Disclosure: A Novel (40 page)

"Then who?"

"I don't know."

Sanders said, "I suppose it could be anybody."

"I don't think it's just anybody. Listen again. Listen to how she sounds."

He rewound the tape, held the player to his ear. After a moment, he put the player down.

"She sounds almost angry."

Fernandez nodded. "Resentful is the term I'd use. She's in the midst of this episode with you, and she's talking about someone else. `The bastard.' It's as if she wants to pay somebody back. Right at that moment, she's getting even."

Sanders said, "I don't know. Meredith's a talker. She always talked about other people.

Old boyfriends, that stuff. She's not what you'd call a romantic."

He remembered one time when they were lying on the bed in the apartment in Sunnyvale, feeling a sort of relaxed glow. A Sunday afternoon. Listening to kids laughing in the street outside. His hand resting on her thigh, feeling the sweat. And in this thoughtful way she said, "You know, I once went out with this Norwegian guy, and he had a curved dick.

Curved like a sword, sort of bent over to the side, and he-”

“Jesus, Meredith."

"What's the matter? It's true. He really did."

"Not now."

Whenever this sort of thing happened, she'd sigh, as if she was obliged to put up with his excessive sensitivity. "Why is it that guys always want to think they're the only ones?"

"We don't. We know we're not. Just not now, okay?"

And she'd sigh again . . .

Sitting in the restaurant, Fernandez said, "Even if it's not unusual for her to talk during sex-even if she is indiscreet or distancing-who is she talking about here?"

Sanders shook his head. "I don't know, Louise."

"And she says she can't stand him touching her . . . as if she has no choice. And she mentions his silly glasses." She looked over at Meredith, who was eating quietly with Garvin. "Him?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Everybody says no. Everybody says Bob isn't screwing her."

"Everybody could be wrong."

Sanders shook his head. "It'd be incest."

"You're probably right."

The food came. Sanders poked at his pasta puttanesca, picking out the olives. He wasn't feeling hungry. Beside him, Fernandez ate heartily. They had ordered the same thing.

Sanders looked over at the Conley-White people. Nichols was holding up a clear plastic sheet of 35-millimeter transparencies. Slides. Of what? he wondered. His half-frame glasses were perched on his nose. He seemed to be taking a long time. Beside him, Conley glanced at his watch and said something about the time. The others nodded.

Conley glanced over at Johnson, then turned back to his papers.

Daly said something. ". . . have that figure?"

"It's here," Conley said, pointing to the sheet.

"This is really very good," Fernandez said. "You shouldn't let it get cold."

"Okay." He took a bite. It had no taste. He put the fork down.

She wiped her chin with her napkin. "You know, you never really told me why you stopped. At the end."

"My friend Max Dorfman says I set it all up."

"Uh-huh," Fernandez said.

"Do you think that, too?"

"I don't know. I was just asking what you were feeling, at the time. At the time you pulled away."

He shrugged. "I just didn't want to."

"Uh-huh. Didn't feel like it when you got there, huh?"

"No, I didn't." Then he said, "You really want to know what it was? She coughed."

"She coughed?" Fernandez said.

Sanders saw himself again in the room, his trousers down around his knees, bent over Meredith on the office couch. He remembered think ing, What the hell am I doing? And she had her hands on his shoulders, tugging him toward her. "Oh please . . . No . . .

No . . ."

And then she turned her head aside and coughed.

That cough was what did it. That was when he sat back, and said, "You're right," and got off the couch.

Fernandez frowned. "I have to say," Fernandez said. "A cough doesn't seem like a big deal."

"It was." He pushed his plate away. "I mean, you can't cough at a time like that."

"Why? Is this some etiquette I don't know about?" Fernandez said. "No coughing in the clinch?"

"It's not that at all," Sanders said. "It's just what it means."

"I'm sorry, you've lost me. What does a cough mean?"

He hesitated. "You know, women always think that men don't know what's going on.

There's this whole idea that men can't find the place, they don't know what to do, all that stuff. How men are stupid about sex.

"I don't think you're stupid. What does a cough mean?"

"A cough means you're not involved."

She raised her eyebrows. "That seems a little extreme."

