Free In Flames by Richard Hilary Weber

shot or two right then. She was picking her words carefully, to shock or inform, I couldn’t say for sure. She looked at me as if she were a schoolteacher grading my performance, and I was too confounded to make a move.
Did I love this woman last night in her own bed, is she the same person with whom I lay contentedly only hours before
…this woman whose husband’s grave was still fresh. Elaine, the army general’s sacrificial lamb? One thing was uncomfortably clear: I was still clueless about her as long as I wanted her lovemaking. I preferred her a victim of circumstances, not a perpetrator.
    “Dan,” she said, “it looks like you could end up leaving here broke, nada to take home. Xy Corp. could collapse whenever. But I’d rather you didn’t leave, really, I’d like you to stay. The heart wants what the heart wants.” The sound of her footsteps pacing the terrace tiles gave her words a determined rhythm, each word standing on its own, followed by a pause to let it sink into my brain. Her ambiguous small smile, lip gloss, all this suited her strange personality. A piece of corporate jargon was making the rounds among some club members, scuttlebutt about Elaine’s “optics,” a phony synonym for “appearances,” something that looks good or bad in a public relations sort of way. A few members seemed to think she was simply slutty, a gold digger, at least one eye always out for the main chance.
She was the general’s lover. That’s why…
But I came to believe she was nobody’s fool, her confounding behavior a guise for all seasons. She continued to pace the terrace,
I’d rather you didn’t leave
…and I looked at her the way I looked at her the night before, amazed as she seemed to be making up her mind about me, irretrievably. I should have been cross with her for her cold-eyed prediction about my employer, but she gave the chilly forecast an almost reassuring sound…
really,
I’d like you to stay
. Elaine had that way about her, appeasing, she could turn it on or off. She didn’t control you, until she did. She had no fixed center, and this absence allowed her a freedom of improvisation, and she spent her life winging it, successfully, taking her wherever her heart wanted to go.
    “Maybe you could get a government contract down here, Dan, do a little something extra on your own, something on the side. Maybe make another hundred thousand a year, even more if you’re any good.”
    Any good
…Again, if anyone else said this to me, I’d have been insulted. “Good at what, Elaine?”
    “Listening…watching…nothing difficult, not for you. You’re a good watcher, I can tell.”
    An island woman crossed the terrace with a basket of fish. “They’re fine,” said Elaine. “Take them to the kitchen, I’ll pay you tomorrow.” She turned around to face me again. Our eyes met, and I thought I detected a flash of impatience in her look. She placed her hand on mine, wanting my complete attention. “So how about it, Dan?”
    “Making lots of money, at what? For whom—”
    “For the government.”
    “Whose?”
    “Ours, what do you think, that this place has any money to spend?” She took out her cell phone and started texting. “That okay?” She showed me the message:
Princeton cottage deke architect fab prospect yr nu art gallery can he call.
“That’s you, right?”
    “I guess so. What art gallery? Call who?”
    She hit SEND.
    “Reg. He’s a member. That was quick. Look.”
    A text message came back:
lunch today club.
    “Now don’t miss it. I’m sticking my neck out for you, Dan, don’t screw up.”

Reg Townsley
    A ceiling of low gray clouds thickened, and the heat grew even more oppressive than usual, humidity as high as the temperature, and still no rain despite a threatening sky. A frequent rumble of distant thunder could have been government artillery in the eastern mountains, shelling the rebels’ remote hideouts.
    I looked around the club terrace.
    “Table,