He took her by the wrist, raised her hand and laid it on the scar on the side of his chest.
“You’re lucky to be alive. Is this why you were wincing in your office?” She pressed her palm gently against the scar.
“The scar tissue is tight. It hurts when I try to take a deep breath.”
“You know you should listen to your body. Pain’s an alarm. It says ‘pay attention to me.’”
“I promise I’m paying attention to it. It’s not getting better.”
“I know what you need. There’s a lady in Midtown who does amazing therapeutic massage.”
“I don’t need a massage.”
“I can see if she gives happy endings.”
“I might need a massage.”
“Thought so. I’ll make you an appointment. She’s good with surgical scars and other wounds.”
“How do you know so much about scars?” he asked, impressed more by her moxie than her knowledge. No one but S?ren ever dared to challenge him. He liked it.
Sam let her hand fall from his side.
“You’re not the only one around here with scars,” she said.
“Show me your scars.” He said “scars” but what he meant was “body.”
“My scars? My scars are—” The phone rang. Sam grinned broadly at it. “I’ll get it.”
“That’s my private line. You don’t have to answer my private line,” he said.
“The private line’s the one I want to answer.”
She jumped onto his bed and crawled across the red sheets. With a f lourish she grabbed the receiver, held it to her ear and rolled f lat on to her back.
“Kingsley Edge’s Bed, Sam speaking.”
With the phone at her ear and her legs dancing playfully in the air, she looked almost like a teenage girl in her bedroom. Kingsley took a deep steadying breath. Lesbian, he reminded himself.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” she said. “Hold, please.”
She sat the phone on the bedside table, pulled the covers back, and stuck her head between the sheets.
“King? You in there?”
“Who is it?” he whispered.
“He says he’s your father,” she said in a stage whisper of her own. “But that can’t be, because you said your father was dead.”
“Did he say he was my father or a father?”
Sam looked up at him.
“I’ll ask.” She grabbed the phone again. “Are you a father or are you Kingsley’s father? Kingsley’s father’s dead, and Kingsley is not at home to ghosts. And if you are a ghost, are you like a Hamlet ghost or a Ghostbusters ghost?”
Kingsley sighed. He shouldn’t be having this much fun with his secretary. He never had fun with his other secretaries. He just fucked them.
“You’re not a father, you’re a Father. Oh, so you’re the priest King told me about. Hey, can you explain transubstantiation to me in twenty-five words or less?”
Sam tucked the phone under her chin and held two hands up in the air. She ticked off numbers on her fingers. Kingsley counted twenty-one.
“Wow,” she said after a few seconds. “You’re good.”
“Give me that.” He took the phone from Sam. “What do you want?” he asked S?ren in French. Whatever S?ren was calling about, he didn’t want Sam to be privy to it.
“This is your first of fourteen nightly reminders to not have sex with anyone until you get your test results back,” S?ren replied, also in French.
“Go fuck a fifteen-year-old.”
“Her birthday was in March. She’s sixteen now.”
“I’m hanging up on you.”
“I like the new secretary,” S?ren said. “Keep this one.”
Kingsley hung up on him.
“Well, that was rude,” Sam said.
“I hung up on him because he deserved it.”
“No, I mean it’s rude to talk to him in French. I couldn’t keep up.”
“He said he liked you,” Kingsley said. Sam’s eyes sparkled like a child’s on Christmas morning.