Disclosure

"I assume her husband," Sanders said. "We were talking about him earlier. Before the tape."

"Tell me what was said earlier."

"Well, Meredith was complaining about having to pay alimony to her husband, and then she said her husband was terrible in bed. She said, `I hate a man who doesn’t know what he’s doing.’ "

"So you think `I can’t stand the bastard touching me’ refers to her husband?"

"Yes."

"I don’t," Fernandez said. "They were divorced months ago. The divorce was bitter. The husband hates her. He has a girlfriend now; he’s taken her to Mexico. I don’t think she means the husband."

"Then who?"

"I don’t know."

Sanders said, "I suppose it could be anybody."

"I don’t think it’s just anybody. Listen again. Listen to how she sounds."

He rewound the tape, held the player to his ear. After a moment, he put the player down. "She sounds almost angry."

Fernandez nodded. "Resentful is the term I’d use. She’s in the midst of this episode with you, and she’s talking about someone else. `The bastard.’ It’s as if she wants to pay somebody back. Right at that moment, she’s getting even."

Sanders said, "I don’t know. Meredith’s a talker. She always talked about other people. Old boyfriends, that stuff. She’s not what you’d call a romantic."

He remembered one time when they were lying on the bed in the apartment in Sunnyvale, feeling a sort of relaxed glow. A Sunday afternoon. Listening to kids laughing in the street outside. His hand resting on her thigh, feeling the sweat. And in this thoughtful way she said, "You know, I once went out with this Norwegian guy, and he had a curved dick. Curved like a sword, sort of bent over to the side, and he-"

"Jesus, Meredith."

"What’s the matter? It’s true. He really did."

"Not now."

Whenever this sort of thing happened, she’d sigh, as if she was obliged to put up with his excessive sensitivity. "Why is it that guys always want to think they’re the only ones?"

"We don’t. We know we’re not. Just not now, okay?"

And she’d sigh again . . .

Sitting in the restaurant, Fernandez said, "Even if it’s not unusual for her to talk during sex-even if she is indiscreet or distancing-who is she talking about here?"

Sanders shook his head. "I don’t know, Louise."

"And she says she can’t stand him touching her . . . as if she has no choice. And she mentions his silly glasses." She looked over at Meredith, who was eating quietly with Garvin. "Him?"

"I don’t think so."

"Why not?"

"Everybody says no. Everybody says Bob isn’t screwing her."

"Everybody could be wrong."

Sanders shook his head. "It’d be incest."

"You’re probably right."

The food came. Sanders poked at his pasta puttanesca, picking out the olives. He wasn’t feeling hungry. Beside him, Fernandez ate heartily. They had ordered the same thing.

Sanders looked over at the Conley-White people. Nichols was holding up a clear plastic sheet of 35-millimeter transparencies. Slides. Of what? he wondered. His half-frame glasses were perched on his nose. He seemed to be taking a long time. Beside him, Conley glanced at his watch and said something about the time. The others nodded. Conley glanced over at Johnson, then turned back to his papers.

Daly said something. ". . . have that figure?"

"It’s here," Conley said, pointing to the sheet.

"This is really very good," Fernandez said. "You shouldn’t let it get cold."

"Okay." He took a bite. It had no taste. He put the fork down.

She wiped her chin with her napkin. "You know, you never really told me why you stopped. At the end."

"My friend Max Dorfman says I set it all up."

"Uh-huh," Fernandez said.

"Do you think that, too?"

"I don’t know. I was just asking what you were feeling, at the time. At the time you pulled away."

He shrugged. "I just didn’t want to."

"Uh-huh. Didn’t feel like it when you got there, huh?"

"No, I didn’t." Then he said, "You really want to know what it was? She coughed."

"She coughed?" Fernandez said.

Sanders saw himself again in the room, his trousers down around his knees, bent over Meredith on the office couch. He remembered think ing, What the hell am I doing? And she had her hands on his shoulders, tugging him toward her. "Oh please . . . No . . . No . . ."

And then she turned her head aside and coughed.

That cough was what did it. That was when he sat back, and said, "You’re right," and got off the couch.

Fernandez frowned. "I have to say," Fernandez said. "A cough doesn’t seem like a big deal."

"It was." He pushed his plate away. "I mean, you can’t cough at a time like that."

"Why? Is this some etiquette I don’t know about?" Fernandez said. "No coughing in the clinch?"

"It’s not that at all," Sanders said. "It’s just what it means."

"I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. What does a cough mean?"

He hesitated. "You know, women always think that men don’t know what’s going on. There’s this whole idea that men can’t find the place, they don’t know what to do, all that stuff. How men are stupid about sex.

"I don’t think you’re stupid. What does a cough mean?"

"A cough means you’re not involved."

She raised her eyebrows. "That seems a little extreme."

"It’s just a fact."