Carla Neggers - The Waterfall

“Yes.”

This had to be a test. She didn’t know what to do to pass. Run screaming? Beg him to make love to her? Slap him?

No, she thought. Hold your ground. She wanted him to underestimate her, not to think he could roll over her.

“You stereotype me at your own peril, Mr. Mowery,” she said. “I’m not some dried-up prune pining for a man I can’t have.”

“Where were you last week?”

“On vacation. I hit outlet stores all over New England.”

“Vermont?”

“What?”

He moved his hands higher, squeezing her ribs. “Did you go to Vermont?”

“I can’t breathe—”

“You can say yes or no.”

She nodded, gasping. “Yes.”

“Did you see Lucy Swift?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“She decided to go to Wyoming at the last minute. She paid top dollar for the tickets. She took her kids. I want to know why.”

“I can’t—breathe—I—”

He eased up, just slightly.

Barbara coughed, gulping in air. “Goddamn you—”

“Tell me about Lucy.”

“I don’t know anything. You’ll have to ask her yourself. I went outlet shopping in Manchester one day. That’s all.”

Lying to him was dangerous, Barbara thought, but telling the truth had to be more dangerous.

He traced the skin just under her breasts with his thumbs. He had no sexual interest in her. His focus on his mission was total. He wasn’t that complicated a man, Barbara thought, and she wasn’t that undesirable a woman. Obviously his obsession with Jack Swift was something she needed to better understand.

His gaze was cold even as he released her. “Arnica,” he said.

She rubbed her sides. “What?”

“Rub in a little arnica oil for the bruises.”

She headed back to the bathroom. This time she didn’t throw up. She washed her hands, closed the lid on the toilet and sat down. She was risking everything. She had a stimulating career, a nice apartment, a fabulous set of friends. There were men who wanted her. Good, successful men.

She didn’t have to let a scummy Darren Mowery fondle her in her own living room.

After Jack had dispatched her, so politely, as if she were pathetic, she’d learned he was seeing Sidney Greenburg, a curator at the Smithsonian—fifty years old, never married, no children. Why her? Why not Barbara?

Sidney was one of Lucy’s Washington friends.

I could have married Colin. I didn’t have to wait for Jack.

“Barbara?”

Darren was outside the door. She didn’t move.

“Here’s how it’s going to go down,” he said. “I’ll approach Jack. I’ll put the squeeze on him. He’s not going to risk his own reputation or sully his dead son’s reputation. He’ll pay. And you’ll get ten percent.”

She jumped up and tore open the door. “Ten percent! Forget it. I’ll call the police right now. You’d have nothing without me. I had the affair with Colin. I have the pictures.”

“You won’t call the police,” Darren said calmly.

“I will. You’re threatening a United States senator.”

“Barbara. Please.” He was cold, supercilious. “If you make one wrong move once this thing gets started, I’ll be there. Trust me. You won’t want that.”

Her stomach turned in on itself. She clutched it in silent agony. What if Lucy went crying to Sebastian Redwing because of her harassment campaign? “Bastard.”

“Bingo. You got that one right.”

Barbara held up her chin, summoning twenty years of experience at using other people’s arrogance to her own advantage. And to Jack’s. “Jack couldn’t survive a week in this town without me, and he knows it. When he comes to me, you’d better be far away. That’s your only warning.”

“Oh, is it? Get this straight, Barbie.” Mowery leaned in close, enunciated each word clearly. “I don’t care if you fucked Swift father and son at the same time. I don’t care if you made up the whole goddamn thing. We’re putting this show on the road, and we’re doing it my way.”

Acid rose up in her throat. “I can’t believe I let you touch me.”

He laughed. “And you will again, Barbie. Trust me on that.”

He swaggered back down the hall. She spat at his back, missing by yards. He laughed harder.

“Fifty percent,” she yelled.

He stopped, glanced back at her.

She was choking for air. Dear God, what had she done? “I want fifty percent of the take.”

“The take? Okay, Dick Tracy. I’ll give you twenty-five percent.”

“Fifty. I deserve it.”

He winked at her. “I like you, Barbie. You got the short end of the stick with the Swifts, and you keep on fighting. Yep. I like you a lot.”

“I’m serious. I want fifty percent.”

“Barbie, maybe you should think this through.” He rocked back on his heels. “I’m not a very nice man. I expect you know that by now. My sympathy for you only goes so far.”

She hesitated. Her head was spinning. This wasn’t a time for cold feet, any sign of weakness. “Twenty-five percent, then,” she said.

* * *

Jack Swift poured himself a second glass of wine. It was a dry apple-pear wine from a new winery in his home state. He toasted Sidney Greenburg, who was still on her first glass. “To the wines of Rhode Island.”

She laughed. “Yes, but not to this particular bottle. I love fruit wines, Jack, but this one’s pure rot-gut.”

He laughed, too. “It is, isn’t it? Well, I’ve never been much of a wine connoisseur. A good scotch—that’s something I can understand.”

It was a very warm, humid, still evening. They were sitting out in the tiny brick courtyard of his Georgetown home. Rhode Island, his home state, the state he’d represented first in the House, then in the Senate, seemed far away tonight. This was where he’d raised his son, where he’d nursed his wife through her long, losing battle with cancer. They were both gone now. He’d been tempted to sell the house. He’d bought it in his early days in Washington; it’d go for a mint. He’d even debated quitting the Senate. Barbara Allen had talked him out of both. Over twenty years, she’d saved him from many a precipitous move.

“I don’t know what to do, Sidney.” He stared at the pale wine. He and Sidney had been discussing Barbara Allen most of the evening. “She’s been with me since she was a college intern.”

“You’re not going to do anything.”

“I can’t just pretend—”

“Yes, you can, and you’ll be doing her a favor if you do.”

Sidney set her glass on the garden table. That she had such affection for him was a constant source of amazement. He was an old widower, a gray-haired, paunchy United States senator who wasn’t eaten up with his own self-importance. She was a striking woman, with very dark eyes and dark hair liberally streaked with gray. She wore little makeup, and she complained about carrying more weight than she liked around her hips and thighs; Jack hadn’t noticed. She was intelligent, kind, experienced and self-assured, comfortable in her own skin. She’d worked with Lucy’s parents at the Smithsonian and had known Lucy since she was a little girl, long before Lucy had met Colin.

“Listen to me, Jack,” she said. “Barbara is not a pathetic woman. You are not to feel sorry for her because she’s forty and unmarried. If she’s given herself to her job to the exclusion of her personal life, that was her choice. Allow her the dignity of having made that choice. And don’t assume just because she doesn’t have a husband and children, she must not have a full life.”

“I haven’t! I wouldn’t—”

“Of course, you would. People do it all the time.” She smiled, taking any edge off her words. “If Barbara Allen’s feeling a little goofy and off-center right now, accept it at face value and give her a chance to get over it.”