"I'd go anyway and watch somebody else read my speech."
"You're the stubbornest damned cracker I ever met," Remo said.
"Are you finished threatening me?"
"I guess so. Unless I can think of something else to do to you."
"All right. I'm going. That's that. If you can't do anything about it, forget it. I'll take my chances."
"Aaah, you politicians make me sick." Remo was moving through the blackness of the room toward the door.
The President's voice followed him.
"I'm not really worried, Remo," he said.
"That proves one of two things. You're brave or stupid."
"No. Just confident."
"What have you got to be confident about?" Remo said, as he paused with his hand on the doorknob.
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"You," the President said. "You'll work something out. I trust you."
"Crap. I don't need that," Remo said. "Don't lose those braces. Dentists aren't cheap for kids with dead fathers."
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Actually, cripples didn't turn her on, but Viola Poombs was willing to sacrifice herself for her art.
So she dressed in a light blue wool sweater she had bought expressly because it would shrink to non-fit, and a tight white linen skirt that squeezed her buttocks like a pair of loving hands.
She had no intention of taking the clothes off, not that night, not for Sylvester Montrofort. Lookies, but no feelies. Maybe even a brush-touchie, but definitely no feelies.
She was admitted to Montrofort's penthouse apartment by a butler in a swallowtail coat, who took her light white shawl and managed to re-strict his expression of distaste at her clothing to a quarter-inch lift of only one eyebrow.
When he led her into the dining room, Montrofort was already sitting in his wheelchair at the far side of an oak table, laden with shimmering crystal glasses and polished dinnerware and golden vermeil.
"Miss Poombs, sir," the butler announced as he escorted Viola into the high-ceilinged room, il-
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luminated only by real candles in real candela-bras placed about the room.
When Montrofort saw her, his eyes widened. He rolled his wheelchair back out from between the legs of the small dining table and like a demented crab rolled around the table toward her at high speed. The butler was already pulling her chair away from the table. Montrofort slapped the man's wrist lightly.
'Til do that," he said.
Viola stood alongside the chair as Montrofort pulled it away from the table. She moved over to sit down, but as she did, the right rear leg of the chair caught in the spokes of the right wheel of Montrofort's wheelchair. Viola sat down, but caught only the edge of the chair, threatening to tip it forward.
She reached down to pull the chair under herself. The chair wouldn't move. She gave it a yank. The yank pulled the chair forward. It also pulled forward Montrofort's wheelchair because the brakes were off. The back of her chair pushed forward by the free-rolling Montrofort smashed against her backside with enough force to slam her face forward onto the table. Her head hit the dinner plate. Two crystal glasses fell over and shattered.
The wind was knocked from Viola's lungs as the edge of the table dug deep into her belly. She lay with her head on the plate, gasping for air.
"How nice to see you, my dear," said Montrofort. He was still struggling surreptitiously to free Viola's chair leg from his wheel.
He finally wrenched it loose with a giant tug of his muscular arms. Just at that moment, Viola caught her breath and straightened up. The back
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of the chair thrust ceilingward missed rapping Viola at the base of the skull by only a fraction of an inch.
Viola was standing now and Montrofort held her chair in his hands at eye level.
"Shit," he hissed under his breath. "Shall we try again, my dear?" he asked in a normal voice.
He rolled himself back a foot, placed Viola's chair on the floor, all four legs planted solidly, and motioned for Viola to sit down. Two feet from the table.
"Comfortable, child?" Montrofort asked.
"Yes. Very," said Viola, She stood up and leaned over to get a glass of water from the table, then sat back down on the chair. Montrofort stared at her buttocks as she moved. The butler hovered nearby, uncertain whether to come forward to help or not. He now moved into position to remove the shattered Waterford crystal from the table.
"Not now, Raymond," Montrofort said. "Just bring the wine."
Montrofort left Viola sitting in her chair, two feet from the table, and wheeled himself around to its other side.
He took up his dining position facing Viola, who still sat two feet from the table. Montrofort wore a powder blue foulard scarf around the open neck of his midnight blue velvet smoking jacket. He touched it and smiled. "We're color coordinated," he said.
Viola looked blank. "My tie and your sweater," he said. "Color coordinated."
"You'll have to talk louder," Viola said. "I'm so far away I can't hear you."
Montrofort let out an animal growl. He
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reached both arms under the full table and lifted it six inches off the ground, then hunched his body forward to start his wheelchair rolling. It stopped with the edge of the table four inches from Viola's lovely belly and he carefully set the table down on the floor. And on Viola's right foot. She screamed and pulled her foot out from under the table leg.
"Are you all right?" Montrofort asked.
"I'm fine. I'm fine," she said with a smile. "It's really a nice table. I'm glad to be sitting here."
Montrofort wheeled himself into position at his end of the table, put his elbows on the table, his face in his hands, and smiled his rich broad smile at the woman. "I'm really pleased that you could come," he said.
He stared at her bosom. Viola noticed the stare and took her hands from the table in front of her, so her chest could be stared at with nothing in the way to impede the stare. She pressed her shoulders against the back of the chair, imagining that she was trying to make her shoulder-blades touch.
Montrofort's eyes widened. "Where is that butler with that wine?" he growled.
Viola imitated a yawn and stretched her arms over her head. Her breasts rose under the thin blue sweater. The itchy fabric felt good against her bare skin.
Montrofort's eyes did not leave her. His mouth was working again, but nothing came out.
"You look lovely tonight, my dear. Especially lovely."
"Do you know anything about residuals on a TV adaptation of a book?" Viola asked.
Raymond returned with a bottle of wine, the
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first step in Montrofort's elegant and pure seduction plan. He was going to pour as much wine in Viola Poombs as it took to get her loaded, and then he was going to screw her eyes out.
"I'll ring when I want you again, Raymond," Montrofort said. He lifted the glass that Raymond had filled and held it up toward the candlelit chandelier over the table.
"A Vouvray petillant," he explained. "Very rare. Very exquisite. Like you. Shall I make the toast?"
Viola shrugged. She had already drunk half her glass of wine. She lowered it. "No, I'll make the toast."
She poured more of the $31-a-bottle wine into her goblet. Some spilled out onto the table. She hoisted the glass over her head. "To money," she said. "To us," Montrofort corrected blandly. "To money and us," said Viola, then drained the glass of wine in one crazed gulp. "Pour me some more of that, will you?"
"Certainly, my dear. I did not fully share in your toast to money because I have all the money I shall ever need."
Viola's eyes rose from the table to meet Montrofort's. All the money he wanted. "All the money you want?" she said.
"AH and more," said Montrofort, handing her back her wine glass, filled again.
He smiled at her. He really did have a nice smile, Viola thought. Nice teeth. He probably had had a good dentist. A good team of dentists working on his mouth. When one had all the money he could want, all and more, well, he could afford any kind of teeth he wanted. It was good for