Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

All of this was going through my mind as I got off the rowing machine, my gray T-shirt already stained dark with sweat, and got on the Stairmaster. This particular torture device requires you to pump up and down on a set of pedals while grasping on to a handlebar, all the while standing vertical, while a bright red computer display keeps track of your pain.

On the next Stairmaster was a portly gentleman of about fifty in a light blue T-shirt and white shorts, spewing droplets of sweat onto the machine’s metal base, rivulets of perspiration running down his ears, nose, jaw, and brow. He was wearing wire-rim glasses that were fogged over. I had once talked to him at the club — I don’t remember what about — and I seemed to remember his name was Alan or Alvin or something, and that he was a vice president at a troubled Boston bank, the Beacon Guaranty Trust. Because of a history of lousy management added to the nation’s economic woes. Beacon was slowly going down the tubes. Alan or Alvin, as I recall, was a perennially depressed man, and who could blame him?

Pumping away at the Stairmaster as he was, Al didn’t notice me. His eyes were hooded, his mouth half open, his breathing labored.

It was not my intention, because I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and mine alone, but I could not help hearing what I did.

Catherine’s uncle, maybe?

No. The SEC will get right on to that. Those bastards don’t miss a trick.

That’s just as illegal as my selling my own stock.

Gotta be a way.

I couldn’t pick up everything he was saying. His thoughts came in and out, loud and then faint, clear and then indistinct, like a shortwave radio picking up some distant foreign station.

But all that stuff about the SEC and illegality drew my attention right away. I tilted my head ever so slightly toward Al’s heaving, dripping body.

The stock’s going to just goddamn rocket. How come I’m not allowed to buy stock in my own company? Doesn’t seem right. Wonder whether anyone else on the board of directors is thinking what I’m thinking. Of course they are. They’re all trying to figure out a way to get rich off this.

This monologue was getting more and more interesting, and I strained to tune in without seeming too obvious about it. Al, lost in his greedy little thoughts, seemed oblivious of me.

So let’s see. The announcement is made tomorrow, two o’clock P.M. Every financial analyst in the country, and hundreds of thousands of shareholders, see that poor beleaguered old Beacon Trust is now being acquired by the rock-solid Saxon Bancorp and everyone and their grandmother will be buying badly undervalued shares of Beacon. We’re going to go from eleven and a half to fifty or sixty in two days. Jesus. And I gotta sit on my hands? There’s gotta be a way. Maybe one of Catherine’s rich lady friends. Maybe her uncle can work something out that’s insulated from me enough — buy up Beacon tomorrow morning in someone else’s name—

I found my heart beginning to thud rapidly. I had just learned what could be described only as the ultimate insider information. Beacon Trust was going to be acquired by Saxon. The deal was going to be announced tomorrow. Alan or Alvin was one of probably only a handful of insiders, executives, and attorneys who knew about the deal. The stock of Beacon would certainly shoot up, and anyone who had advance knowledge could become a rich man. Al was scheming out a way to get rich off it himself, if he could find a way that wouldn’t attract the hound dogs of the SEC. I doubted he’d be able to pull it off.

But I could.

Tomorrow I could, in a matter of hours, make a killing in shares of Beacon Trust that would make the disappearance of my half-million-dollar nest egg seem inconsequential.

There was no way in the world anyone could connect me to Beacon Trust. My firm did no business with Beacon (we wouldn’t deign to). I would have to make a point of not even saying hello to Al: better we didn’t even exchange a word.

What could the Securities and Exchange Commission possibly do? Bring me into a courtroom, facing a jury of my peers, and charge me with mind reading with intent to profit illegally? The chairman of the SEC would be locked up in a rubber room before they could even file the paperwork.

I got off the Stairmaster, sweating profusely. I’d done a good three-quarters of an hour on the torture equipment without even realizing it.

Twenty minutes later or so, I heard a key turn in both front door locks, then heard Molly’s voice calling out, “Ben?”

“You’re late,” I said, feigning irritation. “Tell me what’s more important — the life of an infant, or my supper?”

I looked up, gave her a smile, and saw that she looked exhausted.

“Hey,” I said, getting up to embrace her. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head slowly, wearily. “Tough day.”

“Ah,” I said, “but now you’re home.” I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her, a good, long, extended kiss. I gave her bottom a squeeze and pressed myself hard against her.

She slid her hands, cold and dry, down my back, under the elastic band of my shorts. “Mmm,” she said. Her breath was hot on the back of my neck.

Now I slipped my hands under her blouse, up under the white cotton fabric of her bra, felt her warm, erect nipples, stroked.

“Mmmph,” she said.

“Upstairs?” I asked.

She moaned quietly, then gave a brief shiver.

— the kitchen — I heard.

I leaned toward her, still running my fingertips over her right breast, squeezing the thickened nipple.

— do it in the kitchen. Standing up. Ah, right here—

I got up, took her by the shoulders, and gently maneuvered her from the sitting room into the kitchen, then pushed her back against the burnished, scarred oak tabletop.

Her thoughts. It was wrong, it was evil, it was shameful, but, carried away in my lust, I couldn’t stop myself—

Oh, yes—

She moaned softly as I pulled off her blouse.

— my other breast. Don’t stop. Both breasts—

Obediently, I caressed both her breasts with my palms, then bent my head down and sucked first one nipple, then the other.

Don’t move—

I continued to suck and lick, all the while pushing against her until she was lying flat on the table, safely clear of the bowls. I had never seen The Postman Always Rings Twice , but I remembered the iconography of it; hadn’t Lana Turner and John Garfield done it on the kitchen table, too?

Now, still nuzzling her breasts, I pressed my erect member against her thigh, grinding slowly, and as I began to undo the drawstring of her sweatpants, I heard

— No. Not yet.

And, obeying her unspoken wishes, I turned my full attention to her breasts, dallying there longer than I otherwise might have.

We did in fact make love on the kitchen table, losing one cheap china bowl to the commotion, but neither one of us much noticed the crash. It was, I have to say, the most erotic, intense sex I had ever had. Molly had been so carried away, she had forgotten to insert her diaphragm. She came time after time, the tears flowing down her cheeks. Afterward we lay tangled in each other’s arms, wet with sweat and musky with the fluids and odors of lovemaking, on the couch in the sitting room next to the kitchen.

Yet when it was over, I felt enormously guilty.

They say that all human beings are sad after sex. I believe that it is only men who experience the postcoital blues. Molly looked at once blissful and disoriented, stroking my now-flaccid, reddened, drained penis.

“You weren’t protected,” I said. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about kids?”