Hot Shot (14 page)

"I'm sorry, hon," Conti said. "I—I couldn't pay the bond."

"You shouldn't have called her. I told you never to call her."

As Susannah stood, she found herself remembering the chocolate-covered cherries she had tried to smuggle to Paige when she got in trouble as a child.

"I don't need you here," Paige said belligerently. "Go back where you came from."

The hostility in her sister's face made Susannah feel ill.

Why did Paige hate her so much? What did everyone want from her? She tried so hard to please them all, but whatever she did never seemed to be enough. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her trench coat and squeezed hard, digging the nails into her palm so she wouldn't lose control. "Paige, come home with me tonight," she said calmly. "Let me put you to bed. We can talk in the morning."

"I don't want to talk. I want to get laid. Come on, Conti. Let's get out of here."

"Sure, honey. Sure." He looped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her protectively to him. With her upper body turned into Conti's chest, she walked awkwardly.

Susannah stepped forward. She meant to tell Paige that they had to talk, that they couldn't just forget something like this had happened. She would be logical, reasonable, choose her words carefully. But the soft words that came from her mouth weren't the ones she had planned at all.

"Paige, I don't know if you remember, but I'm getting married on Saturday. It would mean a lot to me if you were there." At first Susannah didn't think Paige had heard. But then, just before Conti led her through the door, her sister gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

The electronics shop was located in Cupertino just off Stevens Creek Boulevard. Sam thought he knew every shop in the Valley, but Z.B. Electronics was new. As he pulled up outside, he spotted a group of three teenage boys approaching the shop. He immediately tagged them as "wireheads"—the name high school kids gave to the boys who spend all their time in the school electronics lab. When Sam was in high school, he had hung out with both the "wireheads" and "freaks," the kids who were caught up in the counterculture. The fact that he didn't stick to one group had confused everybody.

Acting on impulse, Sam got out of the car and opened the trunk of the Duster. He called out to the boys, "Hey, help me carry this stuff inside, will you?"

A pudgy, long-haired kid detached himself from the group and walked forward. "What do you have?"

"A microcomputer," Sam replied casually, as if every-body in the Valley drove around with a microcomputer in the trunk.

"No shit! Hey, guys, he's got a micro in his trunk." The kid turned to Sam and his face was alive with excitement. "Did you build it?"

Sam handed him one of the boxes of equipment and picked up the heavy television himself. Another boy slammed the trunk lid. "I helped a friend of mine design it. He's the best."

As they walked toward the shop, the boys began peppering him with questions.

"What kind of microprocessor did you use?"

"A7319 from Cortron."

"That's shit," one of them protested. "Why aren't you running it off an Intel 8008 like the Altair?"

"The 8008 is old news. The 7319 is more powerful."

"What do you think of the IMSAI 8080?" the pudgy kid asked, referring to a new microcomputer that was rapidly challenging the Altair's supremacy.

"IMSAI's nothing more than a rip-off of the Altair," Sam said derisively. "Same old stuff.

Have you ever taken one apart? Total shit. A bucket of noise."

One of the boys rushed in front of Sam to open the door. "But if you're using another microprocessor, none of the Altair equipment will work with it."

"Who cares? We've done everything better."

As they walked inside Z.B. Electronics, an enormously obese man with yellow hair and pink watery eyes glanced up at them from behind the counter. Sam stopped in his tracks.

As he looked past the man, his stomach did a flip-flop, and the television in his arms suddenly seemed as light as a box of microchips. No wonder the kids were attracted to this store. On two rows of shelving directly behind the man's head rested a dozen Altair microcomputers.

Sam Gamble had hit pay dirt.

"Chamber of Commerce weather," Joel kept saying the morning of the wedding. "It's Chamber of Commerce weather."

Susannah forced herself to take a bite of dry toast while she stared through the dining room window at the sun-spangled June day and watched the gardeners tying the last of the white ribbon festoons in the trees.

Her father glanced up from his newspaper, a man in complete command of his world.

