Smoke Ch. 05

Thursday afternoon, Martine and Cindy helped George wash down the tables in the coffee shop. Every three days after that, Cindy moved from one position to another, learning every aspect necessary to keeping Raymond's running smoothly. Fortunately, washing dishes was something she didn't have to do although she had watched John do it enough.

"Boy, this is hard on your feet," Cindy said, rubbing her toes during her break.

"You need to get some better shoes. Wait... I have an extra pair at the house, you can use them until... ah, just keep them; they're practically new. I'll have them for you, tomorrow."

**********

"Oh, God, yes, right there," she moaned. "C'mon, Greg, push harder, will you?" On her stomach, she moved from side to side on the bed as he moved his hands over her back. Arching her back up toward him, she almost cried. "Harder... oh, yeah, there."

Greg continued scratching her back. Cindy sometimes had an itch she couldn't reach and even though he had suggested rubbing against the doorjamb of the bedroom, she preferred his fingernails leaving red marks across her otherwise lightly-tanned skin.

**********

Every Monday, the restaurant was closed and Martine spent the day teaching Cindy how to bake at Greg's apartment. "Make sure," she said, "that you take your engagement ring off or it's liable to end up in the pie dough and be gone."

Cindy rolled the dough through some flour into a ball, dropped it into a bowl, covered it with a cloth and left it to rise on the stove top for the evening's bread.

Turning back to the kitchen table, she started on the next project. She took two sticks of butter and two cups of sugar and creamed them together until the mix started to fluff up. Turning on the mixer to low, she added in the eggs and vanilla and then finally added the flour, oats, raisins and cinnamon.

"These cinnamon bars will be ready just in time for lunch. Are you about done with those nuts?" she asked, taking a handful of raisins and popping them into her mouth.

"I'm going outside," Martine said, "it's too hot in here right now with that oven on. This is worse than the restaurant. You should speak to Greg about getting some air conditioning in here." She left the kitchen, carrying her cloth bag of peanuts. Cindy slid in the two trays of homemade sweet rolls.

Martine sat in the patio shade, shelling peanuts into a pink Tupperware bowl for homemade peanut butter cookies. Last week, chocolate chip cookies had been the lesson and batch after batch after batch had left the oven to be scrutinized and tasted. The first dozen or two had gone straight into the trash. While good enough to eat, they didn't meet Martine's strict standards and it wasn't until the fifth batch that she was completely satisfied. By the end of the day, the kitchen counters and the dining table were covered with hundreds of cookies.

"Enough here for a bake sale..." Cindy had said, looking at all the cookies.

"They're going to St. Joseph's Orphanage..." Her voice dropped off and she had a far-away look.

Cindy remembered looking at Martine and wondering what hidden secret lay behind those eyes. "How're things with Joseph? You seem very happy."

"Oh, yes, I am. I can't believe how much time we lost since I was so stupid and he was so stubborn. All this time, the children we could have had. Sometimes, it makes me cry all the more."

"But, that's all past, right? I mean, tomorrow is here, finally, isn't it?"

"Yes. I just want children, even if it's only one. Someone that will live on when we're gone, a piece of the future..."

"Oh, that's so romantic," Cindy said, wiping a flour-dusted hand across her face. "I hope that Greg and I have children. I'd like a boy and a girl and a dog."

Martine laughed. "I think the dog part is going to be a little hard on you, don't you think?"

Cindy had a blank look on her face and then she turned red. "Martine! You have a nasty mind."

Martine kept an eye on the grilling chickens as they slowly spun on the rotisserie. Tomorrow, at the restaurant, she would crack walnuts for more cookies. She got up to baste the birds one last time, inhaling the aroma. 'Twenty more minutes,' she thought, 'and it's lunch time.' Even with the melted butter, the two chickens were lower in fat than anything she could fry up on the stove.

It was better this way, the two women decided, a unilateral decision. Everyone would eat better, live longer and feel better. They wouldn't be this young forever and both women were now thinking about having children. Martine could hear her maternal clock loudly banging away.

