The Sam Gunn Omnibus Page 23

  He had a point there.

  The apartment that Larry and Melinda shared was on the way to the airport. Sam’s intention was to drop me off, assuming Larry was still there, and hustle on to the airport.

  We spotted him on the driveway of the old frame three-storey house, packing all his belongings into their battered old Volvo station wagon. As far as I could see, Larry’s belongings consisted of one duffel bag of clothes and seventeen cartons of computer hardware and documentation books.

  He was just getting into the car when we pulled up and blocked the driveway, just like the Highway Patrol.

  “Where’re you going?” Sam yelped as he bounded out of the Jag. I followed behind, my boots crunching on the driveway’s gravel.

  The three of us looked like a set of Russian dolls, the kind that fit one inside of the other. Sam stood about shoulder-high to Larry, who stood little more than shoulder-high to me.

  “Back to Texas,” he said, his voice kind of cracking. “You want Melinda, she’s all yours.”

  “I don’t want her!” Sam said. “I want her to stop pestering me, for cryin’ out loud.”

  Larry put down the cardboard carton he was carrying on the tailgate of the Volvo and drew himself up to his full height.

  “She’s not interested in you anymore, Mr. Gunn. She’s gone batty over this guy.” He jutted his lower lip at me.

  For a ridiculous instant I felt like a gunslinger in a Western, about to be challenged by a callow youth.

  “Listen, son,” I said as reasonably as I could, “I was just trying to get her mind off Sam.”

  He kind of sagged, as if he’d been holding himself together for so long that his strength had given out. I thought he might drop to the ground and start crying.

  But he didn’t. “Sam, you—what’s the difference? She doesn’t like me anymore. I guess she never really liked me in the first place.”

  I looked at Sam and he looked at me. Then he got a sort of strange, benign smile on his face, an almost saintly kind of expression I had never seen on Sam before.

  He went over to Larry and slid an arm around the kid’s skinny shoulders, as much to prop him up as anything else. “Larry,” he asked in a quiet, kindly sort of voice, “have you ever heard of a fella named Cyrano de Bergerac?”

  “Who?”

  “CYRANO?” JADE LOOKED sharply into Johansen’s sparkling blue eyes.

  “You know the play?” he asked.

  “I played Roxane in our high school drama class,” she said.

  “Oh.” Johansen looked slightly uncomfortable. “I think I saw it on video once. Had a lot of sword fighting in it.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Yes, a lot of sword fighting. And Cyrano coached Christian so that he could win Roxane’s heart—even though he loved her himself.”

  Johansen nodded back at her. “Yep. That’s just what Sam did. Or at least, that’s what he got me to do.”

  IT WAS SHEER desperation—Johansen continued. Without Larry we’d never be able to build our hardware on the schedule we had promised in our proposal. Or maybe not at all.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Sam told the kid, right there in the driveway. “Mutt and I know everything there is to know about women. With us helping you, she’ll fall into your arms in no time flat.”

  The kid’s face reddened. “I get kind of tongue-tied when I t-try to t-talk sw-sw-sweet to her.”

  Sam stared at the kid. A stuttering lover? It didn’t look good.

  Then I got the idea of the century. “Why don’t you talk to her through your computers?”

  Larry got really excited about that. Computers were something he understood and trusted. As long as he didn’t have to actually speak to her face-to-face he could say anything we gave him.

  “Okay,” Sam said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Mutt, you take our lovesick friend here to the library and borrow as many poetry books as they’ll let you take out. I gotta get to the airport and meet Bonnie Jo.”

  Melinda looked surprised when we came back into the office; those big brown eyes of hers flashed wide. But then she stuck her nose into her computer screen and began pecking at the keyboard as fast as her chubby little fingers would go.

  It was getting near to noon. I went to my desk and ran off the phone’s answering machine. There was only one call, from Sam. Bonnie Jo’s plane from Salt Lake City was running late. Delays and congestion in Dallas.

  So what else is new? I sat Larry down at his desk and helped him unfold his computer and set it up again. Melinda glanced at us from time to time, but whenever she saw me looking she quickly snapped her eyes back to her own screen.

