War of Eagles

TWENTY-FOUR

Hood reached Beijing surprisingly refreshed and exhilarated. He had slept for most of the flight, and he had left having done something that made him feel good. Something that had nothing to do with work. Not directly, anyway.

Whether he was the mayor of Los Angeles or the director of Op-Center, Hood had always tried to spend time with his kids before traveling anywhere. This was especially true on Op-Center business, when he usually went away for more than just an overnight visit. Hood used that time to plug tightly into his family. He craved it, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Sharon Hood had never really been a part of that. She allowed her husband to give his attention to the kids.

As he thought back on it, that was how they did everything after Harleigh was born. Their love was funneled to their daughter and then their son. They never gave any to each other. Maybe Sharon was doing what she thought the kids needed. Hood’s time at home was limited, and she wanted the kids to have full access to their father. Whatever the cause, over time their life became all about kids and career, with Sharon spending her free time working on her cable TV cooking show. The events that subsequently rocked their personal lives simply accelerated the sad, lonely drift.

The state to which they had deteriorated was evident whenever Hood went to see the kids. It was not just how snippy Sharon was with him. It was how openly affectionate she and her new lover were. He did not think their hand-in-hand walks around the yard or hugs in the window were an act for his benefit. But he did see that Sharon was capable of more than she gave him.

Then again, the new man was around a lot more. Jim Hunt was a caterer Sharon had met on her show. The former Mrs. Hunt was an electrician Jim had met, the kids told him, when she was repairing an oven in a restaurant. Hunt had been the one who divorced her. He had come to the relationship with Sharon bearing full closure with his past and a white tablecloth ready to spread on their happy relationship banquet. An emotionally free and available caterer who made his own hours. It was a recipe that had to make Sharon Hood weak with need.

Hood had pondered all of that, again, as he drove to the house from Op-Center. He had called to make sure the kids would be there before heading out. Then he also did something impulsive that only made sense because he was angry at just about every woman he knew, from Lorraine Sanders to Julie Kubert to General Carrie Morgan and Sharon Hood.

He turned, irrationally, to one for support. One he believed might actually want to hear what he had to say.

He guessed that the number of the former Mrs. Jim Hunt was the same as her son’s, for whom he had gotten an internship at Op-Center six months before. He called. A woman answered. Hood asked if this was the former wife of Jim Hunt. She asked who wanted to know.

“Paul Hood, the former husband of Sharon Hood,” he replied.

There was a silence so long he thought his phone had died.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” she replied. “This is Gloria Lynch-Hunt. Is everything all right with Frankie?”

Frankie was her son, her only child. Of course she would assume that was why he was calling.

“Actually, as of yesterday morning things were very well with Frankie,” he said. “The truth is I’m not at Op-Center anymore. I’m working on special projects for the president.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “Does he need a recording system installed in the Oval Office?”

“Excuse me?” It took a moment for Hood to understand what she had said. Gloria was an electrician. She was making a joke. Hood was caught off guard. He was also surprised by her voice, which was very soft and very high. It was not what he imagined a female electrician would sound like. Not that a female electrician should sound like anything, he knew. But he could not help having imagined her as smoky-voiced and a little hulking, albeit slimmed down because she would be dating again after years of complacency in marriage and eating her husband’s rich foods. “No,” Hood went on. “I’m not calling about the president, Mrs. Hunt. Gloria. I’m calling to see if you want to have lunch or coffee.”

There was another long, long silence. This time Hood had lost her. He pressed Redial. He wondered if she would still be laughing or if she would not bother to pick up at all.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi. Sorry. Lost the signal there.”

“That’s okay. I was thinking this might have been a joke,” she said. “Maybe it is, I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because you come up as Unknown Caller on the phone ID, and my former husband is a dick. This is the kind of stunt he would have one of his restaurant or chef buddies pull.”

“To what end?” Hood asked. He understood the idea of postdivorce payback, but that seemed excessive.

“Mr. Hood, you’re a stranger. Maybe you won’t be, after the dinner you’re going to buy me — at a restaurant of my choosing, where I know my ex holds no sway. Until then, ‘my former husband is a dick’ will have to suffice. The details are bloody — and personal.”

“Understood,” he said. It was odd. He felt no need to warn Sharon that her beau might be “a dick.”

“I have to say, this still seems kind of strange,” she said.

“It is completely strange,” he admitted.

“Do you even know what I look like?”

“No,” he admitted as a jolt of concern flashed through him. “And this isn’t an us-against-them alliance,” he added. “You know what I think I was subconsciously thinking?”

“No. I’m not even sure I understood what you just said.”

He smiled. “I think, Gloria, that I reasoned: Sharon and I did not get along. Sharon and Jim do get along. Therefore, you and I may get along.”

The third silence was the shortest. “I’ll buy that,” she said. “Sort of a nearsighted date. When do we find out?”

Hood thought he detected a hint of excitement in her voice. It took him a moment to get this joke, too. They were not quite blind dating.

“I’m actually headed overseas now for a couple of days,” Hood told her.

“Any place exciting?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But you can’t tell me.”

“Right.”

“Sexy,” she said.

That made Hood feel both good and uncomfortable at the same time. He actually choked on saliva as he said, “Can we chalk it in for Saturday?”

“Consider it chalked. That’ll save me a DVD rental,” she said.

“It’s been that way for me, too,” Hood said.

He hung up feeling pleased with himself. Not because he had made the call but because he had actually had a constructive conversation with a woman. He was upbeat as he reached the house, stayed upbeat as he talked to the kids on the back patio, and even smiled as he waved good-bye to Sharon and Jim as they did the dishes together, laughing as they scrubbed some kind of sauce from cooking implements he did not recognize. It was the first time in a year that Hood did not feel like sticking a steak knife in Hunt’s raw heart.

Maybe that was because he had, though the “dick” did not yet know it. He loved having a secret that would cause Jim a little confusion and discomfort and probably some jealousy, even though he would never admit it.

Screw him.

And now, invigorated, Paul Hood was ready to tackle a world crisis. He did not know whether it was sad or remarkable that such a small thing as a date with this one particular woman could have such a large impact on his outlook. And he realized as he moved through a short diplomatic line that it had nothing to do with Gloria Hunt per se. It had to do with Paul Hood taking control of his life.

As revelations go, that was something an international crisis manager should have realized long before this.