always do when we don’t know what to do?”

He dismissed her with a wave of the hand.  But he didn’t like to be reminded.  “All right, all right,” he said.  “Let’s drop it, O.K.?”

“As we wish,” she said.

He knew that the smirk and arched eyebrows were her supercilious way of undercutting apparent agreement with him.  Only in the vaguest sense did he want to understand why she had such a hard-on – so to speak — for his sister.  Without Rae he knew he’d be nowhere today, and certainly not the party’s shoo-in for a third term as mayor.

“It’s what I wish,” he snapped at his wife.  “And it wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more friendly to Rae. Can’t you at least pretend?  Bob says we absolutely have to put up a united front if this campaign is going to succeed.”  He gave her his most pleading look.  “Please, honey?”

Her head bobbed slowly up and down.  She certainly liked the idea of being a senator’s wife, and last night had been the first time she thought there might be more to this thing than the vain indulgence of yet another whim by her wealthy husband.  There might be a real possibility they could end up in Washington, D.C.  For that kind of payoff, she could, and would, take a lot of shit, even Rae.

“You’re right, dear,” she said, using her most mollifying tone of voice.  “I know Rae has your best interests at heart.  We all do.”  She ruffled his hair and pressed his head against her belly.  “This is a team effort, and I defer to her.  And the other pros.”

“You mean that?”  His eyes turned up toward her.

“Of course I do, sweetheart.”  Ruffle ruffle.  “You know I do.”

“You’re the best, baby, absolutely the best.”

Prologue 001-002     Chap 1 003-005     Chap 2 006     Chap 3 007-008
Chap 4 009-010     Chap 5  011-013     Chap 6  014-017     Chap 7  018-019
Chap 8  020-023     Chap 9  024-027

Revenge Should Have No Bounds

Chapter 10: The Family

Even if it had a ways to go before it would attain the clean and comfortable standards of European passenger rail, Amtrak would, I hoped, make it.  I enjoyed riding the train.  It snaked its way slowly out of the station, lurching through switches and clattering over cross tracks.  I watched hundreds of dirty cars and freight yards march past my window as we picked up speed through small tunnels and overpasses covered with colorful graffiti.  Urban decay gradually gave way to more rural vistas as the north-bound Valley Express picked up speed.  I had a two-hour ride ahead of me before I arrived in the town where my parents, the Capes, lived.  For a few days I would have a chance to escape the broiling heat that was stifling the city, and I could relax in a more rustic setting.  I was looking forward to the visit for several reasons.

I had pulled out my Tacitus to while away the next couple of hours but after a few pages of distracted reading I dropped the book back in my tote bag and let my thinking roam.  I could of course not get Yukiko out of my head, and this in itself disturbed me.  She was already occupying too much emotional space and crowding my mental world.  Even at this preliminary stage in our relationship I somehow knew that we would soon be more than just casual friends, and the idea simultaneously thrilled and agitated me.  Could I possibly become another Su-Lien?  And – for Heaven’s sake — where did this undeniable attraction (was that even a strong enough word?) for a woman, even a woman of such supernal loveliness as Yukiko, suddenly come from?

As the train sped through green fields and thick stands of trees lining rivers and lakes my desultory musings stumbled across the topic of my parents.  Yes, I was glad I was going to see them for a few days. Although we stay pretty much in touch by phone and e-mail, it was several months since I had visited.  Mom, whose name was Christy, doesn’t like the city and rarely comes down, and Dad (Crispin) is always busy enough for three men.

Over the years a lot of my clients had been curious about my childhood and upbringing, wanting, apparently, to believe in the explanatory stereotype of family abuse and dysfunction as requisite etiology for prostitution.  In my case, nothing could be further from the truth.

How do we become what we are?

I come from a solid upper middle-class family of responsible and loving parents and achieving children.  My older brother, Craig, is a corporate attorney in the city and my older sister, Valerie, is an anesthesiologist who lives in Oakland.  I love my mother, who was my best friend; and I love my father without reserve.  Not the way so many of the girls I knew at college did (“I love my Father but …”).  In the privacy of my own thoughts I referred to them as ‘love-buts’.  No, I loved my father period!  No buts, ands or ors.  I was a ‘love-period’.  Nobody ever laid a hand on me in anger or discipline.  All of us kids were encouraged by example, but never coerced by threat, to become readers and learners, and we all went to the best private schools and the colleges of our choice.  Both Craig and Valerie had been supported financially as well as emotionally through college and professional school, as had I for both B.A. and  M.A.  I have nothing but happy memories of my childhood and my family.  Take just one small example of what the family tone was like:  after Craig came along Mom, who had done a minor in anthropological linguistics, said she was tired of all these velar plosives – Cape, Crispin, Christy, Craig.  It was time to move forward in the mouth.  “What we need are some labials!”  And so big sis became Valerie and I got stuck with Mazarine.  According to the story, Dad had merely remarked, “Cool!”  “No,” Mom emended, “you mean ‘boss’, don’t you, honey?”  He thought for a minute before coming back, “Bitchin’, mama baby!”  And then, this urban family legend continues, true to their word they went off to bed and made Valerie.

In short, I was that unfashionable adult of the new century who was not a victim of priest, parent, pedagogue or police – except that in the bizarre social calculus of contemporary American life this very deficit ought no doubt ipso facto to constitute incontrovertible authentication of my status as victim:  I am a victim because I am not a victim.  Welcome to the whacky world of malice in blunderland.

Does my family know what I do for a living?

Yes. No. Maybe.

Mom certainly does.  After I’d been in the life a few years I just blurted it out one night when she and I were chatting in her kitchen over glasses of good Chardonnay.  She calls herself a Libertarian (“To the extent that I’ll put a label on myself!”), but this was bit de trop even for her.

“Are you serious, Mazarine?” she said.  She looked not so much shocked as incredulous.

“I am, Mom.  Very.”

For once she was speechless.  “I … I don’t know what to say,” she confirmed.

“Then let me say something.  I gave this a lot of thought before I got into it.”

She downed some Chardonnay and was all ears.  “I imagine you did, dear,” she said.

“You know about my job situation after I finished the M.A., so I don’t need to fill in the background for you.  As a way to make some decent money it was not going in the direction I would have liked.  I’m sure you can appreciate that.  Right?”

She nodded in agreement.  “So, you mean you’re not a copy editor any longer?”  Was there a hint of mockery there?

“Mom, puh-leaze!” I said, rolling my eyes.

I went to the refrigerator, took out the wine and filled up both our glasses. After returning the Chardonnay, I began.

“I want you to know that what I’m going to say is not something I dreamed up afterwards in order to justify taking the plunge.  It was an entirely rational decision, and it was prompted by basic economics.  Like anybody else, I sell a service.”

“Like ‘anybody else’?” she said.  This time there was no mistaking a trace of puzzled amusement in her intonation.

“Look at it this way,” I went on.  “People object in clichés.  Exhausted clichés, I might add.  Three of them:  it’s immoral, it spreads disease, and – the most heated objection – it exploits women.  Each one is so vacuous it always surprises me that otherwise intelligent  people try to argue them with a straight face.  They’re trivially true, bland statements of human realities valid in a lot of contexts.”

“Oh?  And how exactly do you mean that?”

“To discuss the issue dispassionately you have to realize it’s a business.  The point is to maximize profits.

“If you’re a communist you’re going to have problems with this fact and see prostitution as immoral, not because of the prostitution but because it commodifies – to use a favorite piece of academic jargon — pleasure and generates private profit.  And that’s anathema to those economic illiterates.  In theory.  A good deal of Cuba’s foreign exchange, for example, derives from its position as Europe’s whorehouse, a kind of Caribbean Thailand for hard-currency tourists.  And that great communist Castro says the girls fuck because they like it and not because they need the money.

“But a Christian capitalist will see immorality because he thinks physical pleasure is sinful.  Of course, once you let everybody get his pet lick in, what’s immoral is pretty multifaceted: coffee, smoking, drinking, gambling, hunting, Nikes, abortion, death penalty, war, carbon dioxide emissions, eating meat, and on and on.  And all this evil produces huge profits for entrepreneurs and taxes for governments.  Stacked up against horrors like that, prostitution seems fairly benign to me.

“Yes, prostitution does spread disease.  So do all kinds of intercourse that don’t involve money, inside marriage and outside.  Not to mention the common cold, kissing, and poor personal and public hygiene.  A reasonable person can take precautions against all of them.  What more can I say?”

Mom was looking very pensive but she didn’t say anything.

“The most intense anger seems directed against ‘exploitation’.  Women and women’s bodies are ‘exploited’.  It’s a favorite red herring of the wearied left and duped right that still stinks to high heaven.  I’ve never fully grasped what is meant here.

“How about the man who digs ditches? Isn’t his body being exploited?  Or how about the woman professor who prostitutes her mind in front of generations of students?  Should we deplore her exploitation too and make it illegal?  It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see how a victorianizing society obsessed with protecting supposedly helpless women in general or women professors in particular could slip into a taliban mode and proscribe all women’s work.  And for good measure, the way they look too.”  I took a sip of wine. “Bring on the burqas!”

“I admit I hadn’t ever thought about it in exactly those terms,” Mom said thoughtfully.

“And that’s part of the problem.  All studies on prostitution that I’ve ever read point out that the picture of the innocent woman captured and forced into prostitution is clearly the exception.  It exists, yes, all over the world.  Even here.  But to deal with cases like that, we don’t need laws against prostitution  – just vigorous enforcement of existing laws on kidnapping and enslavement.  Whether she’s an uneducated street walker or a classy hooker working on graduate degrees, she does it for one simple reason:  the work is easy, the money is great, and profits are maximized.  And that should be self-evident in a capitalist society.  The irony is that it obviously is in a  communist society like Cuba.  It beats working at MacDonald’s for six bucks minus 25% the state and feds rake off  — by any other name, in other words, the pimps.

“No, it’s not prostitution that exploits women, but its illegality.  The lack of a legal framework that exists for other forms of small business in this country forces the women to go extra-legal to protect themselves from corrupt police and unregulated pimps who ‘own’ them; it promotes a kind of vicious de facto slavery.  If prostitution were legalized, I believe that most of this corruption wouldn’t find purchase in the business.  And by regulating it like any other business, governments at all levels would score big time from tax collections just as they do from any small business.  In any event, it sure isn’t going away!

“So, it’s not about morality and it’s not about health.  It’s all about money.  If it’s legal to sell the pleasure of cancer-causing cigarettes, why not sell carnal pleasure?  Why shouldn’t women have the right to decide how to make money and maximize earnings from whatever they are good at, even if that includes prostitution?  Nobody can force any woman to be a prostitute, but if that’s how she wants to earn money, why not?  How is her using her body in this way any different from an athlete using her body in that way?  Or a very bright woman using her mind to earn money?  Play to strengths!”

I didn’t think Mom was buying this.  She said nothing, just finished her wine.

“I need to sleep on this,” she concluded, got up, gave me a hug and peck on the cheek.  “You sleep tight, baby.”

Whew.

She didn’t bring it up again with me later that visit, but I believe she talked to Dad about it.  He never confronted me on this, but when I left he gave me one of his solid hugs and added, “You take care, honey.  If you ever need us, you know we’re always here for you.  We’re you parents.”

My Dad.  Crispin Cape, M.D., F.A.C.S.

A very, very special kind of guy.

I don’t believe in astrology and the phases and alignment of the planets and all that stuff, and I don’t read the daily horoscopes.  But I have wondered over the years if Dad’s way of looking at the world was not somehow determined by the fact that he was born the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.  Whatever the reason, he’s one of the few people who, I believe, really tried to do more for his country and other people than he expected from them in return.  He was a patriot without the quotation marks.

In the late fall of 1988 just before I went off to college he asked me to go for a long walk with him in the forestland that abutted our property.  It was a trek we had made together many times during my childhood and teen years, but this time he wanted to “talk about important things” rather than just “enjoy the nature around us.”

“You’re old enough now,” he began as we crossed a small stream that was the rear property line, “to be aware of how things are.”  This was coded phrasing for him, and it referred to the divisions in the world, unfair, as he always pointed out, but there nonetheless.

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“I’ve never told you about Viet Nam, but now I want to.”

After he had finished medical school and a year of residency he was all set, in 1968, to enter a residency in general surgery.  Instead he enlisted in the army to serve in Viet Nam.

“But you didn’t have to, did you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t have to.”  He paused a moment.  “But it was my duty.”  There were not quotation marks around the word duty either.

“How do you mean?”

“People my age were going to Viet Nam to be horribly damaged and even die, and people my age were going to Canada and Sweden to avoid that.  I wanted to do my share.

“As it turned out, I couldn’t have gotten better training in general surgery, and when I returned to the states three years later I was a shoo-in for a very fine residency in reconstructive surgery.  And that led, ultimately, to cosmetic surgery.

“I’ve been very, very lucky, Mazarine.  The things, the money, the cars, the educations for you kids, all of that … it all came at a cost.  A truly horrible cost.”  And this is when he got that thousand-yard stare in his eyes I saw for the first time that afternoon.  He was back in the field hospitals.  “I learned what I learned and became what I became because a lot of young men had their faces blown off.  I never paid them for what they gave me.  Nobody ever really did.  But I’ve earned a great deal of money because of them, because of their suffering.”

He stopped and turned to look at me, with great intensity.  “We must never, never forget that, Mazarine.  I hope you will remember it all of your life.  What we owe to those young men.”

That’s it.  We walked for another hour or so without a word, listening to bird songs and observing the forest.  But I never did forget that afternoon or what he had said.  It made a deep impression on me.  It’s certainly one of the reasons I don’t cheat on my taxes.  The government gets it share of every penny I earn, on Aspasia’s books or off.

My parents instilled in me a lot of their own common sense about the world and its flaws, and, I hope, some of their essential decency.  By the example of their own lives each of them helped to inoculate me against the ideological viruses that seemed to find such fast and fertile footholds in the unthinking minds of many of my contemporaries in both high school and the university.  I was never seduced by the silly siren song of communism (Dad, sighing:  “It will never last, Mazarine.  It can’t.  It’s basic assumption is that the vast majority of humans are by nature altruistic, and that is a false assumption.”) and I did not grow up in a pampering hothouse that allowed for the luxury of venomous hatred for America and all things American (Mom, huffing: “Those morons should all read Plato’s Crito and write a monthly essay on that dialogue.”).

I thought of myself as a grounded person, well adjusted, not burdened by childhood scars.  I didn’t see myself as messed up.  Furthermore, I certainly hoped I was not entertaining any serious illusions in this regard.

The train was starting to decrease speed, and shortly we pulled into the quaint little fifties-style station that served the community of Akers Pond.  Since it was a Monday morning, there weren’t a lot of people riding away from the city and only a few individuals got off the train.  Both my parents were on the platform waiting for me.  They waved, and I felt a small lump in my throat.  I threw myself into Mom’s arms and then hung my arms around Dad’s neck.

“It’s so nice to see you, honey,” Mom said.

“It’s been too long,” Dad added.

“Well, I’m really glad to be here.”

Dad hefted my little suitcase and we walked over to the nearby parking lot and got in the car.  We went to a pancake place that had been in town since the beginning of time and had a leisurely, hi-carb lunch.

Dad dropped us off at the house and then continued on to the hospital.  He is an adjunct professor at the university in the city but does most of his procedures here in town. After I got settled into my old room and chit-chatted with Mom, I went for a short walk.  Everything was so quiet, so unhurried.  The contrast with the city struck me:  only the occasional sound of a truck passing on a distant highway, a car going by on the road in front of the house, the purling sound of water flowing in the brook, the background creaks and snaps of insects, birds.  Tranquility, almost mesmerizing in its sluggishness.

The week sped by.  We went out to eat a lot, drank good wine, talked late into night.  One afternoon Mom and I went to the cemetery and put fresh flowers on the grave where Grandpa now rested next to his wife.  I finished the Annals of Tacitus and decided I’d start in on the Symposium when I got back to the city.  Latin and then Greek.  Sweet as it was to be with my parents, by Friday I was getting a little antsy and was ready to leave, and on Saturday Mom and Dad drove me to the station to catch the 14:14 that would put me back in the city before five and my apartment before six.  We hugged, and Mom, like me, let a few tears drop.

“I love you both so much,” I choked.

They both nodded.  “We love you, too, Mazarine.”

They kept waving until I could no longer see them.

I had nothing to read on the way back.  My thoughts drifted back to my grandfather, Mom’s dad, who had died about half a year ago at the age of 89.  He’d been an old-time country doctor all his life, not retiring until he was in his mid-seventies.  He’d enlisted on December 8, 1941, and served in the Pacific campaign as a medic.  In 1945 he’d applied to medical school, got in, and graduated four years later.  He’d practiced in our town for thirty-five years.

In addition to being a doctor, he was also a very learned man.  In retrospect I think the reason he never went in for some big specialty was so he would have some free time and be able to read.  He was a great reader and he told me he had always enjoyed studying for its own sake.  Somewhere I still have his exercises in Latin composition from school.  In his house he had a huge library, over and above all his medical texts, and we three kids were always welcome to it.  I still remember the little stools one had to stand on to reach the higher shelves which were, as a practical matter, out of range for a child.  It was in the course of browsing in this vast library that, I think, my life-long passion for books, reading, study, art was first awakened.  In particular I recall books he had of old prints illustrating scenes from the bible and folktales.  In later years I came to appreciate that these were the striking drawings of Gustave Doré.

