Games of State - Tom Clancy [87]
Eddie faxed the information to Matt. Then the long, powerful tentacles of the Kraken rested as the monster went back to watching, silently, from its secret lair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Thursday, 5:02 P.M.,
Hamburg, Germany
As he walked back to the office building, Paul Hood was showered with memories. Crisp, detailed memories of the buried but unforgotten things he and Nancy Jo had done and said to each other nearly twenty years ago.
He remembered sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Studio City, discussing whether or not they would eventually want kids. He thought they would; she definitely did not. They ate tacos and drank bitter coffee and debated the pros and cons of parenthood into the small hours of the morning.
He remembered waiting for a Paul Newman movie to start in a Westwood theater while he and Nancy discussed the House Judiciary Committee's debate on whether President Nixon should be impeached. He could still smell the popcorn she had, taste the Milk Duds he ate.
He remembered talking through the night about the future of technology after playing the black-and-white video game Pong for the first time. He should have known, by the way she whipped his butt, that that was the field she was destined to conquer.
He hadn't thought of these things in years, yet he could recall so many of the exact words, the smells and sights, Nancy Jo's expressions and what she was wearing. It was all so vivid. So was her energy. He had been smitten with that, even a little intimidated. She was the kind of woman who looked under every rock, explored each new world, looked into every fresh field. And when that lovely dervish wasn't working, she was playing with Hood in discos and in bed, yelling herself hoarse at Lakers or Rams or Kings games, shouting with frustration or delight from behind a Scrabble rack or video-game joystick, biking through Griffith Park and hiking in Bronson Caverns while she tried to find the spot where Robot Monster was filmed. Nancy could barely sit through a movie without pulling out a pad and making notes. Notes she couldn't read later because they'd been scribbled in the dark, yet that didn't matter. It was the process of thinking, of creating, of doing which had always fascinated Nancy. And it was her energy and enthusiasm and creativity and magnetism which had always fascinated him. She was like a Greek muse, like Terpsichore, her mind and body dancing here and there as Hood followed, entranced.
And goddamn you, he thought, you still are entranced.
Hood didn't want to feel the things he was feeling again. The longing. The desire to wrap his arms around that whirlwind and rush madly into the future with her. Hold on desperately to make up for all the time they had lost. He didn't want to feel it, but a big part of him did.
Christ, he yelled at himself, grow up!
But it wasn't that simple, was it? Being an adult, being sensible, would only tell, him how things happened, not what to do about them.
How did they happen? And how did Nancy manage to overwhelm the two decades of rage he felt and the new life he had built?
He could follow, as if it were a staircase, each step that had brought him to where he was now. Nancy disappeared. He slipped into despair. He met Sharon in a framing store. She was there to get her cooking school diploma framed while he was selecting a matte for his signed photo from the Governor. They talked. They exchanged numbers. He called. She was attractive, intelligent, stable. She wasn't creative outside the kitchen she loved, and she didn't glow in that same supernatural way that Nancy did. If there were such a thing as past lives, Hood could imagine a dozen or more souls flowing through Nancy's veins. You couldn't see anyone in Sharon but Sharon.
But that was good, he told himself.