“Ooh.
Yeah,” said Lee.
“I guess we are a pretty pathetic bunch.
Prima donnas.
Sensitive egos.
Lazy.”
Carr nodded her head in agreement with each assessment.
“Don’t forget self-righteous, self-absorbed and self-deluded,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Lee.
“And, add in whiny, immature, paranoid and devious.
God. What a horrible bunch!
I’m disgusted with us.”
“But the best thing is most of you are also funny, smart,
very tender and – I almost hate to say this – but noble, too,” said Carr.
“Noble in the sense that truth and fairness matter and lies should be exposed.”
“Whew!” said Lee.
“I guess we aren’t so bad after all.
Can we toast us again?”
“Well, I think we’ll need more wine but that’s a good idea, too,” said Carr, grinning.
The food was good but secondary to the whole scene of diners happy to be starting their weekend on a Friday night and entertained by the good-hearted quirkiness of the small establishment.
The waiters were relentless and charming flirts to the man.
Lee’s second floor flat was three blocks away so they walked there afterward.
While he put on a pot of coffee, Carr stood in the bay window with the view looking out across Columbus and down brightly lit Grant Avenue.
The flat had the high ceilings, ornate molding, inlaid wood floors and the other detailed features that characterize the Victorian-era buildings that fill the city.
The ever-friendly Max rubbed against Carr’s legs until she bent down to scratch the cat behind her ears, eliciting a throaty purr.
Lee brought two hot mugs and set them down on a side table to cool.
He stood next to Carr in the darkened living room and they watched the evening crowds roaming North Beach below.
“So…management secrets,” he said.
“You were supposed to tell me some.”
“I lied,” said Carr.
“There are no secrets.
Just an experiment I tried but it didn’t work out.”
“Okay.
What was it?
The experiment,” he said.
“I just wanted to see if you and Pilmann can work together,” she said.
“The answer is pretty clearly, ‘No.’
I thought you two were going to get each other in headlocks and roll around on the floor or something.”
Lee laughed.
“That would be a scene,” he said.
“I’d beat the crap out of him.”
“See!
See what I mean?” said Carr, laughing.
“And, why exactly did you want to know how we’d work together?”
Carr shrugged.
Then she walked closer to the window, crossed her arms and looked out, speaking without looking back at Lee.
“Well.
Okay,” she said.
“How do I do this?
The paper has all these damn rules.
And, it’s pretty clear there’s stuff going on between us, right?”
“Stuff?” said Lee.
“Yeah.
You know what I mean.
Boy meets girl kind of stuff.”
“Oh, right,” he said.
“You mean
this
kind of stuff.”
He put his hands on her hips from behind and turned her to face him.
She was smiling but looked surprised as well as he bent his head down to kiss
her.
Her lips were cool and unsure at first but searching and eager after a second.
He put his arm around her lower back and pulled her closer to him. She put one hand on the back of his neck and gave him a squeeze.
The other was on his shoulder.
He ran his hands down her back to her buttocks.
He pressed her hard against him while he kissed her cheeks, her eyes, her lips again.
He could feel her smile.
“Hmmm,” she said.
“The boy can kiss.”
She lifted her arm and made a check in the air.
“If you don’t stop grading me, I’m not going to be responsible for what happens next,” he murmured.
“Hmm,” said Carr.
“Impetuous.”
She just had a chance to make another check in the air before Lee picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
She was still giggling when they fell onto the bed.
They lay on their sides kissing while Lee ran his hand from her thigh, along her side and caressed her breast through her sweater.
Carr pushed away a bit.
“Enzo,” she said. “Have you ever made out with your boss before?”
An image flashed through Lee’s mind of Ray Pilmann, Carr’s predecessor as city editor, followed by a succession of other middle-aged men, mostly overweight and with marginal social skills, for whom he’d worked over the years.
“You’re trying to ruin this for me, aren’t you?” he said.
Lee pulled her against him again and ran his hand under her sweater and up her back.
Her back was firm, warm and smooth.
He was dying to feel her body up against his with nothing in the way.
