Maya Bohnhoff: Pipe Dreams

“The orgy,” finished Ruby, nodding. “How could I forget?”

“So are you just going to sit there?” Marian had folded her arms across her chest, too, and was glancing between him and the antique walnut wall clock that hung over the mantel piece. “Shouldn’t you go over and catch the fallout?”

“I could call…”

“You could,” agreed Marian, “but then again, you could still catch your last class.”

Beck glanced at his computer screen—longingly. His sense of responsibility kicked in hard. He saved the file a second time, idled the machine, popped out the memory core, pocketed it and headed for his car.

The two women watched him from the lanai at the front of the house, side by side, waving at him. Like conspirators, he thought, then wondered where the hell that had come from. It came to him as a surprise that he hadn’t told Marian about his book deal. It came to him as an even greater surprise that he was reluctant to tell her. He was a man who often dealt in secrets, and, because of this, he shared everything he could with Marian. It was odd, he thought, that this secret was one he rather relished keeping.

He was just able to salvage his last class, then logged onto the school Net to apologize to the students he had stranded, promising not to let it happen again. Then he went home. Ruby was gone when he got there, and Marian, fresh from a shower, was sipping orange juice on the lanai while the house audio system gave forth the sylvan sounds of a Northwest Coast rain forest.

“So, talk to me,” she said, when he’d kissed her forehead and folded himself into the seat across from her at the bistro table. “How was the appointment this afternoon?”

He hesitated, but the secret refused to remain a secret. He grinned. “It was terrific, Marian. Absolutely terrific. This guy really likes my book. Really likes it. He had some suggestions for improving the first couple of chapters—”

“Did you sign a contract?”

“Not yet, but—”

“You shouldn’t really make changes until you see the whites of President Grant’s eyes.”

He stared at her, bemused. “He wants the book, Marian. He just wants to see if I can correct a few things.”

She nodded. “What was the name of the publisher again? I told Ruby it was Seton. She said I must’ve meant Sefton. It isn’t Sefton, is it?”

“It’s—” He broke off and looked at her. That question had an agenda behind it; he could tell by the tone of her voice and the fact that she was gazing into the bottom of her OJ glass, not into his eyes. “It’s Sefton. Why?”

“Do you know what their last big publication was?”

“Not right offhand.”

“ Voice from a Burning Bush by Ibrahim X.”

Beck shook his head.

Marian leaned forward and grasped a handful of the hair at the back of his head. “Sometimes, my beloved husband, you are too much of a nerd to live. Ibrahim X was the self-proclaimed ringleader of the Shalom/ Salaam terrorist group. You might have heard of them if you read the news we subscribe to. Sefton made a killing on his book, which is basically a ‘how-to’ manual for wannabe terrorists and a self-serving justification for mass murder. It generated a heated First Amendment debate in Congress and all sorts of bad press for Sefton, the net effect of which was record book sales and handsome royalties for one and all.” She stopped talking and just looked at him.

He waited a beat. “And?”

Her grip on his hair tightened. “You’re going to deal with these people? People who’ve figured out a legal way to make a buck from terrorism?”

Beck did not swear. Marian did occasionally, and he had no doubt she would be doing it shortly if he did not answer her questions in the appropriate manner. Beck, mounted on the horns of a dilemma that was at once clear and impenetrable, wished he did swear. A good solid, “hell” or “damn” would feel somehow purging. Instead he asked, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure about the book and the author. Ruby’s sure about the publisher.” She let go of his hair. “Seriously, Beck. How can you do business with people like that?”

“Sefton is a big company. I’m sure their fiction department—”

“Cop-out.” She got up from the table, chair sliding back with a metallic groan.

“Marian—”

“Cop-out, cop-out, cop-out. ” She disappeared into the house, the screen door sliding behind her with a slight popping sound. The rain forest fell silent. Some of Marian’s exits, Beck thought, really ought to be followed by the sound of a door slamming.

They argued about it further over dinner. He refused to make commitments of either feeling or intellect and she refused to see what a rejection of Bourbon’s offer (or potential offer) meant to him. He was not good at verbalizing emotion, but in the eleventh hour, he gave it a good shot. “Look, Marian. Try to understand. I see the bigger moral issues, really I do. But they’re not my issues. I just want to publish some science fiction. It has nothing to do with Mr. X or his book. I may be a hot-shot when it comes to AI systems, but I’m nobody when it comes to fiction. Bourbon could change that. This is something I’ve dreamed about for years. For decades. My stories in print, Marian. My name on a book of fiction.”

“And what about principles, Beckett? Your principles.”

He shook his head.

She went to see Ruby. He removed himself to his office and pecked at his manuscript, all the while imagining the two of them, hunched in a booth in their favorite latte bar, dissecting his character as if he were a piece of bad fiction. In the backwash of angst, his POV character took on a decidedly cynical bent.

Marian didn’t get home until after eleven, making a mockery, Beck thought, of everything he’d said to Laurence Bourbon about their “rules.” He was lying in bed, feeling a little betrayed, when she lowered herself into bed next to him. They drifted into sleep without touching.

By morning, Marian was curled in Beck’s arms and he had a hazy memory of hot sex during which he had played a decidedly non-aggressive role. He thought he’d dreamed of Marian riding through a stormy sea dolphin-back. It was a strangely erotic image. He wondered if he might make use of it fictionally.

She fixed breakfast for him. That was an unspoken apology, but she was still nettled by the whole terrorist thing. “You know, it’s possible that your publisher friend even knows who Ibrahim X is—and where he is.”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, think of it, Beck. Money has to change hands, manuscripts have to be delivered. Even if it’s all done through an agent of some sort, somebody must know something. ”

He glanced up at her over the rim of his coffee cup. “And?”

“He’s wanted by the World Tribunal, for godsake. He’s a criminal. If somebody knows where he is, they should turn him in.”

“Look, Marian. ‘Somebody’ knew where Salman Rushdie was for years, but his enemies were kept in the dark until their regime fell. These people are obviously clever.”

“So are you.”

Hair stood up on the back of his neck. “You want me to spy? What—vigilante espionage? I’m not a spy, Marian. I’m a programmer.”

“A programmer whose business is to thwart spies—”

“Not even in the same county , Marian.” He got up and collected his briefcase. “I’m a nerd. A nerd who writes science fiction. If I wrote spy novels, I could see how you might get the idea that I could do counterespionage. But I don’t write spy novels, and I’m not even going to be working with the editor who handled the Burning Bush manuscript.”