This Stream of Dreams (Mirella, Rashid and Adam Book 2) (12 page)

The two men crossed the street and were walking in front of the Plaza Hotel. “I can only guess some of the reasons. One is that my father, your grandfather, had always been a good friend to several of the companies held by our white knight in their early days when they were struggling to emerge from Africa into an international marketplace. And so have I. We have funded them, have troubleshot for them, made gifts to them, but not for a very long time, many years. As you well know, we still have close friends and retain strong ties to Egypt, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somaliland, and deeper into Africa. Maybe they have just never forgotten us, and the fact that we were there for them when they needed us. Loyalty? Friendship? It’s possible, even in this day and age. Rare, but possible.

“There is another reason, one that is very interesting and could explain it. But one that I like far less. It’s quite possible that both the raid on our company and our white knight were politically motivated. After all, one facet of the early tip-off from them was that CIA money was funding the takeover. With two and a half million acres of land in Europe, Africa, Central America, and the U.S. owned by the Corey Trust and out of the hands of any government, our policy of remaining neutral and stubbornly independent from politics could be a very good reason for all our troubles. Interesting theory, don’t you think, Josh?”

Josh nodded.

The two men were greeted by the doorman. Then gave their attention back to Mirella and “the boy with wings on his heels,” who were by now coming around the fountain and were visible from the flight of stairs leading into the hotel. Adam’s heart soared at the sight of them, and he took the stairs two at a time into the hotel, Josh at his side. He booked
a suite of rooms for the night and ordered flowers, champagne, caviar, and asked for the key, then walked through the lobby and reemerged from the hotel.

Father and son stood on the top step looking at Mirella, who was standing at the edge of the fountain, a delectable lady carrying roses, the cascading water behind her, waiting for her lover to sweep her further into a romantic idyll. It was a image so out of context with the hustle-bustle of the steely city around her that it excited the senses, wiped out the world, and made the heart sing for a split second.

The doorman looked up at the men, was about to ask them if they wanted a cab, but the look in their eyes told him a cab was not on their mind, and he instead followed their gaze. He saw Mirella, and suppressed a sigh of admiration and envy for the man who could remain romantic in New York and find time for love in the afternoon.

He was about to turn away and give his attentions to the queue of impatient people waiting for a cab, when he saw a boy on roller skakes close to Mrs. Corey wheel around and approach her. Alarmed, he put his whistle in his mouth, raised his arm to signal, and stepped off the curb into the street, ready to dash to her rescue. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, Jim,” Adam said, “that won’t be necessary. We know the boy.”

The three men watched as the boy stopped in front of Mirella, took her hand, bent to kiss it, then backed off with a gallant bow from the waist and slowly skated away, leaving Mirella aglow with laughter, waving good-bye after him.

“Josh, that’s some special kid there. Do you think we could find a place for him in our organization?”

“Just what I was thinking, Papa. I’ll go after him and see what he’s all about.”

Adam shook his son’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. “You were terrific during our crisis, Josh. I could never have come through without you and Carmel. Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow,” and he walked out into the street toward his romantic rendezvous.

“Papa,” Josh called. “The note. You said you would have Mirella show me the note, if you scored.”

“So I did, Josh.”

As Josh walked back to his father’s side he saw a softness of
erotic desire in his eyes as they sought out the woman waiting for him.

“Never mind, Papa. Not the right moment,” said Josh, who suddenly felt acutely embarrassed for wanting to intrude into Mirella and Adam’s masquerade of seduction. It was the love that Josh sensed vibrating between his father and Mirella, not the passion, which ruffled Josh, made him feel an intruder in his father’s little make-believe assignation.

The two men parted, Josh in one direction and Adam in the direction of Mirella.

Josh walked quickly after Mercury, who was now poised at the corner as the lights changed. He was disturbed. For the first time Josh was deeply touched by the power of love combined with passion. He had sensed something of it at the wedding two weeks before, but had thought he was being carried away by the excitement of the occasion and two people committing themselves to each other for all the days of their life. But this was something different. More profound. So personal, private, intimate even, as to inspire a deep unease in Josh. He realized for the first time that he might be bypassing something rare and wonderful that should be fundamental and yet for him was not.