Last week, Martine removed all the sweets in both houses and took them to the backyard incinerator. They burned quite well, she thought, quite well indeed. For a moment, she thought the old cement was going to crack from the heat. 'Let's face it,' she thought, 'I'm addicted to chocolate.' Keeping them in the house was too great a temptation for either woman and while Cindy was able to exercise, both in the bedroom and out, Martine was approaching forty. She wanted to look good for her husband. She wanted a baby.

She had been shocked when she found he had never signed the final papers and they had been married all these years apart. How she had never known was a mystery to her but since she never tried to remarry or even date...

Although the sweets were gone, doomed to the inferno, she kept a small supply of Hershey's Kisses hidden from everyone, especially her husband. Whether or not there was an inherent contradiction in her thinking never occurred to her. The apartment was full of cookies...

**********

Joseph and Greg were on friendly terms, although not nearly as well as Martine and Cindy. Sitting across from each other, with a butter-basted chicken between them, they quietly listened to the two women chat away about baby clothes and cooking. Greg could see Joseph raise an eyebrow at Martine when she mentioned having a child.

Joseph wondered whether that was such a good idea. He, himself, was forty-two and a little math in his head made him worry. A twenty-year-old boy or girl and he would be in his sixties. The thought made him shudder. With the demands of the restaurant already pressing hard on his shoulders and the desire to make his marriage work, the added stress of a child... 'Would she want to stop at one,' he wondered. 'Would I have the patience necessary to raise a child at that age? Someone has not thought this completely through,' he thought and yet, he had no desire to destroy the reunion he had with his wife. He resolved to give her a child if that's what it took to make her happy and prayed that wouldn't be an even bigger mistake of his life.

**********

That evening, Cindy and Greg walked hand in hand while he continued stealing kisses every few steps under the glow of the street lights marking their way. Every now and then, she touched him playfully with a promise of more to come.

Finally, they reached the beach a block away, scene of so many soul-searches for both of them as they decided what to do with their lives together... if there was a life together.

They sat on the sand, still holding hands, watching the stars. After a while, he leaned over and kissed her, a soft kiss, a slow kiss, lips to lips.

"Oh! Look!" she exclaimed as two meteors flashed overhead, brightly scratching the deep blackness of the sky. "Make a wish," she tried to say but he covered her mouth with his and made his own wish.

She felt his arms surround her, bringing her impossibly closer as she turned her head up. He moved to kiss her again. "Thank you for giving me my life back," she whispered. "The day we met was my salvation. I don't know what I would be, would do if we had never met.

"Greg, I love you with all my heart."

Another meteor silently lit up the beach as it briefly crossed the night sky. That was how he felt his love was for her... hot, bright, and oh, so special.

"Have I told you that I love you?" he asked, not expecting an answer from the woman in his arms.

"You don't have to. I see your love in everything you do but I DO know that something's been bothering you and I'm not talking about... you know, about that. What's wrong, honey? Have I done something wrong?"

He tensed. "You know that goof we took home? I wanted to kill the guy, I was so angry."

"I'm sorry I asked him to come with us. I wasn't thinking, that's for sure and I never thought he'd be such a stupid... boy. It doesn't matter, does it? I'm never seeing him again and I'm done going to school. It'll never happen again, I swear to God. I just thought I was being nice."

Greg said nothing, letting her say it all. He felt better, even if she was a little embarrassed. He didn't want to have to worry about her every second of the day and the car ride home had hurt him... that his fears had been met so soon after he had realized them was terrifying. What other fears did he have hidden away in his subconscious?

**********

The next morning, Elliot Cooper and his wife Sophia were sitting at the breakfast table. "Elliot, dear, you're not still mad about what happened, are you?" asked Sophia, taking another drag on her cigarette. Ever since her strange night with Suzy and Angie and then her 'date', they had been walking on eggshells around each other. She had been surprised how much she had enjoyed the evening with her 'date.' 'If I was still single,' she thought, shamefully, 'I'd have finished the evening quite differently. Maybe Angie's got something, there,' and that was the source of her discomfort.

She blushed and Elliot noticed it. He left the room without saying anything, looking for something to take his anger out on. He put his hat on and walked outside to get away. His problem, he realized, was that she wouldn't have been there at all if he hadn't asked her... no, told her to go with the two women.

