Top Gun (7 page)

Gold headed that way as well, striding down the aisle and turning the corner—

That was when Gold saw Linda Forrester browsing among the booths, collecting manufacturers’ brochures and stuffing them into
a canvas shopping tote.

Son of a bitch, what’s she doing here?
Gold wondered. He saw that she was wearing one of the bright-yellow press badges, and then he remembered that Don Harrison
had told him that Linda had left her TV journalist’s job in order to write a book on the airline industry. She must have gotten
her book publisher to arrange entry credentials….

Linda hadn’t yet spotted him. Gold took the opportunity to study her. She looked different than Gold remembered her, but then,
a lot of years had passed since that day she’d stormed out of his bed and out of his life, he thought ruefully. Linda was
in her forties now. Her brunette hair was cut very short. She was wearing a tan silk suit with her skirt ending well above
her knees, patterned stockings, and alligator pumps. For jewelry she wore chunky gold earrings and a gold Tank watch on a
brown leather band. The exhibition hall’s unforgiving fluorescent lights clearly revealed the laugh lines time had put around
her eyes and her mouth, but the years had only transformed rather than robbed her of beauty: Her youthful, carnal sensuality
had matured to sexy elegance.

She still had not seen him. Gold knew he could easily avoid her in the large, crowded hall, but what would be the point? She
was researching commercial aviation for her book, and he was a GAT chief executive. They were destined to run into each other
sooner or later. Anyway, Gold knew that she was married, that she had a couple of kids, for chrissakes.

The bottom line was that if Don Harrison could get over Linda, so could he. No! Make that, so
had
he. Gold amended, walking over to her before he could chicken out.

She still hadn’t noticed him when he said, “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

She looked up quickly, her expression blank. For an instant, Gold was acutely embarrassed, thinking:
she doesn’t even recognize me.
But then her blue eyes widened.

“Son of a bitch,” she murmured sardonically. “They’ll let
anybody
in this place, won’t they?”

Nodding dumbly, grinning like a fool, he awkwardly took her arm in order to give her a peek on the cheek. He found touching
her to still be a thrill, even if she did stiffen slightly. She actually flinched against his touch on her sleeve.

“Long time no see,” Gold heard himself blurt to fill the roaring silence between them.
Oh, yeah, just brilliant,
he scornfully thought. “How have you been, Linda?”

“I’m fine,” she said adamantly. “I’m terrific!”

She was sounding strident. Clearly, she was just as fucked up over this as he was. Gold hoped the encounter wasn’t going to
turn out to be a total fiasco. He thought hard for something to say. “I heard you were doing a book.”

“Yeah!” She nodded quickly, looking on the verge of hysteria.

Gold was feeling as awkward as a kid on his first date, which was not normally his style with women, to say the least. If
his heart pounded any harder, he was going to have to sit down.

“Just look at you! All spiffy in your business suit!” Linda chattered. “I’d heard that you’d left the Air Force to join your
father’s company—” She stopped short, her expression instantly turning sympathetic. “Oh, Steve, your father! I was so sorry
when I heard….” She brightened. “But look at you now! That’s a lovely suit.” She ran her fingers along his lapel but then
jerked her hand back as if she’d been burned. “I almost didn’t recognize you out of uniform!”

This was going nowhere,
Gold thought, watching her. She looked like she was ready to bolt.

“Come on, Blue Eyes,” he kidded softly, knowing that he was taking a risk calling her that: Blue Eyes was what he’d used to
call her back when they’d thought they were going to last forever.
“You
of all people have seen me out of uniform the
mostest.”

She laughed at that, and the ice somewhat broke between them. Gold took out his cigarettes and offered her one, which she
accepted. He lit her smoke and then his own. As she exhaled, he could see the tension flowing out of her.

“So, Steve,” she began, sounding self-assured and a bit smart-alecky; in other words, like the old Linda. “What’s it been
like for you now that you’re among us mortals in mufti?”

“It’s had its ups and downs,” Gold told her. “Mostly downs, until
now.
You’re the first person I’ve met here all day that I wanted to talk to. I heard you were married and living in New York?
That you had a couple of kids?”