My grandfather had been an amateur botanist his whole life, and he had huge herbarium of dried and pressed plants carefully labeled in his small, exquisite hand.  Date and location of collection, common and Latin names, and any other relevant information would be noted on each page.  He also had many botanical illustrations of great beauty and accuracy, and these, I am sure, helped foster my own interest in realism and craftsmanship in art (I do not recall ever having seen illustrations from any of his medical text, and that may well have been because he thought them inappropriate for a child).  Since his library originated at a time before color photography had made its way into general publishing, such illustrations as appeared in his books were mostly based on ink drawings, and to this day I find such art emotionally most gratifying, like those magical ink sketches of Dürer and Rembrandt.  For all of this, I am forever indebted to my grandfather and his interests.

My general mental picture to this day is of him sitting in his favorite easy chair in his large study and living-room with a book or a newspaper in front of him, billows of cigar-smoke circling his head and spiraling slowly up to the ceiling.  At six o’clock every evening he would turn on a radio and listen to the latest news, and he didn’t get a TV until the early seventies.

He liked the outdoors, and as a youth he had been active in swimming and gymnastics.  Many times he would walk with Craig and Valerie and myself to a large lake near where we lived, and then we would go swimming and diving.  The trip to the lake took us through the forest, and on the way he would point out plants to us, comment on the songs of birds, show us where edible berries were hidden, and in general keep up an informative flow of talk about everything under the sun.

When he and Grandma were visiting in our house he was in the habit of reading aloud to us before we went to sleep, and this always gave us all great pleasure.  He would come up to our bedroom, and I still recall – pleasantly — the smell of cigar smoke emanating from his clothes.  Craig would come into Valerie’s and my room and sit at the foot of one of our beds.

It is a curious thing that the influence of all his academic and intellectual interests did not manifest itself in me for many years in terms of my formal schooling.  I was a very indifferent student, and that did not change until I hit ninth grade and had the good fortune to have a dynamic Latin teacher and a very strict algebra teacher.

In retrospect I have to consider myself quite fortunate to have had such a grandfather during my years of growing up – another one of those things that benefited me hugely but for the arrangement of which I can claim no personal credit – I was just lucky.

Everyone should be so blessed!

The train was slowing and screeching.

All in all, it had been a great visit, and I was very glad I had gone up.  As we came to a full stop in the station I felt revitalized, recharged, all set to go again.  There would be appointments from Miche on the answering machine and a full schedule for the coming week.

I descended onto the platform, the dripping August heat hit me like a body blow, and I had the happy thought that I would soon see Yukiko.

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029     030

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  031

I had nothing to read on the way back.  My thoughts drifted back to my grandfather, Mom’s dad, who had died about half a year ago at the age of 89.  He’d been an old-time country doctor all his life, not retiring until he was in his mid-seventies.  He’d enlisted on December 8, 1941, and served in the Pacific campaign as a medic.  In 1945 he’d applied to medical school, got in, and graduated four years later.  He’d practiced in our town for thirty-five years.

In addition to being a doctor, he was also a very learned man.  In retrospect I think the reason he never went in for some big specialty was so he would have some free time and be able to read.  He was a great reader and he told me he had always enjoyed studying for its own sake.  Somewhere I still have his exercises in Latin composition from school.  In his house he had a huge library, over and above all his medical texts, and we three kids were always welcome to it.  I still remember the little stools one had to stand on to reach the higher shelves which were, as a practical matter, out of range for a child.  It was in the course of browsing in this vast library that, I think, my life-long passion for books, reading, study, art was first awakened.  In particular I recall books he had of old prints illustrating scenes from the bible and folktales.  In later years I came to appreciate that these were the striking drawings of Gustave Doré.

My grandfather had been an amateur botanist his whole life, and he had huge herbarium of dried and pressed plants carefully labeled in his small, exquisite hand.  Date and location of collection, common and Latin names, and any other relevant information would be noted on each page.  He also had many botanical illustrations of great beauty and accuracy, and these, I am sure, helped foster my own interest in realism and craftsmanship in art (I do not recall ever having seen illustrations from any of his medical text, and that may well have been because he thought them inappropriate for a child).  Since his library originated at a time before color photography had made its way into general publishing, such illustrations as appeared in his books were mostly based on ink drawings, and to this day I find such art emotionally most gratifying, like those magical ink sketches of Dürer and Rembrandt.  For all of this, I am forever indebted to my grandfather and his interests.

My general mental picture to this day is of him sitting in his favorite easy chair in his large study and living-room with a book or a newspaper in front of him, billows of cigar-smoke circling his head and spiraling slowly up to the ceiling.  At six o’clock every evening he would turn on a radio and listen to the latest news, and he didn’t get a TV until the early seventies.

He liked the outdoors, and as a youth he had been active in swimming and gymnastics.  Many times he would walk with Craig and Valerie and myself to a large lake near where we lived, and then we would go swimming and diving.  The trip to the lake took us through the forest, and on the way he would point out plants to us, comment on the songs of birds, show us where edible berries were hidden, and in general keep up an informative flow of talk about everything under the sun.

When he and Grandma were visiting in our house he was in the habit of reading aloud to us before we went to sleep, and this always gave us all great pleasure.  He would come up to our bedroom, and I still recall – pleasantly — the smell of cigar smoke emanating from his clothes.  Craig would come into Valerie’s and my room and sit at the foot of one of our beds.

It is a curious thing that the influence of all his academic and intellectual interests did not manifest itself in me for many years in terms of my formal schooling.  I was a very indifferent student, and that did not change until I hit ninth grade and had the good fortune to have a dynamic Latin teacher and a very strict algebra teacher.

In retrospect I have to consider myself quite fortunate to have had such a grandfather during my years of growing up – another one of those things that benefited me hugely but for the arrangement of which I can claim no personal credit – I was just lucky.

Everyone should be so blessed!

The train was slowing and screeching.

All in all, it had been a great visit, and I was very glad I had gone up.  As we came to a full stop in the station I felt revitalized, recharged, all set to go again.  There would be appointments from Miche on the answering machine and a full schedule for the coming week.

I descended onto the platform, the dripping August heat hit me like a body blow, and I had the happy thought that I would soon see Yukiko.

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028     029

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  030

I don’t believe in astrology and the phases and alignment of the planets and all that stuff, and I don’t read the daily horoscopes.  But I have wondered over the years if Dad’s way of looking at the world was not somehow determined by the fact that he was born the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.  Whatever the reason, he’s one of the few people who, I believe, really tried to do more for his country and other people than he expected from them in return.  He was a patriot without the quotation marks.

In the late fall of 1988 just before I went off to college he asked me to go for a long walk with him in the forestland that abutted our property.  It was a trek we had made together many times during my childhood and teen years, but this time he wanted to “talk about important things” rather than just “enjoy the nature around us.”

“You’re old enough now,” he began as we crossed a small stream that was the rear property line, “to be aware of how things are.”  This was coded phrasing for him, and it referred to the divisions in the world, unfair, as he always pointed out, but there nonetheless.

“That’s true,” I agreed.

“I’ve never told you about Viet Nam, but now I want to.”

After he had finished medical school and a year of residency he was all set, in 1968, to enter a residency in general surgery.  Instead he enlisted in the army to serve in Viet Nam.

“But you didn’t have to, did you?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t have to.”  He paused a moment.  “But it was my duty.”  There were not quotation marks around the word duty either.

“How do you mean?”

“People my age were going to Viet Nam to be horribly damaged and even die, and people my age were going to Canada and Sweden to avoid that.  I wanted to do my share.

“As it turned out, I couldn’t have gotten better training in general surgery, and when I returned to the states three years later I was a shoo-in for a very fine residency in reconstructive surgery.  And that led, ultimately, to cosmetic surgery.

“I’ve been very, very lucky, Mazarine.  The things, the money, the cars, the educations for you kids, all of that … it all came at a cost.  A truly horrible cost.”  And this is when he got that thousand-yard stare in his eyes I saw for the first time that afternoon.  He was back in the field hospitals.  “I learned what I learned and became what I became because a lot of young men had their faces blown off.  I never paid them for what they gave me.  Nobody ever really did.  But I’ve earned a great deal of money because of them, because of their suffering.”

He stopped and turned to look at me, with great intensity.  “We must never, never forget that, Mazarine.  I hope you will remember it all of your life.  What we owe to those young men.”

That’s it.  We walked for another hour or so without a word, listening to bird songs and observing the forest.  But I never did forget that afternoon or what he had said.  It made a deep impression on me.  It’s certainly one of the reasons I don’t cheat on my taxes.  The government gets it share of every penny I earn, on Aspasia’s books or off.

My parents instilled in me a lot of their own common sense about the world and its flaws, and, I hope, some of their essential decency.  By the example of their own lives each of them helped to inoculate me against the ideological viruses that seemed to find such fast and fertile footholds in the unthinking minds of many of my contemporaries in both high school and the university.  I was never seduced by the silly siren song of communism (Dad, sighing:  “It will never last, Mazarine.  It can’t.  It’s basic assumption is that the vast majority of humans are by nature altruistic, and that is a false assumption.”) and I did not grow up in a pampering hothouse that allowed for the luxury of venomous hatred for America and all things American (Mom, huffing: “Those morons should all read Plato’s Crito and write a monthly essay on that dialogue.”).

I thought of myself as a grounded person, well adjusted, not burdened by childhood scars.  I didn’t see myself as messed up.  Furthermore, I certainly hoped I was not entertaining any serious illusions in this regard.

The train was starting to decrease speed, and shortly we pulled into the quaint little fifties-style station that served the community of Akers Pond.  Since it was a Monday morning, there weren’t a lot of people riding away from the city and only a few individuals got off the train.  Both my parents were on the platform waiting for me.  They waved, and I felt a small lump in my throat.  I threw myself into Mom’s arms and then hung my arms around Dad’s neck.

“It’s so nice to see you, honey,” Mom said.

“It’s been too long,” Dad added.

“Well, I’m really glad to be here.”

Dad hefted my little suitcase and we walked over to the nearby parking lot and got in the car.  We went to a pancake place that had been in town since the beginning of time and had a leisurely, hi-carb lunch.

Dad dropped us off at the house and then continued on to the hospital.  He is an adjunct professor at the university in the city but does most of his procedures here in town. After I got settled into my old room and chit-chatted with Mom, I went for a short walk.  Everything was so quiet, so unhurried.  The contrast with the city struck me:  only the occasional sound of a truck passing on a distant highway, a car going by on the road in front of the house, the purling sound of water flowing in the brook, the background creaks and snaps of insects, birds.  Tranquility, almost mesmerizing in its sluggishness.

The week sped by.  We went out to eat a lot, drank good wine, talked late into night.  One afternoon Mom and I went to the cemetery and put fresh flowers on the grave where Grandpa now rested next to his wife.  I finished the Annals of Tacitus and decided I’d start in on the Symposium when I got back to the city.  Latin and then Greek.  Sweet as it was to be with my parents, by Friday I was getting a little antsy and was ready to leave, and on Saturday Mom and Dad drove me to the station to catch the 14:14 that would put me back in the city before five and my apartment before six.  We hugged, and Mom, like me, let a few tears drop.

“I love you both so much,” I choked.

They both nodded.  “We love you, too, Mazarine.”

They kept waving until I could no longer see them.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chapter 9  024-027     028

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  029

“To discuss the issue dispassionately you have to realize it’s a business.  The point is to maximize profits.

“If you’re a communist you’re going to have problems with this fact and see prostitution as immoral, not because of the prostitution but because it commodifies – to use a favorite piece of academic jargon — pleasure and generates private profit.  And that’s anathema to those economic illiterates.  In theory.  A good deal of Cuba’s foreign exchange, for example, derives from its position as Europe’s whorehouse, a kind of Caribbean Thailand for hard-currency tourists.  And that great communist Castro says the girls fuck because they like it and not because they need the money.

“But a Christian capitalist will see immorality because he thinks physical pleasure is sinful.  Of course, once you let everybody get his pet lick in, what’s immoral is pretty multifaceted: coffee, smoking, drinking, gambling, hunting, Nikes, abortion, death penalty, war, carbon dioxide emissions, eating meat, and on and on.  And all this evil produces huge profits for entrepreneurs and taxes for governments.  Stacked up against horrors like that, prostitution seems fairly benign to me.

“Yes, prostitution does spread disease.  So do all kinds of intercourse that don’t involve money, inside marriage and outside.  Not to mention the common cold, kissing, and poor personal and public hygiene.  A reasonable person can take precautions against all of them.  What more can I say?”

Mom was looking very pensive but she didn’t say anything.

“The most intense anger seems directed against ‘exploitation’.  Women and women’s bodies are ‘exploited’.  It’s a favorite red herring of the wearied left and duped right that still stinks to high heaven.  I’ve never fully grasped what is meant here.

“How about the man who digs ditches? Isn’t his body being exploited?  Or how about the woman professor who prostitutes her mind in front of generations of students?  Should we deplore her exploitation too and make it illegal?  It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to see how a victorianizing society obsessed with protecting supposedly helpless women in general or women professors in particular could slip into a taliban mode and proscribe all women’s work.  And for good measure, the way they look too.”  I took a sip of wine. “Bring on the burqas!”

“I admit I hadn’t ever thought about it in exactly those terms,” Mom said thoughtfully.

“And that’s part of the problem.  All studies on prostitution that I’ve ever read point out that the picture of the innocent woman captured and forced into prostitution is clearly the exception.  It exists, yes, all over the world.  Even here.  But to deal with cases like that, we don’t need laws against prostitution  – just vigorous enforcement of existing laws on kidnapping and enslavement.  Whether she’s an uneducated street walker or a classy hooker working on graduate degrees, she does it for one simple reason:  the work is easy, the money is great, and profits are maximized.  And that should be self-evident in a capitalist society.  The irony is that it obviously is in a  communist society like Cuba.  It beats working at MacDonald’s for six bucks minus 25% the state and feds rake off  — by any other name, in other words, the pimps.

“No, it’s not prostitution that exploits women, but its illegality.  The lack of a legal framework that exists for other forms of small business in this country forces the women to go extra-legal to protect themselves from corrupt police and unregulated pimps who ‘own’ them; it promotes a kind of vicious de facto slavery.  If prostitution were legalized, I believe that most of this corruption wouldn’t find purchase in the business.  And by regulating it like any other business, governments at all levels would score big time from tax collections just as they do from any small business.  In any event, it sure isn’t going away!

“So, it’s not about morality and it’s not about health.  It’s all about money.  If it’s legal to sell the pleasure of cancer-causing cigarettes, why not sell carnal pleasure?  Why shouldn’t women have the right to decide how to make money and maximize earnings from whatever they are good at, even if that includes prostitution?  Nobody can force any woman to be a prostitute, but if that’s how she wants to earn money, why not?  How is her using her body in this way any different from an athlete using her body in that way?  Or a very bright woman using her mind to earn money?  Play to strengths!”

I didn’t think Mom was buying this.  She said nothing, just finished her wine.

“I need to sleep on this,” she concluded, got up, gave me a hug and peck on the cheek.  “You sleep tight, baby.”

Whew.

She didn’t bring it up again with me later that visit, but I believe she talked to Dad about it.  He never confronted me on this, but when I left he gave me one of his solid hugs and added, “You take care, honey.  If you ever need us, you know we’re always here for you.  We’re you parents.”

My Dad.  Crispin Cape, M.D., F.A.C.S.

A very, very special kind of guy.

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026     027     Chap 9  024-027

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  028

Chapter 10: The Family

Even if it had a ways to go before it would attain the clean and comfortable standards of European passenger rail, Amtrak would, I hoped, make it.  I enjoyed riding the train.  It snaked its way slowly out of the station, lurching through switches and clattering over cross tracks.  I watched hundreds of dirty cars and freight yards march past my window as we picked up speed through small tunnels and overpasses covered with colorful graffiti.  Urban decay gradually gave way to more rural vistas as the north-bound Valley Express picked up speed.  I had a two-hour ride ahead of me before I arrived in the town where my parents, the Capes, lived.  For a few days I would have a chance to escape the broiling heat that was stifling the city, and I could relax in a more rustic setting.  I was looking forward to the visit for several reasons.

I had pulled out my Tacitus to while away the next couple of hours but after a few pages of distracted reading I dropped the book back in my tote bag and let my thinking roam.  I could of course not get Yukiko out of my head, and this in itself disturbed me.  She was already occupying too much emotional space and crowding my mental world.  Even at this preliminary stage in our relationship I somehow knew that we would soon be more than just casual friends, and the idea simultaneously thrilled and agitated me.  Could I possibly become another Su-Lien?  And – for Heaven’s sake — where did this undeniable attraction (was that even a strong enough word?) for a woman, even a woman of such supernal loveliness as Yukiko, suddenly come from?

As the train sped through green fields and thick stands of trees lining rivers and lakes my desultory musings stumbled across the topic of my parents.  Yes, I was glad I was going to see them for a few days. Although we stay pretty much in touch by phone and e-mail, it was several months since I had visited.  Mom, whose name was Christy, doesn’t like the city and rarely comes down, and Dad (Crispin) is always busy enough for three men.

Over the years a lot of my clients had been curious about my childhood and upbringing, wanting, apparently, to believe in the explanatory stereotype of family abuse and dysfunction as requisite etiology for prostitution.  In my case, nothing could be further from the truth.

How do we become what we are?