He saw Greg in the back and headed in his direction. Once in a while, he felt it was good to talk to someone not connected with the Bureau. National security seemed the only topic of conversation whenever he was together with his colleagues and it seemed like the work never ended.

Well, that wasn't quite true and in Elliot's case, while he had been chasing German spies in New York City, Greg had been fighting for his life in the Pacific.

"Hey," he said, blocking the sun from Greg's face.

Greg looked up from the picnic table he was staining reddish-brown. "Oh, hi, uh... Elliot." He put down the paintbrush. "Thanks, I could use a break."

"Looks like you just started and already you want a break?" As soon as he said it, Elliot felt embarrassed. He was taking out his frustration on Greg. He had no business talking to the man like that, especially a war hero and his landlord. He and Sophia needed to stay at the apartment and being evicted was going to cause an incredible problem trying to explain it.

Greg stood up and motioned to the porch steps. "It's easy to forget," he said, "how boring this can be. What's new with you?"

"Ah, you know, same old, same old... trying to sell insurance to the GIs coming back and starting families... start while you're young and have dependants... you fixed?"

"Actually, no... 'till Cindy came along, there was nobody to worry about... you on the job, right now?"

"Nah, just talkin'... if you're still interested, we can make an appointment for later to talk about it... I've got a partner who does all the paperwork."

"OK, we can talk about covering the apartments and cars, too, if you do that."

"I know," Elliot said, "I've been putting things off for a while, too; you know how it is. There's some stuff I need to do but there's other things that have to be done, first."

"Want a beer?"

"Sure, thanks."

Greg went inside his kitchen and returned with a couple of Budweisers. "Here," he said, passing over the bottle opener and taking a long swallow of the cold amber fluid.

"Cindy was supposed to go with Angela but begged off... said your wife went, instead."

"Uh, yeah..."

"Uh, yeah? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, let's just say that the evening didn't go quite as planned and leave it at that." Elliot sighed.

"There's something about that woman that bothers me... she seems to be a real 'alley cat,'" Greg said.

Elliot looked at Greg, wondering if he should say something about the girls' night out events. He was just about to say something when Angie turned the corner of the driveway and walked over. "Hello, boys, working hard?" She emphasized the word 'hard' and there was no question of her intent.

"Good morning, Miss Meadows. Is there something you need?" Greg asked, hoping she'd go away.

Whether she took the slight to mind or not, she continued. "I was just wondering if Sophia enjoyed her night out with us. I haven't had a chance to talk with her."

Elliot tried to think quickly for an answer that would make sense. "I'm pretty sure she did, but she hadn't mentioned anything special. She got home pretty late that night."

Greg looked at him, mouth open in shock.

There was a self-satisfied smile appearing on her face as she said, "Oh, well, maybe she's home?"

"She's home but I think she's busy, right now."

"Oh, I'll just go see," she said and went into the building.

"That woman..." Elliot said, under his breath.

Greg looked at the man, wondering what was going on in his mind. "I've got the notion to evict the two of them; there's something about her that I don't like and I don't want her rubbing off on Cindy. That Suzy was bad enough without this one, too. I'm glad that she became friends with Martine. Cindy's got enough on her plate than to have Angie put some crazy ass notions in her head. You better take a good look at who your wife is partying with, that's all I'm saying."

Elliot was worried, now. If Greg evicted the two Russians, surveillance would have to begin all over again, with new agents involved. 'What to do,' he agonized, 'what to do?'

"Greg, I need you to take a ride with me." 'This is getting more and more complicated...' he worried. He wondered just how much he was going to have to explain to the war hero.

**********

If you lived in Southern California, Route 66 went east from the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, through the southwest near the Grand Canyon and then north to the Great Lakes at Chicago, Illinois. Twisting and turning along its two-lane asphalt way, it crossed the arid and blistering Mojave Desert. Breaking the apparent barrenness nearby were the tall, majestic transmission towers carrying electricity from Hoover Dam to Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California.

