Free A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror by Larry Crane

Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Yeah. “ “Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Uh… dix neuf cent soixante quatre.” Oh, boy. Where did that come from? But the waiter kid just blushed, and Lou saw that Maggie was smiling tolerantly from across the table, so he gave in and let the kid deliver an unnamed, white table wine.
     
    “I think it was a great buy,” Mag said.
     
    “It’s plain white wine, Mag. Just kidding. It’s a nice chair. We should have a bunch of them,” Lou said.
     
    “They should’ve left the paint on, but people want natural wood,” she said.
     
    “I kind of like the bare wood, myself.”
     
    “I love the way the legs flare out from the seat,” she said.
     
    “We could’ve gotten some more.”
     
    “Lou, I didn’t mean that I thought we should go crazy.”
     
    “Who’s going crazy? If they’re a good buy, let’s go for it.”
     
    “Shush.”
     
    “Don’t shush me. I’m feeling good. I’m feeling very good.”
     
    “Relax.”
     
    “I’m relaxed. I’m very relaxed.”
     
    “Lou, can we salvage something lasting out of this? Can we save some part of it for the future and not suck every last ounce of honey from it just as fast as we can?”
     
    “What are you talking about?”
     
    “It’s just our approach to things. I get something good and immediately begin to fret about when it will be taken away. Don’t ever surrender completely to happiness, lest some arbiter in the sky come down to even things up again with something bad.”
     
    “So, what’s the bad part?”
     
    “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
     
    “Mag, I’m a mover again. Can’t you see? It kills me to have no shot at...”
     
    “At what? Glory?”
     
    “Now, that’s nasty.”
     
    “Power?”
     
    “Chances don’t come very often. When they do, you have to move. Fast.”
     
    “I suppose.”
     
    “I have to be a player, Mag. Now, I don’t know if I am one; but as they say, ‘if it looks like a duck...’ You know, I’m glad they couldn’t make it, Sherm and Virg.”
     
    “Glad?”
     
    “Yeah. This place...you know, isn’t all I thought it was going to be.”
     
    “What? It’s perfect.”
     
    “I still made some points.”
     
    “Now, what are you talking about?”
     
    “To just get up from whatever you’re doing and go; that’s the perfect thing.”
     
    “I don’t get it.”
     
    “That’s freedom, Mag… That’s power.”
     
    They each stared into the other’s eyes for nearly a minute. Then, Lou raised his glass to drink and heard Mag singing softly to herself:
     
    “Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...”
     
    They lingered a long while over dinner, and then went back to the room to get sweaters. Arm in arm, they stepped out of the screened veranda in front of the inn.. Lou noticed that the Audi was gone. He and Mag took a long walk, consciously matching strides and spontaneously tightening their hold whenever they felt the others’ eyes on their cheek. The chill air and the sandy ground beneath their feet recalled a time when their flesh was hard to the others’ touch and their stride was strong and purposeful. Coming back to the inn, they stopped just beyond the range of the front light and kissed long and full.
     
    The bed in their room was high. Mag’s face held the chill of the night air, but the room was warm and the coolness across her cheeks was soon replaced with a ruddy glow. They didn’t speak as they peeled off each other’s clothes, slowly and with care. Lou led Mag to the shower where they soaped, rinsed, and dried each other. Then he went back to the bed and waited until Mag came out of the bathroom, snapped off the light, and walked to him in the moonlight, covered in two squirts of Redi-Whip and an oversized Chocolate Chiparoo on a string.
     
    In the morning, Lou woke with the sun coming through the chintz curtains. The room was warm and bright. He rolled to his side. Mag was bent over the Windsor. She had placed it