He ran his fingers to her upper back and undid the clasp of her bra in a few seconds.
She started to say something that he guessed would be a comment on his manual dexterity – another damn grade – so he put some extra French in his kiss and occupied her tongue with his before she could say anything more.
He moved his hand under her sweater and bra to the front, found her nipple with the back of his fingertips and teased her while he moved his lips from her lips to her check, her neck, and up to her ear.
Carr pushed away.
“I need to use your bathroom,” she said, pushing herself off the bed.
She leaned down and kissed him before standing up.
“Don’t go anywhere.”
Lee took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm his surging hormones while he lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
When he heard the bathroom door open, he lifted himself on his elbows and saw her walking toward him wearing nothing but a very small pair of black panties.
“You look overdressed,”
Carr said.
She extended her hands and pulled him to his feet.
Lee stripped off his shirt and embraced her as he kissed her again.
Carr rubbed her breasts against him.
It felt as great as he had imagined.
He ran his hands down her bare back and underneath her panties and pulled them down until they were around her ankles.
“Unfair,” she said.
“Now, I’m
really
ahead of you.”
Carr deftly unfastened his belt and the button on his trousers, slid the zipper down and helped his pants drop to the floor.
“Hmmm…boxers…” she said, “and something trying to get out.” They both laughed.
Then she pulled them down.
They moved back to the bed and were an urgent tangle of naked skin, searching tongues, salty sweat and slipperiness that left them both gasping.
Lee was inside her when he felt her muscles tense and a shudder run through her.
He held still until she relaxed and took a deep breath followed by a pleasurable sigh.
He lifted his weight up for a moment while Carr arched her back and readjusted herself to get comfortable.
She was like a cat stretching.
As they settled back down and she pulled him deeper into her, he felt Carr’s finger slowly trace a check mark in the small of his back.
Chapter 37
BY NOW, ENZO Lee had seen Rev. Jimmy Burgess’ show several times on television and had even perused transcripts of several speeches on the Soldiers of Christ Ministry’s website.
He knew the basic message well by now – every Christian must join the war against the evil in its various forms that was corrupting society.
What Lee hadn’t predicted was how mesmerizing Burgess was in person.
He had channeled his rural barn-burning style into a performance that started soft and gentle but built gradually to a red-hot intensity.
At the end, he could see the audience leaning forward transfixed, ready to leap out of their seats.
He half expected the packed auditorium to jump up en mass and storm the stage.
“And you! And you! And you!” said Burgess in his trademark ending, roaming the stage and throwing his finger out toward different segments of the audience.
“We all must fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
“When Judgment Day comes,” he said, lowering his voice to a theatrical whisper.
“Can
you
really
tell God, ‘I’ve done enough?’”
Then, Burgess whirled and was gone, his long legs carrying him swiftly to the back of the stage and out of sight.
The crowd was dead quiet for a moment. Then, suddenly erupted in cheering and applause.
“Preacher as rock star,” thought Lee.
An amazing performance.
Lee had been prepared to fire questions at Burgess any way that he could even if it meant confronting him on his way to a waiting limo or taking over a normally sedate press conference.
So, it had been a pleasant surprise when he called Burgess’ office a day earlier and was told he could come back stage after the performance and the televangelist would give him 20 minutes in private.
When he finally was ushered into his dressing room, Burgess had changed into designer jeans, a striped dress shirt and hand-tooled cowboy boots.
He was drinking a small bottle of mineral water.
He motioned at a table off to the side with several more bottles and Lee took one before he sat down in a chair in the middle of the dressing room.
Burgess leaned back in an older wooden low-back chair with a spring that squeaked if he moved too much.
Behind him were three mirrors set up in a makeup array so Lee could see the preacher in different angles from behind.
His hands were intertwined behind his head.
About six feet separated the reporter and the preacher.
Lee set his water on the floor next to his chair and pulled out his notebook.
“You can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy,” began Burgess in a slight twang, nodding at his boots.
“Call me Jimmy.
What can I do you for?”