  Larry hadn’t said a word to her. While he checked out his machine I thumbed madly through one of the poetry books. God almighty, I hadn’t even looked at that stuff since they made me read it in high school English classes. I ran across one that I vaguely remembered.

  Without speaking, I showed the page to Larry, then left the book on his desk and went over to my own, next to the window. As nonchalantly as I could I booted up my own machine, waiting to see if the kid actually worked up the nerve to send the poem to Melinda, sitting four and a half feet away from him.

  Sure enough, the words began to scroll across the screen: “Come live with me and be my Love ...”

  I don’t know what Melinda was working on, but I guess when she saw the message light blink on her machine she automatically set the screen to receive it.

  Her eyes went really wide. Her mouth dropped open as she read the lines of poetry scrolling onto her screen. To make sure she didn’t think they were coming from me, I picked up the telephone and tapped the first button on my automatic dialer. Some guy’s bored voice told me that the day’s high would be eighty-two, with a seventy-five percent chance of showers in the afternoon.

  Melinda looked at me kind of puzzled. I ignored her and looked out my window, where I could watch her reflection without her knowing it. I saw a suspicion on her face slowly dawn into certainty. She turned and looked at Larry, who promptly turned flame-red.

  A good beginning, I thought.

  Then Sam burst into the office, towing Bonnie Jo Murtchison.

  When it came to women Sam was truly democratic. Tall or short, plump or anorexic, Sam made no distinctions based on race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude. But he did seem to hit on blondes preferentially.

  Bonnie Jo Murtchison was blonde, the kind of golden blonde with almost reddish highlights that is one of the triumphs of modern cosmetic chemistry. Her hair was frizzed, shoulder length, but pushed back off her face enough to show two enormous bangle earrings. She had a slight figure, almost boyish. Good legs, long and strong and nicely tanned. A good tennis player, I thought. That was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw her.

  She was wearing a neat little miniskirted sleeveless frock of butter yellow, the kind that costs a week’s pay. More jewelry on her wrists and fingers, necklaces dangling down her slim bosom. She clattered and jangled as she came into the office, towering over Sam by a good five-six inches.

  The perfect spoiled princess, I thought at once. Rich father, beautiful mother, and no brothers or sisters. What a pain in the butt she’s going to be.

  I was right, but for all the wrong reasons.

  The first thing that really jolted me about Bonnie Jo was her voice. I expected the kind of shrill yapping that you hear from the cuties around the condo swimming pool; you know, the ones who won’t go into the water because it’d mess up the hairdo they just spent all morning on.

  Bonnie Jo’s voice was low and ladylike. Not quite husky, and certainly not soft. Controlled. Strong. She didn’t hurt your ears when she talked.

  Sam introduced her to Larry, who mumbled and avoided her eyes, and to Melinda, who looked her over like a professional prizefighter assessing a new opponent. Then he brought her across the room to my desk.

  “This is our president, Spence Johansen,” Sam said. “I call him Mutt.”

 
; She reached across the desk to take my hand in a firm grip. Her eyes were gray-green, a color that haunted me so much I looked it up in a book on precious stones at the local library. The color of Brazilian tourmaline: deep, mysterious, powerful grayish green.

  “And what would you like me to call you, Mr. Johansen?” she asked in that marvelous voice.

  She just sort of naturally drew a smile out of me. “Spence will be fine,” I said.

  “Good. I’m Bonnie Jo.”

  I think I fell in love with her right then and there.

  “THAT WAS PRETTY quick,” Jade sniffed.

  Johansen shrugged. “It happens that way, sometimes.”

  “Really?”

  “Haven’t you ever fallen in love at first sight?”

  She tried to conjure up Raki’s image in her mind. The drinks she had been swilling made her head spin slightly.

  “Yes, I guess I have, at that,” she said at last. That smile of his made her head swim even more.

  Johansen looked out across the grassy hills that stretched below them to the edge of the toylike village. Sunlight filtering through the big solar windows slanted long shadows down there.

