Undue Influence

Chapter 13

Six hours on a plane, some of it with Dana’s head on my shoulder as she sleeps, is not an entirely unpleasant experience.

Dana stirs on my shoulder, stretches, and arches her back in the chair.

‘I’m gonna use the phone,’ she says. ‘Try to get us accommodations.’ Dana’s been here before, so I leave this to her.

‘Here, catch up on your reading,’ she says. She hands me the evening paper from Capital City, pulled from the side flap of her briefcase under the seat in front of her.

I watch her move down the aisle toward one of the cellular phones up front.

The bombing at the post office is the lead on the front page, a banner headline with a three-column photo, police tape on the loading dock, a human tide of the curious in the alley behind the building, fire trucks and police cars in view.

They are withholding the name of the employee killed until next-of-kin can be notified. I think about Marcie’s children, the seven-year-old son she talked about, and wonder: Does he have a father? What will become of the boy now? And I think about Sarah, who but for a few more feet down that shattered hallway…

So far there are few details on the bombing. What is published is a lot of conjecture, quoted statements from postal officials talking about the constant risk of bombs being sent through the mails, the difficulty of security precautions given the volume of letters and packages. Speculation, most of it wrong. I scan the page, two columns, and turn to the inside. There is not a word about the private courier or the package he delivered. I am wondering what has happened to Howard, Marcie’s friend who ushered the courier back to the office. Have they questioned him? Figured it out?

I turn the page, nothing more.

Up front Dana has her back to me, pressing more buttons on the phone. I think maybe she’s having trouble getting a hotel.

When I look up again, she’s coming down the aisle.

‘I think you’ll like the place,’ she says. ‘I stayed there once with my husband, years ago.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ I tell her. This is no vacation.

She swings into the seat and buckles up.

One hand is in my sport coat pocket. I feel the photograph of the little church, now wrapped in a plastic cover — what I have kept back from Dana.

My eyes are still running over the paper. At the bottom of the page there is something of interest, speculation on a federal court vacancy in Capital City, Dana’s name mentioned prominently on a short list of candidates. The lady has juice.

I show it to her, point with my finger at her name.

She makes gestures of modesty.

‘The press,’ she says. ‘Once on their “A” list you never get off. They have to have something to fill in around the ads,’ she says.

But I know better. Dana’s in the power set in Capital City. Well-thought-of and a serious contender for higher office.

We talk for a while, doze on and off. My head is spinning. The blast from this afternoon, the pressure of the cabin, the droning of the engines, all combine to make for fitful sleep.

By the time we do the interisland flight it is nearing midnight Hawaiian time. Stars so bright you want to reach out and grab them as we do the last few miles on the road to Wailea and our hotel. I’m driving the rental car as Dana navigates.

I would have slept in some fleabag near the airport, but Dana insists that we will both need a good night’s sleep for the road to Hana in the morning.

‘You’ve been there?’ I say.

‘Once.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Everyman’s dream of paradise,’ she says. ‘Azure seas, blue skies, puffy clouds, and the hills are green, very, very green.’

She smiles. ‘And then there is the road to Hana,’ she says.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’ll see in the morning.’

The highway suddenly comes to an end and I make a sweeping right turn down a winding drive toward the sea. We dead-end at the driveway to a shopping center, upscale. I see signs with arrows in every direction, golf courses and clubhouses at every point of the compass.

‘You want to go left,’ she says.

I turn, and about a hundred yards up the road I see the sign for the hotel.

We turn in and stop at the kiosk. A woman in a flowing silk sarong greets us.

‘Welcome to Grand Wailea. Are you staying with us?’

‘The reservation’s under “Colby,”’ says Dana.

‘Of course,’ she says. ‘We got the call.’

The woman gives me a parking pass and sends us through, down the broad curving driveway, past cascades of water backlit by colored lights. We turn and stop under the massive carport at the front entrance. A car hop gets the keys. A bellboy takes our bags. If they had six stars, this place would get them all.

We are lei-ed about the neck as we enter the lobby, something from Elephant Walk — open air and lush vegetation, a reflecting pond larger than some lakes, and an enormous covered bar in the center, its blue-tiled roof floating on concrete spires fifty feet in the air. We are greeted by a girl in starched white livery at reception, a white tunic with gold buttons, Asian eyes, and an accent that rings with intrigue.

They are doing impressions of our credit cards, and I am wondering how mine will hold up.

Dana leans in my ear. ‘Not to worry. I got us a good rate,’ she says.

The girl at the counter smiles.

Great. Three hundred a night, I’m thinking.

They bring us hot hand towels and little glasses of papaya juice. The girl hits the bell twice and our luggage appears on a cart. We follow the bellhop to the elevator, and outside, under stars and flickering tiki torches, past giant banyan trees and a sea of bamboo, palm fronds clacking in the trade winds.

He stops with the rolling cart in front of a door, glossy white enamel with brass fittings, and with the card key opens it. He shows Dana in, drops off her bags, and takes me to my room next door.

I tip him and he’s out the door.

The place is palatial but muggy. I open the plantation louvers and the sliding door behind them, walk out on the balcony overlooking the sea, surging white surf on a curve of beach shimmering in the moonlight.

I hear knocking.