When he had found his father on the bench cruising the beautiful New York women, he was amused, but not surprised. He knew his father well. Had grown up, since the age of three, without his own mother, yet among the women his father had loved. Over the years, he had seen Adam, though loving those women, drift into the odd romantic interlude, the short liaison, the discreet one-night stand, which had never affected his father’s feelings for those women, or the unconventional living space he created with them for himself and his children.

When Adam had, by chance, spied his own wife Mirella among the crowds on the pavement and selected her for his romantic interlude, Josh thought it utterly charming of him. That should have told him something, but it didn’t. It only amused Josh, who went along with the pretense that Mirella was a stranger his father was picking up.

Josh realized there was no place for him in their game only after he caught the look in his father’s eyes, when Josh had demanded his father fulfill his promise and show him the note Mercury had delivered to Mirella. At first he had thought that
husband and wife were playing the game, and as son and stepson, he could tease them about it. But he had been wrong.

They were two passionate strangers looking for the excitement of romance and an erotic coming-together, stealing away from their life as husband and wife for a few hours or days. Two people wanting to deliver themselves totally in sexual pleasure to each other, where nothing of who they are or what they are may come into it. Where they could in a sense die to their selves, and to their passion, and reincarnate again and again.

It was real and profound love that emanated from both Adam and Mirella: the joy of total submission to another that Josh glimpsed in his father’s eyes, and was exhaled from every pore of Mirella’s being, and it quite shocked him. He stole one last glance at the two lovers in the moment of their meeting at the fountain. He felt his chest tight with the pain of never having experienced what he saw them now sharing.

The reality of their love and erotic passion had not only touched his deeper emotions but had also illuminated the effect his father’s commitment with Mirella had begun to stir in the son. He was in love with his stepmother.

Words of Deena’s at the wedding about Adam, Mirella, and Rashid kept dimly nudging his memory. While he was talking to Mercury, he was trying to remember them exactly, but they still eluded him.

He could remember vividly, standing with Deena and Brindley among the other guests, in the road strewn with peony petals, in front of the white clapboard church. He was feeling happy, almost euphoric, as if high on some drug, better than that even. He kept glancing up at Mirella and his father, who were still on the landing in front of the entrance, accepting the good wishes of guests leaving the church.

Clear as the setting might be to Josh, Deena’s words escaped him: they simply would not come into focus. They were there on the edge of his mind, on the edge of remembrance. He felt Mercury pull at his coat sleeve and say, “D’ya mean it?”

Josh’s attention was yanked back to Mercury.

“Mean what, Mercury?”

“Just as I thought. You’re bullshittin’ me, man. There ain’t no ‘opportunity to better myself’ bullshit job waitin’ for me. My old man’s right about three hundred sixty-five suckers
gettin’ themselves born every goddamn year. Every week, more like. And I’m sure as hell today’s sucker. Ya had me goin’ there for a minute, thinkin’ this my lucky day, man. First yer old man’s forty bucks and his romantic number, then you, spinnin’ out that —”

“Hey, listen, I’m sorry, Mercury. Look, I was distracted for a minute, a long way off in my head. I do mean it. Come to my office tomorrow morning at eleven. We can talk better then. My father and I like you and the way you handle yourself. We have a big company and maybe we can find a place for you. We have all kinds of programs for young people wanting to get on in the world. Programs where we pay to train you, and you come into the company later to work for us.”

Josh turned the boy around and used his back to support a notepad on which Josh jotted down how to contact the Corey Trust. Then he handed it to the young man. Josh smiled and patted him on the shoulder.

“You see, Mercury. Fathers get it wrong sometimes. It could just be your lucky day after all.”

Josh started walking away from him, and Mercury shifted on his skates and said, “You gonna let me ask you a question?”

“Sure, one. The rest tomorrow, okay?”

“Right. Do I have to be called Mercury?”

Josh laughed. “Well, it’s not a bad name. But no, of course not. Not unless you want to. By the way, what do you call yourself?”

