When the game finished, Indiana was shocked to realize that that jerk had beaten her daughter. “You owe me a rematch,” Amanda said a little bitterly to Gary as she left—she was not used to losing.
The old Cuore d’Italia restaurant, established in 1886, was famous for its authentic cuisine—and for the gangland massacre that had taken place there in 1926. The local Mafia had met in the large dining room to taste the best pasta in the city, drink good bootleg wine, and cordially divide up California between them; then one gang pulled out their machine guns and blew the others away. In a matter of minutes twenty capos lay dead, and the place was a grisly mess. Though the distasteful incident was soon just a memory, that had never put off the tourists, who flocked there out of morbid curiosity to sample the pasta and take photos of the crime scene, until the Cuore d’Italia burned down and was rebuilt in a new location. A persistent rumor around North Beach had it that the owner had doused it in gasoline and set a match to it to get back at her cheating husband, but the insurance company couldn’t prove a thing. The new Cuore d’Italia boasted brand-new furniture but retained the atmosphere of the original, with huge paintings of idyllic Tuscan landscapes, painted terra-cotta vases, and plastic flowers.
By the time Blake, Indiana, and Amanda arrived, Ryan and Pedro Alarcón were already waiting for them. Ryan had invited them all along to celebrate a lucrative new business contract—it was a good excuse for spending time with Indiana, whom he had not seen for some days. He had just come back from Washington, DC, where he had met with Defense Department officials to discuss the security programs he and Pedro were working on. He did not actually mention his friend’s name, though. Thirty-five years ago Pedro had been a guerrilla; for some still stuck in a Cold War mentality, guerrilla was synonymous with Communist, and for those more up-to-date, guerrilla with terrorist.
Seeing Indiana dressed in her ridiculous boots, jeans that were threadbare at the knees, a boxy jacket over a tight-fitting blouse that barely contained her breasts, Ryan felt the curious mixture of desire and tenderness she always aroused in him. She was clearly tired, having come straight from work, with no makeup and her hair pulled back into in a ponytail, and still the joy she exuded at simply being alive and comfortable in her own body was so palpable that several men instinctively turned to look her over. It’s that sexy walk, thought Ryan, irritated by their primitive male response—only women in Africa have that sort of brazen sensuality. Not for the first time, he wondered how many men must be wandering the world still troubled by memories of Indiana, still secretly loving her; how many still craved her affection, longed for the spells of this good witch to relieve their pain and guilt.
No longer able to bear the doubts, the agony, the sudden bursts of hope that keeping his feelings secret demanded, Ryan had finally confessed everything to Pedro. His friend listened with a look of amusement, then asked Ryan why he had put off telling the only person in the world likely to care about his pathetic crush. This was not just a crush, Ryan insisted; this time it was serious. He had never felt like this about anyone before.
“I thought you and I agreed long ago that love is just an unnecessary risk,” said Pedro.
“I know, I know—that’s why I’ve spent three years trying to stamp out my feelings for Indiana—but, well, sometimes Cupid’s arrow really hits home.”
Pedro shuddered to hear his friend utter such words in a serious tone. He took off his glasses and wiped them with his shirttail.
“You screwed her yet?”
“No!”
“There’s your problem.”
“You don’t get it, Pedro. This isn’t about sex—I can get that anywhere. This is about love. Besides, Indiana’s already in a relationship—some guy called Keller, they’ve been together a few years.”
“So?”
“So if I try to get her into bed, I’d lose her as a friend. Faithfulness is really important to her—we’ve talked about it. She’s not the kind of woman who dates one guy and flirts with others—actually, that’s one of the things I admire about her.”
“Jesus, Ryan, you sound like a faggot. Long as she’s single, you’ve got a hunting license. That’s the deal. I mean, you and Jennifer Yang aren’t exclusive. The moment you take your eye off the ball, some guy who’s paying more attention can come in and take her from you. You can do the same to this Keller guy.”
Ryan realized that this was probably not the best time to tell his friend that his relationship with Jennifer was over. At least, he hoped it was: she was still perfectly capable of pulling some spiteful stunt. She was a vengeful woman—it was her only flaw as far as he could tell, and in every other respect she stood out as his finest conquest. Jennifer was beautiful, intelligent, a modern woman who didn’t have the slightest wish to get married and have kids; she earned a good salary and had a kinky desire to be a sex slave. Strange as it seemed, this young Wells Fargo executive got her kicks from bondage, humiliation, and restraint. Jennifer was a dream for any red-blooded male, but Ryan, a man of simple tastes, had had so much trouble learning the rules and codes that she had to lend him a recent book so he could learn more about it, something with beige in the title—or maybe it was gray, he couldn’t remember. It was apparently very popular with women, being the usual vapid love story with a dose of soft porn: the tale of a sadomasochistic relationship between an innocent virgin with bee-stung lips and a handsome, domineering millionaire. In the copy she gave him, Jennifer had underlined the “binding contract” that specified the various forms of abuse that the virgin—as soon as she stopped being a virgin—was obliged to endure: “whippings, floggings, spankings, caning, paddling or any other discipline the Dominant should decide to administer”—as long as he didn’t leave any scars or splatter the walls too much. Ryan could not understand what exactly the “Submissive” got out of what—in his eyes—amounted to extreme domestic violence, but Jennifer spelled it out for him: through pain, the ex-virgin could experience guilt-free paroxysms of pleasure.
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