Hard Landing

"What about Ellen?"

He sniffed and with studied nonchalance glanced down and straightened the crease in his slacks. "You never plan for people to get hurt. That's one of the variables you can't predict. But things get… distorted. Once you're in, you're in. When a problem comes up, the only question that matters is, can you think your way around it? Are you smart enough?" He shrugged. "Ellen was a problem. She was going to be, anyway."

I stared at him. His tone was absolutely flat. We could have been analyzing a business deal gone bad.

"It's unfortunate," he said, "but Ellen was pulled into this whole affair by that drunken bastard Dickie Fly

"You would have been smarter about it, no doubt."

"I never would have tried to cover up negligence. They told me after the fact, after it was too late, but in that situation you have to go public in a big way because there are too many people involved. And the risk if you're exposed is too great. You have to deal with it head-on, diffuse the risk, take away all the leverage. That's why this videocassette is so powerful for us. Do you see?"

"No."

"That video will be run over and over on every newscast, every news magazine, every cheap tabloid reality program. You can't buy that kind of exposure. So you ask yourself, how do you use that? You make an immediate disclosure, at which point you a

"You already have a plan."

"I always have a plan."

"And where am I in this plan?"

"Don't you know?" He looked at me with those hotter-than-the-sun eyes beneath those long, lush eyelashes. Then he began to move around to my side of the desk. I stood up, backed away, and kept going until I felt the wall again against my shoulder blades.

"Don't I know what? That you are hopelessly, desperately, pathetically in love with me?"

He seemed to be floating toward me, moving without walking, immune to the natural forces that tethered the rest of us to this earth. I could have moved away, but there was really no place to go. He was going to keep coming until he'd had a chance to play his final hand.

"I told you what I thought you needed to hear, that's all. I should have told you the truth."

The smell of rum surrounded me like a seedy cloud, but as he moved toward me, ever so slowly, his scent was stronger.

"What is the truth?"

"We're good together. That's the only truth there is, Alex, the only one that matters." He was very close now, and I could feel his whisper as much as I could hear it. "You wanted me the other night as much as I wanted you, and nothing that's happened since has changed that. I want you right now. I want you so bad I can taste it. And you want me, too."

I needed to be angry, and I was. I needed to hate him, and I did. But I could also feel his breath in my hair. I could feel the heat through his clean cotton shirt, feel the flush beneath my own clothes. I could hear his breathing grow shallow, more ragged as he got closer.

"As far as the police are concerned," he said, "what you told them is exactly the way it happened. Le

"What about Le

"Le

He leaned in closer, and now there wasn't much that separated us except for the smell of the rum. My back arched against just the idea of his hands on me, his long, graceful fingers touching me in ways that no one ever had before or since. No matter what else was happening, no matter what he had done or what I might do, there was something between us and it was never going away. And there was truth in that co

I think of how my life would be without him, and the thought of letting go scares me to death.

He bent his head down as if to nuzzle my neck. He didn't touch me, but still I felt the rush of blood through my veins, a powerful surge fueled by a heart beating so wildly, it threatened to lift me off the floor. I tried to breathe, but when I did, I breathed him in. I closed my eyes, fighting for control, and tried to remember the rest of the passage, hoping for some kind of a message from Ellen, some kind of safety in her words.

When I think about life without him, she'd said… my lungs fill up with something cold and heavy, and I feel myself going under and… and what? And the only thing that keeps my head above water is the motion of reaching up for him… without him I'll disappear to a place where God can't save me and I… can't… save… myself.

I opened my eyes and sca

"What?"

I hadn't even realized I'd said it out loud. "She could have saved herself."

When I looked at him, he was wearing that smile, the one that changed him, the one that changed me. "Ellen didn't need you, she didn't need Dan, and she didn't need God to save her. She could have saved herself. All she needed was to know that, and she wouldn't have disappeared. You couldn't have made her disappear if she'd known that, if she'd felt it. She couldn't feel it."

He stared down into my face and I stared back.

"But I do."

He took a step away and then another, and I watched him back off, fascinated by what I was seeing-finally seeing. It was a reverse metamorphosis. The smile disappeared, and then the charm, the smooth self-confidence, the easy authority, all began to fall away. He was like a butterfly wrapping himself back into a cocoon, turning from awe-inspiring and breathtaking to small and tight and ugly. Ugly but, I knew, authentic.

By the time I'd completely exhaled, he was across the room, around the desk, and sitting in my chair. When he spoke again, even his voice sounded different. "You should give me the tape," he said, but with no inflection, conserving energy, saving the charade for some fool who would still buy it. He tapped the answering machine with one finger. "There's nothing on here to incriminate me beyond that silly contract business, and I can make even that questionable. Why put yourself through it?"