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“Where’s my macho protective husband now?”
“I’ve been unwell.”
“Yeah, well, that’s allover. You’re fit as a fiddle, so bestir your buns and let’s get out of here.”
Da
She yanked the covers down, exposing his naked legs sticking out from the hem of the hospital gown. “Forget it, little chum. There are at least a hundred and ten positions we haven’t tried yet before I consider dissolution. Now will you get out of that bed and come on?”
“But...”
“... a thing I’ll kick, if you don’t move it.”
Bewildered, he moved it.
Outside, the Rolls-Royce waited with its motor ru
Da
Co
After a moment Da
Co
Da
“It would help.”
He settled into silence, uneasy and juggling more than just twenty unasked questions. And he remained silent until he realized they were not taking the expressway into New York. He sat up sharply, looked out the rear window, snapped his head right and left trying to ascertain their location, and Co
“Darien? Who the hell do we know in Darien?”
“Well, Upjohn, for one, lives in Darien.”
“Upjohn!?! Ohmigod, he’s fired me and sent the car to bring me to him so he can have me executed! I knew it!”
“Squires,” she said, “Daniel, my love, Da
“But... but we live in New York!”
“Not any more we don’t.”
Twenty minutes later they turned into the most expensive section in Darien and sped down a private road.
They drove an eighth of a mile down the private road lined with Etruscan pines, beautifully maintained, and pulled into a winding driveway. Five hundred yards farther, and the drive spiraled in to wind around the front of a huge, luxurious, completely tasteful Victorian mansion. “Go on,” Co
“Who lives here?” Da
“I just told you: we do.”
“I thought that’s what you said. Let me out here, I’ll walk back to the nuthouse.”
The Rolls pulled up before the mansion, and a butler ran down to open the car door for them. They got out and the servant bowed low to Co
“Thank you, Penzler,” Co
“Very good, Mrs. Squires,” Mark said. Then he drove away.
Da
“Wh-where did all this come from?” He finally gasped out the question as Co
“Come on, Da
“The limo, the house, the grounds, the mink-trimmed jacket, the servants, the Vermeer in the front hall, the cobalt-glass Art Deco bar, the entertainment center with the beam television set, the screening room, the bowling alley, the polo field, the Neptune swimming pool, the escalator and six-strand necklace of black pearls I now notice you are wearing around your throat... all of it came from the genie?”
“Sorta takes your breath away, don’t it?” Co
“I’m having a little trouble with this. ”
“What you’re having trouble with, champ, is that Mas’úd gave you a hard time, you couldn’t handle it, you crapped out, and somehow I’ve managed to pull it all out of the swamp.”
“I’m thinking of divorce again. ”
“They were walking down a long hall lined with works of modem Japanese illustration by Yamazaki, Kobayashi, Takahiko Li, Kenzo Tanii and Orai. Co
“What we’ve got here, Squires, is a bad case of identity reevaluation. Nobody gets through all the battles. We’ve been married less than two weeks, but we’ve known each other for three years. You don’t know how many times I folded before that time, and I don’t know how many times you triumphed before that time.
“What I’ve know of you for three years made it okay for me to marry you; to think ‘This guy will be able to handle it the times I can’t. ’ That’s a lot of what marriage is, to my way of thinking. I don’t have to score every time, and neither do you. As long as the unit maintains. This time it was my score. Next time it’ll be yours. Maybe.”
Da
Movement out of the corner of his eye made him look over his shoulder.
An eleven foot tall black man, physically perfect in every way, with chiseled features like an obsidian Adonis, dressed in an impeccably-tailored three-piece Savile Row suit, silk tie knotted precisely, stood just in the hallway, having emerged from open fifteen-foot-high doors of a room at the juncture of corridors.
“Uh...” Da
Co
“How good a friend?” Da
“We haven’t known each other carnally, if that’s what I perceive your squalid little remark to mean,” she replied. And a bit wistfully she added, “I’m not his type. I think he’s got it for Lena Home.” At Da
Mas’úd stepped forward, two steps bringing him the fifteen feet intervening, and proffered his greeting in the traditional Islamic head-and-heart salute, flowing outward, a smile on his matinee idol face. “Welcome home, Master. I await your smallest request.”
Da
Co