“You’re half right,” she replied. “I have two boys, seven and nine years old. But I’m back here in L.A. now. My marriage didn’t
last,” she added evenly.

“Oh, I’m sorry….”

“The divorce went through a couple of years ago,” she said, dismissing the matter with a wave of her hand. “My ex now lives
in Chicago. It’s history.” She paused. “Like a lot of things, huh?”

She was contemplating him, that old, devilish smile he remembered so well playing at the corners of her mouth. Gold felt his
groin stir as the memory of that smile unleashed a thousand other memories of Linda Forrester that rushed through him. This
wasn’t going to be as safe as he’d thought. As a matter of fact. Gold realized that he was on very thin ice.

“Where you living?” he asked.

“My boys and I live in Rustic Canyon.”

“It’s beautiful there.”

She nodded. “Good for kids. You still living in Malibu?”

“Uh-huh. Still on the beach.”

“My boys like the beach….”

“What kid doesn’t?” Gold remarked.

“No matter how old,” Linda pointedly commented. “Good old Steve.” She laughed in response to his frown. “Some things never
change, huh?”

Gold realized he was holding his Pall Mall with his thumb and index finger, like Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca. Cut it out, before she nails you on it,
he warned himself. “So, your boys are seven and nine?”

“Uh-huh.”

She was watching him now with her head cocked, her attention focused. Gold couldn’t shake the feeling that every word he was
saying carried supreme weight and importance. He could see her evaluating his responses—reevaluating him—and he realized that
he had already made his decision about what
he
wanted.
All right, let’s get this over with, one way or the other.

“Boys that age are a real trip,” Gold began. “I remember how much fun I had with my nephews when they were that age. God,
I had some great times with them camping out, fishing, or just messing around.” He paused. “Do your kids get to see their
father much?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, he lives in Chicago. My boys see him whenever he’s on the West Coast for business, and for
two weeks every summer.”

“But you take the boys to the beach?

“Every weekend I can.”

“Well…” Gold hesitated. “Well, maybe next time you’re at Malibu you’ll stop by the house to introduce me to them? I’m usually
home on weekends….”

“Okay.” She smiled tentatively, suddenly seeming very shy. “Maybe I will.”

“Yeah, that would be great!” Gold said, knowing he was sounding overeager but not caring.

“I know they’d love to meet you,” Linda said. “You being an ex-fighter pilot. A war hero and all—”

“And I’d like to meet them,” Gold said firmly. “Maybe if we hit it off I could take them fishing sometime. It’s not much fun
fishing alone.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t be.” Linda agreed, watching him very,
very
closely now.

Talk about fishing,
Gold thought. He swallowed hard. “Who knows? Maybe they’ll have a soft spot in their heart for an old Air Force man?” He
pushed the rest of it out. “Like their old lady… ?”

Linda’s eyes were bright blue beacons. “Anything’s possible.”

(Two)

Malibu

The beach outside Steve Gold’s house was wide and flat. The sand was almost as blindingly white as the pale disc of sun burning
through the overcast. There was a cool breeze blowing off the Pacific, creating swirling eddies upon the low, sunbaked dunes.
The waves were rolling in very high. The rough blue surf crashed rhythmically as it broke against the beach. Gold, hearing
that somber sea song played in counterpoint to the gull’s shrill laughter, could let it carry him back in time, to when he
was a child, building damp sand castles just out of reach of the foaming swash. But now, in the bedroom of his house, in his
big double bed, Steve Gold was lost in another form of time travel as he made love to Linda Forrester.

The wind off the beach rattled the bedroom’s jalousie windows, carrying with it the salt tang of the sea as it caressed and
cooled the lovers’ sheened, naked bodies. The wind moved the windows’ lowered bamboo blinds, casting slanted patterns of light
and dark on the bedroom’s white walls, and on the white bed, and on the lovers’ white limbs, entwined.

Gold and Linda were lying on their sides, facing each other. He stroked her supple curves as he moved his lips across her
full breasts, pausing to suck her nipples, not stopping until he had her moaning and pleading for mercy, her hip’s silken
swell writhing beneath his touch. Gold sighed softly as she reached out for him, pulling him closer, one hand on his shoulder
and the other gently encircling his erection, drawing him into her smoothly with no fumbling. Gold closed his eyes. The feel
of her body was both the same as he remembered and also very different; she was an exotic but familiar land to which he’d
returned after being too long away.

