The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [119]
Ursula stares at him wide-eyed, her effort to appear nonchalant forgotten.
“You’re kidding” is all she can manage to say.
The red-smocked woman places a second leech below the design on Couch’s arm.
“As you see,” Couch replies with a little laugh, “you’re in an excellent bargaining position. I can’t pull this off without you, and I don’t know what more I can offer. The company isn’t worth terribly much in its present condition, of course. We’d be starting out with some debt, and it might be an uphill battle at first to regain our client base. But with a little of the old elbow grease there’s no reason we couldn’t be in the black again in a couple of years’ time.”
He looks at her searchingly. She lets him wait, picking up her knife and fork and cutting into her steak. For the first time in days, years, maybe for the first time ever, Ursula feels totally in control of her life. She knows she’ll help him carry out his plan, whatever it is, if there’s any chance at all it’ll get that website shut down and Ivy safely back in her care. She knows, furthermore, that she’s in a position to make Couch pay for her services. But she also knows she has no interest in running a trend-spotting agency, not with James T. Couch or anyone else. She’s through with marketing. This much she’s sure of, even if she hasn’t the faintest idea what she wants to do instead.
She looks around the room, stalling for time. At a nearby table a middle-aged woman with blond ringletted hair lies prone on a padded, inclined bench. Her earth-tone cashmere sweater is pulled up, revealing the small of her back; a white towel like the one Couch wears is draped over the back of her legs, leaving one buttock bared. As a waiter feeds the ringletted woman spoonfuls of soup, a burly man in a red smock extracts a metal rod from an open cart full of hot coals. At the end of the rod is a brand glowing bright orange, too bright for Ursula to make out the design or even discern whether it is image or text. Holding the rod firmly in both hands, the red-smocked man presses the brand into the woman’s buttock. The woman lets out a shriek, not quite loud or long enough to cover the sound of sizzling flesh, and the sight reminds Ursula of her own recent scarification, so vividly that her underarm throbs with pain. The man removes the brand and then, before Ursula can make out the pattern of the red welt, slathers the woman’s wound over with white ointment. It looks so cooling, so soothing, the man’s fingers caressing the salve into her skin, that Ursula’s own sympathetic pain instantly subsides.
Then she smiles, the answer having come to her.
“Javier,” she says. “I want Javier to be the president.”
Couch barks out a laugh that stops abruptly when she doesn’t join in and he sees she’s not kidding.
“Javier? Ursula, look, Javier’s a good field agent, but, well, you know, a president has to inspire confidence, make strategic-type decisions, you know, that sort of thing.”
“You haven’t seen him lately,” she replies calmly, cutting herself another hunk of steak. “He’s transformed himself, James. It’s incredible. You’d barely recognize him. He’s stable, he’s responsible, he’s all into preparing himself for the future—he’s even doing some inner-city program, taking care of a kid. I mean it, James. Javier would be perfect. And you said yourself the clients like him.”
Couch thinks about this. “Well, that’s true. He’s certainly personable enough. And I could still take care of all the tricky wheeling and dealing stuff, I suppose.” He grins. “Sure. President Javier. That works for me, Ursula. I’m a reasonable man.”
“And