Bust (3 page)

Most of her money went on clothes. The most basic lesson she learned was that if you wore a short skirt, killer
heels and a tight top, guys went ape. Her legs were good and she knew how to hike a skirt to really get the heads turning. She saved her money and went online to book a week in Belfast, brought the urn with her — which caused some commotion with Homeland Security, but in the end she was allowed to bring her Mom if she stashed her in freight, which she did. She stayed at the Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe — that’s what Frommer said anyway — and the customers were pretty bombed themselves. The city was a shithole — drab, grey, depressing — and the Sterling, what was the deal with that? And people kept getting on her about Iraq, like she had any freakin’ say about it. She did all the sightseeing crap — maybe seeing blown up buildings did it for some people, but it bored the hell out of her. When she threw her Mom’s ashes into the Foyle there was a wind, of course, and most of her mother flew back into her hair. When she told the old guy at the hotel desk what had happened he said, “Tis proof, darling, that the dead are always with us.”

Evenings, she ate at the hotel and had drinks at the bar. She didn’t want to go out, not because she was afraid but because she couldn’t understand a goddamn word anyone was saying. The bartender hit on her and if his teeth hadn’t been so yellow she might have been into it. For the first time in her life, she felt American and that Ireland was the foreign country. The blended accent that got her so far in New York seemed useless here.

Her second-to-last night, she was sitting at the bar and a drunk began to hassle her. The bartender, of course, didn’t help. The drunk had a combat jacket, sewage breath, and was going, “Ah come on, you want to suck me dick, you know yah do.”

It took her a while to actually figure out what he was
saying because of the accent; it sounded like, “Orr... kom on... yer want to truck meh duck.”

Finally, she put it all together. Before she could react, a man appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the guy by the front of the neck and had him out of there in no time. Shaking, she tried to put a Virginia Slim into her mouth, and the bartender raced over, flicked a bic, and said, “There you go.”

She accepted the light as she wanted that hit of nicotine then blew a cloud of smoke in Yellow Teeth’s face, said, “And there
you
go you spineless prick.”

Unfazed, the bartender said, “I love it when you talk dirty.”

The other man had returned and now stared at the bartender, and said “Leg it shithead.” Then he turned to her, asked, “You okay missus?”

She could understand him, because he was from the Irish Republic and had soft vowels, sounding kind of like her Dad. He had a scar on his face, long grey hair and was as thin as the guys on Christopher Street. His lips were mangled but, hey, he was the first guy in the whole damn province she saw with good teeth. And the lips were kind of sexy anyway. They’d be strange to kiss, but they’d be great for other things. Maybe it was the near violence but she felt a raw sexuality oozing off of him that was so freaking irresistible. One thing that got Angela hot was danger and this guy reeked of it.

She felt a burning rise up her neck, spread to her face, and said, “Wow, I’m so, like, grateful. Can I buy you a drink?”

He smiled then said, “Jameson.” He said it like a Hollywood tough guy, no bullshit with
please
or
ice
. No, just the one word, with a slight hard edge, the implication being, bring me the drink
now
and don’t even think about fucking with me.

She asked, “Are you, like, for real?”

He parked his ass on the stool next to her, said, “The heart wants what it cannot hold.”

Jesus, she thought, poetry and violence, how could a girl resist? The Irish might know shit about cool but they sure as hell knew how to talk.

And she loved his voice, deep, devilish, and, yeah, sexy.

With a little of the same flirty tone, she said, “You want that on the rocks?”

He gave her the look she would get to know and not always love, and said, “I take everything... neat.”

He put his hand in his jacket, took out a slim book and she saw the title,
The Wisdom of Zen.
She was impressed that a guy like him was carrying around a deep book like that.

He asked her, “You like The Pogues?”

She thought, Screw them, I like you.

Never do evil, always do good, keep your mind pure — thus all the Buddhas taught.

T
HE
D
HAMMAPADA

Max screamed, “To hell with you, you crackpot!” and slammed the phone as he hard as he could and banged the desk with his fist. A moment later, he felt a jolt in his chest. Thinking,
Fuck, I’m dying
, he searched his jacket pockets for his Mevacor. Then he remembered he’d already taken his pills today but now feared that the Mevacor was interacting with his Viagra, causing some kind of reaction.