They began to move together slowly, silently, gradually speeding up their rhythms until the wind sighing off the roaring ocean
mixed its brine scent with Linda’s flowery perfume and the sea-salty musk of their lathered, locked-together bodies. The currents
of scent and touch swirling around Gold tumbled him into further dizzying waves of exquisite sensation. Linda wrapped her
long, tawny legs around his waist to grind herself against him. It went on like that forever, impossibly delicious and unbearably
long, until at some point in their dance they found themselves looking into each other’s eyes.

“Hello.” She laughed breathlessly between nibbling kisses.

“Hello…” For some damn reason, he was crying. His tears softly plopping onto her breasts ran a helter-skelter course down
her cleavage.

“Welcome,” she began, but suddenly her back arched and her mouth stretched wide; in her climax her words melted to an unintelligible
moan. It was long moments before she managed within the lessening throes of her orgasm to come to her senses, and then her
voice in his ear was the hiss of the wind-wracked sea:
“Welcome home
—”

The two of them lay side by side in Gold’s bed, letting the breeze dry them as they shared a cigarette. Gold, watching the
ashtray balanced on his stomach rise and fall with his breathing, found himself thinking of Linda’s ex-husband. Whoever this
guy was. Gold was damned glad he lived in Chicago. It was amazing and a bit frightening how fiercely jealous and protective
he felt toward this woman lying beside him.

“Do you want to hear about it?” Linda asked, breaking the silence.

“Hear about what?”

“My marriage.”

Gold couldn’t help flinching.
What’d she read my mind?
It was damned spooky.

“Well, you’re not answering,” Linda continued. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to get this out of the way between us once
and for all.”

“Yeah, sure,” Gold hedged. “I mean, if you want to…”

She chuckled. “Okay… First off, it was a good marriage. We loved each other. I’m not saying we loved each other the way
you
and
I
love each other.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she took the cigarette from him. “I hope I’m not making
you uncomfortable by saying that?”

“Well, I uh…” Gold couldn’t seem to get his mouth in gear.

“Because if I did just embarrass you, that’s too bad, but I’ve been putting up with your damned foolishness for what seems
to me to be my entire life, and I’m getting too old to go chasing after you or any man with a butterfly net. But that’s really
neither here nor there at the moment.” She paused for a breath and a tug on the cigarette. “Anyway,” she pressed on, exhaling
smoke toward the bedroom ceiling,
“anyway
…”

Gold abruptly realized that Linda was exorcising her husband’s ghost more for her own sake than his.

“Anyway, the first couple of years of marriage were fine: my husband, who is an attorney, was doing well at his L.A. law firm,
and I was a reporter on the local news broadcast, up for a correspondent’s slot on that affiliate’s network evening news.
Well, I got that job—”

“I seem to remember seeing you on TV once or twice,” Gold interrupted. “At least, I don’t
think
I switched channels when you came on.”

Linda laughed, and Gold let her think it was a joke. Actually, he had always switched the channel when she came on the air,
but it was only just now that he understood why he had. All of his life it had been his way to firmly turn his back on those
things he wanted but for some reason couldn’t have.

“My husband and I moved to New York in order for me to accept that network job. It was no hassle for him to do that: He had
his pick of job offers in the Big Apple. We continued to live happily ever after.” She paused. “I mean, I
guess
things were okay, but to be fair I have to add that in those days our individual schedules were so hectic, and we got together
so infrequently, that when we
did
see each other it was almost like we were still
dating.
…” She trailed off, lost in private, brooding reveries.

“So what happened?” Gold demanded, anxious to snatch her back to the here and now.

“What happened was he got a supreme-o job offer in Chicago. I remember how excited he was about it—it meant a senior partnership
for him—but all I felt at the time was anger: ‘What about my career?’ I remember demanding. ‘What am I supposed to do? Quit
my job and follow you to fucking Chicago with the kids on my hip like some fucking pioneer woman?’”