It’s Dana at the adjoining door.

I unlatch my side and she comes in.

‘Like it?’ she says.

‘What’s not to like? The government rate must be a little better than when I worked for the DA,’ I tell her.

‘Pulled a few strings,’ she says. ‘Some people in Honolulu owed me a favor.’

‘Who’s that?’ I say.

‘Some people. Relax,’ she says. ‘Enjoy the evening. Tomorrow comes… the road to Hana.’ She makes it sound ominous, then smiles at me.

It’s a warm night, but the breeze off the ocean carries its own chill. I shiver, more from exhaustion, leaning on the railing at the balcony.

‘Do you want to order something in the room to eat?’

I shake my head.

‘So this is how the other half lives,’ I say. A world away from the gray-cast skies and freezing ground fog of Capital City in the winter.

‘The place really is something, isn’t it?’ She’s reading my mind. ‘You must think I’m awful. The pampered woman. Tagging along and demanding only the best,’ she says.

‘Why?’

‘I should have let you make the arrangements,’ she says. I turn and look at her. A smile. ‘Why would I think you’re awful? Because you have good taste?’ She is shimmering hair, and the magic gleam of night light dancing in amethyst eyes.

‘Now you’re patronizing,’ she says. ‘Believe me, if this trip had taken us to any other place, it would have been government per diem and a travel allowance. Like I said, tonight is a special deal.’

‘Why?’

She looks at me, strokes my face with the side of her hand. ‘You had a rough day. I thought you needed something… special,’ she says.

‘Your husband took you to nice places. He must have been well-heeled.’

‘You sound jealous.’ She winks. A schoolgirl’s grin. ‘You never took Nikki anywhere like this?’

I shake my head. ‘The anxiety attacks waiting for the bill would have stolen all the pleasure,’ I tell her. ‘We’re both blue-collar, down to the third cervical vertebra. Vacations, the few times we took them, were a rented mountain cabin that belonged to a friend, meals in, and vacuum before you leave.’

I turn to the railing. She is behind me, the contour of her body pressed to mine, shielded against the breeze of the trades. I feel her knee in the crook of my own.

‘My husband’s family had money.’ She’s musing, almost talking to herself, leaning on me, her chin nestled on the back of my shoulder.

‘Problem was, Darrel only knew how to spend it. He would have been the prodigal son, except he never really left home. Never grew up,’ she says.

‘Sounds like you had a child to raise after all,’ I say.

‘You could say that. Oh, as a woman I always felt good on Darrel’s arm. He wore the right clothes, made all the proper gestures, he was tall, good-looking in a charming sort of way. He had the kind of humor that can make a woman forgive a lot, and a first impression that lasted longer than the crease in his pants.

‘It took me the better part of the first year to figure out where all the money was coming from. Darrel couldn’t hold a job if he owned the place. Daddy kept buying him businesses, and Darrel kept treating them like hobbies.’

‘Is that what brought it to an end?’

‘In part. One night he got drunk and I saw the darker side. He’d had an argument with his father over money, and took it out on me. Slapped me around until I got the car keys. And that was that,’ she says. ‘I never went back.’

‘You left him?’

‘Quickest divorce in history. Still like how the other half lives?’ she says.

‘I suppose the grass is always greener,’ I tell her. I’m nodding, swaying in the cool breeze, listening to the rollers as they crash on the beach below, white foam glistening in the moonlight.

Three fingers of her right hand are through the buttons on the front of my shirt, twirling through the hairs on my chest, the tip of one foraging over a nipple, like searing heat.

I wonder for a moment if I should move, but there is nothing uncomfortable in this. It feels so natural. A woman’s hand on my chest, something I have not felt in months.

The soft whisper of her lips caresses the nape of my neck. I turn, and I am looking into her eyes, dazed, wondering what is happening.

Shattering glass and death, the explosion at the post office, seem something from another decade, another century.

I am mesmerized by the glow in her face. My hands, clasped at the small of her back, take on a life of their own. She is soft and warm, her hands at my shirt, suddenly inside, buttons undone, the soft slide of silk as her blouse driven by points of ecstasy grazes my chest.

The throbbing in my ears is no longer from pain. My fingers at the buttons on the back of her blouse. A trail of fabric in our wake as we grasp and grope each other, moving through the room. My knee gripped by silken thighs. Her hungry mouth pressed on my own, the whisper of her tongue.

There is the slickness of nylon against my naked leg as I ease her onto the bed. I am captured by the reality of her near nakedness. She lies, her hair cascading on the pillow, stripped to the waist, the soft tenderness of her breasts like two beacons, her thin waist encircled by the lacy gauze of a black garterbelt. The tender bare flesh of thighs, above nylon.

She looks at me, her eyes glazed by lust, a mirror image of my own.

She beckons, her flesh moist with the scent of the tropics.

I sink, our bodies two melding pools of pleasure.

She is in my ear, hot whispers of passion laced with my name. Lower regions pressing, the slick wet heat of desire moving, roiling, undulating ancient rhythms of bliss, her fingers everywhere. My mind a sea of confusion, lust, or love. My lips, the edge of teeth jagged at her nipple. She arches her back, and between quick breaths of passion, grinding bone to pelvic bone, she pleads for the pleasure of release.