He was about to call Dr. Cohen, that jerk-off, back but he decided, What’s the point? So far nothing that schmuck suggested had worked. Max took all the goddamn drugs he was supposed to, had even hired an Indian named Kamal to come over to his house a few days a week to cook macrobiotic meals. But his HDL-to-LDL ratio was eight-to-one, up from seven-to-one at his last check-up, putting him in the super-high-risk group for heart disease. Right now, he could feel his heart working on overtime, the pump already on its last legs.

To help relax, Max did a yoga breathing exercise that Kamal had taught him, inhaling and exhaling through alternate nostrils, but it didn’t do crap. He made a mental note — fire Kamal, that Indian bastard, as soon as he comes back from his vacation.
Taj Mahal that, you little prick.

There was a knock on Max’s door.

Max yelled, “What?”

The door opened slowly and Harold Lipman, Max’s new Networking Salesman, came into the office.

Lipman said, “Esc —” and Max said, “Not now.”

“I just wanted to ask—”

“I said not now!”

Lipman left and Max went right to his office bar and made a vodka tonic. Ah, Max loved his office, the only part of NetWorld that he’d remodeled. Besides the mahogany bar, he’d paneled the walls, installed brandnew carpeting, and bought the most expensive desk and swivel chair available in the Office Depot catalogue. He figured it made a statement, that here was a hip guy, not showy, but with refined taste and a serious edge. You saw the office, you saw a guy who probably had drinks with the Donald, though not often because Max was “too busy.” The office had no view, but elegant beige curtains concealed the windows. Behind his desk hung a custommade picture of a blonde with Pam Anderson-size breasts sitting on a red Porsche. Inscribed on the car was the company motto,
NETWORLD OR BUST.

The booze soothed Max enough so that he was able to concentrate on the important stuff again, like money. Over the past two days, Max had put away ten grand in his private safe. He had made small withdrawals from all of his bank accounts — corporate and private — and from his brokerage accounts where he had cash balances. But the bulk of the money, about seven grand, had come from the office’s petty cash. Max thought this was a great idea because if the police investigated there would be no withdrawal slips or any other way to prove he’d hired a hit man. And fuck that crazy mick’s demand for small bills — the money was mostly fifties and hundreds. What was he going to do, turn it down? Yeah, like that was going to happen.

As Max poured his second vodka tonic, there was a soft knock on the door, a pause, followed by a louder knock.

Max recognized the signal and said in his sexiest voice, “Come in, baby.”

As usual, Angela looked dynamite. She was wearing shiny black boots, a short red skirt tight enough to see her butt-cheeks, and a lacy camisole. She had big blow-dried hair and was wearing the diamond stud earrings that Max had bought her at Tiffany’s last Christmas.

“You had two messages while you were on the phone,” Angela said, the soft Irish vowels driving him crazy.

“Fuck the messages. How about you put those magic little hands of yours to work?”

Angela locked the door and came up behind Max at his desk. Max breathed deeply, moaning, “Oh, yeah, that feels so good,” as Angela worked the muscles in his neck and shoulders.

“You have a lot of knots today,” Angela said.

“I bet my blood pressure’s shooting through the roof too.”

“Was that Dr. Cohen you were screaming at?”

“Who else? I swear, I don’t know how that jerk-off got a license. You know what that asshole told me? That I should start eating brown rice. Like the bacon, the fried chicken, the shrimp, the pizza — that’s not killing me. It’s the fuckin’ white rice.”

“Calm down,” Angela said. “You have to learn how to relax, not let the stress get to you. In Ireland we say,
Na bac leat.”

The fuck was she talking about? He asked, “The fuck’re you talking about?”

She said calmly, “In American...
No biggie.
”

Max exhaled, then took a long, steady breath. Angela was wearing some of that perfume called Joy he had bought her last month at Bloomingdale’s. Max couldn’t tell whether
it smelled nice or not, but it had cost five hundred bucks an ounce so he figured it must be pretty good.