"It's just a fact."

"I don't know. My husband has bronchitis. He coughs all the time."

"Not at the last moment, he doesn't."

She paused, thinking about it. "Well, he certainly does right afterward. He breaks out in a fit of coughing. We always laugh about how he does that."

"Right after is different. But at the moment, right in the intense moment, I'm telling you nobody coughs."

More images flashed through his mind. Her cheeks turn red. Her neck is blotchy, or her upper chest. Nipples no longer hard. They were hard at first, but not now. The eyes get dark, sometimes purple below. Lips swollen. Breathing changes. Sudden surging heat.

Shift in the hips, shifting rhythm, tension but something else, something liquid. Forehead frowning. Wincing. Biting. So many different ways, but

"Nobody coughs," he said again.

And then he felt a kind of sudden embarrassment, and pulled his plate back, and took a bite of pasta. He wanted a reason not to say more, because he had the feeling that he had overstepped the rules, that there was still this area, this kind of knowledge, this awareness that everyone pretended didn't exist . . .

Fernandez was staring at him curiously. "Did you read about this somewhere?"

He shook his head, chewing.

"Do men discuss it? Things like this?"

He shook his head, no.

"Women do."

"I know." He swallowed. "But anyway, she coughed, and that was why I stopped. She wasn't involved, and I was very-angry about it, I guess. I mean she was lying there panting and moaning, but she was really uninvolved. And I felt . . ."

"Exploited?"

"Something like that. Manipulated. Sometimes I think maybe if she hadn't coughed right then . . ." Sanders shrugged.

"Maybe I should ask her," Fernandez said, nodding her head in Meredith's direction.

Sanders looked up and saw that she was coming over to their table. "Oh, hell."

"Calmly, calmly. Everything's fine."

Meredith came over, a big smile on her face. "Hello, Louise. Hello, Tom." Sanders started to get up. "Don't get up, Tom, please." She rested her hand on his shoulder, gave it a little squeeze. "I just came by for a moment." She was smiling radiantly. She looked exactly like the confident boss, stopping to say hello to a couple of colleagues. Back at her table, Sanders saw Garvin paying the bill. He wondered if he would come over, too.

"Louise, I just wanted to say no hard feelings," Meredith said. "Everybody had a job to do. I understand that. And I think it served a purpose, clearing the air. I just hope we can go on productively from here."

Meredith was standing behind Sanders's chair as she talked. He had to twist his head and crane his neck to look at her.

Fernandez said, "Don't you want to sit down?"

"Well, maybe for a minute."

Sanders stood to get her a chair. He was thinking that to the Conley people, all this would look exactly right. The boss not wanting to intrude, waiting to be pressed by her co-workers to join them. As he brought the chair, he glanced over and saw that Nichols was looking at them, peering over his glasses. So was young Conley.

Meredith sat down. Sanders pushed the chair in for her. "You want anything?" Fernandez said solicitously.

"I just finished, thanks."

"Coffee? Anything?"

"I'm fine, thanks."

Sanders sat down. Meredith leaned forward. "Bob's been telling me about his plans to take this division public. It's very exciting. It looks like full speed ahead."

Sanders watched her with astonishment.

"Now, Bob has a list of names for the new company. When we spin it off next year. See how these sound to you: SpeedCore, SpeedStar, PrimeCore, Talisan, and Tensor. I think SpeedCore makes racing parts for stock cars. SpeedStar is right on the money but maybe too right on. PrimeCore sounds like a mutual fund. How about Talisan or Tensor?"

"Tensor is a lamp," Fernandez said.

"Okay. But Talisan is pretty good, I think."

"The Apple-IBM joint venture is called Taligent," Sanders said.

"Oh. You're right. Too close. How about MicroDyne? That's not bad. Or ADG, for Advanced Data Graphics? Do either of those work, do you think?"

"MicroDyne is okay."

"I thought so, too. And there was one more . . . AnoDyne."

"That's a painkiller," Fernandez said.

"What is?"

"An anodyne is a painkiller. A narcotic."

"Oh. Forget that. Last one, SynStar."

"Sounds like a drug company."

