Charisma by Steven Barnes

Author:Steven Barnes [Barnes, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466833982
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

33

LOS ANGELES

Renny walked through the offices feeling more confidence than he had in years. The overhead fluorescents seemed brighter, warmer. Paper-clotted desks looked busy and productive, not desperate. Cubbyhole cloistered coworkers seemed somehow more lively and attractive; even the general background buzz of ringing phones and clipped conversation was more attractive and welcoming. Renny may have been emotionally conflicted, but he was also cooking. Yes indeed, the man was on fire.

Muriel was lost in a maze of papers and Post-it notes in her glass-walled office, but her eyes were drawn to him, as if threads or wires connected them. He felt hooked in.

“Renny?” she asked.

He stopped, not irritated, not excited. He was expectant, contained, safely within the circle of his own power. “Yes?”

“Would you step in here for a minute?”

“Sure.” He was almost laughing to himself. There was a touch of hysteria in that humor. I’m juggling a bomb here. “What’s up?”

She let Renny into the office, thought for a moment, and then closed the door behind him. “Have a seat.”

He sat “Whuzzup?” There was something in his voice that he didn’t entirely like. The pressure of keeping the secret was starting to wear him down. Here he was, in Marcus’s building, on Marcus’s payroll, slaving to uphold his honor, sitting on a secret that could bring the whole empire crashing down.

Muriel sat on the edge of her desk, and shifted one tanned and muscular leg over the other. She smoothed her dress down. “Well … I have to admit that I sort of thought you’d fall on your face on the hooker piece.”

His smile felt nailed into place. “Now why in the world did you think that?”

“Well—you’d intimated that you thought it was beneath you. And your recent work hasn’t had … that spark.”

“And?”

“Well, I read your piece, and I was blown away. This is really good work.”

“Thank you.”

“In fact, I’m thinking of kicking this up to Quanta. Barry and I had lunch today, and he thinks he can use it. Frankly, it’s too good for Eyeful.”

“Always good to hear.” Sand wondered if he should put a bit more enthusiasm in his voice. Surely she knew that a month ago, he would have crawled across a mile of broken glass to hear those words. Now she was playing with Renny. Testing him. Watching him. Damned if she didn’t seem just a little nervous about him.

Muriel drummed her fingers on the desk. He didn’t speak.

“Why,” she said, “do I have a feeling that you’ve got a secret?”

“Everyone has secrets.”

She nodded without agreeing. “How do I put this…?”

“Simply and honestly?”

She laughed. It wasn’t the deep, throaty, healthy laugh that he remembered. It was something else. It was worried. “All right. You seem a lot more like the man I met seven years ago. More … alive. Or something.”

She probably thought he had a girlfriend. And maybe he did: hardly a morning passed without a note from a very special lady in Washington. And almost every night he sat and wrote her of his days, visualizing her smile as she read the little inconsequentials.

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