I come from a solid upper middle-class family of responsible and loving parents and achieving children.  My older brother, Craig, is a corporate attorney in the city and my older sister, Valerie, is an anesthesiologist who lives in Oakland.  I love my mother, who was my best friend; and I love my father without reserve.  Not the way so many of the girls I knew at college did (“I love my Father but …”).  In the privacy of my own thoughts I referred to them as ‘love-buts’.  No, I loved my father period!  No buts, ands or ors.  I was a ‘love-period’.  Nobody ever laid a hand on me in anger or discipline.  All of us kids were encouraged by example, but never coerced by threat, to become readers and learners, and we all went to the best private schools and the colleges of our choice.  Both Craig and Valerie had been supported financially as well as emotionally through college and professional school, as had I for both B.A. and  M.A.  I have nothing but happy memories of my childhood and my family.  Take just one small example of what the family tone was like:  after Craig came along Mom, who had done a minor in anthropological linguistics, said she was tired of all these velar plosives – Cape, Crispin, Christy, Craig.  It was time to move forward in the mouth.  “What we need are some labials!”  And so big sis became Valerie and I got stuck with Mazarine.  According to the story, Dad had merely remarked, “Cool!”  “No,” Mom emended, “you mean ‘boss’, don’t you, honey?”  He thought for a minute before coming back, “Bitchin’, mama baby!”  And then, this urban family legend continues, true to their word they went off to bed and made Valerie.

In short, I was that unfashionable adult of the new century who was not a victim of priest, parent, pedagogue or police – except that in the bizarre social calculus of contemporary American life this very deficit ought no doubt ipso facto to constitute incontrovertible authentication of my status as victim:  I am a victim because I am not a victim.  Welcome to the whacky world of malice in blunderland.

Does my family know what I do for a living?

Yes. No. Maybe.

Mom certainly does.  After I’d been in the life a few years I just blurted it out one night when she and I were chatting in her kitchen over glasses of good Chardonnay.  She calls herself a Libertarian (“To the extent that I’ll put a label on myself!”), but this was bit de trop even for her.

“Are you serious, Mazarine?” she said.  She looked not so much shocked as incredulous.

“I am, Mom.  Very.”

For once she was speechless.  “I … I don’t know what to say,” she confirmed.

“Then let me say something.  I gave this a lot of thought before I got into it.”

She downed some Chardonnay and was all ears.  “I imagine you did, dear,” she said.

“You know about my job situation after I finished the M.A., so I don’t need to fill in the background for you.  As a way to make some decent money it was not going in the direction I would have liked.  I’m sure you can appreciate that.  Right?”

She nodded in agreement.  “So, you mean you’re not a copy editor any longer?”  Was there a hint of mockery there?

“Mom, puh-leaze!” I said, rolling my eyes.

I went to the refrigerator, took out the wine and filled up both our glasses. After returning the Chardonnay, I began.

“I want you to know that what I’m going to say is not something I dreamed up afterwards in order to justify taking the plunge.  It was an entirely rational decision, and it was prompted by basic economics.  Like anybody else, I sell a service.”

“Like ‘anybody else’?” she said.  This time there was no mistaking a trace of puzzled amusement in her intonation.

“Look at it this way,” I went on.  “People object in clichés.  Exhausted clichés, I might add.  Three of them:  it’s immoral, it spreads disease, and – the most heated objection – it exploits women.  Each one is so vacuous it always surprises me that otherwise intelligent  people try to argue them with a straight face.  They’re trivially true, bland statements of human realities valid in a lot of contexts.”

“Oh?  And how exactly do you mean that?”

 TO BE CONTINUED

Prologue 001-002     Chap 1 003-005     Chap 2 006     Chap 3 007-008
Chap 4 009-010     Chap 5  011-013     Chap 6  014-017     Chap 7  018-019
Chap 8  020-023    

Revenge Should Have No Bounds

Chapter 9: The Bi

I had to stop in the lobby and sit in one of the comfortable chairs.

“May I get you something to drink?”  One of the attractive hostesses circulating among the loungers had appeared in front of me.

“Yes, yes.  That’s a good idea.  I’d like a large glass of club soda with a lime twist.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “It’ll just be a second.”  She wasn’t kidding.  She mumbled something into her lapel, and almost before she had moved on to the next set of chairs a smartly dressed attendant placed a beaded glass in front of me.  “Here you are,” she said brightly.

“That was fast,” I said, rather dumbly.

The woman gave me a little nod of agreement and rushed off in the direction of the bar.

I took a long draught of the cold drink and looked casually around me.  As one might expect for a Sunday morning, the lobby was quite crowded and filled with a steady hum of conversations and laughter.  I tried to tune it out and sort of retract into myself.

The truth is that Agung had drained me.  Emotionally, psychically, certainly physically.  An ineffable lassitude had descended over me, and, stretched out in my soft fauteuil, I mused languorously on our recent encounter, as if detached from its reality and marooned in a waking dream.  I am almost – but not quite – tempted to call it love-making.  But in spite of my sense of possible drift onto the dangerous shoals of passion for Agung, as yet I still had enough presence of mind to steer away from this shattering passage.  Although I clearly had wide ranges of feeling for the men who hired me, from incipient disgust to passionate abandon, I had never had any illusions about what I did for a living and what my clients wanted from me — reduced to the frank and guileless patois of the gutter, it was that delicious hairy pussy between my legs.  I knew working girls who in their hearts had packaged this reality in the disingenuous wrappings of romantic illusion only to be cruelly disappointed.  For in the end illusions are without exception as falsely perfect as they are inevitably unreliable, and I prayed I would never lose sight of this perdurable truth.  Women like us were simply not the ones the men who paid us to fuck and suck would ever be bringing home to Mom and Dad.

I snapped out of this reverie.

I had a good three hours before my meeting with Yukiko at the Momiji.  I was ravenous and decide to splurge at The Take, a classy restaurant associated with the Momiji and specializing in Japanese-French fusion food that was astonishingly palatable.  But I couldn’t bring myself to get up; I needed to stay a bit longer and unwind exactly where I was.  I finished my club soda and licked the lime.  Discreetly, without removing it from my shoulder bag resting on my lap, I used a tapered fingernail to split the seam on the little something Agung had given me.  I peered inside.  His munificence was, if not surprising, still quite grand.  Ten crisp Franklins lay sleeping peacefully in the creamy off-white cradle of the thick envelope.

Definitely my kinda guy!

I moseyed indolently over to one of the revolving doors and exited into the furnace warmth of mid-day August.  I was feeling like lethargy incarnate, and it was far too hot for me even to think of walking the ten or so blocks down to the Momiji.  Feeling expansive, I palmed a ten to the doorman and asked him to secure me a cab.  With a tip like that, said is done, and soon a Sikh in a green turban was conveying me south in his air-conditioned cab.

The Momiji is one of those super-luxurious hotels backed by foreign – this one, obviously, Japanese — corporations that have begun to dot the more fashionable landscapes of larger American cities.  It was also super-expensive, but I’d never heard anyone complain about the amenities or the service.  They were all super-impeccable.  The lobby was a study in minimalist elegance, and one could imagine hearing the soft modulation of flutes.  The spacious atrium was bathed in soft daylight pouring down through a vaulted ceiling implanted with countless panes of patterned glass.  A luxuriance of verdant plants and red hibiscus made for a general restfulness.  In the middle of this expanse a broad fountain purled gently and murmured its muted whispers.  Tall bamboos swaying halfway up to the mezzanine formed a fringe around the outer periphery of the pool’s blue-green water.  A polyglot of languages from East and West created a rustling susurrus in the background.

The Take was located at the north end of the atrium, and I wended my way through clusters of bowing businessmen and multiple groups of Japanese and German vacationers being herded out to the tour busses parked outside.  There was a short line outside the restaurant.  It seemed to be moving along briskly enough, and since I still had lots of time I decided to join the other brunchers waiting to be seated.  It didn’t take long, and soon I was seated at a table for eight with seven strangers.

It was one of those teppanyaki steak places where the food was prepared right in front of you on a large hibachi-type grille that was built into the table.  I was partial to the fried rice and the thin, almost transparent strips of filet; these were seared with garlic, chopped ginger and shredded stalks of green onion, and then mixed in a sauce of mirin wine, soy sauce and oyster sauce.

Shortly after the eight seats were filled a waitress came and took our selections, and soon after that the chef arrived with his cart of implements and ingredients.  I had a small flask of sake while I waited for my order.  Everything was fixed with flair and style, and the food was every bit as tasty as I had remembered.  I finished up with green-tea ice cream and put down a generous tip.

The lunch left me feeling neither hungry nor sated.  Perfect.

I wanted to walk a bit and settle the food.  Since the weather was not likely to have appreciably changed in the interim I opted for a slow walk throughout the coolness of the vast lobby and atrium.  Idly I watched people and also let my eyes rove over the exquisite luxuries on display in the many windows of tony boutiques and established chains.

It was getting on towards three o’clock.

I suppose the hermetic compartmentalization of desire is not possible.  For desire seems more to be a matter of gamut, more a movement along an elastic spectrum than a fixed point of eternal permanence.  As I have noted before, I have a wide range of feelings for the many clients I see;  I could probably locate each of them with some precision along a personal continuum of want that stretches from the barely tolerable – a Fab Darling, say – to an avidity almost frightening in its intensity – an Agung, say.  But in the phenomenology of yearning men constitute only one half of availability.  What of women?  Again, I am compelled to contemplate that notion of an elastic spectrum to whose practical applicability Yukiko is, contrary to all I might have believed, shortly to introduce me.

I am alone riding up in the exposed glass cage to the eighteenth floor as the view of the lobby of the Momiji receded.  The ascent is smooth and swift.  I exit the glass enclosure and avail myself of the pointing arrows and range of room numbers posted on the wall to get oriented, and then I head off in the soft direction of 1856.  It is about half way down the opulent hall.  I stop in front of the door.  Before knocking, I hesitate briefly and allow myself a final monitory reflection about why I am here and what I think I am really up to.

I tap on the door.

It opens, immediately, as if she has been peering through the small eyehole and knows I have arrived.

I sweep over her in one stunned look.

She wears a tight, seamless cylinder of basic black hugging her complex planes like dark enfolding the fluid night.  She is fashionably sleek, a feline sinuousness supported on the longest legs I have ever seen on a woman.  There are no ridges from brassiere or panties visible on the molded surfaces of her décolleté dress.  The exposed skin is tanned an expensive honey amber.  She gives off an aura of simmering voluptuousness as naturally as bubbling water on a hot stove throws off steam.  The velvety pumps push her up to eye-level with me.  The face is flawless, and it is framed by a glossy sheen of black hair pulled back tight and pierced by the kinds of ivory pins one sees in ladies of the floating world in Utamaro prints.  But her lips are not tiny and pursed – quite the opposite, full and generous.  And a deep, intense incarnadine.  The somnolent eyes have prominent epicanthic folds and are widely set, giving her a somewhat startled look; their sooty pupils seem to float on dusky irises.  Her brows are strikingly thick and suggestively lush, blacker than charcoal.

She wears no earrings or other jewelry.

I find the citrine muskiness of her perfume simultaneously unsettling and physically provocative, almost like an assault.  A brief, sardonic smile plays on her broad mouth, and she makes no attempt to hide two modestly crooked teeth in the lower jaw.  Silent, with a kind of lazy amusement, she gazes at me up and down and nods slowly as if to say, yes, ‘She will do’, at least for now.  Even before she utters a word I sense about her an aura of imperious hauteur.

I make an effort to conceal my astonished reaction to her, but I don’t believe I succeed.   And I think Yukiko knows the effect she is having on me.  I am sure she is used to it by this stage in her life.  red

“Please,” she said, motioning economically with an elegant hand, the nails at the tips of long fingers an astonishing crimson red,  “come in.  Please.”  The voice is soft and pleasantly modulated.  There is no trace of a foreign accent.  Pure California.  She precedes me into the airy suite with a gliding languor that calls to mind the listless indolence of – once more – large cats.

The suite has a large living room, and, folding doors ajar, through a screen-like arrangement I see a spacious bedroom with a large futon sitting low off the floor.  A spectacular view opens out on the city far below.  Up here all is silence.  Soft reading chairs and a large sofa are placed around a centered table, low and vitreous.  Against one wall is a handsome escritoire that looks to be of cherry wood.  The walls are a light ochre, interspersed with strips of polished mahogany.  Several ceramic vases contain flowers in a riot of color that have been subjected to an artful arrangement among delicate sprigs.

The room is undeniably restful, calming, somehow reassuring.

With her hand, again, Yukiko invites me to sit in the sofa.  I sink down, and she arranges herself in one of the chairs facing me.  She prepares tea from the tray on the table and hands me a cup.

“Thank you,” I say.

She sips lightly and eyes me above the rim.  She returns the cup to its saucer and places both back on the table.

“Thank you for coming,” she says.

I move my head down in acknowledgment of her words.

“I’ve never done this before,” I say.  “With a woman, I mean.”

Yukiko looks puzzled, and cants her long neck to the side.  “But we’re only here to talk,” she corrects me.

“Yes, that’s what I was told.”  I hesitate.  “But one never knows how such things can go.”

She gives my words serious thought.  “Yes,” she answers, “I can see how that might be the case sometimes.”

Meanwhile I have been asking myself if I could ‘go to bed’ with this inconceivably beautiful woman.  I must admit that it did not seem quite as improbable as it first had when Miche asked me to take the appointment.  It is perhaps hard to admit to myself, but there lay a certain attraction for me in the prospect.

All people wonder at some point if they are gay.  I had what I consider the normal explorations with girls that no doubt most women have in the course of growing up.  When I was fifteen, for example, I was strongly drawn to friend at school, and the feeling was mutual.  On a number of occasions I had lain next to her, both of us naked, and with tentative probings we had touched the untouchable parts of each other’s bodies while we kissed and hugged.  This callow ‘romance’ had lasted maybe six months, and then it ended as abruptly as it had begun, and in due time, after high school, we lost touch – literally as it were — with each other.  I have no idea if my friend was gay or had, like me, grown up heterosexual.  At college, given the many hysterical ideologies of the day, more than one girl had come on to me, but, frankly, by then the idea did not appeal to me at all and I had never reciprocated these amatory advances.  And when I had sought employment at Aspasia’s I had made it clear that I wouldn’t do women.

But now, sitting here with this … this creature … this erotic incarnation of beauty, I wasn’t so sure.  I surprised myself by realizing that, yes, I could see myself making love to Yukiko.  And not just making love, but abandoning myself, crazily and utterly, to the powerful attraction I felt her exercising on me, effortlessly, just by being, almost as if she were affixing some kind of magnetic charm to my waning resolve.  I want to touch her – I think.  In spite, it occurs to me, of the exquisite release of passion with Agung earlier that morning.

“For now, at least,” she reassures me, “let us just talk.”

She pauses.  “I must be honest with you.”

I am not sure I like the sound of that.  “Yes?”

“My original intent in getting you up here was to kill you.  Or at least hurt you.  Badly.”

She sees the very real fear in my demeanor.  The thought flashes through my mind that here I have been with hundreds of men without a serious incident:  wouldn’t it be ironic if every working girl’s nightmare starred a woman?  I quickly move to the front of the sofa and swivel my head several times, looking around me, checking for help.  I know my eyes are growing wide.

“Please,” she says, calmly.  “I should not have spoken so abruptly.  Please, let me explain.”  She smiles at me and relaxes her posture to appear as non-threatening as possible.  “There is nothing to fear here.  I assure you.”

I feel some relief, but I still sit tensely on the edge of the sofa.  I am wary as a fawn.

“My husband knows you.”

That is at least a plausible explanation.

“I know lots of husbands,” I say, feeling suddenly cocky.

“Yes,” she dips that olorine neck, “I am sure you do.”

I say nothing.  The momentum was with me now.

“I am no longer with him.”

“I see,” I note noncommittally.  “Divorced, then?”

“Yes.  Since 2000.  Please don’t misunderstand,” she explains.  “I am not blaming you for any of this.  It all happened several years ago.”

“Are you from the city?”

“No.  L.A.”

“And you decided to stay on after your divorce?”

“Yes.  I’d been here eight years by the time we got divorced.  I stayed on here.  I am not,” she explained with some bitterness, “close to my parents, and I have a brother who lives in the city.  I am very close to him.  He’s a chef at one of the restaurants here.”

I digest this capsule information.

“So why am I here?” I asked.

“I wanted to meet you.  My husband – my ex-husband,” she corrects herself, “used to talk about you.  I was very jealous.”  She holds up her hand, “At one time.  No longer.”

“I see.”

“But he was right about you.  You are a very beautiful woman.  I can understand why he liked to … to see you.”

“So this was never about sex at all, was it?”  I feel oddly deflated.

She turns her head aside and lowers her eyes.  A noticeable blush creeps across her face.  She says nothing.  But she is breathing hard.  My suspicions rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of my recently imagined encounter with Yukiko.

“Or is it?” I wonder aloud.

“Yes, I believe it is.  I … I am in fact attracted to you,” she whispers.  “Yes, that is true.  But I want only to know something about you, and for you to know something about me.”  She shakes her head, not believing what she is proposing.  “It is odd, is it not?”

“Probably,” I acquiesced.  “I find myself wanting to know more about you, too.”  I pause.  “If that helps.”

“That does help.”  She stands up and walks to the window, turns and faces me. Her willowy frame is outlined against the late afternoon glare.  It is hard for me to make out the features of her face.  “After a bad divorce I ended up pretty much on my own.   I started a business, and it took off.  I run a very successful translation agency in the city.  It began with just me and Japanese, but now I have twenty-five people working for me and we cover fifteen languages.  You have no idea what the demand for such services is with business and government agencies.”

“So you do speak Japanese?”

“Yes, I am fluent, virtually a native speaker.”  She has returned to her seat where I can again make out her features and picks up the tea pot.  “Will you have some more tea?”

She pours and refills both our cups.

“I need to talk about myself.”

“I’m yours until seven,” I said, hoping I do not sound entirely mercenary.  It is now strangely important for me to be on this woman’s good side, so to speak.