Al Meadows, whose real name was Ivan Egorov, was muttering curse after Russian curse toward his partner, Tatiana Petrova who was masquerading as Angela Meadows, his sister. While she was acclimatizing herself to Southern California and the decadent Western lifestyle they were committed to overthrowing, he was given the grunt work such as his mission today. "Oh, Al," she had said, keeping in character, "you're the strong, handsome man and I'm just the helpless girl. Of course, you have to do this and while you're gone, I've got a lot of work to do myself."

"Da," he said to himself as he drove the narrow road up and over another small desert hill. "You've got work to do, just like that night out with those two others... whores... a good word but not as good as the Russian..." He did think about the woman, Sophia, who had moved in downstairs and a leering smile crossed his face. 'Now, that's one decadent Westerner I'd like to invade.'

Several hours after leaving Barstow to the west, he came across the line of towers, again. Pulling the car over to the side but remembering to keep his driver's side wheels on the pavement, he got out and took several photographs of the location and wrote down his odometer reading. 'Finding the towers in the dark was not impossible but why take chances?' he reflected. It was quite a distance to the next one and in the dark, it was going to be much harder not to fall and kill himself. He took a photo of a large desert tortoise and wondered if it would make a good pet. He wished he had brought a shovel for there was a beautiful cactus he wanted. 'Maybe,' he considered, 'when I come back next time, I'll bring a shovel with me.'

Blowing one tower down would suffice to blackout the city but it could be repaired soon enough. There had to be a better way.

After taking the last photograph, he got back into the car and continued east toward the state border and its accompanying darkness; dodging several large rattlers slithering onto the warm asphalt prior to an evening of hunting, he could see the lights in the distance. He'd spend the night in Needles and then head north on US 95 to Lake Mead. Ivan had seen enough photographs of the dam but he wanted to see the electrical distribution area down below, personally. 'Maybe... just maybe,' he considered, 'something could be done there... and then, Las Vegas.'

The desert silence was broken only by the sound of his car and his singing of old Russian drinking songs.

**********

While Ivan was deliberating his next move, Tatiana, or Angie, the personality she had now submerged herself in, was with Suzy in another smoke-filled bar and dancing with a man whose name meant nothing and would be forgotten by the time they left the motel room in the morning.

Even after a vigorous attempt by Angie, Sophia still turned out to be a no-show. After the first night, Angie was sure the woman had potential but was well satisfied with Suzy who seemed to know how, for an American, to enjoy herself.

**********

Cindy approached the couple walking in. "Good afternoon, welcome to Raymond's. Would you care for a booth or a table?"

"Booth is fine, thank you."

"Follow me, please... Here we are. Today's specials are..."

As the days passed, Cindy became more and more confident at the restaurant and Martine increased her responsibilities. At the end of the second month, she was setting schedules and menu changes and learning how to order supplies. Martine had wanted to move her along faster but didn't want to upset the other women.

"Cindy," Martine whispered, "I want to tell you first... I'm going to have a baby... this time, for real."

**********

"Kelloggs, 'The Greatest Name In Cereals', presents: The Adventures of Superman... Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!"

He wondered how good it would look in color as he stared at the television. Cindy was leaning against him, quietly watching.

Her hand quietly unzipped his pants and reached inside, pulling him out. Aiming it toward his face, she began to gently stroke the underside, smiling as she looked at her handiwork. He quickly hardened, lengthened, felt hot.

"Greg?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Martine's having a baby... and I'm going to be taking her place at the restaurant when the time comes." She looked at him, wondering what his response would be as her fingers continued to move.

To her surprise, he smiled, lazily. "That's great, honey. I was wondering about them."

**********

Elliot and Sophia walked down the street toward the little Italian pizzeria on the corner. Luigi greeted them with open arms. "Buon giorno, signore e signora. Welcome back... your usual?"

"Si, si, Luigi... pepperoni, per favore..."

They took a table toward the rear of the small restaurant and as he reached out for her hand, he said, "I'm sorry I was so damned foolish. I put your life and our marriage in danger."

Sophia said nothing, letting Elliot continue with his apology. 'Damn straight,' she thought, 'you idiot. Do you realize how close I came to...?' She was surprised at her own anger and disappointment, anger at him for putting her into such a situation; disappointment at herself for almost falling off the marital cliff.