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Fran Paoli turned up the music, but Valentine could still hear if he concentrated. "So I like to go to bed with more than a good book."
"Someday it's going to bite you."
"Mmmmm, kinky. But don't fret. I can handle this hillwilly."
"He's after status and that's it. Don't fool yourself."
* * * *
Valentine looked for Reapers in the woods as the truck approached Xanadu, but couldn't see or sense them. The security guard hardly used his flashlight when the SUV reached the gate. Fran Paoli waggled her fingers at him and he waved twice at the gate, and the fencing parted in opposite directions.
She drove up a concrete, shrub-lined roadway and pulled into a gap under the south tower. "Two-one-six, entering," she said into her mouthpiece, working a button on the dashboard, and a door on tracks rolled up into the ceiling. The SUV made it inside the garage-just-and parked in the almost-empty lot. A few motorbikes, a pickup, some golf carts, and a low, sleek sports car were scattered haphazardly among the concrete supporting pillars like cows sleeping in a wood. A trailer with an electric gasoline pump attached was set up on blocks near the door.
"You'll like the Grand Towers. You mind helping with the groceries?"
Valentine took two crates, Oriana one.
They walked past a colorful mural, silhouettes of children throwing a ball to each other while a dog jumped, and Fran Paoli passed her security ID card over a dark glass panel. An elevator opened. It smelled like pine-scented cleanser inside. Soft music played from hidden speakers.
"Home," Fran Paoli said, and the elevator doors closed.
"You don't have to hit a button?" Valentine asked.
"I could. It's voiceprint technology. A couple of the techs on the security staff like to tinker with old gizmos."
"I wish they could get an MRI working," Oriana said.
Valentine looked in his boxes on the ride up. Foil-wrapped crackers, a tin of something called "pate," a bottle of olive oil with a label in writing Valentine thought looked like Cyrillic, artichokes, fragrant peaches, sardines, a great brick of chocolate with foil lettering . . .
The elevator let them out on a parquet-floored hallway. If there was a floor higher than twelve the elevator buttons didn't indicate it. Lighting sconces added soft smears of light to the maroon walls.
Fran Paoli held Oriana's groceries while she let herself in. "Good night. Call if you want your rounds covered."
"Thanks, O."
Oriana thanked Valentine as she took her box of foodstuffs- slightly more mundane instant mixes and frozen packages with frost-covered labels. Her door had a laminated plate in a slide next to it: ORIANA KREML, MD.
"I'm at the end of the hall, Tar-baby," Fran Paoli said.
She led him down, putting an extra swivel in her walk. Valentine clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in time to her stride. She twirled her keys on their wrist loop.
The door at the end read EXECUTIVE MEDICAL DIRECTOR. She opened it and Valentine passed through a small reception office-a computer screen cast a soft glow against a leather office chair-and a larger meeting room with an elegantly shaped glass conference table. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected only the darkness outside and their faces. Lights came on as she moved through the space to a frosted-glass partition. Valentine marked a telescope at the glass corner she passed.
A casual living space and then a kitchen. Valentine set the boxes down on a small round table, and extracted the fresh fruits and vegetables.
"Stay for a drink?" Fran Paoli asked.
* * * *
Fran Paoli snored softly beside him in postcoital slumber.
Her makeup was on the sheet, him, and the oh-so-soft pillowcases, and she gave off a faint scent of sweet feminine perspiration and rose-scented baby powder. She made love like some women prepared themselves for bed, following a long-practiced countdown that evidently gave her a good deal of pleasure.
Valentine thought of "Arsie," the professional he'd met at that Quisling party in Little Rock. Was this how it was for her? Did she feel like her body was an apparatus as her customers took what they wanted ?
Valentine engaged in the lovemaking with-perhaps clinical detachment was the right word. It had been fun; Fran Paoli's hunger for him, the way she discovered his scars and touched them, licked them, gently as though drawing some mixture of the pain they represented and taking pleasure from them, both motherly and sexual, healing and arousing; while he'd become instantly erect at the first touch of her full, falling breasts and flesh-padded hips. She touched his erection, squeezed it as though testing its tensile strength, clawed and gasped and bucked out her satisfaction with its quality, and then brought him back again after he spent himself into the black-market condom-a thin-walled novelty that made Southern Command's prophylactics feel like rain ponchos.
"You can get a shortwave radio easier than these," she said, and she passed him the second plastic oval.