“I understand,” she says wanly.

As the time rolls by and the shadows in the room grow longer she unfurls a compelling tale.  I am not sure if it is true, as I have no way to verify anything she says.  But I can find no reason why she would make up such a narrative.  I am inclined to believe her.  In the course of the telling Yukiko as such emerges from the fuzziness, and the initial vagueness of shape is limned in a sharper complexity that mingles soft with harsh, cruel with kind, and not a little rage.

She was born and grew up in Los Angeles.  Her family was what she referred to with some ambivalence as ‘traditional.’  Both her parents were born in Japan in the late thirties, and came to America in 1963.  Yukiko arrived a couple years later, and was the only child.  The parents spoke exclusively Japanese at home, and they made sure she could read and write the language as well as speak it.  In 1983, at the age of 18, she enrolled at U.C.L.A. and started a double major in Japanese and statistics.

Her senior year she travels to Japan with plans to spend several years at Osaka University.

I have no difficulty recollecting Yukiko’s exhaustive description to me of her two years in Japan, and here is how I reconstruct the highlights of that strange period.

She studies classical Japanese literature, continues her work in statistics, and takes up international economics.  In her first week there she meets Su-Lien Rahman, a Malaysian whose intelligence and comeliness, ladled from a variegated gene pool of Chinese and Malay ancestry, mounts a powerful argument for miscegenation.  She is a stewardess with Asean Airlines on a year’s leave of absence to further her education in Japanese culture and literature.

Their intellectual attraction to each other is as powerful and immediate as the physical one.  But Yukiko has a sharp edge on Su-Lien, for she was born cynical of human nature and calculating about its fragility.  She has no illusions of altruism in arranging her life to best advantage in love as in business, nor is she concerned about costs to others.  Male colleagues accuse her, behind her back, of sleeping up the faculty hierarchy;  women loathe her, for a more complex variety of reasons.

Shortly after Su-Lien arrives in Osaka she is sitting one day in the sun on a bench outside the engineering building at the Toyonaka campus.  She is studying a brochure for foreign students.  Yukiko, recently arrived, notices her during a predatory walk-about on campus.  She sits down on the bench.

Su-Lien is taken aback.  She is not accustomed to this forwardness from the Japanese.  Yukiko addresses her in Japanese, and Su-Lien answers in kind.

“You are a new student here, not Japanese?”

“No. I am from Malaysia.”

“Kuala Lumpur?”

Su-Lien smiles.  “No,” she answers.  “I am from Sandakan.”

Yukiko looks confused.  “I am sorry, I do not know it.”

“In Sabah state, across from Kota Kinabalu.”

“Ah, yes,” she nods.  “In East Malaysia.  Borneo.”

“Yes,” Su-Lien says, breaking into a smile that liquefies Yukiko’s hard heart.

They are both 21 years old.

“My name is Yukiko,” she says.

“I am Su-Lien Rahman,” she responds.  “Are you from Osaka?”  Even as she asks, Su-Lien senses that Yukiko is from elsewhere.  It is something about her dress, the carefree and confident, even arrogant way she carries herself.

“No.  I am from America.  From Los Angeles.”

“Oh,” Su-Lien answers, genuinely impressed.  She knew the woman could not have been native Japanese.

There is an awkward silence between them.  Both feel something in the air, like an arc sparking between two charged poles.  Su-Lien does not remember exactly what happens next, but the two of them decide to share a place to live.  She believes Yukiko suggested it.  She does not recall remonstrating against this invitation, but feeling that it was natural it should be so.  They find a tiny place a forty-five minute’s commute from the central campus.

They become, at first, inseparable.  They are roommates and lovers.  Su-Lien unfurls delicate layers of herself, like the petals of a jungle orchid, to Yukiko’s worldly sagacity.   They do most things together:  dining in restaurants, visiting discos, going to movies, walking in the parks, sharing a secret delight in rejecting the men who are openly eager to date them.  Yukiko quickly establishes a dominant role.  Su-Lien readily accommodates herself to subservience.

At times she brushes aside the discreet prodding of her own thoughts that she is permitting herself to be too pliant in Yukiko’s shaping hands, too yielding, too eager to satisfy.  It becomes increasingly exhausting to anticipate Yukiko’s moods, her wants and her dislikes of the moment.  At the end of the first year Su-Lien thinks seriously of moving out, but seems incapable of acting on her plan.  Yukiko returns to Los Angeles for three months, and Su-Lien is desperately unhappy and lonely.  She is absurdly grateful when Yukiko calls one evening and says that she will be returning to Japan in two days.  Will Su-Lien train up to Tokyo and meet her at Narita?  After Yukiko hangs up, Su-Lien throws herself on their bed and sobs for happiness.  She will spend hours dressing and making up and trying to look exactly as Yukiko has told her she wants her to look.

In the course of the second year of their ménage Su-Lien allows herself to acknowledge a streak of genuine cruelty in Yukiko’s behavior.  It begins with slighting remarks about her Japanese pronunciation or off-hand comments about the darkness of her skin or what Yukiko suddenly considers excessive hairiness on intimate parts of her body.  Su-Lien is hurt.  She can do little about her skin or her accent, but she shaves.  Yukiko upbraids her for being intemperate.  She is to allow the pubic hair to grow out again, but only until it looks like Yukiko’s.  Indeed, in more and more circumstances Yukiko sets herself up as the template which Su-Lien is to use in reshaping herself to Yukiko’s ever more exacting criteria:  looks, inflection, idioms, dress, walk, movement of the hands, tying up of the hair, lipstick, rouge, eyeliner, newspapers and magazines to read.

Failure on Su-Line’s part to achieve the goals set by these assignments prompts cyclonic outbursts of rage on Yukiko’s part.  But they subside as unpredictably as they arise.

Unchallenged superiority leads Yukiko to ridicule Su-Lien’s lack of mathematical sophistication;  a defiant inferiority makes her belittle her lover’s formidable knowledge of languages (in addition to the Japanese she is perfecting at Osaka, Su-Lien is fluent in five languages — Bahasa Malaysia, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, and English —and can get around passably in five more — Portuguese, French, Dutch, German and Tagalog — as well as Kadazan, the language of her bumiputra amah).  Yukiko affects an utter indifference to Malaysia and Su-Lien’s family but talks incessantly, and with increasing vehemence, ferocity even, about America and Los Angeles.  Racial prejudice in both America and Japan become prominent topics of her acidulous lectures during walks, at dinner, in bed.  It infuriates her that the Japanese she meets every day remind her with overt as well as subtle strokes that she isn’t really Japanese the way they are.  For example, ‘You speak excellent Japanese for an American’ – which truly enrages her, turns her inside out with feral fury.  And she appears to want to blame Su-Lien for these measured affronts to her ethnicity by her ethnic brothers and sisters, raining down her stormy wrath on a cowering Su-Lien.

Yukiko’s love-making is less frequent than a year ago.  But Yukiko is always the initiator, and it begins to take on a kind of experimental pitilessness, as if she wants to use Su-Lien not so much for sexual gratification as to explore the limits of her debased acquiescence in humiliation.  Su-Lien has neither the strength to refuse Yukiko’s bullying nor the courage to assert her own desires.  She feels herself spinning into a vortex of insignificance, and she is almost beyond desperation to service Yukiko’s erratic self-indulgences.  She draws the line at performing for Yukiko with a Korean woman (to whom Yukiko can feel safely superior) she has brought home.  Though petrified with fear of Yukiko’s response to this insubordination, to her surprise Yukiko dismisses her refusal with an airy laugh and serves everybody tea in the formal way.  She has also bought almond cookies and rice cakes.

By the end of the school year Su-Lien suspects that Yukiko has met somebody else, but she is too timid to ask.  Finally Yukiko simply says good-by and walks out.  She leaves behind an address in Los Angeles, saying cavalierly it’s possible she will write if Su-Lien wishes to send her a letter.  The words they do write become fewer and less frequent, and soon enough dribble off into empty formulas.

“I am not proud of my treatment of Su-Lien,” Yukiko adds by way of recapitulating coda.  “She should have been stronger, should not have allowed me to behave as I did.  It’s actually all her fault.”  There is a dismissive coolness in the manner of the expression, almost a kind of contempt for her Malaysian lover.

I elect not to remark on this curious version of blame-the-victim but, in response, mumble some inconsequential comments designed not to offend.  It is close to seven by now and my appointment is almost up.  Although Yukiko had claimed earlier to be interested in learning more about me, it seems that our time together has been largely monopolized by her narcissistic monologue.

As I make ready to go, Yukiko gets up.  She slips me an envelope.  And pulls me close enough that her scents imprint themselves on my memory and gives me a warm hug.  “I hope we can meet again.  For lunch perhaps?”

When, almost without thinking, I readily give her the telephone number to my apartment I appreciate that this has been no ordinary appointment.  “Yes. Call me, please,” I say.  And wonder what I am doing.

She kisses me on one cheek and gives the other a brief but intimate caress.

We do meet for lunch the week after I returned from visiting my parents.

Looking ahead some months, I continued my work with Aspasia’s throughout the fall and on my private time also saw a great deal of Yukiko.   Within three weeks of our first meeting, and after waiting exquisitely, we finally became lovers.  By Christmas I came to an inescapable realization, that I was now sandwiched between two extremes of desire, Agung and Yukiko.  Who knows where Agung was?  But Yukiko was too palpably a delectable presence – until she became an absence with calamitous consequences for myself.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chap 8  020-023     024     025     026

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  027

Chapter 9 (4 of 4): The Bi

There is an awkward silence between them.  Both feel something in the air, like an arc sparking between two charged poles.  Su-Lien does not remember exactly what happens next, but the two of them decide to share a place to live.  She believes Yukiko suggested it.  She does not recall remonstrating against this invitation, but feeling that it was natural it should be so.  They find a tiny place a forty-five minute’s commute from the central campus.

They become, at first, inseparable.  They are roommates and lovers.  Su-Lien unfurls delicate layers of herself, like the petals of a jungle orchid, to Yukiko’s worldly sagacity.   They do most things together:  dining in restaurants, visiting discos, going to movies, walking in the parks, sharing a secret delight in rejecting the men who are openly eager to date them.  Yukiko quickly establishes a dominant role.  Su-Lien readily accommodates herself to subservience.

At times she brushes aside the discreet prodding of her own thoughts that she is permitting herself to be too pliant in Yukiko’s shaping hands, too yielding, too eager to satisfy.  It becomes increasingly exhausting to anticipate Yukiko’s moods, her wants and her dislikes of the moment.  At the end of the first year Su-Lien thinks seriously of moving out, but seems incapable of acting on her plan.  Yukiko returns to Los Angeles for three months, and Su-Lien is desperately unhappy and lonely.  She is absurdly grateful when Yukiko calls one evening and says that she will be returning to Japan in two days.  Will Su-Lien train up to Tokyo and meet her at Narita?  After Yukiko hangs up, Su-Lien throws herself on their bed and sobs for happiness.  She will spend hours dressing and making up and trying to look exactly as Yukiko has told her she wants her to look.

In the course of the second year of their ménage Su-Lien allows herself to acknowledge a streak of genuine cruelty in Yukiko’s behavior.  It begins with slighting remarks about her Japanese pronunciation or off-hand comments about the darkness of her skin or what Yukiko suddenly considers excessive hairiness on intimate parts of her body.  Su-Lien is hurt.  She can do little about her skin or her accent, but she shaves.  Yukiko upbraids her for being intemperate.  She is to allow the pubic hair to grow out again, but only until it looks like Yukiko’s.  Indeed, in more and more circumstances Yukiko sets herself up as the template which Su-Lien is to use in reshaping herself to Yukiko’s ever more exacting criteria:  looks, inflection, idioms, dress, walk, movement of the hands, tying up of the hair, lipstick, rouge, eyeliner, newspapers and magazines to read.

Failure on Su-Line’s part to achieve the goals set by these assignments prompts cyclonic outbursts of rage on Yukiko’s part.  But they subside as unpredictably as they arise.

Unchallenged superiority leads Yukiko to ridicule Su-Lien’s lack of mathematical sophistication;  a defiant inferiority makes her belittle her lover’s formidable knowledge of languages (in addition to the Japanese she is perfecting at Osaka, Su-Lien is fluent in five languages — Bahasa Malaysia, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, and English —and can get around passably in five more — Portuguese, French, Dutch, German and Tagalog — as well as Kadazan, the language of her bumiputra amah).  Yukiko affects an utter indifference to Malaysia and Su-Lien’s family but talks incessantly, and with increasing vehemence, ferocity even, about America and Los Angeles.  Racial prejudice in both America and Japan become prominent topics of her acidulous lectures during walks, at dinner, in bed.  It infuriates her that the Japanese she meets every day remind her with overt as well as subtle strokes that she isn’t really Japanese the way they are.  For example, ‘You speak excellent Japanese for an American’ – which truly enrages her, turns her inside out with feral fury.  And she appears to want to blame Su-Lien for these measured affronts to her ethnicity by her ethnic brothers and sisters, raining down her stormy wrath on a cowering Su-Lien.

Yukiko’s love-making is less frequent than a year ago.  But Yukiko is always the initiator, and it begins to take on a kind of experimental pitilessness, as if she wants to use Su-Lien not so much for sexual gratification as to explore the limits of her debased acquiescence in humiliation.  Su-Lien has neither the strength to refuse Yukiko’s bullying nor the courage to assert her own desires.  She feels herself spinning into a vortex of insignificance, and she is almost beyond desperation to service Yukiko’s erratic self-indulgences.  She draws the line at performing for Yukiko with a Korean woman (to whom Yukiko can feel safely superior) she has brought home.  Though petrified with fear of Yukiko’s response to this insubordination, to her surprise Yukiko dismisses her refusal with an airy laugh and serves everybody tea in the formal way.  She has also bought almond cookies and rice cakes.

By the end of the school year Su-Lien suspects that Yukiko has met somebody else, but she is too timid to ask.  Finally Yukiko simply says good-by and walks out.  She leaves behind an address in Los Angeles, saying cavalierly it’s possible she will write if Su-Lien wishes to send her a letter.  The words they do write become fewer and less frequent, and soon enough dribble off into empty formulas.

“I am not proud of my treatment of Su-Lien,” Yukiko adds by way of recapitulating coda.  “She should have been stronger, should not have allowed me to behave as I did.  It’s actually all her fault.”  There is a dismissive coolness in the manner of the expression, almost a kind of contempt for her Malaysian lover.

I elect not to remark on this curious version of blame-the-victim but, in response, mumble some inconsequential comments designed not to offend.  It is close to seven by now and my appointment is almost up.  Although Yukiko had claimed earlier to be interested in learning more about me, it seems that our time together has been largely monopolized by her narcissistic monologue.

As I make ready to go, Yukiko gets up.  She slips me an envelope.  And pulls me close enough that her scents imprint themselves on my memory and gives me a warm hug.  “I hope we can meet again.  For lunch perhaps?”

When, almost without thinking, I readily give her the telephone number to my apartment I appreciate that this has been no ordinary appointment.  “Yes. Call me, please,” I say.  And wonder what I am doing.

She kisses me on one cheek and gives the other a brief but intimate caress.

We do meet for lunch the week after I returned from visiting my parents.

Looking ahead some months, I continued my work with Aspasia’s throughout the fall and on my private time also saw a great deal of Yukiko.   Within three weeks of our first meeting, and after waiting exquisitely, we finally became lovers.  By Christmas I came to an inescapable realization, that I was now sandwiched between two extremes of desire, Agung and Yukiko.  Who knows where Agung was?  But Yukiko was too palpably a delectable presence – until she became an absence with calamitous consequences for myself.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chapter 8  020-023     024     025

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  026

Chapter 9 (3 of 4): The Bi

She sees the very real fear in my demeanor.  The thought flashes through my mind that here I have been with hundreds of men without a serious incident:  wouldn’t it be ironic if every working girl’s nightmare starred a woman?  I quickly move to the front of the sofa and swivel my head several times, looking around me, checking for help.  I know my eyes are growing wide.

“Please,” she says, calmly.  “I should not have spoken so abruptly.  Please, let me explain.”  She smiles at me and relaxes her posture to appear as non-threatening as possible.  “There is nothing to fear here.  I assure you.”

I feel some relief, but I still sit tensely on the edge of the sofa.  I am wary as a fawn.

“My husband knows you.”

That is at least a plausible explanation.

“I know lots of husbands,” I say, feeling suddenly cocky.

“Yes,” she dips that olorine neck, “I am sure you do.”

I say nothing.  The momentum was with me now.

“I am no longer with him.”

“I see,” I note noncommittally.  “Divorced, then?”

“Yes.  Since 2000.  Please don’t misunderstand,” she explains.  “I am not blaming you for any of this.  It all happened several years ago.”

“Are you from the city?”

“No.  L.A.”

“And you decided to stay on after your divorce?”

“Yes.  I’d been here eight years by the time we got divorced.  I stayed on here.  I am not,” she explained with some bitterness, “close to my parents, and I have a brother who lives in the city.  I am very close to him.  He’s a chef at one of the restaurants here.”

I digest this capsule information.

“So why am I here?” I asked.

“I wanted to meet you.  My husband – my ex-husband,” she corrects herself, “used to talk about you.  I was very jealous.”  She holds up her hand, “At one time.  No longer.”

“I see.”

“But he was right about you.  You are a very beautiful woman.  I can understand why he liked to … to see you.”

“So this was never about sex at all, was it?”  I feel oddly deflated.