"Yeah, it does. But we've got a year to come up with a better one. And MicroDyne isn't bad, to start. Sort of combining micro with dynamo. Good images, don't you think?"

Before they could answer, she pushed her chair back. "I've got to go. But I thought you'd like to hear the thinking. Thanks for your input. Good night, Louise. And Tom, I'll see you tomorrow." She shook hands with them both and crossed the room to Garvin.

Together she and Garvin went over to the Conley table to say hello.

Sanders stared at her. " `Good images,' " he repeated. "Christ. She's talking about names for a company, but she doesn't even know what the company is."

"It was quite a show."

"Sure," Sanders said. "She's all show. But it had nothing to do with us. It's for them." He nodded toward the Conley-White people, sitting across the restaurant. Garvin was shaking hands all around, and Meredith was talking to Jim Daly. Daly made a joke and she laughed, throwing her head back, showing her long neck.

"The only reason she talked to us was so that when I get fired tomorrow, she won't be seen as having planned it."

Fernandez was paying the bill. "You want to go?" she said. "I still have some things to check."

"Really? What do you have to check?"

"Alan may have gotten something more for us. There's a possibility."

At the Conley table, Garvin was saying good-bye. He gave a final wave, then crossed the room to talk to Carmine.

Meredith remained at the Conley-White table. She was standing behind John Conley, with her hands resting on his shoulders while she talked to Daly and Ed Nichols. Ed Nichols said something, peering over his glasses, and Meredith laughed, and came around to look over his shoulder at a sheet of figures he was holding. Her head was very close to Nichols. She nodded, talked, pointed to the sheet.

You're cbecking the wrong company.

Sanders stared at Meredith, smiling and joking with the three men from Conley-White.

What had Phil Blackburn said to him yesterday?

The thing is, Tom, Meredith Johnson is very well connected in this company. She bas impressed a lot of important people.

Like Garvin.

Not only Garvin. Meredith bas built a power base in several areas.

Conley- White?

Yes. Tbere, too.

Alongside him, Fernandez stood up. Sanders stood and said, "You know what, Louise?"

"What?"

"We've been checking the wrong company."

Fernandez frowned, then looked over at the Conley-White table. Meredith was nodding with Ed Nichols and pointing with one hand, her

other hand flat on the table for balance. Her fingers were touching Ed Nichols. He was peering at the sheets of data over his glasses.

"Stupid glasses . . ." Sanders said.

No wonder Meredith wouldn't press harassment charges against him. It would have been too embarrassing for her relationship with Ed Nichols. And no wonder Garvin wouldn't fire her. It made perfect sense. Nichols was already uneasy about the merger-his affair with Meredith might be all that was holding it in place.

Fernandez sighed. "You think so? Nichols?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

Fernandez shook her head. "Even if it's true, it doesn't help us. They can argue paramour preference, they can argue lots of things-if there's even an argument that needs to be made. This isn't the first merger made in the sack, you know. I say, forget it."

"You mean to tell me," he said, "that there's nothing improper with her having an affair with someone at Conley-White and being promoted as a result?"

"Nothing at all. At least, not in the strict legal sense. So forget it."

Suddenly he remembered what Kaplan had said. She was looking in the wrong direction when they fired her.

"I'm tired," he said.

"We all are. They look tired, too."

Across the room, the meeting was breaking up. Papers were being put back into briefcases. Meredith and Garvin were chatting with them. They all started leaving.

Garvin shook hands with Carmine, who opened the front door for his departing guests.

And then it happened.

There was the sudden harsh glare of quartz lights, shining in from the street outside. The group huddled together, trapped in the light. They cast long shadows back into the restaurant.

"What's going on?" Fernandez said.

Sanders turned to look, but already the group was ducking back inside, closing the door.

There was a moment of sudden chaos. They heard Garvin say, "Goddamn it," and spin to Blackburn.

Blackburn stood, a stricken look on his face, and rushed over to Garvin. Garvin was shifting from foot to foot. He was simultaneously trying to reassure the Conley-White people and chew out Blackburn.

Sanders went over. "Everything okay?"

"It's the goddamned press," Garvin said. "KSEA-TV is out there." "This is an outrage,"