"Could I have more coffee, dear?"

As she refilled his cup, she felt tired and worn, like an old lady with all the drama of life behind her.

The woman who was coordinating the wedding arrived shortly before noon, and for the next few hours she and Susannah busied themselves double-checking arrangements that had already been triple-checked. She sat for the hairdresser who arrived at two, but the style he arranged was too fussy. After he left, she brushed it out and made a simple coil at the nape of her neck. At three o'clock she put on her antique lace dress and fastened a little Juliet cap to her head. While she secured the Bennett family choker around her neck, she watched through the window as the guests arrived. And then, when it was time, she went downstairs.

"My little girl," Joel whispered as she approached. "My perfect little girl."

Moments later the trumpets sounded, heralding the beginning of the ceremony.

Cal was smiling at her as she approached. The minister began to speak, and she tugged surreptitiously on the pearls. Why couldn't she breathe? Why was the choker so tight?

The ceremony continued, and the noise of the lawn mower that had been bothering her grew louder. People were turning their heads and Cal's eyebrows drew together. The minister had just begun to address her when she finally recognized the sound for what it was. Her gasp was drowned out by the noise of the Harley shooting into the garden.

"Suzie!"

She spun around and saw his black hair flying in the breeze like a pirate's flag. He looked magnificent and appallingly dangerous—a dark angel, a wicked messiah.

"What's the matter?" he called out. "Forget to send me an invitation?"

As he taunted her from the seat of his Harley, the long-ago chant of the balloon man began to beat in her ears.

"Come on, Suzie. Climb up on the back of my bike."

She pulled away from Cal and pressed her hands over her ears. "Go away! I won't listen to you! I'm not listening to you!"

But Sam was a man with a vision, a child of the middle class, immune to the rules of upper-class propriety, and he paid no attention to her entreaty. She stumbled away from the altar, trying to distance herself from all of them.

"Follow me, babe. Leave all this and come with me."

She wouldn't do it. She wouldn't go to the end of the drive. She wouldn't unlock the iron gates. She was a good girl. Always a good girl. She wouldn't ever, ever again run off with a clown-faced balloon man.

All my balloons for free. Come and follow me.

Her father was untangling himself from the rope garland that cordoned off the end of his row, coming to rescue her, to protect her and keep her. To keep her at Falcon Hill. To keep her with Cal. She saw Paige's shocked face, Cal's appalled one. She clawed at her neck so she could breathe, but the choker was no longer there. A sprinkling of pearls had scattered over the toes of her wedding pumps.

"Hop on my bike, babe. Hop on my bike and follow me."

She felt the pull of his sun, the light of his vision, the blazing glory of his challenge. A yearning for freedom burst inside her like a rocket-born rainbow. She heard the rage of proper angels in the outbursts of the people around her, but the call of a leather-clad devil spurred her on. No more. No less is more. Not ever. From now on more is more.

She began racing toward him, flying along the pristine white runner and crumpling it beneath her feet. One of her shoes came off. She kicked off the other. The little Juliet cap blew away, tugging free her careful hair.

Paige's voice rang out over all the rest. Paige—proper Paige—calling out in horror at the unforgivable act her sister was committing. "Susannah!"

Joel shouted her name and rushed forward. Paige cried out again.

Sam Gamble threw back his head and laughed at them all. A strand of black hair blew in front of his mouth and stuck to his bottom lip. He gunned the Harley. Held out his hand.

Come on, babe. Come-on, come-on, come-on.

She lifted the lace skirt of her dress high up on her thighs, revealing long thin legs and a flash of garter blue. Her auburn hair flew out behind her. She reached for him. Reached for her destiny and felt his tight grip pulling her into the future as she straddled the Harley.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her breasts against his jacket. The Harley roared to life between her thighs, its vibrations shooting high up inside her, filling her full to bursting with new life.

At that moment she didn't care if all the balloons in the world would someday burst around her. She only cared that she was finally free.