  “It’s going to be sunset pretty soon,” he said. “I know a fine little restaurant down in Gunnstown, if you’re ready for dinner.”

  “Gunnstown?” she asked.

  “That’s the name of the village down there.” He pointed with an outstretched arm.

  “Should I change?”

  Grinning, “I like you the way you are.”

  “My clothes,” she said.

  He cocked his head slightly. “It’s a very nice little continental restaurant. Tablecloths and candles, that sort of thing.”

  She said, “Meet me at my hotel room in an hour.”

  When he called for her, precisely one hour later, Johansen was wearing a comfortable pair of soft blue slacks and a slate-gray velour pullover, the closest thing to formal attire on the space habitat. Jade had shopped furiously in Gunnstown’s only two boutiques until she found a miniskirted sleeveless frock of butter-yellow.

  Once they were sitting across a tiny table, with a softly glowing candle between them, she saw that Johansen was staring at her intently.

  Almost uncomfortable, Jade tried to return to the subject of Sam Gunn.

  But Johansen said, “Your eyes are beautiful, you know? The prettiest I’ve ever seen.”

  Silently Jade retorted, Prettier than Bonnie Jo’s? But she dared not say it aloud. Instead, she said:

  “Just before you suggested dinner, you were telling me about Bonnie Jo.” Jade struggled to keep her voice even. “About falling in love with her.”

  IT WASN’T A tough thing to do—Johansen replied. I had expected a spoiled rich kid. Her father, the banker, had insisted on having one of his own people join the VCI team as treasurer. Apparently his daughter insisted just as stubbornly that she take the job. So there she was, at the desk we shoehorned into our one little office, two feet away from mine.

  She had degrees in economics and finance from BYU, plus an MBA from Wharton. She really knew her business. And she was strictly no-nonsense. Sam wined and dined her, of course, but it didn’t go any further than that, far as I could tell. I knew Sam had no real intention of getting married to anybody. I didn’t think she did, either. Or if she did, she was willing to wait until VCI started making big bucks.

  We were all living practically hand-to-mouth, with every cent we got from the government and from Bonnie Jo’s father’s bank poured into building the hardware for removing debris from orbit. Bonnie Jo was never hurting for spending money, of course, but she never lorded it over us. The weeks rolled by and we sort of became a real team: you know, working together every day, almost living together, you come to know and respect each other. Or you explode.

  Bonnie Jo even started helping Melinda in her personal life. Gave her hints about her clothes. Even went on a diet with her; not that Bonnie Jo needed it, but Melinda actually started to slim down a little. They started going to exercise classes down the way in the shopping mall.

  I was giving myself a cram course in romantic poetry and passing it all on to Larry. On Valentine’s Day he wanted to give Melinda a big heart-shaped box of chocolates. I suggested flowers instead. I figured she wouldn’t eat flowers, although I wasn’t altogether certain.

  “And write a note on the card they put in with the flowers,” I insisted.

  He gulped. “Sh-should I s-s-s-sign my n-n-name?”

  “Damned right.”

  Larry turned pale. But I marched him to the florist section of the supermarket and we picked out a dozen posies for her. I towed him to the counter where they had a little box full of blank cards. I handed him my government-issue ballpoint pen, guaranteed to write under water or in zero gravity.

  He looked at me, panic-stricken. “Wh-what’ll I say?”

  I thought for a second.” ‘To the woman who has captured my heart,’“ I told him.

  He scribbled on the little card. His handwriting was awful.

  “Sign it.”

  He stared at me.

  “Better yet,” I said. “Just put your initial. Just an ‘L.’“

  He did that. We snuck the bouquet into the office while Melinda and Bonnie Jo were out at their exercise class. Larry laid the flowers on her desk with a trembling hand.

  Well, the last time I had watched a scene like what followed was in an old video called “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Melinda sort of went into shock when she saw the flowers on her desk, but only for a moment. She read the card, then spun around toward Larry—who looked white as a sheet, scared—and launched herself at him. Knocked him right off his desk chair.

