The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [120]
His grin melts into a theatrical pout.
“—which I’ll be requiring forthwith.”
The woman in the red smock turns on the tattoo gun and presses its rapid-fire needle into Couch’s arm.
“Um,” he says, “how forthwith?”
There is no blood, just ink and then clear fluid weltering from the punctures in the skin. No blood. The man doesn’t bleed.
“Get out your checkbook,” she says.
Business
Chas stands facing her in a white bathrobe, his neck and face red, heavy bags under his eyes, his wet gray hair combed back.
“We need to talk,” Ursula announces. Her heart is pounding. Unless she’s bleeding again, the bandage in her armpit is already sopping with sweat. He hesitates. Clearly, he doesn’t want to talk to her. But he leaves the door open, turning and walking back toward the kitchen.
She follows him in. His apartment is undecorated, modernistic and swank, with few interior walls and an almost paralyzing overabundance of open space. A wall-to-wall window looks out across the volcano crater at the crest of the Black Tower, which at the moment nudges the underside of a lone cloud like a gun muzzle to the chin of heaven. The stainless steel dining table is piled high with take-out containers. A set of free weights takes up a choice area by the window, gleaming in the sunlight. In the far corner a very large computer monitor sits on another stainless steel worktable; on the screen a cartoon Middle City is being slowly eaten away by acid rain.
She takes a seat at the kitchen counter. He keeps his back to her as he fiddles with the coffee maker. His big stone block of a head juts forward as though it might slide from his massive, hunched shoulders. He looks worn out, even more so than when she saw him in his office. She wonders if he’s been sleeping as little as she has lately, wonders whether it’s the company’s recent troubles or Ivy’s round-the-clock performances that have been keeping him up. His haggard and persecuted appearance makes her feel momentarily ashamed of what she’s about to do.
“Go ahead,” he mutters. “Talk.”
“I’ve come to make you an offer, Chas,” she says. “It’s not a bad one, under the circumstances. And I think by the time we’re done talking you’ll see you’re in no position to refuse.”
Chas doesn’t look up from the percolating coffee, but he stops moving.
“ ‘An offer,’ ” he says. “What kind of offer?”
“An offer to buy your company.”
He turns to face her, and she looks quickly down into her new briefcase, purchased specially for the occasion, trying to draw from it the confidence she desperately hoped it might give her. She takes out a stack of papers and a cashier’s check and lays them side by side on the counter. She readies a steely stare and looks up. But his stare is steelier than anything she can muster. Like a crowbar prying open her brainpan. Her eyes snap back down to the papers.
“I have here a check for a hundred thousand dollars,” she goes on, her nervous energy tripping the rehearsed words into motion. “From what I understand, you put fifty thousand dollars of your own money into Ivy’s bedroom. So what you see here is a check for twice that amount.”
In the periphery of her vision she sees him approach. He stands opposite her and sets his palms down on the counter.
“Yes,” he says evenly. “That’s twice what I put in the room. And a small fraction of what the company is worth.”
“Be that as it may,” she says, “that’s the highest your prospective buyer is prepared to go. It’s going to take a lot of work to free the company from all the debt and bad publicity you’ve saddled it with. Tomorrow may not be profitable again for some time.”
She feels him looming over her.
“My prospective buyer,” he says quietly. “Who would that be?”
“That would be James T. Couch,” she says. “As you can see from the check.”
In the ensuing silence the back of her neck charges with static electricity, the same feeling that she once got driving through what would momentarily become a lightning field.
“And why,” Chas says, “did James T. Couch send you, of all