She turns her head aside and lowers her eyes.  A noticeable blush creeps across her face.  She says nothing.  But she is breathing hard.  My suspicions rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of my recently imagined encounter with Yukiko.

“Or is it?” I wonder aloud.

“Yes, I believe it is.  I … I am in fact attracted to you,” she whispers.  “Yes, that is true.  But I want only to know something about you, and for you to know something about me.”  She shakes her head, not believing what she is proposing.  “It is odd, is it not?”

“Probably,” I acquiesced.  “I find myself wanting to know more about you, too.”  I pause.  “If that helps.”

“That does help.”  She stands up and walks to the window, turns and faces me. Her willowy frame is outlined against the late afternoon glare.  It is hard for me to make out the features of her face.  “After a bad divorce I ended up pretty much on my own.   I started a business, and it took off.  I run a very successful translation agency in the city.  It began with just me and Japanese, but now I have twenty-five people working for me and we cover fifteen languages.  You have no idea what the demand for such services is with business and government agencies.”

“So you do speak Japanese?”

“Yes, I am fluent, virtually a native speaker.”  She has returned to her seat where I can again make out her features and picks up the tea pot.  “Will you have some more tea?”

She pours and refills both our cups.

“I need to talk about myself.”

“I’m yours until seven,” I said, hoping I do not sound entirely mercenary.  It is now strangely important for me to be on this woman’s good side, so to speak.

“I understand,” she says wanly.

As the time rolls by and the shadows in the room grow longer she unfurls a compelling tale.  I am not sure if it is true, as I have no way to verify anything she says.  But I can find no reason why she would make up such a narrative.  I am inclined to believe her.  In the course of the telling Yukiko as such emerges from the fuzziness, and the initial vagueness of shape is limned in a sharper complexity that mingles soft with harsh, cruel with kind, and not a little rage.

She was born and grew up in Los Angeles.  Her family was what she referred to with some ambivalence as ‘traditional.’  Both her parents were born in Japan in the late thirties, and came to America in 1963.  Yukiko arrived a couple years later, and was the only child.  The parents spoke exclusively Japanese at home, and they made sure she could read and write the language as well as speak it.  In 1983, at the age of 18, she enrolled at U.C.L.A. and started a double major in Japanese and statistics.

Her senior year she travels to Japan with plans to spend several years at Osaka University.

I have no difficulty recollecting Yukiko’s exhaustive description to me of her two years in Japan, and here is how I reconstruct the highlights of that strange period.

She studies classical Japanese literature, continues her work in statistics, and takes up international economics.  In her first week there she meets Su-Lien Rahman, a Malaysian whose intelligence and comeliness, ladled from a variegated gene pool of Chinese and Malay ancestry, mounts a powerful argument for miscegenation.  She is a stewardess with Asean Airlines on a year’s leave of absence to further her education in Japanese culture and literature.

Their intellectual attraction to each other is as powerful and immediate as the physical one.  But Yukiko has a sharp edge on Su-Lien, for she was born cynical of human nature and calculating about its fragility.  She has no illusions of altruism in arranging her life to best advantage in love as in business, nor is she concerned about costs to others.  Male colleagues accuse her, behind her back, of sleeping up the faculty hierarchy;  women loathe her, for a more complex variety of reasons.

Shortly after Su-Lien arrives in Osaka she is sitting one day in the sun on a bench outside the engineering building at the Toyonaka campus.  She is studying a brochure for foreign students.  Yukiko, recently arrived, notices her during a predatory walk-about on campus.  She sits down on the bench.

Su-Lien is taken aback.  She is not accustomed to this forwardness from the Japanese.  Yukiko addresses her in Japanese, and Su-Lien answers in kind.

“You are a new student here, not Japanese?”

“No. I am from Malaysia.”

“Kuala Lumpur?”

Su-Lien smiles.  “No,” she answers.  “I am from Sandakan.”

Yukiko looks confused.  “I am sorry, I do not know it.”

“In Sabah state, across from Kota Kinabalu.”

“Ah, yes,” she nods.  “In East Malaysia.  Borneo.”

“Yes,” Su-Lien says, breaking into a smile that liquefies Yukiko’s hard heart.

They are both 21 years old.

“My name is Yukiko,” she says.

“I am Su-Lien Rahman,” she responds.  “Are you from Osaka?”  Even as she asks, Su-Lien senses that Yukiko is from elsewhere.  It is something about her dress, the carefree and confident, even arrogant way she carries herself.

“No.  I am from America.  From Los Angeles.”

“Oh,” Su-Lien answers, genuinely impressed.  She knew the woman could not have been native Japanese.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chapter 8  020-023     024

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  025

Chapter 9 (2 of 4): The Bi

She wears a tight, seamless cylinder of basic black hugging her complex planes like dark enfolding the fluid night.  She is fashionably sleek, a feline sinuousness supported on the longest legs I have ever seen on a woman.  There are no ridges from brassiere or panties visible on the molded surfaces of her décolleté dress.  The exposed skin is tanned an expensive honey amber.  She gives off an aura of simmering voluptuousness as naturally as bubbling water on a hot stove throws off steam.  The velvety pumps push her up to eye-level with me.  The face is flawless, and it is framed by a glossy sheen of black hair pulled back tight and pierced by the kinds of ivory pins one sees in ladies of the floating world in Utamaro prints.  But her lips are not tiny and pursed – quite the opposite, full and generous.  And a deep, intense incarnadine.  The somnolent eyes have prominent epicanthic folds and are widely set, giving her a somewhat startled look; their sooty pupils seem to float on dusky irises.  Her brows are strikingly thick and suggestively lush, blacker than charcoal.

She wears no earrings or other jewelry.

I find the citrine muskiness of her perfume simultaneously unsettling and physically provocative, almost like an assault.  A brief, sardonic smile plays on her broad mouth, and she makes no attempt to hide two modestly crooked teeth in the lower jaw.  Silent, with a kind of lazy amusement, she gazes at me up and down and nods slowly as if to say, yes, ‘She will do’, at least for now.  Even before she utters a word I sense about her an aura of imperious hauteur.

I make an effort to conceal my astonished reaction to her, but I don’t believe I succeed.   And I think Yukiko knows the effect she is having on me.  I am sure she is used to it by this stage in her life.  red

“Please,” she said, motioning economically with an elegant hand, the nails at the tips of long fingers an astonishing crimson red,  “come in.  Please.”  The voice is soft and pleasantly modulated.  There is no trace of a foreign accent.  Pure California.  She precedes me into the airy suite with a gliding languor that calls to mind the listless indolence of – once more – large cats.

The suite has a large living room, and, folding doors ajar, through a screen-like arrangement I see a spacious bedroom with a large futon sitting low off the floor.  A spectacular view opens out on the city far below.  Up here all is silence.  Soft reading chairs and a large sofa are placed around a centered table, low and vitreous.  Against one wall is a handsome escritoire that looks to be of cherry wood.  The walls are a light ochre, interspersed with strips of polished mahogany.  Several ceramic vases contain flowers in a riot of color that have been subjected to an artful arrangement among delicate sprigs.

The room is undeniably restful, calming, somehow reassuring.

With her hand, again, Yukiko invites me to sit in the sofa.  I sink down, and she arranges herself in one of the chairs facing me.  She prepares tea from the tray on the table and hands me a cup.

“Thank you,” I say.

She sips lightly and eyes me above the rim.  She returns the cup to its saucer and places both back on the table.

“Thank you for coming,” she says.

I move my head down in acknowledgment of her words.

“I’ve never done this before,” I say.  “With a woman, I mean.”

Yukiko looks puzzled, and cants her long neck to the side.  “But we’re only here to talk,” she corrects me.

“Yes, that’s what I was told.”  I hesitate.  “But one never knows how such things can go.”

She gives my words serious thought.  “Yes,” she answers, “I can see how that might be the case sometimes.”

Meanwhile I have been asking myself if I could ‘go to bed’ with this inconceivably beautiful woman.  I must admit that it did not seem quite as improbable as it first had when Miche asked me to take the appointment.  It is perhaps hard to admit to myself, but there lay a certain attraction for me in the prospect.

All people wonder at some point if they are gay.  I had what I consider the normal explorations with girls that no doubt most women have in the course of growing up.  When I was fifteen, for example, I was strongly drawn to friend at school, and the feeling was mutual.  On a number of occasions I had lain next to her, both of us naked, and with tentative probings we had touched the untouchable parts of each other’s bodies while we kissed and hugged.  This callow ‘romance’ had lasted maybe six months, and then it ended as abruptly as it had begun, and in due time, after high school, we lost touch – literally as it were — with each other.  I have no idea if my friend was gay or had, like me, grown up heterosexual.  At college, given the many hysterical ideologies of the day, more than one girl had come on to me, but, frankly, by then the idea did not appeal to me at all and I had never reciprocated these amatory advances.  And when I had sought employment at Aspasia’s I had made it clear that I wouldn’t do women.

But now, sitting here with this … this creature … this erotic incarnation of beauty, I wasn’t so sure.  I surprised myself by realizing that, yes, I could see myself making love to Yukiko.  And not just making love, but abandoning myself, crazily and utterly, to the powerful attraction I felt her exercising on me, effortlessly, just by being, almost as if she were affixing some kind of magnetic charm to my waning resolve.  I want to touch her – I think.  In spite, it occurs to me, of the exquisite release of passion with Agung earlier that morning.

“For now, at least,” she reassures me, “let us just talk.”

She pauses.  “I must be honest with you.”

I am not sure I like the sound of that.  “Yes?”

“My original intent in getting you up here was to kill you.  Or at least hurt you.  Badly.”

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022     023     Chapter 8  020-023

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  024

Chapter 9 (1 of 4): The Bi

I had to stop in the lobby and sit in one of the comfortable chairs.

“May I get you something to drink?”  One of the attractive hostesses circulating among the loungers had appeared in front of me.

“Yes, yes.  That’s a good idea.  I’d like a large glass of club soda with a lime twist.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “It’ll just be a second.”  She wasn’t kidding.  She mumbled something into her lapel, and almost before she had moved on to the next set of chairs a smartly dressed attendant placed a beaded glass in front of me.  “Here you are,” she said brightly.

“That was fast,” I said, rather dumbly.

The woman gave me a little nod of agreement and rushed off in the direction of the bar.

I took a long draught of the cold drink and looked casually around me.  As one might expect for a Sunday morning, the lobby was quite crowded and filled with a steady hum of conversations and laughter.  I tried to tune it out and sort of retract into myself.

The truth is that Agung had drained me.  Emotionally, psychically, certainly physically.  An ineffable lassitude had descended over me, and, stretched out in my soft fauteuil, I mused languorously on our recent encounter, as if detached from its reality and marooned in a waking dream.  I am almost – but not quite – tempted to call it love-making.  But in spite of my sense of possible drift onto the dangerous shoals of passion for Agung, as yet I still had enough presence of mind to steer away from this shattering passage.  Although I clearly had wide ranges of feeling for the men who hired me, from incipient disgust to passionate abandon, I had never had any illusions about what I did for a living and what my clients wanted from me — reduced to the frank and guileless patois of the gutter, it was that delicious hairy pussy between my legs.  I knew working girls who in their hearts had packaged this reality in the disingenuous wrappings of romantic illusion only to be cruelly disappointed.  For in the end illusions are without exception as falsely perfect as they are inevitably unreliable, and I prayed I would never lose sight of this perdurable truth.  Women like us were simply not the ones the men who paid us to fuck and suck would ever be bringing home to Mom and Dad.

I snapped out of this reverie.

I had a good three hours before my meeting with Yukiko at the Momiji.  I was ravenous and decide to splurge at The Take, a classy restaurant associated with the Momiji and specializing in Japanese-French fusion food that was astonishingly palatable.  But I couldn’t bring myself to get up; I needed to stay a bit longer and unwind exactly where I was.  I finished my club soda and licked the lime.  Discreetly, without removing it from my shoulder bag resting on my lap, I used a tapered fingernail to split the seam on the little something Agung had given me.  I peered inside.  His munificence was, if not surprising, still quite grand.  Ten crisp Franklins lay sleeping peacefully in the creamy off-white cradle of the thick envelope.

Definitely my kinda guy!

I moseyed indolently over to one of the revolving doors and exited into the furnace warmth of mid-day August.  I was feeling like lethargy incarnate, and it was far too hot for me even to think of walking the ten or so blocks down to the Momiji.  Feeling expansive, I palmed a ten to the doorman and asked him to secure me a cab.  With a tip like that, said is done, and soon a Sikh in a green turban was conveying me south in his air-conditioned cab.

The Momiji is one of those super-luxurious hotels backed by foreign – this one, obviously, Japanese — corporations that have begun to dot the more fashionable landscapes of larger American cities.  It was also super-expensive, but I’d never heard anyone complain about the amenities or the service.  They were all super-impeccable.  The lobby was a study in minimalist elegance, and one could imagine hearing the soft modulation of flutes.  The spacious atrium was bathed in soft daylight pouring down through a vaulted ceiling implanted with countless panes of patterned glass.  A luxuriance of verdant plants and red hibiscus made for a general restfulness.  In the middle of this expanse a broad fountain purled gently and murmured its muted whispers.  Tall bamboos swaying halfway up to the mezzanine formed a fringe around the outer periphery of the pool’s blue-green water.  A polyglot of languages from East and West created a rustling susurrus in the background.

The Take was located at the north end of the atrium, and I wended my way through clusters of bowing businessmen and multiple groups of Japanese and German vacationers being herded out to the tour busses parked outside.  There was a short line outside the restaurant.  It seemed to be moving along briskly enough, and since I still had lots of time I decided to join the other brunchers waiting to be seated.  It didn’t take long, and soon I was seated at a table for eight with seven strangers.

It was one of those teppanyaki steak places where the food was prepared right in front of you on a large hibachi-type grille that was built into the table.  I was partial to the fried rice and the thin, almost transparent strips of filet; these were seared with garlic, chopped ginger and shredded stalks of green onion, and then mixed in a sauce of mirin wine, soy sauce and oyster sauce.

Shortly after the eight seats were filled a waitress came and took our selections, and soon after that the chef arrived with his cart of implements and ingredients.  I had a small flask of sake while I waited for my order.  Everything was fixed with flair and style, and the food was every bit as tasty as I had remembered.  I finished up with green-tea ice cream and put down a generous tip.

The lunch left me feeling neither hungry nor sated.  Perfect.

I wanted to walk a bit and settle the food.  Since the weather was not likely to have appreciably changed in the interim I opted for a slow walk throughout the coolness of the vast lobby and atrium.  Idly I watched people and also let my eyes rove over the exquisite luxuries on display in the many windows of tony boutiques and established chains.

It was getting on towards three o’clock.

I suppose the hermetic compartmentalization of desire is not possible.  For desire seems more to be a matter of gamut, more a movement along an elastic spectrum than a fixed point of eternal permanence.  As I have noted before, I have a wide range of feelings for the many clients I see;  I could probably locate each of them with some precision along a personal continuum of want that stretches from the barely tolerable – a Fab Darling, say – to an avidity almost frightening in its intensity – an Agung, say.  But in the phenomenology of yearning men constitute only one half of availability.  What of women?  Again, I am compelled to contemplate that notion of an elastic spectrum to whose practical applicability Yukiko is, contrary to all I might have believed, shortly to introduce me.

I am alone riding up in the exposed glass cage to the eighteenth floor as the view of the lobby of the Momiji receded.  The ascent is smooth and swift.  I exit the glass enclosure and avail myself of the pointing arrows and range of room numbers posted on the wall to get oriented, and then I head off in the soft direction of 1856.  It is about half way down the opulent hall.  I stop in front of the door.  Before knocking, I hesitate briefly and allow myself a final monitory reflection about why I am here and what I think I am really up to.

I tap on the door.

It opens, immediately, as if she has been peering through the small eyehole and knows I have arrived.

I sweep over her in one stunned look.

TO BE CONTINUED

Prologue 001-002     Chap 1 003-005     Chap 2 006     Chap 3 007-008
Chap 4 009-010     Chap 5  011-013     Chap 6  014-017     Chap 7  018-019

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  Chap 8 (020-023)

Chapter 8: The Hero

It was thoroughly good to get back to my own apartment.  The sweltering afternoon had left me drenched, and I felt dirty.  I headed for the shower, where I scrubbed myself twice all over to wash off the distastefulness of my recent unpleasantness with Nathan Hoe.

After toweling and slipping into a light shift I notched up the A/C and got the CD player going with some Bobby Troupe.  Jazz with class.  With an ice-cold Lemon Pepsi in a tall glass of rattling ice cubes I flopped down in front of the computer and surfed to all corners of the world.

My idea of a great Saturday night.

I had one appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11.  At my favorite venue, the presidential suite of La Ville.  And with one of my favorite clients, though he was an infrequent one.  Agung.  An obscenely wealthy Indonesian, he had heard about me from a close friend, Chick, who was a long-standing client of mine and a mathematician at the university, with a specialty in the arcane field of number theory and encryption algorithms.  Agung, ever discreet and self-effacing, had actually asked Chick if he would feel me out regarding my willingness to meet his friend.   Chick availed himself of the opportunity one rainy March day a few years back after we had finished up and were sitting around in his suite at The Griffin Group.  We were snacking on cold La Bastide Chèvre coated in a crust of basil and chopped walnuts and washing it down with sweet Cinzano aperitifs in crushed ice.

Since Agung is going to figure in crucial ways in what happened to – and almost destroyed – me, I think it’s important that I recount what Chick told me about him.  If you understand the kind of man he was you will understand why he eventually did what he did on my behalf.  In my endless pursuit of Homeric homologies Agung indisputably came up as Odysseus:  monster-slayer, crafty and resourceful improviser, comforting friend to friends and terrifying foe to foes; a traveler, a warrior, a lover, a hero.