  Sam gave them the rest of the day off. It was Friday, so they had the whole weekend to themselves.

  A few minutes after the lovers left the office, Sam frowned at his computer screen.

  “I gotta check out the superconducting coils down at the Cape,” he said. “Those suckers in Massachusetts finally delivered them. Arrived this morning.”

  Two weeks late. Not good, but within the tolerable limits we had set in our schedule. The manufacturer in Massachusetts had called a couple months earlier and said that delivery would be three months late, due to a big order they had to rush for Rockledge International.

  Sam had screamed so loud and long into the phone that I thought every fiber-optic cable between Florida and Massachusetts would have melted. The connection actually broke down three times before he finished convincing our manufacturing subcontractor that: (a) their contract with us had heavy penalty clauses for late delivery; (b) since this order from Rockledge had come in after our order we clearly had priority; and (c) this was obviously an attempt by Rockledge to sabotage us.

  “Tell your goddamned lawyers to stock up on NoDoz,” Sam yelled into the phone. “I’m going to sue you sneaking, thieving bastards sixteen ways from Sunday! You’ll go down the tubes, buddy. Bankrupt. Broke. Dead in the water. Kaput! You just watch!”

  He slammed the phone down hard enough to make the papers on my desk bounce.

  “But Sam,” I had pleaded, “if you tie them up or shut them down we’ll go out of business with them. We need that superconducting coil. And the backup.”

  A sly grin eased across his face. “Don’tcha think I know that? I’m just putting the fear of lawyers into them. Now” he reached for the phone again, “to put the fear of God almighty into them.”

  I didn’t eavesdrop on purpose, but our desks were jammed so close together that I couldn’t help hearing him ask for Albert Clement. At the Department of Commerce.

  Sam’s tone changed enormously. He was stiffly formal with Clement, almost respectful, explaining the situation and his suspicion that Rockledge was trying to club us to death with their money. I wondered if this guy Clement was the same Commerce Department undertaker who had been at the evaluation hearing in D.C.

  Well, it all got straightened out. The next day I got a very apologeti
c phone call from the director of contracts at the Massachusetts firm, some guy with an Armenian name. Terrible misunderstanding. Of course they wouldn’t let this enormous order from Rockledge get in the way of delivering what they had promised to us. On schedule, absolutely. Maybe a week or so late, nothing more than that. Guaranteed. On his mother’s grave.

  I said nice things back to him, like, “Uh-huh. That’s fine. I’m glad to hear it.” Sam was watching me, grinning from ear to ear.

  The guy’s voice dropped a note lower, as if he was afraid he’d be overheard. “It’s so much pleasanter dealing with you than that Mr. Gunn,” he said. “He’s so excitable!”

  “Well, I’m the president of the firm,” I said back to him, while Sam held both hands over his mouth to stifle his guffaws. “Whenever a problem arises, feel free to call me.”

  He thanked me three dozen times.

  I no sooner had put the phone down than it rang again. Pierre D’Argent, calling from Rockledge headquarters in Pennsylvania.

  In a smarmy, oily voice he professed shock and surprise that anyone would think that Rockledge was trying to sabotage a smaller competitor. I motioned for Sam to pick up his phone and listen in.

  “We would never stoop to anything like that,” he assured me. “There’s no need for anyone to get hysterical.”

  “Well,” I said, “it seemed strange to us that Rockledge placed such a large order with the outfit that’s making our teeny little coils, and then tried to muscle them into shunting our work aside.”

  “We never did that,” D’Argent replied, like a saint accused of rifling the poor-box. “It’s all a misunderstanding.”

  Sam said sweetly into his phone, “We’ve subpoenaed their records, oh silver-tongued devil.”

  “What? Who is that? Gunn, is that you?”

  “See you in Leavenworth, Pee-air.”

  D’Argent hung up so hard I thought a gun had gone off in my ear. Sam fell off his chair laughing and rolled on the floor, holding his middle and kicking his feet in the air. We had not subpoenaed anybody for anything, but it cost Rockledge a week’s worth of extremely expensive legal staff work to find that out.