Chain Lightning (2 page)

Mandy looked quickly around the crowd, seeking Anthea. The movement made the thousands of tiny black bugle beads on her dress shimmer. Bias-cut, long-sleeved, high-necked, utterly backless and slit to the thigh, the dress nonetheless managed to look sensuously elegant rather than sexually provocative. But then, at the price the designer was asking for it, the dress had to do something more than just glitter. Mandy frowned as she remembered the cost. For the tenth time that evening she wondered how she had allowed Anthea to talk her into modeling Sharai’s exclusive, cozy creation.

Simple,
Mandy told herself dryly.
You took one look at the dress and fell in love. The fact that Sharai is one of Anthea’s former projects simply made the offer more impossible to refuse.

A subtle flash of blue caught Mandy’s eye. That would be Alice, one of the two receptionist candidates. Sharai had decreed that Alice wear a slinky cerulean dress that made her look like a blue candle flame burning in the crowd. The other candidate – Jessica – was breathtaking in red silk pants and a beaded strapless top. Apparently Anthea hadn’t been able to decide which of the two women to employ, so she had hired both. Jessi was working as receptionist while Alice was learning the basics of Mandy’s job. When Mandy had pointed out that soon she would have nothing to do, Anthea had laughed and said that the more quickly Alice could take over routine office duties, the more quickly Mandy would be freed to work with Anthea on her various personal and OCC projects.

Suddenly Mandy stopped scanning the crowd. Her abrupt stillness wasn’t the result of a conscious choice to stop looking for Anthea; it was simply that Sutter was impossible to catalog and pass over in a single glance, even though he was seated in the shadows of the orchestra pit a few rows away. He wore a black suit coat, a dress shirt of a linen so fine that its surface was smoother than summer silk, and a rich black tie. The midnight color of his suit served to intensify the blondness of his thick, sun-cured hair, which in turn made his tanned skin seem very dark by contrast. Instead of making him appear civilized, the expensive clothes served only to heighten the aura of primal, barely leashed masculinity Mandy had sensed in Sutter the first time she had seen his picture on Anthea’s desk.

OCC left Sutter out in that Brazilian jungle too long. I wonder if those cold green eyes can see in the dark.

Mandy forced herself to continue scanning the crowd, then sat down as swiftly as she could, feeling as though Sutter had been staring at her and at the same time telling herself that she was being foolish. Sutter was hardly likely to stare at her. She had spoken perhaps twenty words to him since he had returned, those words consisting of “yes, sir,“ “yes, sir,“ and “yes, sir,“ repeat as necessary.

A flurry of anticipation rippled through the crowd as the lights dimmed and the auctioneer stepped onto the stage to introduce the first of the bachelors who had volunteered to be auctioned off in the name of Our Children’s Children. As though pulled by invisible strings, the crowd leaned forward for a better view of the stage. Jewels flashed and glittered in the low light, plush foldout chairs creaked, and conversations died throughout the large auditorium. The auctioneer was wearing another of Sharai’s creations. Every movement of the auctioneer’s body sent exotic tongues of luminescence licking through rich green fabric, defining the curves beneath without actually revealing their precise proportions. As a bit of seductive witchery, it was stunning.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,“ the auctioneer said. “I have a mirror at home, so I know those gasps of admiration aren’t for me. The gown I’m wearing is by Sharai. As some of you may know, Sharai gives ten percent of her profits each year to OCC. In return, OCC does its best to send clients her way. Several of the OCC staff are also wearing Sharai’s creations tonight, compliments of the designer.“

That was the cue for Mandy and five other women throughout the crowd to stand up and pirouette slowly in the prearranged spotlights. The dresses displayed the range of Sharai’s elegant evening creations while the auctioneer gave a few facts as to price and availability of each costume. Silently Mandy kept telling herself that she needn’t be shy – the audience certainly would be looking at the flashier dresses worn by the other women rather than at the relatively demure black dress she herself had chosen to wear.

