Stuart Woods: Insatiable Appetites

Stone grabbed her and pulled her to him. “You’re not treating your clothes very well.”

“I was in a hurry. I’m getting laid.”

“You certainly are,” he replied, kicking off his covers.

She hugged him to her breast. “God, it seems like a year since I felt a man next to me.”

“It’s less than a month,” he said, tickling her lightly between the legs. She immediately became wet, and he climbed aboard.

“And just as long since I’ve felt that weight,” she said.

He slid slowly inside her, and she made a happy noise. “And years since I’ve felt that!”

“Tell me how it feels,” he said softly, moving slowly in and out.

“Heavenly. Are you an angel or a devil?”

“A little of both,” he breathed.

She ran her nails down his back. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.”

“And I, you.”

“And how I’ve missed this!”

“How long can we do this before you abandon me again?” he asked, but he didn’t stop.

“Forever, if I quit my job.”

“But you’re not going to quit, are you?”

“What can I say? My country needs me. I have to be back at the Carlyle, looking unfucked, by seven AM.”

Stone increased the pace, and they stopped talking and concentrated. She climaxed three times before she pushed him off.

“A girl’s gotta rest,” she said.

Stone laid his head on her breasts and rubbed her belly.

She slapped his hand. “Don’t get me started again,” she said. “At least, not for a few minutes. When I can make a fist again, I’ll entertain you.”

Stone rolled onto his back and she rested her hand on him. “God, how I love a stick shift,” she said, kissing it.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me what it’s like for you these days.”

She didn’t let go, but managed to talk. “Exciting, exhausting, exciting, exhausting. That’s it, both at the same time.”

“What’s been your biggest surprise?”

“How exciting it is. It’s like the campaign to the nth!”

“And your biggest disappointment?”

“That I can’t stay awake and do the job twenty-four hours a day.”

“So, you’re happy in your work?”

“Not so much happy as elated.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Elated is like watching your team score, knowing that they can’t score on every play. Happy would be if they could score whenever they feel like it. And we all know that’s not going to happen.”

“How’s Will taking the transition?”

“Oh, Will is always Will: cheerful, optimistic. He would have been here for the funeral, but he’s meeting with the Japanese prime minister in Los Angeles. Will has a surprise for him.”

“What surprise?”

“Will has gotten some contributors to donate a statue honoring the Japanese-Americans who were interned during the big war.”

“That’s good of him.”

“I think he’s doing it for Franklin Roosevelt. He said when he meets Roosevelt in heaven he wants to tell him that he did what he could to right the wrong.”

“That’s a very fine motive.”

“The words on the statue are ‘They also served and sacrificed.’”

“Perfect.”

“I’m elated, but it’s still tough,” Ann said. “I came real close to starting smoking again.”

“When did you quit?”

“Fifteen years ago.”

“And you still want it?”

“Sometimes. Why? Would that be a deal breaker?”

“You know my friends — have you ever seen one of them smoke?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“I’m not a fanatic about it,” Stone said. “As far as I’m concerned, there are only two places where it should be banned.”

“Where are they?”

“Indoors and outdoors.”

She laughed until he pounced again.

Ann woke him at five AM and attacked him. Stone submitted gracefully. Done with him, she jumped into a shower, pulled a change of clothes from her large handbag, replacing them with those worn, spent half an hour doing something with a hair dryer in the bathroom, then woke up Stone again.

“There’s a car waiting for me downstairs. I can’t stay for breakfast.”

“Look in the dumbwaiter,” Stone said, pointing.

Ann looked and found a brown paper bag. “What’s in it?”

“Some of Helene’s pastries and coffee. You can enjoy it on the way to the Carlyle. Will I ever see you again short of the inauguration?”

“Of course,” she said, kissing him, “but as Rodgers and Hart once said, ‘Who knows where or when?’”

“I’ll wait with bated breath.”

She kissed him and ran from the room.

Stone fell asleep again.

Stone was working in his office with Herbie after lunch when his cell phone buzzed on his belt. “Hello?”

“It’s Carla Fontana,” she said.

“Good afternoon, Carla. I hope you’re well.”

“I am, thank you, and better than ever, thanks to your referral.”

“Did he prove cooperative?”

“I met him an hour ago in the rear office of an antiques shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Georgetown.”

“And?”

“He was very cooperative. He told me his name, and he said I could tell you.”

“Who is he?”

“He is Evan Hills, a first-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and he was very brave. He knows that if his leadership ever finds out he spoke to me, he’ll be gutted and hung out to dry, and I think he actually believes they’ll have him killed.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Some dark figure or other. Who knows?”

“Is it a story?”

“Is it ever! Evan has an excellent memory, and he was able to give me a verbatim account of who said what. He made notes as soon as he got home.”

“Whose house was the meeting held at?”

“Ready for this? Harley David, oil billionaire who’s backed a dozen right-wing organizations. He has a son, Junior, who’s known as Harley Davidson — get it?”

“The poor kid.”

“No, he’s a rotten little bully. He drives around Dallas and D.C. in a Ferrari, mowing down pedestrians. He’s had two hit-and-runs in Texas while drinking and has walked away from both, leaving a trail of his daddy’s money in his wake.”

“He sounds like a charmer.”

“Not only that, but his daddy is clearing the way for a congressional seat for him next time.”

“Was H. David Senior at the meeting?”

“He was.”

“When will your story run?”

“A few days, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I’ve got some checking around to do. I want to be sure that I — and you — are not being set up. This has been a little too easy. I have a list of who was at the meeting, and there’s one other guy I might be able to get to cop to being there. I need a second source.”

“You would know better about that than I.”

“I’ve talked to my executive editor in New York, and he’s excited, but, like me, he thinks that it may be too good to be true. The Gray Lady doesn’t want her tit caught in a wringer, and Harley David would like nothing better than for that to happen. Also, I want to see what else I can get out of our man Evan Hills.”

“What’s Hills’s background?”

“Deerfield Academy, Penn, Yale Law School, practiced with a Philadelphia white shoe firm, very Republican.”

“What are his motives in all this?”

“Well you may ask. If he’s for real, I think he has a conscience, and he’s put off by the right-wing tilt in his party. Also, I have nothing to back this up but intuition, but I think he’s gay and afraid the Republicans will shun him if he comes out.”

“Does he have money?”

“He certainly appears to. His father is a big-time commodities trader, and that means he’s either very rich or very poor. Evan was married once, to a girl from a very Main Line family, not the sort that would have a pauper or a Democrat for a son-in-law. They were divorced, amicably, after a couple of years.”