“That was pretty quick,” Jade sniffed.
Johansen shrugged. “It happens that way, sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Haven’t you ever fallen in love at first sight?”
She tried to conjure up Raki’s image in her mind. The drinks she had been swilling made her head spin slightly.
“Yes, I guess I have, at that,” she said at last. That smile of his made her head swim even more.
Johansen looked out across the grassy hills that stretched below them to the edge of the toylike village. Sunlight filtering through the big solar windows slanted long shadows down there.
“It’s going to be sunset pretty soon,” he said. “I know a fine little restaurant down in Gunnstown, if you’re ready for dinner.”
“Gunnstown?” she asked.
“That’s the name of the village down there.” He pointed with an outstretched arm.
“Should I change?”
Grinning, “I like you the way you are.”
“My clothes,” she said.
He cocked his head slightly. “It’s a very nice little continental restaurant. Tablecloths and candles, that sort of thing.”
She said, “Meet me at my hotel room in an hour.”
When he called for her, precisely one hour later, Johansen was wearing a comfortable pair of soft blue slacks and a slate-gray velour pullover, the closest thing to formal attire on the space habitat. Jade had shopped furiously in Gunnstown’s only two boutiques until she found a miniskirted sleeveless frock of butter-yellow.
Once they were sitting across a tiny table, with a softly glowing candle between them, she saw that Johansen was staring at her intently.
Almost uncomfortable, Jade tried to return to the subject of Sam Gunn.
But Johansen said, “Your eyes are beautiful, you know? The prettiest I’ve ever seen.”
Silently Jade retorted, Prettier than Bonnie Jo’s? But she dared not say it aloud. Instead, she said:
“Just before you suggested dinner, you were telling me about Bonnie Jo.” Jade struggled to keep her voice even. “About falling in love with her.”
It wasn’t a tough thing to do—Johansen replied. I had expected a spoiled rich kid. Her father, the banker, had insisted on having one of his own people join the VCI team as treasurer. Apparently his daughter insisted just as stubbornly that she take the job. So there she was, at the desk we shoehorned into our one little office, two feet away from mine.
She had degrees in economics and finance from BYU, plus an MBA from Wharton. She really knew her business. And she was strictly no-nonsense. Sam wined and dined her, of course, but it didn’t go any further than that, far as I could tell. I knew Sam had no real intention of getting married to anybody. I didn’t think she did, either. Or if she did, she was willing to wait until VCI started making big bucks.
We were all living practically hand-to-mouth, with every cent we got from the government and from Bonnie Jo’s father’s bank poured into building the hardware for removing debris from orbit. Bonnie Jo was never hurting for spending money, of course, but she never lorded it over us. The weeks rolled by and we sort of became a real team: you know, working together every day, almost living together, you come to know and respect each other. Or you explode.
Bonnie Jo even started helping Melinda in her personal life. Gave her hints about her clothes. Even went on a diet with her; not that Bonnie Jo needed it, but Melinda actually started to slim down a little. They started going to exercise classes down the way in the shopping mall.
I was giving myself a cram course in romantic poetry and passing it all on to Larry. On Valentine’s Day he wanted to give Melinda a big heart-shaped box of chocolates. I suggested flowers instead. I figured she wouldn’t eat flowers, although I wasn’t altogether certain.
“And write a note on the card they put in with the flowers,” I insisted.
He gulped. “Sh-should I s-s-s-sign my n-n-name?”
“Damned right.”
Larry turned pale. But I marched him to the florist section of the supermarket and we picked out a dozen posies for her. I towed him to the counter where they had a little box full of blank cards. I handed him my government-issue ballpoint pen, guaranteed to write under water or in zero gravity.
He looked at me, panic-stricken. “Wh-what’ll I say?”
I thought for a second. “ ‘To the woman who has captured my heart,’ ” I told him.
He scribbled on the little card. His handwriting was awful.
“Sign it.”
He stared at me.
“Better yet,” I said. “Just put your initial. Just an ‘L.’ ”
He did that. We snuck the bouquet into the office while Melinda and Bonnie Jo were out at their exercise class. Larry laid the flowers on her desk with a trembling hand.
Well, the last time I had watched a scene like what followed was in an old video called “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” Melinda sort of went into shock when she saw the flowers on her desk, but only for a moment. She read the card, then spun around toward Larry—who looked white as a sheet, scared—and launched herself at him. Knocked him right off his desk chair.
Sam gave them the rest of the day off. It was Friday, so they had the whole weekend to themselves.
A few minutes after the lovers left the office, Sam frowned at his computer screen.
“I gotta check out the superconducting coils down at the Cape,” he said. “Those suckers in Massachusetts finally delivered them. Arrived this morning.”
Two weeks late. Not good, but within the tolerable limits we had set in our schedule. The manufacturer in Massachusetts had called a couple months earlier and said that delivery would be three months late, due to a big order they had to rush for Rockledge International.
Sam had screamed so loud and long into the phone that I thought every fiber-optic cable between Florida and Massachusetts would have melted. The connection actually broke down three times before he finished convincing our manufacturing subcontractor that: (a) their contract with us had heavy penalty clauses for late delivery; (b) since this order from Rockledge had come in after our order we clearly had priority; and (c) this was obviously an attempt by Rockledge to sabotage us.
“Tell your goddamned lawyers to stock up on NoDoz,” Sam yelled into the phone. “I’m going to sue you sneaking, thieving bastards sixteen ways from Sunday! You’ll go down the tubes, buddy. Bankrupt. Broke. Dead in the water. Kaput! You just watch!”
He slammed the phone down hard enough to make the papers on my desk bounce.
“But Sam,” I had pleaded, “if you tie them up or shut them down we’ll go out of business with them. We need that superconducting coil. And the backup.”
A sly grin eased across his face. “Don’tcha think I know that? I’m just putting the fear of lawyers into them. Now” he reached for the phone again, “to put the fear of God almighty into them.”
I didn’t eavesdrop on purpose, but our desks were jammed so close together that I couldn’t help hearing him ask for Albert Clement. At the Department of Commerce.
Sam’s tone changed enormously. He was stiffly formal with Clement, almost respectful, explaining the situation and his suspicion that Rockledge was trying to club us to death with their money. I wondered if this guy Clement was the same Commerce Department undertaker who had been at the evaluation hearing in D.C.
Well, it all got straightened out. The next day I got a very apologetic phone call from the director of contracts at the Massachusetts firm, some guy with an Armenian name. Terrible misunderstanding. Of course they wouldn’t let this enormous order from Rockledge get in the way of delivering what they had promised to us. On schedule, absolutely. Maybe a week or so late, nothing more than that. Guaranteed. On his mother’s grave.