Mandy repeated the comforting thought to herself for half of the required pirouette, then shivered involuntarily to a stop when she saw Sutter watching her from the shadows of the orchestra pit. Suddenly she felt naked, stripped of defenses, clothed only in a transparent shaft of light. The feeling was so unnerving that she swayed like a dark orchid in a sultry breeze. The movements sent networks of black lightning over the dress with each shivering breath she took. There was a flurry of appreciative applause from people who thought that the seductive swaying had been planned rather than involuntary. Mandy forced a stiff smile to her lips and prayed for the spotlight to black out before she did.

The spotlights snapped off, leaving only the auctioneer visible. There was a round of applause for the dresses. Mandy was so relieved to be invisible again that it was all she could do not to fall. She sat down in a rush, her face flaming and her heart beating far too fast.

“Gowns by Sharai!“ the auctioneer said enthusiastically, leading a final round of applause. When silence came again, the auctioneer began speaking in a clear, trained contralto that carried easily to every corner of the music hall. “I’m sure you’ll be as generous in your bidding as you were in your applause, so let’s lead the first lamb to the altar.“

There was scattered laughter.

“As you know,“ the auctioneer continued, “OCC, Our Children’s Children, is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to promoting rational national policies of resource use, policies that will result in decent lives for our children and for our children’s children. OCC was founded and funded by Jason Charles Sutter and Alicia Jean Sutter, the parents of Anthea Jean Sutter, who is the present administrator of OCC’s diverse global projects. Foremost among those projects is what the press calls a ‘think tank’ located amid the redwoods in northern California. At present, the OCC retreat houses thirty-one academic, political, artistic and business leaders whose sole task is to…think. If that sounds easy, you’re welcome to apply for the next opening. At last count there were more than one hundred applicants for each vacancy.“

Mandy felt her heartbeat slow and the trembling in her body subside as the auctioneer’s voice and the blessed darkness concealed her from Sutter’s view. The man unnerved her. There was no explanation for it and no way to get around it. Even looking at his picture made her uneasy. He was precisely the kind of man that her husband Andrew had been – powerful, impatient, both scholar and man of action – only Andrew had worked for a university rather than for a charity. He had been an oceanographer renowned for his incisive intelligence and lofty academic principles.

What a pity Andrew’s principles didn’t preclude adultery. Maybe then I wouldn‘t have spent a night of horror adrift on a cold sea. Maybe then I would have had a child to laugh with rather than the company of nightmares.

Maybe.

And maybe it all would have happened anyway. Maybe it wasn‘t a lack of principles that sent Andrew on the prowl. Maybe it was the simple fact that his student-bride didn’t know how to please a man. Maybe if I’d been better in bed none of this would have happened.

Maybe. Oh, God, maybe….

Mandy shuddered violently but didn’t try to suppress or deny the churning of her thoughts. She had learned the hard way that whatever she suppressed during the day returned to haunt her in the darkness of her dreams. Once she had understood that, she had begun to grapple more successfully with her emotions. All that remained now was for her to accept the fact that there was more than enough blame to go around in life and much too little joy. Andrew had failed her and she had probably failed Andrew and she had certainly failed their unborn child. Having acknowledged that, she had nothing left to do but live the rest of her life as best she could.

A wave of laughter called Mandy from her bleak thoughts. Her head snapped up as the auctioneer waved her index finger from side to side at the audience, imitating a parent chastising a child.

“Naughty, naughty,“ the woman murmured. “What I meant to say is that a good man is hard to find, rather than vice versa. The first of our hard – that is,
good
– men is Dr. Anthony Streano. He is Tony to his friends and has been known to respond to other names on rather more intimate occasions. I leave it to the lucky last bidder to discover what names and which occasions!“

The crowd laughed again while a man of middle age and height walked onto the stage. He smiled briefly before he took a seat at center stage in a pool of white light. Silence descended again while the auctioneer recited his “vital statistics“ in a sultry contralto that found double meanings in the most innocent phrases. As the last of the appreciative laughter died down, she described the “date“ Dr. Streano had donated – a star-studded gala film opening in Hollywood.