“I wanted to ask you,” Chick had begun, loading up a cracker with the crunchy goat’s cheese, “about a friend of mine.  I’ve told him about you, and he would like to meet you.”

I said nothing.

“I mean, that’s O.K., isn’t it?”  He was a little embarrassed.

I put my hand on his arm and reassured him.  “That’s fine,” I purred.  “Tell me about your friend.”

“He’s from Indonesia, and he wants to be sure this would not be a problem for you.”

Chick’s friend should have seen some of the crud I’d had to deal with.  They could have learned some basic notions of politeness from this Indonesian.

“No, of course not.  Why should it?”

Chick shrugged his shoulders.  “I don’t know.  He’s a very a cautious kind of guy.”

“I wouldn’t hold that against him,” I laughed.  “So go ahead, tell me about this friend of yours.”

“Well, he’s definitely sui generis.”

“Sui generis?”

“Yes.  Very much so.”

“I’m already intrigued.  Go on.  Talk. Tell.”

Chick sipped his Cinzano, put the glass on the table, and settled back in his chair.

“You understand,” he began, “that what I’m going to tell you is based largely on the account Agung gave me after the fact, and only in part on the basis of what I myself saw.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Well, one day back in the mid-nineties I was surprised to get an e-mail from Agung, or, as I had come to think of him by then, the Sultan of Java.  He was a brilliant oddball I had met a few years earlier in a chat room set up by some graduate students at M.I.T., where he himself had just finished a Ph.D. in physics.  As you know, I had been finishing up my Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard at the time.  After a few months of hanging out on the internet, when spring finally broke some of us would get together Thursday afternoons for a few hours of informal soccer along the Charles River, and that’s how I met him in person.

“We would all hit a well-known bar in Harvard Square after our soccer, and although he was a Muslim and did not drink alcohol, he would join us and down caffeine-free diet cokes.  He and I hit it off from the start, since we both shared an interest in, among other things, so-called non-linear systems.  We had a common dream of being able to model such phenomena mathematically.”

“Is it fair to ask what a non-linear system is?” I interjected.  I’d come across the term in the course of my own studies but I needed a refresher.

“Sure.  Briefly, a non-linear system is a set of phenomena whose outcomes are, supposedly, explicable after the fact but, definitely, not before – two classical examples are weather and the price movements of stocks and commodities.  O.K.?”

“O.K.  Thanks.”

Chick continued.

“Agung was an unusually attractive young man.  God knows I am not gay, but nor am I blind:  Agung was almost beautiful.  He had exquisite café-au-lait skin, jet-black hair, very long eye-lashes, and he was tall and muscularly lean.  He had taken his undergraduate degree at Jesus College in Oxford and spoke a clipped Oxbridge English in his deep, rich voice.  He came from one of the oldest and largest families in Java, and their personal history went back about half a millennium before the Dutch colonized the islands.  They survived that, they survived the oil-thirsty rapacity of Hirohito’s brutal war machine during World War II, and they survived the revolutionary chaos of the post-war decades.  Under the dazzling corruption of Suharto’s regime the family had multiplied its already considerable wealth many times over and become super-rich.  But it was my friend, the Sultan of Java, who increased the family’s wealth by truly astonishing proportions, orders of magnitude, if you will:  first, his interest in non-linear systems had led him to write a complex currency trading program, and he had anticipated almost to the day the implosion of the Suharto regime in May of 1998 and the consequent disastrous collapse of the Indonesian rupiah.  Being correct on the London Exchange about currency those crucial spring months in the year of living dangerously 1998 had made him — and his family — US dollar billionaires.  Yes, that’s right, billionaires –  several times over.  And it had all been entirely legal.

“But you’d never know about his wealth from being around him.  He was really quite unassuming, and though he dressed with a sophistication and elegance that his physique and pocket-book enabled him to push almost but not quite to foppishness, he very much wanted to be and indeed was ‘one of the guys.’  But even in the company of admittedly very bright people he stood out as something of an intellectual phenomenon in his own right.  He had an uncanny nimbleness of mind and, I suspect, a completely photographic memory.  In addition to fluency in English and Bahasa Indonesia, he was fully at ease in Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Malay, Japanese and several other Indonesian dialects besides Javanese — and when I first met him he was meeting regularly with a fellow physics student from Beijing who was teaching him Chinese.  It was actually unnerving to watch him do a Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle in about twelve minutes!”

Chick shook his head in wonderment.

“Of course he was not a Sultan of Java or anything else, but it was a sobriquet I privately attached to him the first time we met:  there was something so regal about him, both physically and intellectually.  And when I told him many months later of this nickname he smiled softly and nodded his head in amused acquiescence.  But he said I could call him Agung.

“In any event, most of us had sort of lost touch after we all left Cambridge, but the Sultan of Java and I had, in spite of his travels all over the world looking out for the family’s wide-spread interests in every imaginable enterprise, kept in fairly close contact over the years, and it was he who now had e-mailed me — from Palawan, a large island in the archipelago that is the southwestern Philippines.  He had given me rather mysterious instructions to call him two weeks after receipt of the e-mail at a certain number in Puerto Princesa at six o’clock in the morning my time, as there was something he wanted me to help him with.  I was as surprised to receive his message as I was intrigued to learn what it was all about.

“Two weeks later I did as he had requested.”

My friend stopped to take another bite and a little more Cinzano.  Brushing a few crumbs from his lap, he continued.

“Palawan is an elongated sliver of beautiful island that shoots off the north-south vertical of the Philippines at about 220° and almost touches the tip of northern Borneo.  Parts of it are pristine and beautiful beyond the descriptions of the travel brochures  –  and in its southern parts infested with avaricious and savage bandits of every ilk masquerading as ‘freedom fighters’, ‘environmentalists’, ‘warriors for God’, and all the usual dreary suspects.  You’ve read about these groups in the newspapers.

“The Sultan of Java had landed himself in a truly tricky situation, one fraught with horrific danger both to himself and to others.

“He and some fellow investors from Europe and other parts of Asia had taken one of the family’s company jets –  a Gulfstream  — to Palawan to scout a site for erecting yet one more luxury tourist resort.  It was a field already crowded, and they wanted to get in on the action before real saturation set in.  While traveling by jeetney along this gorgeous jungle-clad Eden that was the shores of southeastern Palawan a snake entered this garden in the rag-tag and murderous shape of heavily armed ‘environmentalists’ who grandiosely tried to scrub off their filthy thuggery by designating themselves as  ‘Friends of Palawan Preservation’, or FPP for short.

“The Sultan of Java and his investors had rented a motorized sixty-footer with captain and crew for a leisurely cruise from Puerto Princesa down through the emerald warmth of the Sulu Sea to the southern tip of Palawan.  There they had put in to a village and secured a jeetney for closer inspection of potential beach properties.  It was during this excursion that some gangsters from FPP had ‘detained’ them, and in order to demonstrate their seriousness they had shot one of the Norwegian investors in cold blood.  Then they had picked my friend to hie it back to Puerto Princesa to secure ten million US dollars in ransom money ‘for the people’ that would secure the release of the rest of the group – which were of course being held as hostages to guarantee the Sultan’s return.

“He was not a man given to panic, and he sounded reasonably calm during our conversation.  But he was unmistakably under pressure, and vowed to me he would do whatever was necessary to save his companions and his own honor.

“My first order of business was to be the arrangement of the cash through his bankers in New York, who were to have the money flown out – under heavy guard – in one of the company jets to Puerto Princesa.  This would take at least forty-eight hours, but he had the means to signal his captors that their demands were being met.

“Next I was to get in touch with a younger brother I had once met briefly at one of the family compounds in the highlands of east-central Java and have him initiate what the Sultan called ‘The Wyang Caper’  –  his brother would know what I meant and that I was for real in representing the Sultan.  When I enquired about this “caper” my friend pleaded with me not to ask but merely to do.  I would be safer that way, he responded ominously.  It was not hard for me to imagine that ‘The Wyang Caper’ was some kind of rescue operation his family and company had arranged long ago for just this sort of emergency.  I knew that the Sultan had served several years in the Indonesian navy between graduation from Oxford and starting his graduate work at M.I.T., and I assumed he had some fairly powerful contacts within the Indonesian military as well as private organizations of ‘international for-hire experts in violence’, as he had once referred to them in my presence.

“He was irrevocably committed to keeping the Philippine authorities out of the loop on this operation, the government not being the most reliable or secretive when it came to dealing with the bandits in the southern Mindanao region.”

By this point I was totally hooked.  Indeed, I was eager to meet this remarkable man who had captivated my imagination.

Chick continued.

“Well, I made my calls.  With a terse thank you the Sultan’s brother assured me that things would gear up before I hung up the phone;  and the banker I spoke to in New York, to whom I relayed the same code as verification, said the cash would be in Puerto Princesa within forty-eight hours.

“I could do no more, and tried to go about my business, anxiously awaiting further information about this dicey turn of events half way around the globe.

“For the next few days I could not get events in far-off Palawan out of my mind, but as the days wore on without further news one way or the other, I admit that I gave less and thought to that world.  It was only about three months later that I received a coded communiqué from the Sultan in which he explained in broad outlines what had happened.

“After making his calls to me and to New York, he waited around in Puerto Princesa another forty-eight hours until the cash arrived in ten compact suitcases, each containing one hundred packets of one hundred used hundred-dollar bills each, neatly bundled and snugly stacked.  A metal casing privately designed and manufactured for precisely this purpose held the ten suitcases.  Agung had returned by chartered helicopter to southern Palawan and delivered the cash to his captors.  They in turn had shot another hostage, a Japanese investor, to impress upon the remaining group that they were not to move from their present location for at least twenty-four hours, and then the thugs had set off into the remote recesses of the mountainous jungles.

“But many hundreds of miles south in the city of Pontianak on the west-central coast of Borneo, elite units of Indonesian marines and toughened mercenaries with hard eyes had been flown in from distant parts of Afghanistan and Angola to prepare for a massive invasion of the area held by the Philippine rebels.  That the marines would undertake operations with mercenaries and that they would in effect invade a foreign country, however clandestinely, spoke volumes about the kind of juice the Sultan of Java and his people had with the military that just the past July had deposed the feckless Wahid and installed Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, as the new president of an imploding nation.  The Sultan and his family had a large estate in Menteng, the same upscale suburb of Jakarta in which Mega herself lived.

“Extensively equipped with helicopters, coastal vessels, and lethal munitions by the United States, the invasion force had made a stealthy approach toward the target area by night and marshaled all forces on a tiny island lying in the extensive archipelago of the Balabac-Bugsuk group just off the southern tip of Palawan.  As predetermined, the force arrived just in time at the marshaling point to receive coded satellite messages from the freed hostages as they finally made it to the shore-line about twenty miles south of a city named Valdez.  This was the signal that they were safely away from the bandits and the operation proper could begin.

“Early the next morning the hostage party was taken off the beach by motorized rubber dinghies launched from beyond the surf line by the missile boats. The party was exhausted and mauled by insect bites, but otherwise in reasonable condition, given the ordeal they had just endured.

“Because of his past practical connections with the Indonesian navy, the Sultan insisted on assuming second-in-command status of one of the Mandau class missile boats for the gruesome mission that followed.  In recounting all of this, Agung informed me the boat was a Korean rip-off of an American design.  Each weighed close to 300 tons, and with some 25,000 shaft hp her top speed was above 40 knots.  Bristling with computerized launch platforms for high-energy piercing armaments she was a formidable offensive weapon for running coastal patrols against the pirates and smugglers who still infest the increasingly violent and contested waters of the South China Sea.  In this case, along with half a dozen similar vessels and a clattering contingent of military helicopters, she outclassed the resources of the FPP thugs by a ridiculous margin — as they were shortly to discover to their horror.

“You see, behind all that Western education and European sophistication my friend the Sultan of Java was at heart an Old Testament kind of hardcore guy rather than a New Testament wimp.  He wasn’t really into that ethic of turning the other cheek but much preferred his own ginned up version of an eye for an eye whereby you take two eyes for an eye.

“The choppers, all equipped with infrared sensors, soon picked up a group of some forty marchers beneath the overarching canopy of jungle.  Since this part of Palawan had its share of bandits, the Sultan, being very literally just, wanted to be sure they had the right group.  Marines shimmied down from the helicopters in advance of the projected march of the bandits and, blending into the thick jungle along the trails, shortly verified that this was indeed the FPP.

“I never did find out how he had pulled it off, but the Sultan had somehow gotten his people to tap into some databank somewhere that spewed out photos of those FPP who’d made the mistake of hitting on him, and these had been faxed via satellite to the helicopters and distributed to the marines.  Once the latter returned verification, the vengeance business swung into high gear.

“The electronics officers on the choppers slaved their infrareds to the firing computers on the missile boats off the surf line so their launchers could lock on to the co-ordinates of the FPP.  Then they proceeded to rain down a relentless fire of brimstone and concussion grenades to the side of and behind the confused and panicked marchers.  In this way they were forced to turn toward the sea, away from the relative safety of their remote mountain camps, and sort of marched bit by bit by the murderous salvos from off shore right down to the beaches where, just beyond the waterline, heavily armed mercenaries with little mercy in their hearts awaited them with machine guns, safeties off.

“As a military operation it was a kind of classic of its genre.

“The Sultan personally came ashore, recovered the suitcase with his ten million dollars, and directed the mop-up.  He had all the terrorists strip off all their clothes.  Some were forced to dig holes in the sand at the waterline, others to tie fellow bandits to long tow lines whose other end was attached to missile boats, and a third set – the lucky ones – were summarily executed by the raking fire of heavy machine guns.  I won’t go into the details of what happened to those still left alive, but suffice it to say that they each no doubt fervently wished they had been taken down by the merciful machine guns.

“The beach and a trail leading up into the jungle were eventually decorated with the grisly remains of those foolish unfortunates, and signs in Tagalog and several of the local dialects explained why they had ended up this way and how others could expect similar and even worse treatment for the kinds of violations they had been in the habit of perpetrating at will on both locals and tourists.

“Not a peep was heard in the press about this punitive expedition by a foreign power on Philippine soil.  My own take is that the locals, sick to death of the depredations that had been visited on them with impunity for too long by these thugs without any effective response from Manila, simply ignored the whole episode with silent thanks, operating on a time-tested Chinese principle that heaven is high and the emperor is far away.  No doubt the feckless politicians in the distant capital did learn of what had happened and decided not to look this particular gift horse too closely in the mouth, busy as they were with trying to sort out the new corruption of the new government while gearing up for the show trials of the old corruption of the old Estrada regime.

“But the Sultan of Java and his Wyang Caper had at last rebalanced the chi in his universe. It was a decisiveness beautiful to behold.  What a man!”

Sic semper tyrannis, I guess.

I thought vaguely of the Annals of Tacitus.

Maybe that old Roman wasn’t quite as apposite in this case as Odysseus in the twenty-second book of the Odyssey:  vengeance, dread vengeance is mine, sayeth the hero.

I admit again:  the tale had utterly captivated me.  It was almost like reading a short story jointly composed by W. Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad.  I felt a small letdown when Chick brought his narrative to a conclusion.  I didn’t want to leave the Sultan of Java.  A silence hung in the air replete with unstated questions.  But all I could manage was a quiet comment, “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sure he’d like you to say ‘yes’,” Chick answered.

“Yes,” I said,  “yes, of course.  By all means.  Have him set up an appointment.”

This happened in late 1999, and since then I’d seen Agung probably half a dozen times when he was in the States looking to his family’s far-flung business interests.  I was anticipating tomorrow.  And starting Monday I would have the week free.  My period would come then or on Tuesday.

I left the A/C on high, set the CD player to cycle through Mr. Troupe one more time, and then turned the lights off.

Sleep soon wrapped me in graceful embrace.

I woke up Sunday morning to the insistent ringing of the phone.

“Yes,” I said groggily, my head still on the pillow, nestling the phone against my ear.

“Mazarine, dear,” Michelle said.  “I know it’s early, but I have an emergency.”

“Yes,” I said warily.

“This afternoon.  I know you’re booked with Agung for this morning, but that’s just a couple of hours.  Can you help me out around four?”

“But, Miche,” I said, “I’m supposed to be off for a week after Agung.”

“Yes, dear, I know.  But you should be fine until tomorrow at least, shouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” I grudgingly admitted.  Miche – Michelle – had been very good to me over the years, and to my knowledge she’d never cheated me or intentionally put me in an awkward position.  I know I was in her debt.

“Good,” she came back at me, much relieved.  “All the other girls are booked.  You know what these August weekends are like.  The family at the beach house or out in the country while poor hubbie has to stay behind in the baking city and work.  He gets so very lonely …” she chuckled.  “Anyway,” she was all business again, “we’re booked solid.”

“Do I know him?”

Miche took a sec too long to answer.  “Honey,” she said in her most honeyed voice, “he’s a she.”

“A she?”

“A she.  Not a she-male.  Very she!”

“Come on, Miche, I’m not into that scene.  You know that.”

You might be surprised how often a discreet service like Aspasia’s made appointments for women who were rainmakers but for obvious reasons preferred to keep their predilections out of public awareness.  And several of the girls swung either way without any problem, but I was not one of them.  I’d made that clear in the lengthy interview I’d had with Michelle before I first started working for her.

“I know, Mazarine.  But I am absolutely des-pe-rate.  She’s been recommended by a very heavy client.  We … I don’t want to have to let him down.  And she’s paying enough that your share will run to a thousand dollars an hour, with a three-hour booking.”

That was certainly alluring.