“Erasmus Luther Goldstein. But my friends call me Ras.”

“Well, Ras, let’s just say, with a name like that, you might consider it.”

Josh walked away, searching his memory for Deena’s remark, which had suddenly come to seem terribly important to him.

All the way back to his office, Josh was obsessed with the idea that he had missed something, a vital something, and Deena’s words that day at the wedding were the key to it.

He spoke to his secretary, double-checked that the vast staff of men assigned to roll over the Corey Trust’s injection of new money furnished by the white knight for the junk bonds was moving swiftly and successfully, and went back to his
office. He tried unsuccessfully to distract himself with work, then finally gave up.

His mind kept homing back in on Mirella and Adam on the stairs of the church, and then his memory would block. Mirella. To be made love to, sexually pampered by a woman like Mirella. A fantasy fulfilled. His father had it right. With the adrenaline still pumping from the drama of the takeover, what better release than an erotic duel? He dialed Carmel Colsen’s office — her red telephone, the one she kept locked in the bottom drawer of her desk.

“Hello.”

“Hello, had anything gone wrong?” she asked.

“No, everything is going just as planned.”

“Then why are you calling on the hot line?”

“Because the heat’s on. This is the kind of emergency the hot line was set up for.”

Carmel shed her authoritative lawyer’s voice, as Josh’s sexy tone got through to her. “So how exactly are things hotting up, Joshua?”

“I want you to make love to me, Carmel, lots of love to me.”

“Oh.”

“Just ‘oh’?”

“No, Joshua, not just ‘oh.’ How about ‘Oh, what a sizzling idea’? Or, ‘Oh, I’ve wanted to love you for a very long time’? Or, ‘Oh! How exactly would you like me to make love to you’?”

“With total abandon. And that’s only to begin with. I am prepared to be a selfish lover today, for you to spoil me, to spread me all over with cream, and caress and knead my slippery flesh with your slender sensuous fingers, then lick it off with your tongue. You can play with me like a cat, rather than the panther I imagine you can be. But if you are very good and would rather have the jungle, I’ll take you as that panther and wrestle with you for your life. Then tame you with my cock and my lips so you’re all kitten again.”

“Do you really think you can do that, Joshua? Play Tarzan, not Boy, today?”

“Oh, I
know
I can do that, that and much more. Carmel, there is never a time when I see you that I don’t think, She is a wild, fierce animal in bed, one to both love and whip into submission. A woman I would like to wring orgasm after
orgasm from. A rare species — to master and be mastered by. Shall we give it a go, Carmel?”

“Why not?” said a laughing Carmel, not mocking, but rather filled with sensuality and promise. “My lair, or yours?” she asked, with a sparkle in her voice. “And when?”

“Not my place, not your place. Partouz, the best, most discreet bordello in New York. I’ll book a room, vodka and caviar, and we’ll dine on lovely food, have two gorgeous hookers, skilled in what we want to do and where we want to get to, to excite us on our way. And you: another man? Would you like another man besides me?”

“No, I think not. You’re big enough game for me tonight. In an hour?”

“No, that’s too long. Now is better. I’ll quit at once, and be right around for you by car. Wait at the Fifth Avenue entrance of your building, Carmel, I’ve wanted you for a long time too.”

Carmel listened briefly to the disconnected whine of the receiver in her hand and then placed it back on its rocker, closed the drawer and locked it. She dropped the key in her open handbag and swung her chair around and faced the window and the New York skyline. Her body tingled with anticipation. She had wanted Adam’s young son the first time she saw him; and then, a year later when they met again, she wanted him even more.

Of all the men at the wedding reception it had been Joshua Corey to whom Carmel was attracted. Ten years younger than herself, handsome, with the body of a quarterback, and a sensitive, intelligent face, courtly European manners mixed on occasion with a Midwestern reticence, all glossed over with macho sexuality, he was devastatingly attractive to her.

There was something else about Joshua. He had some of the characteristics of his father, a mystery, and an independence that could almost be called aloofness, a lively inner self and warmth beneath that cool, hard exterior that made them unusual men, and irresistible.