“Remember,“ concluded the auctioneer, “the money you bid goes directly to OCC. Each bachelor pays all costs for his proposed outing, just as he would on a more traditional date. There is no limit to the number of dates you may acquire, so bid often, and bid high! Your children’s children will thank you.“

The auditorium’s lights came up again so that the bidders could be spotted. The auction opened at one hundred dollars and rose quickly to one thousand. Finally a blushing, beaming woman not quite old enough to be the good doctor’s mother walked up onstage to claim him. The doctor smiled, introduced himself and murmured something that made the woman glow. Grinning, laughing and attempting to ignore the occasional risqué comment from the audience, the pair exited the stage.

For the next half hour the bidding went briskly, as everything from a VIP tour of Disneyland to a Malibu barbecue to a ski weekend at Vail was auctioned. The men took the auctioneer’s spicy teasing in good humor, plainly both gratified and chagrined to be in the position of seller rather than buyer in the dating game. The women, for their part, enthusiastically exploited the opportunity to see men on the sexual auction block for a change.

Mandy watched man after man walk onstage, sit down and smile while his attributes were numbered and his “favors“ were auctioned off like a glorified box lunch. Some of the men were four-year veterans of the auction, but most had never before participated. Fully one-third of the purchased dates resulted in long-lasting relationships, a fact that tended to seriously deplete the pool of available bachelors OCC could call upon.

“Our final bachelor before we break for a champagne intermission is Jeremy Stanhope, owner of Stanhope Electronics and patent holder of a nifty little process that allows our computers to work ten times as fast as they used to. Jeremy is a newcomer to our auction, so let’s make him very welcome.“

A tall, thin, obviously shy man walked slowly onstage while the audience applauded. He looked uncomfortable in his black tie and shifted restlessly from side to side while the auctioneer read his vital statistics. He was offering a week-long cruise on one of the “Loveboats“ that plied the waters between Washington and Alaska. As the “date“ was described, an appreciative murmur went through the crowd, followed by an enthusiastic hand. Because the costs of the excursion would be borne by the bachelor rather than by OCC, and the bids tended to reflect the cost of the date itself, the electronics tycoon’s cruise amounted to a generous, if indirect, donation to OCC’s coffers.

The bidding began at six hundred dollars and went rapidly higher. As had been the case with the previous auctions, the women who were too shy to bid outright had conned friends and family into bidding for them. Mothers bid for their daughters’ birthday gifts and vice versa. The OCC auction was only in its fourth year, but already it was the most popular and lucrative of the many events on OCC’s fund-raising calendar. The fact that the event had been preceded by a free champagne and caviar reception increased both the attendance and the generosity of the ultimate bids.

After the intermission, during which more champagne and canapés were consumed, the bidding intensified. In the second half of the auction, the “dates“ offered were uniformly expensive vacations that often were unusual and always hotly contested among the bidders. As the bidding became more spirited, so did the innuendos. The comments from the audience went from flirtatious to nearly salacious. Good taste was skirted but never breached, and the men took the sexy teasing with comic-opera leers that brought laughter from the audience.

When the auctioneer introduced the last bachelor listed on the program, a former tight end for the Rams, by saying that this was one man who matched his job description, the audience shouted with laughter. Variations on the sporting theme – holding penalties, game-winning touchdowns, incomplete passes, hands-on scrimmages and punting for distance – were all explored by the auctioneer and the audience. The man himself was both huge and beautifully proportioned. He was offering a ten-day surfing safari to Hawaii. The bidding was a machine-gun blur of numbers that finally resolved into a three-cornered war among a trim matron, a blond society girl and Sharai.

Ten minutes later the bidding was over. Five thousand dollars poorer, Sharai walked onstage in a dress that looked like water flowing over her, giving the impression that with the next step, or the next, some of the feminine secrets lying beneath the cloth would be revealed. They never were, but the dress kept every man hoping. The former jock took one look at Sharai’s near six feet of height and generously proportioned body, joined the wild applause and then casually scooped up the designer and carried her offstage in his arms. The look of surprise and then pleasure on Sharai’s face made it clear that she believed her money well spent.