The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [123]
“Hey, Ursula, can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Have you ever done it in a taxi?” His eyebrows inchworm over his glasses. His high-wattage smile heats up his cheeks.
“Not that I can remember.”
“Oh, ho! So I’ve got to get you drunk, is that it?”
The eyes of the cabdriver swivel toward her in the rearview.
“You’d have to get me a lot more than drunk, James.”
“OK. What else? You name it!”
“Get me a lobotomy—that might help your chances.”
“Touché!” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Oh, I’m sorry. Intrigue just gets my blood flowing.”
The cab turns onto Conein Avenue, and Ursula tries rolling her head around, but it’s too painful; her shoulders are as taut as steel cables. Excitement wells up in her as she thinks about seeing Javier. President Javier. She wonders how he’ll take the news. He won’t believe it at first. She’ll have to convince him it’s true. He’ll look from her to Couch, and gradually he’ll start to believe, and he’ll start smiling that heartbreaking smile of his, and his eyes will tear up, as hers are doing now just picturing the scene.
The car slows, pulls to the curb outside the Pangloss. It seems darker than when they got in the cab a few minutes ago. James takes a twenty- dollar bill from his wallet and slips it into the cabby’s outstretched hand. The fare is $19.65. “Keep the change, my friend, you deserve it,” he says, patting the man’s shoulder steak of a shoulder. He pushes Ursula out onto the sidewalk, hops out behind her, and shuts the door just in time to muffle the cabbie’s curses.
“You’re a real smooth operator, James.”
“You’re too kind,” he replies, sliding his arm under hers as they traverse the hotel’s gargantuan atrium. A glass-walled elevator arrives; they board, and immediately the lobby floor sinks away, a living mandala of shopping, dining, loitering. They look up and watch the rotunda ceiling approach, the red, green, and blue suns blazing merrily away in the artificial sky like the lights of some cosmic projection TV set.
They disembark on the fortieth floor and make their way along the curved terrace walkway, the conveyor-belt product display keeping time with them just below the balcony rail, a bulky platinum watch and then a silver-lined fog-free shaving mirror happily riding along on dark velvet pillows. Far below, on the atrium’s floor, the burnished steel of the Pangloss Restaurant gleams in the indoor lighting, each of its four sides resembling a giant silver trailer home seen lengthwise. When they get to Javier’s door, Couch sidles up beside Ursula and sneaks his hand up to the small of her back. She reaches behind her, removes the hand, and knocks.
No answer. She knocks again.
“Javier?”
They wait a moment longer, then Couch tries the knob. “It’s open,” he whispers. He gives it a push and lets it swing inward.
“Javier?” she calls out.
They step in. A suite, with white carpeting, white furniture, pearl-white walls. The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows takes advantage of the hotel’s odd position at the foot of Conein Avenue, looking straight up the canyon of office buildings to the volcano’s peak. Stark against the sky at the very top of the avenue, the statue of God stoops rheumatically atop the volcano’s rim. The soot has recently been cleaned from his face, making his features—the bulging eyes, the broom-bristle eyebrows, the two oversize