“And besides,” Michelle continued breathlessly, “for what it’s worth, she says she just wants a companion for the afternoon.  No sex required.”

“And you believe her?”

“Actually, I do. Of course, if there were any change of plan in the course of your time together, it would be up to you how to handle it.  I trust your judgment here.”

I was thinking hard about it.  “Oh, and one other thing,” Michelle inserted as though it were an inconsequential afterthought.  “She’s Japanese.  Her name is Yukiko.”

At least my interest was piqued.  “All right, Miche.  I’ll do it.”

“Oh, you’re a true angel,” Michelle gushed.  “I always knew it.  And I won’t forget you helped me out of a tight spot.”  I could hear her leafing through her appointments book.  “Here it is,” she said.  Four this afternoon in room 1856.  At Momiji.  Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Again, Mazarine, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.  Now, you go off and have fun with your handsome foreigner.”  She hung up and I returned the phone to its cradle.

Eight fifteen.  Time to get ready.  I took a long shower, put on my emollients, perfume, and face.  I dressed in a simple tubular sheath from Bergdorf Goodman’s the color of powdered cayenne. Around my neck I clasped a lustrous necklace of Philippine pearls, a gift from Agung two years ago.   Finally I book-ended the dress with black Claudia Ciuti heels and a plain small-rimmed Bendel cloche in black.  I checked myself in the long mirror on the bedroom door and smoothed the sheath, adjusted the cloche.  My lips were Chantecaille red in exactly the proper hue to complement the sheath.

Yes, I still had the ‘look’.

Agung would like seeing me.

I slung a Kate Spade bag in black vachetta leather around my right shoulder and at ten-thirty took the elevator down to the lobby and asked the doorman to flag down a cab to take me to La Ville.  Agung was the only one of my clients who took the presidential suite there, and that was because he was probably the only one who could afford it effortlessly.

I headed for the elevator and was whooshed up.

Agung was standing in the doorway as I exited the elevator.

He came towards me and smiled softly, bowed, and said, “Welcome, di ajeng.”

We gently shook hands and entered the 2400 square feet of suite he was renting.  I took my heels off and padded after him in the deep nap of a pale blue carpet.  The living room had an incredible view of the tri-state area and was furnished in understated but unmistakable opulence.  A kitchen and bathroom led off from one end of the central room, and from the other two large bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.  Flowers and fresh fruit adorned tables and dressers, and the sleek glass-top between the central group of sofa chairs and elongated couch in muted gray contained an ornate teak tray with small pastries and tea cups.  Agung was a Muslim, and although he was far from ostentatious about it, unlike some I had known he did observe his religion’s proscriptions regarding alcohol even when he was in the West.

A small package had appeared in his hands as he turned towards me.  “A little something for a very beautiful woman,” he said softly.

“Oh, Agung,” I said, “that is so sweet of you.”

Agung was one of the very few of my clients who actually turned me on, and I could feel myself getting wet just looking at him.  What a beautiful man!  At first you want to say he looks effeminate, but that would not be correct.  Almost effeminate, yes, but then there was something about his face that I could not define but which made him look very masculine.  I had once asked Chick if Agung was bi-sexual, and Chick had told me had never seen the slightest indication that such was the case.

I’m five feet eight, and Agung was a good head taller than I.  He was also lean and lithely muscular and carried himself in a loose-jointed way that gave him an impression of being on relaxed guard.  This contradictory observation captures an essence of Agung.  He contained multitudes.  Today he was wearing an intricate kain panjang, or long cloth, of Javanese silk batik riotously colored and held up by a gold-studded belt; he also had on a colorful jacket.  A hint of sandalwood enveloped him like a scented aura.  Before sitting down at his invitation I slipped his present into my bag.  It would not be polite to open it in front of him.

He poured tea and offered me one of the cream pastries.  “So how have you been, Mazarine?” he asked.

I took a sip.  “Things are going very well for me.  Generally it’s a happy time.”

“Generally?”  He eyed me quizzically.

“No,” I corrected myself.  “It’s a happy time.”

He let it slide.  “That is all to the good.  And your family?”

“Fine, too.  I am going home tomorrow for a few days to visit with my parents.  I haven’t seen them for a while.”

He smiled.  “Ah, that is a respectful thing to do.  I should spend more time with my own Mother and Father.”  He always ‘capitalized’ the words when referring to his parents.  “But one is so busy.  Always so busy.”

We chatted for an hour or so, about books we were reading, plays we’d seen, the Spanish still lifes at the museum, the uncertain state of the world economy.  He was an intelligent conversationalist and a generous listener.  He had the easy ability to loosen up an interlocutor and create the feeling that he or she alone existed for him at that moment.  It was a rush of sorts.

He looked at me and a tiny smile played across his lips, as sensuous as they were – I recalled with a little shiver — sensual.  He was not one to beat around the bush. “I want to make love with you,” he said.  “But, first, if your ‘generally happy’ should somehow turn into ‘specifically unhappy’ you do know how to get in touch with me, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” I whispered.

“You know I am a person you can always count on if you are in trouble of some kind.  Please do not forget that.”

“I know,” I nodded.  “I know.  And I am grateful.”

He came over to the couch and sat down next to me.  I could feel my heart racing as he began to caress my face and look with great intensity into my eyes.  His own were large limpid depths of brown that I sensed I could all too happily drown in.  It scared me that I felt I could fall madly and ruinously in love with this beautiful, charismatic man.

But for now I let it slip and just surrendered myself to the moment.

He traced his finger light as a fluttering butterfly across my jaw from ear to ear, over my forehead and on top of my eyelids, down along the ridge of my nose to the philtrum and curves of my lips.  He rubbed the back of my neck and pressed his fingers into the knobs of my collar bone pushing through the skin.  He was breathing hard, and he began to position himself along my side.  Through the thin batik I could feel his heat and hardness against my loin.  Slowly he began to undress me, kissing the parts of my body being exposed and letting his fingers continue to explore.  I had no need to fake a mounting excitement as I rotated my pelvis against Agung’s insistent attentions.

“Stand up and let me look at you,” he whispered.  I was naked but for choker and heels.  I stood in front of him and gazed at his gazing, a passion crackling electrically in the empty space between us.  Then he stood up, removed his jacket, and undid his sarong.  We looked up and down each other’s bodies and fell each into the arms of the other.  He held me tightly to his warmth and then laid me down on the carpet and entered me, gently at first, then with a swelling urgency that made me explode.  But he withdrew.  He was still huge, but lay on his back, hands at his side, breathing hard.  I moved my left hand to the palace of pleasure to finish myself off but he arrested it.  “Patience,” he said.  “The greatest pleasure comes from anticipation of pleasure, and the most intense desire lies in not consummating it.  Wait, and postpone.  That is a path to ecstasy.”  I let him lay my hand on my belly, just above the hair line and out of reach.  “Take shallow breaths,” he said.  After a few minutes he spread me apart with his fingers and rose up above me.  He entered hard this time and I gasped aloud at the sheer intensity of sensation, the consuming fire in my belly.  Again he brought himself – and me – to the very edge, then withdrew.  I did not think I could stand it any longer, but he insisted in word and deed, once more, that we defer.  “Trust me, and have patience.”  We lay tightly together on our backs, he erect and glistening from me, I splayed and matted from him.  For a third time he mounted me and entered, now slowly, probing, testing, caressing, in and out.  I cling to him like a limpet.  At last he allows a tsunami to build for both of us and as he thrusts savagely the wave breaks and we come to a juddering release.

For what seems forever we lie unmoving, together, hearts pounding.

I reflect that he is the only man I know who is master of his passion, not its slave.

I hardly remembered getting up, showering, dressing, leaving his suite.  But his last words to me as he handed me an envelope were, “Don’t forget what I said, sweet Mazarine:  I am a person you can always count on.”

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021     022

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  023

Chapter 8 (4 of 4): The Hero

“A she?”

“A she.  Not a she-male.  Very she!”

“Come on, Miche, I’m not into that scene.  You know that.”

You might be surprised how often a discreet service like Aspasia’s made appointments for women who were rainmakers but for obvious reasons preferred to keep their predilections out of public awareness.  And several of the girls swung either way without any problem, but I was not one of them.  I’d made that clear in the lengthy interview I’d had with Michelle before I first started working for her.

“I know, Mazarine.  But I am absolutely des-pe-rate.  She’s been recommended by a very heavy client.  We … I don’t want to have to let him down.  And she’s paying enough that your share will run to a thousand dollars an hour, with a three-hour booking.”

That was certainly alluring.

“And besides,” Michelle continued breathlessly, “for what it’s worth, she says she just wants a companion for the afternoon.  No sex required.”

“And you believe her?”

“Actually, I do. Of course, if there were any change of plan in the course of your time together, it would be up to you how to handle it.  I trust your judgment here.”

I was thinking hard about it.  “Oh, and one other thing,” Michelle inserted as though it were an inconsequential afterthought.  “She’s Japanese.  Her name is Yukiko.”

At least my interest was piqued.  “All right, Miche.  I’ll do it.”

“Oh, you’re a true angel,” Michelle gushed.  “I always knew it.  And I won’t forget you helped me out of a tight spot.”  I could hear her leafing through her appointments book.  “Here it is,” she said.  Four this afternoon in room 1856.  At Momiji.  Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Again, Mazarine, you have no idea how much I appreciate this.  Now, you go off and have fun with your handsome foreigner.”  She hung up and I returned the phone to its cradle.

Eight fifteen.  Time to get ready.  I took a long shower, put on my emollients, perfume, and face.  I dressed in a simple tubular sheath from Bergdorf Goodman’s the color of powdered cayenne. Around my neck I clasped a lustrous necklace of Philippine pearls, a gift from Agung two years ago.   Finally I book-ended the dress with black Claudia Ciuti heels and a plain small-rimmed Bendel cloche in black.  I checked myself in the long mirror on the bedroom door and smoothed the sheath, adjusted the cloche.  My lips were Chantecaille red in exactly the proper hue to complement the sheath.

Yes, I still had the ‘look’.

Agung would like seeing me.

I slung a Kate Spade bag in black vachetta leather around my right shoulder and at ten-thirty took the elevator down to the lobby and asked the doorman to flag down a cab to take me to La Ville.  Agung was the only one of my clients who took the presidential suite there, and that was because he was probably the only one who could afford it effortlessly.

I headed for the elevator and was whooshed up.

Agung was standing in the doorway as I exited the elevator.

He came towards me and smiled softly, bowed, and said, “Welcome, di ajeng.”

We gently shook hands and entered the 2400 square feet of suite he was renting.  I took my heels off and padded after him in the deep nap of a pale blue carpet.  The living room had an incredible view of the tri-state area and was furnished in understated but unmistakable opulence.  A kitchen and bathroom led off from one end of the central room, and from the other two large bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.  Flowers and fresh fruit adorned tables and dressers, and the sleek glass-top between the central group of sofa chairs and elongated couch in muted gray contained an ornate teak tray with small pastries and tea cups.  Agung was a Muslim, and although he was far from ostentatious about it, unlike some I had known he did observe his religion’s proscriptions regarding alcohol even when he was in the West.

A small package had appeared in his hands as he turned towards me.  “A little something for a very beautiful woman,” he said softly.

“Oh, Agung,” I said, “that is so sweet of you.”

Agung was one of the very few of my clients who actually turned me on, and I could feel myself getting wet just looking at him.  What a beautiful man!  At first you want to say he looks effeminate, but that would not be correct.  Almost effeminate, yes, but then there was something about his face that I could not define but which made him look very masculine.  I had once asked Chick if Agung was bi-sexual, and Chick had told me had never seen the slightest indication that such was the case.

I’m five feet eight, and Agung was a good head taller than I.  He was also lean and lithely muscular and carried himself in a loose-jointed way that gave him an impression of being on relaxed guard.  This contradictory observation captures an essence of Agung.  He contained multitudes.  Today he was wearing an intricate kain panjang, or long cloth, of Javanese silk batik riotously colored and held up by a gold-studded belt; he also had on a colorful jacket.  A hint of sandalwood enveloped him like a scented aura.  Before sitting down at his invitation I slipped his present into my bag.  It would not be polite to open it in front of him.

He poured tea and offered me one of the cream pastries.  “So how have you been, Mazarine?” he asked.

I took a sip.  “Things are going very well for me.  Generally it’s a happy time.”

“Generally?”  He eyed me quizzically.

“No,” I corrected myself.  “It’s a happy time.”

He let it slide.  “That is all to the good.  And your family?”

“Fine, too.  I am going home tomorrow for a few days to visit with my parents.  I haven’t seen them for a while.”

He smiled.  “Ah, that is a respectful thing to do.  I should spend more time with my own Mother and Father.”  He always ‘capitalized’ the words when referring to his parents.  “But one is so busy.  Always so busy.”

We chatted for an hour or so, about books we were reading, plays we’d seen, the Spanish still lifes at the museum, the uncertain state of the world economy.  He was an intelligent conversationalist and a generous listener.  He had the easy ability to loosen up an interlocutor and create the feeling that he or she alone existed for him at that moment.  It was a rush of sorts.

He looked at me and a tiny smile played across his lips, as sensuous as they were – I recalled with a little shiver — sensual.  He was not one to beat around the bush. “I want to make love with you,” he said.  “But, first, if your ‘generally happy’ should somehow turn into ‘specifically unhappy’ you do know how to get in touch with me, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” I whispered.

“You know I am a person you can always count on if you are in trouble of some kind.  Please do not forget that.”

“I know,” I nodded.  “I know.  And I am grateful.”

He came over to the couch and sat down next to me.  I could feel my heart racing as he began to caress my face and look with great intensity into my eyes.  His own were large limpid depths of brown that I sensed I could all too happily drown in.  It scared me that I felt I could fall madly and ruinously in love with this beautiful, charismatic man.

But for now I let it slip and just surrendered myself to the moment.

He traced his finger light as a fluttering butterfly across my jaw from ear to ear, over my forehead and on top of my eyelids, down along the ridge of my nose to the philtrum and curves of my lips.  He rubbed the back of my neck and pressed his fingers into the knobs of my collar bone pushing through the skin.  He was breathing hard, and he began to position himself along my side.  Through the thin batik I could feel his heat and hardness against my loin.  Slowly he began to undress me, kissing the parts of my body being exposed and letting his fingers continue to explore.  I had no need to fake a mounting excitement as I rotated my pelvis against Agung’s insistent attentions.

“Stand up and let me look at you,” he whispered.  I was naked but for choker and heels.  I stood in front of him and gazed at his gazing, a passion crackling electrically in the empty space between us.  Then he stood up, removed his jacket, and undid his sarong.  We looked up and down each other’s bodies and fell each into the arms of the other.  He held me tightly to his warmth and then laid me down on the carpet and entered me, gently at first, then with a swelling urgency that made me explode.  But he withdrew.  He was still huge, but lay on his back, hands at his side, breathing hard.  I moved my left hand to the palace of pleasure to finish myself off but he arrested it.  “Patience,” he said.  “The greatest pleasure comes from anticipation of pleasure, and the most intense desire lies in not consummating it.  Wait, and postpone.  That is a path to ecstasy.”  I let him lay my hand on my belly, just above the hair line and out of reach.  “Take shallow breaths,” he said.  After a few minutes he spread me apart with his fingers and rose up above me.  He entered hard this time and I gasped aloud at the sheer intensity of sensation, the consuming fire in my belly.  Again he brought himself – and me – to the very edge, then withdrew.  I did not think I could stand it any longer, but he insisted in word and deed, once more, that we defer.  “Trust me, and have patience.”  We lay tightly together on our backs, he erect and glistening from me, I splayed and matted from him.  For a third time he mounted me and entered, now slowly, probing, testing, caressing, in and out.  I cling to him like a limpet.  At last he allows a tsunami to build for both of us and as he thrusts savagely the wave breaks and we come to a juddering release.

For what seems forever we lie unmoving, together, hearts pounding.

I reflect that he is the only man I know who is master of his passion, not its slave.

I hardly remembered getting up, showering, dressing, leaving his suite.  But his last words to me as he handed me an envelope were, “Don’t forget what I said, sweet Mazarine:  I am a person you can always count on.”

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020     021

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  022

Chapter 8 (3 of 4): The Hero

“Early the next morning the hostage party was taken off the beach by motorized rubber dinghies launched from beyond the surf line by the missile boats. The party was exhausted and mauled by insect bites, but otherwise in reasonable condition, given the ordeal they had just endured.

“Because of his past practical connections with the Indonesian navy, the Sultan insisted on assuming second-in-command status of one of the Mandau class missile boats for the gruesome mission that followed.  In recounting all of this, Agung informed me the boat was a Korean rip-off of an American design.  Each weighed close to 300 tons, and with some 25,000 shaft hp her top speed was above 40 knots.  Bristling with computerized launch platforms for high-energy piercing armaments she was a formidable offensive weapon for running coastal patrols against the pirates and smugglers who still infest the increasingly violent and contested waters of the South China Sea.  In this case, along with half a dozen similar vessels and a clattering contingent of military helicopters, she outclassed the resources of the FPP thugs by a ridiculous margin — as they were shortly to discover to their horror.

“You see, behind all that Western education and European sophistication my friend the Sultan of Java was at heart an Old Testament kind of hardcore guy rather than a New Testament wimp.  He wasn’t really into that ethic of turning the other cheek but much preferred his own ginned up version of an eye for an eye whereby you take two eyes for an eye.

“The choppers, all equipped with infrared sensors, soon picked up a group of some forty marchers beneath the overarching canopy of jungle.  Since this part of Palawan had its share of bandits, the Sultan, being very literally just, wanted to be sure they had the right group.  Marines shimmied down from the helicopters in advance of the projected march of the bandits and, blending into the thick jungle along the trails, shortly verified that this was indeed the FPP.

