"He's marvelous, Susannah," Madge had said. "I know everyone will get a lot out of his presentation. He brings slides and everything. And all of us are interested in menopause."
Susannah hadn't said a word. For a moment she had sat without moving, and then she found herself slowly lowering the receiver to the cradle and hanging up right in the middle of Madge's sentence. It was unforgivably rude, but her arm had seemed to move of its own volition. Ten minutes later she was on her way to Palo Alto.
"I-I'm sorry I'm late," she said to Sam. "There was a lot of traffic and I-"
"You lost your guts?" He ambled toward her, his walk slightly bow-legged, as if he were still riding his Harley.
"Of course not," she replied stiffly. "I just didn't leave myself enough time."
"Sure." He stopped in front of her and his gaze was openly admiring as it traveled over her coat, although what he found so fascinating about her old cashmere wraparound, she couldn't imagine. "How old are you?" he asked.
Fifty years old. Fifty-five. Ready for menopause; ripe for estrogen supplements. "I was just twenty-five last month," she replied.
He smiled. "That's great. I'm twenty-four. I knew if you were too much older than me, you'd have all kinds of hang-ups about the two of us. You look closer to thirty." He took her arm and began drawing her toward the building, apparently unaware of how rude his comment was. He must have felt her resistance because he stopped. At first he looked puzzled, and then he scowled.
"You're not used to people who say what they're thinking, are you, Suzie? Well, I don't go for any dishonest bullshit. I'm real. That's one thing you have to learn about me."
"I'm real, too," she countered, which was a perfectly ridiculous thing to say. She unsettled herself even further by adding, "Nobody seems to understand that." She was appalled. Why did she keep making these personal revelations to a man she barely knew?
He studied her with his intense dark eyes. "You're something, do you know that? Classic, elegant, efficient-like a great piece of design."
She took a shaky breath, forcing herself to speak lightly so she had time to pull back into her shell. "I don't know if I like the idea of being compared to a piece of design."
"I appreciate quality. I may not have any money, but I've always appreciated the best."
And then, unexpectedly, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her body close to his. The contact dazed her. He stared down into her face, his eyes touching her forehead, her nose, her mouth.
"Please," she whispered. "I don't think-"
"Don't think," he said, leaning forward to nuzzle her neck with his lips. "Just feel."
He was a seducer, a tempter, a peddler of patent medicines hawking his wares from the back of a Harley-Davidson, a tent-show evangelist delivering the promise of eternal life, a salesman in a sharkskin suit selling shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. He was a hustler. She knew all that. She knew it without question. But still she couldn't make herself draw away.
He tilted his head, and his mouth settled on hers. His lips were moist and warm, alive with activity. He was so lusty, so young, his skin so fresh and rough. Her hand crept upward until she rested her open palm on his jacket. She felt starved for the touch and taste of him. Her fingers constricted, grasping at the leather, and her lips parted involuntarily.
Their tongues tangled-hers tentative at first, his quicksilver and full of magical promises. She forgot about good manners, about reserve and dignity. She even forgot about being afraid as youth churned in her veins-springtime green and callow. Her blood was young and abundantly fed. She felt its surge. She grew weak beneath the spurt of rich new hormones flowing through her veins. He opened her mouth farther, slipped his hands inside her coat, pushed them under her sweater to touch her skin. He made love to her with his tongue. She moaned and leaned toward him.
It was he who finally pulled away.
"Christ," he muttered.
Appalled, she pressed her wrist over her lips. She had lost control again-just like the first time she and Cal had made love. Just like that long-ago June day when she'd slipped through the safe iron gates of Falcon Hill to chase a bundle of balloons.
"Relax, Suzie." His voice was soothing as he observed her consternation. "Don't get so uptight about everything. Take it easy."
"I can't take it easy. I'm not like you." With shaking fingers she reached into her coat pocket for her car keys. "I can't do this anymore, Sam. I'll-I'll talk to my father and ask him to meet with you. I can't do anything more."
And then, because she was frightened and couldn't think clearly, she did something incredibly stupid. It was a reflex, the involuntary response of someone who has attended too many formal receptions. Before she turned to leave, she extended her hand to him.
He looked down at it and laughed. She started to snatch her hand back, but he caught it, lifted it to his mouth and bit down hard on the ends of her fingers.
She gave a small exclamation of pain.
He sucked where he had bitten, and then kissed the tips of her fingers. "You crack me up," he said huskily. "You really do."
She wanted to bolt, but before she could get away, he caught her arm in a firm grip. "Not yet, honey. I'm not letting you leave yet."
Holding her tightly, he steered her up the steps and into the breezeway that led to the building. "I really have to go," she protested.
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to. And right now, you want to stay with me."
He led her across the lobby to the auditorium doors. Without giving her time to recover, he pulled them open and thrust her into the very epicenter of nerddom-the Homebrew Computer Club.
Her thoughts still weren't coherent, and it took her a few moments to calm her breathing pattern enough so she could adjust to the activity taking place around her. She saw several hundred people gathered in clusters about the auditorium and vaguely noted that they were an odd mixture. As her head cleared, she saw that almost all of them were male-most of them in their twenties, although some were obviously teenagers. A few wore the shirts and ties of respectable businessmen, but the majority were scruffy-many of them leftovers from the counterculture. She saw unshaven cheeks and long ponytails draping the backs of faded blue work shirts. Groups huddled around electronic equipment set up on card tables placed near the stage and across the back wall of the auditorium. Directly in front of her, a pimply-faced boy who couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen was engaged in a hot argument with a group of men who were twice his age.
An obese character with polyester pants belted above his protruding stomach passed in front of her. "Who's got an oscilloscope?" he called out. "I need to borrow a 'scope for a couple of days."
"You can borrow mine if you've got a logic probe."
Electronic parts were being passed back and forth. Schematic drawings exchanged hands. Sam gestured toward an unkempt-looking man with a sharp nose and tangled hair. "That's John Draper. He's Captain Crunch-probably the most famous phone phreak in the world."
"Phone phreak?"
"He discovered that the toy whistles packed in Captain Crunch cereal produced the same 2600 Hertz tone that the telephone company was using to move long distance calls over its lines. He dialed a number, blew the whistle into the mouthpiece, and the call went through free. Then he started mapping telephone access codes, bouncing from one trunk line to another-hitting communications satellites all over the world. He got a kick out of taking the longest possible route to call himself-sending the call through Tokyo, India, South Africa, about four or five other places-all to make a second phone ring on the table right next to him. With the time delay, he could actually talk to himself."