“You should be careful,” Angela said, “screaming in the office like that. Everyone could hear you.”

“So? If they don’t like it they don’t have to work here.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to, like, yell like that. I mean people could remember. They’ll tell the police ‘Come to think of it, Max was kind of acting crazy lately.”

“But I act crazy all the time, I’m a crazy kind of guy, it’s part of my appeal.”

“I’m just saying — it’s probably not a good idea.”

“Eh, you’re probably right,” Max said. “You know what else Cohen told me? He said I’m fat.”

“I love your belly.”

“Yeah, well, Cohen says it’s unhealthy. He showed me some chart that said I’m obese for a man my height and age. Meanwhile, you should see the size of that asshole’s gut.”

“How does that feel?”

“Nice. Real nice.”

Angela spun Max around in his chair, kissed him on the lips, then Max whispered, “I just want all this shit to be over with already. Last night I had a dream she was dead. The ambulances were there and they were carrying her out of our house, covered by a white sheet, and you know what? It was the best dream I’ve ever had.”

“You shouldn’t talk about her that way,” Angela said. She had her hands behind Max’s head, gently rubbing her fingers through his thinning hair. He was glad she was touching the back of his head, where he still had some hair left. “You know what they say — if you say things about your first wife you’ll say them about your second wife too.”

“You and Deirdre have nothing in common, sweetheart.”

“That’s what you say now, but in twenty years you might be paying to have me killed.”

“I’d be lucky if I lived another twenty years.”

“You’re not denying it.”

Holding her head steady and looking right into those fucking beautiful light blue eyes, Max said, “I love you. You think I ever went around telling Deirdre that I loved her?”

“You still didn’t deny it.”

“I deny it, I deny it,” Max said. “Jesus Christ.”

Angela smiled. Max kissed her then said, “You know, the only thing I’m worried about is this Popeye character.”

“Why?” Angela asked.

“First of all, I don’t like his name.”

“What’s wrong with his name?”

“Come on, it’s a fucking cartoon character. It’s like I’m hiring Donald Duck to kill my wife.”

“You can’t expect him to use his real name. I mean, he has to protect himself, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, but couldn’t he come up with something better, more hitman-like. I don’t know, like, Skull, or Bones, or something like that.”

“You can’t judge somebody by their name.”

“Eh, I guess you’re right. And I guess we’ve gotta assume he’s good at what he does or your cousin wouldn’t have recommended him, right? God knows the guy’s crazy enough to kill somebody. You should’ve seen the way he grabbed my arm.”

“So what’re you worried about?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a vibe. I just got a feeling the guy’s fucking around with me somehow. And I don’t like the way he changed the terms. It was supposed to be eight, then he made it ten. That’s no way to do business with somebody.”

Angela held Max’s hand, said, “Don’t worry. I mean, it’s only another two thousand. It’s not like he asked for twenty thousand.”

“Yet,” Max said. “I got a feeling this guy thinks he’s got me by the balls or something. That’s how he comes off, like he thinks he’s in control. You know what he called me? He called me a ‘suited prick.’ Asshole. And I couldn’t stand looking at him, either. Those disgusting lips.”

While he spoke, Max was massaging Angela’s breasts. He loved her breasts — they were the main reason he’d hired her. He’d always been a breast man. Even Deirdre had big breasts, although they were starting to sag below her stomach.

“This is probably a bad idea,” Max said as Angela started to kiss his neck. “Tonight has to be our last time for a while.”

“I can’t wait till we can be together all the time,” Angela said.

“Ditto,” Max said. “But until then, let’s just try to keep things as quiet as possible around here.”

For the rest of the day, Max and Angela went about their business. Amazingly, they’d managed to keep their affair a secret from everyone in the office. Around other people, Max was always very formal, asking Angela to send faxes, take messages, bring him coffee, order in lunch and other crap that presidents of companies ask their executive assistants to do. They never went out to lunch together or left the office together at night. If they were planning to meet for dinner, Angela would always leave first and then Max would meet her at a specified location. As for the times they fooled around in Max’s office during business hours, it wasn’t unusual for an executive assistant and her boss to be in the boss’s office together with the door locked.