“I never did find out how he had pulled it off, but the Sultan had somehow gotten his people to tap into some databank somewhere that spewed out photos of those FPP who’d made the mistake of hitting on him, and these had been faxed via satellite to the helicopters and distributed to the marines.  Once the latter returned verification, the vengeance business swung into high gear.

“The electronics officers on the choppers slaved their infrareds to the firing computers on the missile boats off the surf line so their launchers could lock on to the co-ordinates of the FPP.  Then they proceeded to rain down a relentless fire of brimstone and concussion grenades to the side of and behind the confused and panicked marchers.  In this way they were forced to turn toward the sea, away from the relative safety of their remote mountain camps, and sort of marched bit by bit by the murderous salvos from off shore right down to the beaches where, just beyond the waterline, heavily armed mercenaries with little mercy in their hearts awaited them with machine guns, safeties off.

“As a military operation it was a kind of classic of its genre.

“The Sultan personally came ashore, recovered the suitcase with his ten million dollars, and directed the mop-up.  He had all the terrorists strip off all their clothes.  Some were forced to dig holes in the sand at the waterline, others to tie fellow bandits to long tow lines whose other end was attached to missile boats, and a third set – the lucky ones – were summarily executed by the raking fire of heavy machine guns.  I won’t go into the details of what happened to those still left alive, but suffice it to say that they each no doubt fervently wished they had been taken down by the merciful machine guns.

“The beach and a trail leading up into the jungle were eventually decorated with the grisly remains of those foolish unfortunates, and signs in Tagalog and several of the local dialects explained why they had ended up this way and how others could expect similar and even worse treatment for the kinds of violations they had been in the habit of perpetrating at will on both locals and tourists.

“Not a peep was heard in the press about this punitive expedition by a foreign power on Philippine soil.  My own take is that the locals, sick to death of the depredations that had been visited on them with impunity for too long by these thugs without any effective response from Manila, simply ignored the whole episode with silent thanks, operating on a time-tested Chinese principle that heaven is high and the emperor is far away.  No doubt the feckless politicians in the distant capital did learn of what had happened and decided not to look this particular gift horse too closely in the mouth, busy as they were with trying to sort out the new corruption of the new government while gearing up for the show trials of the old corruption of the old Estrada regime.

“But the Sultan of Java and his Wyang Caper had at last rebalanced the chi in his universe. It was a decisiveness beautiful to behold.  What a man!”

Sic semper tyrannis, I guess.

I thought vaguely of the Annals of Tacitus.

Maybe that old Roman wasn’t quite as apposite in this case as Odysseus in the twenty-second book of the Odyssey:  vengeance, dread vengeance is mine, sayeth the hero.

I admit again:  the tale had utterly captivated me.  It was almost like reading a short story jointly composed by W. Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad.  I felt a small letdown when Chick brought his narrative to a conclusion.  I didn’t want to leave the Sultan of Java.  A silence hung in the air replete with unstated questions.  But all I could manage was a quiet comment, “I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m sure he’d like you to say ‘yes’,” Chick answered.

“Yes,” I said,  “yes, of course.  By all means.  Have him set up an appointment.”

This happened in late 1999, and since then I’d seen Agung probably half a dozen times when he was in the States looking to his family’s far-flung business interests.  I was anticipating tomorrow.  And starting Monday I would have the week free.  My period would come then or on Tuesday.

I left the A/C on high, set the CD player to cycle through Mr. Troupe one more time, and then turned the lights off.

Sleep soon wrapped me in graceful embrace.

I woke up Sunday morning to the insistent ringing of the phone.

“Yes,” I said groggily, my head still on the pillow, nestling the phone against my ear.

“Mazarine, dear,” Michelle said.  “I know it’s early, but I have an emergency.”

“Yes,” I said warily.

“This afternoon.  I know you’re booked with Agung for this morning, but that’s just a couple of hours.  Can you help me out around four?”

“But, Miche,” I said, “I’m supposed to be off for a week after Agung.”

“Yes, dear, I know.  But you should be fine until tomorrow at least, shouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” I grudgingly admitted.  Miche – Michelle – had been very good to me over the years, and to my knowledge she’d never cheated me or intentionally put me in an awkward position.  I know I was in her debt.

“Good,” she came back at me, much relieved.  “All the other girls are booked.  You know what these August weekends are like.  The family at the beach house or out in the country while poor hubbie has to stay behind in the baking city and work.  He gets so very lonely …” she chuckled.  “Anyway,” she was all business again, “we’re booked solid.”

“Do I know him?”

Miche took a sec too long to answer.  “Honey,” she said in her most honeyed voice, “he’s a she.”

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019     020

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  021

Chapter 8 (2 of 4): The Hero

“Palawan is an elongated sliver of beautiful island that shoots off the north-south vertical of the Philippines at about 220° and almost touches the tip of northern Borneo.  Parts of it are pristine and beautiful beyond the descriptions of the travel brochures  –  and in its southern parts infested with avaricious and savage bandits of every ilk masquerading as ‘freedom fighters’, ‘environmentalists’, ‘warriors for God’, and all the usual dreary suspects.  You’ve read about these groups in the newspapers.

“The Sultan of Java had landed himself in a truly tricky situation, one fraught with horrific danger both to himself and to others.

“He and some fellow investors from Europe and other parts of Asia had taken one of the family’s company jets –  a Gulfstream  — to Palawan to scout a site for erecting yet one more luxury tourist resort.  It was a field already crowded, and they wanted to get in on the action before real saturation set in.  While traveling by jeetney along this gorgeous jungle-clad Eden that was the shores of southeastern Palawan a snake entered this garden in the rag-tag and murderous shape of heavily armed ‘environmentalists’ who grandiosely tried to scrub off their filthy thuggery by designating themselves as  ‘Friends of Palawan Preservation’, or FPP for short.

“The Sultan of Java and his investors had rented a motorized sixty-footer with captain and crew for a leisurely cruise from Puerto Princesa down through the emerald warmth of the Sulu Sea to the southern tip of Palawan.  There they had put in to a village and secured a jeetney for closer inspection of potential beach properties.  It was during this excursion that some gangsters from FPP had ‘detained’ them, and in order to demonstrate their seriousness they had shot one of the Norwegian investors in cold blood.  Then they had picked my friend to hie it back to Puerto Princesa to secure ten million US dollars in ransom money ‘for the people’ that would secure the release of the rest of the group – which were of course being held as hostages to guarantee the Sultan’s return.

“He was not a man given to panic, and he sounded reasonably calm during our conversation.  But he was unmistakably under pressure, and vowed to me he would do whatever was necessary to save his companions and his own honor.

“My first order of business was to be the arrangement of the cash through his bankers in New York, who were to have the money flown out – under heavy guard – in one of the company jets to Puerto Princesa.  This would take at least forty-eight hours, but he had the means to signal his captors that their demands were being met.

“Next I was to get in touch with a younger brother I had once met briefly at one of the family compounds in the highlands of east-central Java and have him initiate what the Sultan called ‘The Wyang Caper’  –  his brother would know what I meant and that I was for real in representing the Sultan.  When I enquired about this “caper” my friend pleaded with me not to ask but merely to do.  I would be safer that way, he responded ominously.  It was not hard for me to imagine that ‘The Wyang Caper’ was some kind of rescue operation his family and company had arranged long ago for just this sort of emergency.  I knew that the Sultan had served several years in the Indonesian navy between graduation from Oxford and starting his graduate work at M.I.T., and I assumed he had some fairly powerful contacts within the Indonesian military as well as private organizations of ‘international for-hire experts in violence’, as he had once referred to them in my presence.

“He was irrevocably committed to keeping the Philippine authorities out of the loop on this operation, the government not being the most reliable or secretive when it came to dealing with the bandits in the southern Mindanao region.”

By this point I was totally hooked.  Indeed, I was eager to meet this remarkable man who had captivated my imagination.

Chick continued.

“Well, I made my calls.  With a terse thank you the Sultan’s brother assured me that things would gear up before I hung up the phone;  and the banker I spoke to in New York, to whom I relayed the same code as verification, said the cash would be in Puerto Princesa within forty-eight hours.

“I could do no more, and tried to go about my business, anxiously awaiting further information about this dicey turn of events half way around the globe.

“For the next few days I could not get events in far-off Palawan out of my mind, but as the days wore on without further news one way or the other, I admit that I gave less and thought to that world.  It was only about three months later that I received a coded communiqué from the Sultan in which he explained in broad outlines what had happened.

“After making his calls to me and to New York, he waited around in Puerto Princesa another forty-eight hours until the cash arrived in ten compact suitcases, each containing one hundred packets of one hundred used hundred-dollar bills each, neatly bundled and snugly stacked.  A metal casing privately designed and manufactured for precisely this purpose held the ten suitcases.  Agung had returned by chartered helicopter to southern Palawan and delivered the cash to his captors.  They in turn had shot another hostage, a Japanese investor, to impress upon the remaining group that they were not to move from their present location for at least twenty-four hours, and then the thugs had set off into the remote recesses of the mountainous jungles.

“But many hundreds of miles south in the city of Pontianak on the west-central coast of Borneo, elite units of Indonesian marines and toughened mercenaries with hard eyes had been flown in from distant parts of Afghanistan and Angola to prepare for a massive invasion of the area held by the Philippine rebels.  That the marines would undertake operations with mercenaries and that they would in effect invade a foreign country, however clandestinely, spoke volumes about the kind of juice the Sultan of Java and his people had with the military that just the past July had deposed the feckless Wahid and installed Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter, as the new president of an imploding nation.  The Sultan and his family had a large estate in Menteng, the same upscale suburb of Jakarta in which Mega herself lived.

“Extensively equipped with helicopters, coastal vessels, and lethal munitions by the United States, the invasion force had made a stealthy approach toward the target area by night and marshaled all forces on a tiny island lying in the extensive archipelago of the Balabac-Bugsuk group just off the southern tip of Palawan.  As predetermined, the force arrived just in time at the marshaling point to receive coded satellite messages from the freed hostages as they finally made it to the shore-line about twenty miles south of a city named Valdez.  This was the signal that they were safely away from the bandits and the operation proper could begin.

TO BE CONTINUED

001     002     Prologue 001-002     003     004     005     Chap 1 003-005
Chap 2 006     007     008     Chap 3 007-008     009     010     Chap 4 009-010     011     012     013     Chap 5  011-013     014     015     016    017
Chap 6  014-017     018     019     Chap 7  018-019

Revenge Should Have No Bounds  020

Chapter 8 (1 of 4): The Hero

It was thoroughly good to get back to my own apartment.  The sweltering afternoon had left me drenched, and I felt dirty.  I headed for the shower, where I scrubbed myself twice all over to wash off the distastefulness of my recent unpleasantness with Nathan Hoe.

After toweling and slipping into a light shift I notched up the A/C and got the CD player going with some Bobby Troupe.  Jazz with class.  With an ice-cold Lemon Pepsi in a tall glass of rattling ice cubes I flopped down in front of the computer and surfed to all corners of the world.

My idea of a great Saturday night.

I had one appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11.  At my favorite venue, the presidential suite of La Ville.  And with one of my favorite clients, though he was an infrequent one.  Agung.  An obscenely wealthy Indonesian, he had heard about me from a close friend, Chick, who was a long-standing client of mine and a mathematician at the university, with a specialty in the arcane field of number theory and encryption algorithms.  Agung, ever discreet and self-effacing, had actually asked Chick if he would feel me out regarding my willingness to meet his friend.   Chick availed himself of the opportunity one rainy March day a few years back after we had finished up and were sitting around in his suite at The Griffin Group.  We were snacking on cold La Bastide Chèvre coated in a crust of basil and chopped walnuts and washing it down with sweet Cinzano aperitifs in crushed ice.

Since Agung is going to figure in crucial ways in what happened to – and almost destroyed – me, I think it’s important that I recount what Chick told me about him.  If you understand the kind of man he was you will understand why he eventually did what he did on my behalf.  In my endless pursuit of Homeric homologies Agung indisputably came up as Odysseus:  monster-slayer, crafty and resourceful improviser, comforting friend to friends and terrifying foe to foes; a traveler, a warrior, a lover, a hero.

“I wanted to ask you,” Chick had begun, loading up a cracker with the crunchy goat’s cheese, “about a friend of mine.  I’ve told him about you, and he would like to meet you.”

I said nothing.

“I mean, that’s O.K., isn’t it?”  He was a little embarrassed.

I put my hand on his arm and reassured him.  “That’s fine,” I purred.  “Tell me about your friend.”

“He’s from Indonesia, and he wants to be sure this would not be a problem for you.”

Chick’s friend should have seen some of the crud I’d had to deal with.  They could have learned some basic notions of politeness from this Indonesian.

“No, of course not.  Why should it?”

Chick shrugged his shoulders.  “I don’t know.  He’s a very a cautious kind of guy.”

“I wouldn’t hold that against him,” I laughed.  “So go ahead, tell me about this friend of yours.”

“Well, he’s definitely sui generis.”

“Sui generis?”

“Yes.  Very much so.”

“I’m already intrigued.  Go on.  Talk. Tell.”

Chick sipped his Cinzano, put the glass on the table, and settled back in his chair.

“You understand,” he began, “that what I’m going to tell you is based largely on the account Agung gave me after the fact, and only in part on the basis of what I myself saw.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Well, one day back in the mid-nineties I was surprised to get an e-mail from Agung, or, as I had come to think of him by then, the Sultan of Java.  He was a brilliant oddball I had met a few years earlier in a chat room set up by some graduate students at M.I.T., where he himself had just finished a Ph.D. in physics.  As you know, I had been finishing up my Ph.D. in mathematics at Harvard at the time.  After a few months of hanging out on the internet, when spring finally broke some of us would get together Thursday afternoons for a few hours of informal soccer along the Charles River, and that’s how I met him in person.

“We would all hit a well-known bar in Harvard Square after our soccer, and although he was a Muslim and did not drink alcohol, he would join us and down caffeine-free diet cokes.  He and I hit it off from the start, since we both shared an interest in, among other things, so-called non-linear systems.  We had a common dream of being able to model such phenomena mathematically.”

“Is it fair to ask what a non-linear system is?” I interjected.  I’d come across the term in the course of my own studies but I needed a refresher.

“Sure.  Briefly, a non-linear system is a set of phenomena whose outcomes are, supposedly, explicable after the fact but, definitely, not before – two classical examples are weather and the price movements of stocks and commodities.  O.K.?”

“O.K.  Thanks.”

Chick continued.

“Agung was an unusually attractive young man.  God knows I am not gay, but nor am I blind:  Agung was almost beautiful.  He had exquisite café-au-lait skin, jet-black hair, very long eye-lashes, and he was tall and muscularly lean.  He had taken his undergraduate degree at Jesus College in Oxford and spoke a clipped Oxbridge English in his deep, rich voice.  He came from one of the oldest and largest families in Java, and their personal history went back about half a millennium before the Dutch colonized the islands.  They survived that, they survived the oil-thirsty rapacity of Hirohito’s brutal war machine during World War II, and they survived the revolutionary chaos of the post-war decades.  Under the dazzling corruption of Suharto’s regime the family had multiplied its already considerable wealth many times over and become super-rich.  But it was my friend, the Sultan of Java, who increased the family’s wealth by truly astonishing proportions, orders of magnitude, if you will:  first, his interest in non-linear systems had led him to write a complex currency trading program, and he had anticipated almost to the day the implosion of the Suharto regime in May of 1998 and the consequent disastrous collapse of the Indonesian rupiah.  Being correct on the London Exchange about currency those crucial spring months in the year of living dangerously 1998 had made him — and his family — US dollar billionaires.  Yes, that’s right, billionaires –  several times over.  And it had all been entirely legal.

“But you’d never know about his wealth from being around him.  He was really quite unassuming, and though he dressed with a sophistication and elegance that his physique and pocket-book enabled him to push almost but not quite to foppishness, he very much wanted to be and indeed was ‘one of the guys.’  But even in the company of admittedly very bright people he stood out as something of an intellectual phenomenon in his own right.  He had an uncanny nimbleness of mind and, I suspect, a completely photographic memory.  In addition to fluency in English and Bahasa Indonesia, he was fully at ease in Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Malay, Japanese and several other Indonesian dialects besides Javanese — and when I first met him he was meeting regularly with a fellow physics student from Beijing who was teaching him Chinese.  It was actually unnerving to watch him do a Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle in about twelve minutes!”

Chick shook his head in wonderment.

“Of course he was not a Sultan of Java or anything else, but it was a sobriquet I privately attached to him the first time we met:  there was something so regal about him, both physically and intellectually.  And when I told him many months later of this nickname he smiled softly and nodded his head in amused acquiescence.  But he said I could call him Agung.

“In any event, most of us had sort of lost touch after we all left Cambridge, but the Sultan of Java and I had, in spite of his travels all over the world looking out for the family’s wide-spread interests in every imaginable enterprise, kept in fairly close contact over the years, and it was he who now had e-mailed me — from Palawan, a large island in the archipelago that is the southwestern Philippines.  He had given me rather mysterious instructions to call him two weeks after receipt of the e-mail at a certain number in Puerto Princesa at six o’clock in the morning my time, as there was something he wanted me to help him with.  I was as surprised to receive his message as I was intrigued to learn what it was all about.

“Two weeks later I did as he had requested.”

My friend stopped to take another bite and a little more Cinzano.  Brushing a few crumbs from his lap, he continued.

TO BE CONTINUED