Chapter 8

For several moments the wedding guests stood frozen like well-dressed figures in a modern
tableau vivant
. Cal Theroux was the first to move. White-faced and humiliated, he shoved a path through the crowd and disappeared. Joel, looking neither right nor left, made his way to the house with rigid dignity.

Paige was too stunned to move. The breeze picked up a cluster of feathers from her boa and blew them against her cheek, but she didn't feel anything. Her world had tilted, shifting everything it contained so that it could never resettle in the same position.

She shook her head slightly as she tried to reconcile all that she knew about her cool, perfect sister with the woman who had just fled her wedding on the back of a Harley. As she stared at the crumpled aisle runner and the place where the grass had been trampled down, she realized that she hadn't known her sister at all.

The idea terrified her. She immediately shoved it away and let a clean, pure surge of anger take its place.

Susannah had lied to all of them. She had a secret life, a secret self that none of them had ever suspected. That image of cool perfection had been a sham. How clever her sister was, how deceitful. She had manipulated them so that she remained the favored daughter while her younger sister was the outcast.

Paige nurtured her anger, clasping it to her breast and hugging it close. She let it fill every pore so that there was no room left for fear, so that no place remained inside her where she might hide other lies—lies about herself.

Sounds began to work their way into her consciousness—exclamations, muted conversation. The guests had formed animated groups, and at any moment they would begin to descend on her. They would ply her with questions she couldn't answer and pour buckets full of pity over her head. She couldn't bear it. She had to get away.

Her battered VW was parked in the motorcourt among the Jags and Rollses, and she wove her way along the perimeter of the garden toward it. But before she slipped around the corner of the back wing, she slowed and looked back.

The groups were still huddled together. Heads were moving back and forth as everyone offered an interpretation of what had just happened. She waited for the men to reach for their pens so they could calculate the effect that this might have on the price of FBT

stock.

As she watched them, she could feel the blood rushing through her veins like a river on a rampage. Her ears were ringing. This was it! This was what she'd been waiting for. All her life she'd been waiting for this chance.

Hesitantly, she slipped her tawdry boa from her shoulders and let it fall behind an urn of roses. Then, with her heart in her throat, she began moving toward the guests. When she reached the nearest group, she gathered her strength and spoke.

"It seems a shame for all this food to go to waste. Why don't we move toward the reception tent?"

Everyone turned to her, surprised.

"Why, Paige!" one of the women exclaimed. "Poor dear. What an awful thing."

"None of us can believe it," another interjected. "Susannah, of all people."

Paige heard herself replying in a smooth, careful voice that sounded a bit like her sister's.

"She's been under a lot of pressure lately. I—We can only hope she gets the professional help she needs."

An hour later, with the small of her back aching from the tension of fielding their questions, she said good-bye to the last of the guests and entered Falcon Hill. The house enveloped her—comforting and suffocating at the same time. She walked through the deserted rooms on the first floor in search of her father and then climbed the stairs. The door to her old bedroom was shut. Nothing was there for her and she felt no temptation to go in.

Susannah's room was neat as always. The suitcases for the honeymoon waited by the door like abandoned children. Paige stepped into the adjoining bath. The marble tub and sink were immaculate. No auburn strands of hair clung to the sides, no smears of makeup spoiled the ebony surface. It was as if her sister never used the room, as if she somehow managed to emerge into the world clean and perfect—without any effort on her part.

Her father's bedroom was as orderly as Susannah's and just as empty. She found him in a small study at the back of the house, which overlooked the gardens. He was standing at the window, staring down on the shambles of his daughter's wedding.

Her stomach pitched. "Daddy?"

He turned his head and gave her a calm inquisitive stare, as if nothing of any import had happened. "Yes, Paige?"

Her fragile self-confidence deserted her. "I—I just—wanted to see if you were—were all right."

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

But as she looked more closely, she could see his pallid complexion and the harsh brackets at the corners of his mouth. His weakness gave her a sudden spurt of strength.