Steve Martini - Double Tap

“Actually they delivered it yesterday.”

He glanced at the silver stallion, Ferrari’s trademark, on the hood. “What do they call it? The model, I mean.”

“It’s called the Enzo,” said Madelyn. “After the company’s founder. The salesman’s pitch was that the car has the spirit of Enzo Ferrari.”

The car was one of a limited edition with the pedigree of a formula racer, the toy of oil sheiks and a few Hollywood stars who could balance California’s state budget with one of their movies. Its price hovered in the range of the national debt.

Stepping out of the low-slung racer in a tight skirt and heels was like doing the limbo. Still, Madelyn managed it with agility and grace. At forty-three she looked ten years younger, with a body that didn’t destroy the illusion, something she worked hard to keep. Young men still looked at her with a gleam in their eyes.

She fished some green from her purse as the kid watched and then took one of his hands in both of hers.

“Now, Jimmy, I want you to keep the car here at the curb. Understand?”

“Well, I don’t know. My manager. .” He felt the tickle of the papers’ edges as she moved the crisp folded currency against his open palm.

When she let go of his hand, the valet looked down and spotted Franklin’s portrait, not once, but twice. He smiled and came to commercial attention. “Thank you , Ms. Chapman.”

“And my car?”

“Stays at the curb,” said the kid.

“Good.” She offered a confident smile. It had become a common expression for Madelyn, who over the last decade had grown accustomed to getting her way.

“Do you have any idea how long you’ll be?” he asked.

She looked at the money still in his hand.

“Not that it matters,” he added.

“I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour.”

“No problem.”

He gently closed the driver’s-side door. She started moving toward the sidewalk, her arm on his shoulder. “And if your manager comes out and tells you to move it, what are you going to say?”

“I’m going to tell him a hot car in front of the hotel on a Friday night is good advertising. I’ll tell him it’s one of a kind.”

“What else?”

The kid looked at her, fresh out of ideas.

“You tell him the car belongs to me, that I kept the keys”-she dropped them in her purse-“and that if he even thinks of having it towed, I’ll buy the hotel before morning and fire his ass.”

The kid smiled at the thought. “Yes, ma’am!”

She wasn’t about to turn over a $700,000 sports car so that two valets could flip a coin to see which of them got to do wheelies around concrete pilings in the basement.

She started to turn to go, then turned back. “And, Jimmy, I don’t want any dings or dents or dimples in the doors or anywhere else when I get back.”

He was already shaking his head.

She smiled. “The only dimples allowed here are yours.” The kid blushed again, then looked up at his colleague, who was already beginning to show signs of a sneering smile.

Jimmy pushed the money into his pocket.

She mouthed the words watch the car as she blew him a kiss and walked away, passing under the Whaling Bar and Grill sign on the pink awning overhead.

The other valet broke into a full smile and started laughing under his breath until finally she was out of earshot. “Hey, Jimmy, come over here. Lemme do your dimples.”

“Yeah, right. Kiss my ass.”

The other kid puckered up his lips and puffed a few kisses at him, blowing them off the palm of one hand before offering up a donkey laugh.

“You know what you can do with that,” said Jimmy.

“Maybe if you got dimples back there, she’ll do those for you, too,” said his friend.

Jimmy didn’t say anything. He just smiled, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the two crisp bills she’d just given him. He held them up high, stretched between the fingers of both hands, shifting them back and forth so that the other kid’s smile faded.

“She gave you two hundred bucks?”

“No shit,” said Jimmy. And it wasn’t even dark yet. Friday night in La Jolla.

Madelyn walked under brightly colored awnings past shimmering display windows with their exotic wares. She couldn’t help but smile to herself. Two hundred dollars for a few minutes of parking. Twenty years ago that would have been half a week’s salary. She had come a long way, so far and so fast that at times she couldn’t remember all of the critical way-points in her career or, for that matter, some of the people who had offered directions. Looking back was not something Madelyn was good at. It took all of her vision, energy, and focus just to keep moving forward.

Several of the shop owners looked up and took notice as she passed. Chapman’s face had become high-profile, a celebrity of sorts among the regulars in the Village, especially those in the commercial community. Her name and picture had been in the business and society sections of the local papers and magazines on a regular basis for at least four years now. Her company, Isotenics, Inc., of which Chapman was CEO and chairman of the board, had gone public less than a year after she moved it from Virginia to California. Madelyn held a block of shares that gave her the controlling interest. This was the cornerstone of her empire, though she had diversified into real estate and other investments.

She owned a total of six houses in different states, including a horse property in Virginia, a condo in Alexandria near the Pentagon, and a town house in New York. But La Jolla was home.

Eight years ago she had decided that her company would lease land out by the university, near one of the technology parks that sprouted during the euphoric days of the dot-com binge. It was a time when the words high tech were all you needed on a business card for banks to lavish loans and investors to queue up and buy your stock.

When the storm came, most of her competitors went down like paper boats in a typhoon, but not Chapman. Madelyn had taken her company into the safe harbor of government contracts. As with her taste in clothing and cars, Madelyn’s sense of timing was flawless. In a time of terrorism, her computer programs had been tailored to the needs of national security.

Her company was now one of the largest employers in the state, with its stock still on an upward arc. The value had tripled in the last year alone. It is said that timing is nature’s way of telling us we are in rhythm with the seasons. If so, Madelyn Chapman was in sync not only with the moon but with the planets, the stars, and even the black holes in the dark and distant vacuum of space.

In an age when information was everything, Chapman’s company possessed the keys to the defense-software kingdom. She controlled Primis.

Two blocks down, Madelyn reached her destination. She stopped in front of the gallery’s main window to study a few of the new pieces on display. Like liquid crystal, the glass flowed in every form imaginable. Translucent colors fused with brilliance in all the hues in the visible light spectrum. There were large, cavernous oyster shells of glimmering violet and swirling amber, and tubular tulip blossoms in shades of purple running to blue and green, free-form glass in shapes that could only be matched by the rich variations of nature. Some of the labels carried names of artists now familiar to her, while others were still earning their spurs.

It had been several weeks since her last visit to the gallery. The owner, a man named Ibram Asani, had been making inquiries on her behalf. He had become her agent of sorts in Madelyn’s latest addiction, the acquisition of fine art glass. She had developed a collector’s eye, and Asani was helping her to refine it.