Silence

41

WHILE THEY HAD a drink in Scott Schelling’s suite, Jill Klein introduced Scott to a whole set of grievances against her husband. Fifteen years ago, Jill had been a young, extremely pretty woman who worked for a subsidiary called Carbondale Industries in Chicago. Ray Klein told her he had come to the moment in his life when he wanted only to step back from running the conglomerate and enjoy life with a woman like her. He told her he would always cherish her and be faithful to her. Every one of his statements had been a deliberate lie.

“Now he’s got another new girl—about the hundredth one—but this one is much worse. He’s promoted her to vice president and travels with her, like a corporate wife. It’s the most public humiliation yet. I hate him.” Then it was as though she remembered something she had forgotten to do. She put down her drink, stood up, and began to take off her clothes.

When they were in bed, he saw that what she was doing was avenging her humiliation. Anger made her passionate and eager. She wanted to be more excited, more enthralled by Scott than she had ever been with Ray Klein because that was part of her revenge: to show some impartial, invisible universal arbiter that Ray was not as good at making love as the first man she picked out at a party. And there was another comparison at work in her mind, too. Her sex had to be wilder, more erotic than the illicit sex that Ray had with Martha Rodall. And Scott could tell there were other feelings, too, ones that Scott did not have enough experience or enough empathy to interpret.

Scott had been afraid of Ray Klein, terrified of the power that Ray Klein had over him. But tonight Scott was in a hotel room having sex with Ray Klein’s beautiful wife. It was the antidote to the cowardice and the shame and resentment, and it was intoxicating. He and Jill had become complicit in deceiving Ray Klein—not just in fooling him, but in dishonoring him, mocking Ray Klein’s brute power over them. What could Ray Klein ever do to Scott that compared with this? While they were in bed, Scott already knew that the next time he was forced to defer to Ray Klein, to tolerate his dominance, Scott would be thinking, I fucked your wife. And he knew that Jill was looking forward to having thoughts on the same topic.

While Jill dressed, he said, “Am I going to see you again?”

“You must know I’ll see you again.” Her tone was peculiar. It was not affectionate, not even warm. There was an edge to it, and his ear caught the tone.

“When?”

“When I can.”

“I want it to be soon.” He could hardly believe he had said that, but he meant it. He wanted not just to have one night with Jill Klein. He wanted to be able to repeat this night as often as possible. He wanted her to belong to him.

She touched his face, leaned close and looked at him, but did not kiss him. “If I have a chance to do this again, believe me, I will.”

“Let me give you a phone number.” He took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote while he talked. “This is the cell I carry. It’s a number almost nobody has because I use it only for emergencies. Call when you think you might be able to see me.”

She took it, folded it and put it in her purse. “Fine. Now I’ve got to get out of here.”

At nearly three A.M., Scott Schelling escorted Jill Klein out of his room and down the hotel hallway to the elevators. When he pressed the button, the nearest elevator opened immediately, they stepped inside and the doors closed with a quiet, rolling sound. Jill Klein gave one of her semaphore smiles, embraced Scott and kissed him. Scott knew that hotel elevators usually had cameras in the ceilings, but he decided it was best to acquiesce. The mouth-breathers who looked at the tapes certainly wouldn’t know who Scott Schelling was.

Scott didn’t want to seem timid to Jill Klein. Everything she did was flagrant. While she kissed him, her hands moved below his belt, and he had to break off the kiss. “If you do that, I can’t very well walk back through the lobby with you.”

She laughed. “I’ll be good.”

“I just mean right now, not in the future.”

“No? Then next time I see you, I think I’ll be as bad as I can possibly be.”

“When will that be?”

“I’ll try to call you tomorrow. If I don’t, then find an excuse to skip the European conference in a couple of weeks. I’ll fly to L.A.”

“Good. You have my cell-phone number, right?”

“How could I lose it this soon?”

The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. The lobby was nearly deserted at this hour. A uniformed man with an electric machine buffed the floor, but he paid no attention to them. A night clerk looked up as they passed the main desk at a distance of seventy feet, and then returned his eyes to the magazine he was reading.

Schelling and Jill Klein went out the main entrance, and Schelling’s eyes were already sweeping the parking lot and the street beyond to spot anyone who might be watching them. As far as Schelling could tell, tonight he was in luck: There were no visible watchers. The valet-parking attendant and the doorman were sitting on a bench a few paces away beside the cabinet full of keys. The parking attendant jumped up eagerly and took the chit from Jill, then ran down the ramp under the building and came back up with her car. Scott had asked him to park the car below, even though there had been spaces in the open lot when she had arrived. He handed the attendant a ten-dollar bill.

He opened Jill’s door so she could slip behind the steering wheel, then leaned in to kiss her.

She turned away. “Don’t be stupid. I’ll see you soon enough.” She drove out of the lot and turned toward the central square in front of the old Palace of the Governors. After two blocks he saw the lights of her car turning north toward the road to the Klein house.

Back in his room, Scott caught a faint scent of Jill’s perfume. The twisted upper sheet thrown back from the bed and the scattered pillows brought back the surprise Jill Klein had been. He had expected the night to be only a couple of hours of diplomacy to pacify an aging beauty, but this had been a night of new emotions. Now he was alone again. As he took off his sport coat and hung it in the closet, he took his cell phone out of the pocket and pressed the menu for Tiffany’s line at the office. He got her voice mail. “Hello, Tiffany. I’m going to stay longer in Santa Fe. I’ll cancel my own flight and make another reservation. Coordinate with Kimberly.”

He disconnected, put the phone on his nightstand, brushed his teeth and lay on the bed. He had another reason for not going home in a few hours. Carl had not yet called to tell him that he had solved the problem of the Turners. Maybe Carl had found he needed to kill them. If so, then it was a good idea for Scott to stay away until it was over. Occupying a hotel room in another state wasn’t the best alibi, but it wasn’t the worst, either. He reached for the house telephone. When the clerk answered, he said, “This is Mr. Schelling in 362. I’d like to stay an extra day. Can you arrange that for me?”

“One moment, please, while I check.” After a moment she said, “Yes, sir. I’ve extended your reservation an extra day. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you.” He hung up. It struck Scott Schelling that a subtle shift had taken place in the universe yesterday afternoon, and now the purpose of the whole world was to say “Yes, sir” to Scott Schelling.