“You’re getting better,” she said. “You have a shot at ‘Most Improved Naked Man.’ ”
“I’d like to think I was already smart enough to appreciate you, and never let myself forget how special you are, even after a few years of getting our strawberries in supermarkets like other people.” His hand moved gently from her shoulder down her side to her hip, thigh, knee, shin, foot. “But I’m glad you took me on the field trip.”
“Me too.”
He said quietly, “It’s not like you to waste all this wisdom on the first naked man you meet in a strawberry patch. To make it worthwhile, you’d almost have to marry me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
4
The boardroom for Pleasure, Inc., overlooked the Polynesian water slide. Somebody had once joked that the architect’s plans had been folded and the contractor hadn’t noticed. It sounded true because mistakes in Las Vegas were not little slipups that made a few chips fall between the floorboards. They were hideous, gargantuan blunders, like building a billion-dollar casino on ground that was a foot lower than the adjacent square mile of parking lots, so the whole place got inundated with water in a flash flood every five years. But the location of the Pleasure Island boardroom had been no mistake; it had been a suggestion from Calvin Seaver, vice president for security.
Seaver stepped from the elevator and stared out through the double layer of one-way glass at the beautiful waterfall and the rocks and the lush tropical plants and flowers. He saw a pair of boys—he guessed eight and ten years old from the memory of his own boys—and then the father, a guy in his late thirties with a little baby fat around his middle and a U.S.N. anchor tattoo that showed he wasn’t troubled with neck pains from holding up his brain. They stood on the platform ten feet from Seaver, waiting for something. He guessed it was Mom. And there she was. Not bad. A trace of cellulite in the haunches and sag in the tits, but nothing for her to worry about. She plunked down at the top of the slide with them, and all four went slipping down, around, under the waterfall, and out of sight. Good for them.
Seaver was trained to feel a presumptive hostility, watching the guests for some sign that they were going to cause a need for his services, but the reason he was the best was that he could tell the sheep from the goats. These were sheep. They wouldn’t know how to cause trouble, because it wasn’t in their nature. During their stay they would never know that he was watching over them, protecting them while they played and while they slept, making sure that nothing disturbed the artificial tranquility around them.
Those four were evidence that things were going beautifully. They would stay maybe five days. Mom and Dad would get a taste of canned glamour and carefully controlled risk. The boys would spend some time in the virtual-reality arcades, getting the feel of paying money to get excitement, and ensure Pleasure, Inc., of repeat business for the next fifty years. The family would pay Pleasure, Inc., more than they spent on this year’s taxes to their home state, and then they’d be gone.
The goats were different—card counters and con men and shortchange artists and call girls and pickpockets—always trying to fade in among the sheep, but restless. He knew half of them by sight, but he didn’t need to. He could detect it in their eyes the first time he saw them. They were hungry. He had sensed something too eager in Pete Hatcher’s eyes early on, but he had misinterpreted it. His mistake was in accepting the bosses’ assurances that all Hatcher was after was pussy.
He glanced at his watch and moved on down the hallway. Seaver was probably the only one who could see this part of the complex clearly when he looked at it. The elevators and the long, narrow hallway gave his people plenty of time and means to isolate anyone who had some business that wasn’t on the board’s agenda. The double panes of one-way glass kept anyone from amplifying the vibrations to pick up a conversation or using any sort of photography. Being next to the water slide ensured that nobody who wasn’t wearing a bathing suit could get close, and anybody scanning with a directional microphone from a distance would pick up the waterfall and eighty customers talking about nothing.
It wasn’t the sort of security that an underground room would have, but it had worked well enough so far. What he was worried about these days was some kind of futuristic emergency—some loser driving a car bomb through the front entrance, or some Japanese cult releasing nerve gas in the climate-control system. He had consultants working on countermeasures, but so far nothing they had brought him was good enough to bring to the big guys. All the plans involved lots of rebuilding to make space for some strategy they could not guarantee would work.
The big guys were never reluctant to spend money on remodeling. What they hated was having to shut anything down while they did it. But Seaver believed in outside consultants, and he was confident that they would solve these problems, one by one. Security was a matter of batting down specific threats. Nothing worked all of the time for all purposes.
He opened the door to the boardroom, stepped inside onto the thick carpet, and quietly took a seat at the enormous rosewood table. The door closed silently behind him. The automatic closer had been Seaver’s idea too. The time when people were going in and out was a gaping breach in the room’s integrity. Anyone who managed to defeat the other obstacles could learn a lot by picking up a few seconds here and there and studying what he had heard.
This time there was no meeting of the Management Team. The only ones in the room were the big guys themselves, Bobby Salateri, Max Foley, and Peter Buckley. They met this way more often than people would think, to talk without the twenty upper-level functionaries who ran housekeeping or finance or public relations or security.
Peter Buckley first deigned to notice Seaver. “Morning, Cal.”
“Peter,” said Seaver. Then he added, “Bobby, Max,” as the others saw him. Then he waited. They took their time, and it was a compliment to him.
“Having water misters all over the place is okay this year. It’s okay next year,” said Salateri. “How does it look ten years from now? I mean politically?”
“It’s not exactly all over the place,” said Foley. “It’s just on the golf courses. The sun shelters are already plumbed. It’s just a matter of installing these little fixtures around the roof. That’s thirty-six misters. They’ll make the players feel cool and comfortable.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Salateri. “It’s nothing, really. But every single time some TV station does a report on wasting water I see footage of misters over some hot dog stand.”
“The estimate says the trees around the shelters will catch some of the water and the shade will keep the mist from evaporating as fast. If there’s ever rationing, it’s just that much more water grandfathered in.”
“That’s a point I hadn’t thought of,” said Salateri. “I can buy it on that basis. How about you, Peter?”
“Sure,” said Buckley. “If things really get stupid, we’ve got something we can give away: Pleasure Island shuts down misters to save water.”
“I’ll have them go ahead,” said Foley. He turned to Seaver. “Little problem last night, huh, Cal?”
“Yes,” said Seaver. “I wish I had some excuse. I don’t.”
“So where does that leave us now?” asked Buckley.
“Hatcher wasn’t on any flight leaving McCarran, or a train. A bus is too haphazard for him. He undoubtedly drove out. If he had the sense to keep driving, he could be in Chicago by now.” He reached into his breast pocket. “My resignation is ready, if you want it.”