* * *
"Greta?" Matthew called, stepping from room to room on the lower floor of the house. He climbed the stairs. Soft, pleasant music drifted out from the bedroom. He closed in on the bathroom, and found his wife in the tub. She raised her face from some sort of picture book or atlas propped on a silver bath tray table.
He lowered himself to the closed toilet seat. "It's over," he said.
"Thank God," Greta said. She closed her eyes and stretched her right arm out of the tub. Bubbles and soapy water dripped from her perfect hand onto the floor. "Darling, would you pass me the oil please?"
He handed her a bottle of spiced bath oil. She held it there, out of the tub, until she caught his eye. She led his vision to the bottle's cap and he uncapped it and held it while she squeezed the red liquid into the water. It spurted from the bottle and he was suddenly mesmerized by the mixture as it bled into the water. He studied his wife with sullen fascination as she lay there with her eyes closed, gently oscillating her shoulders and legs, mixing up the oil and water. With her eyes still closed, she held out the bottle to him again. Accepting it, his hand touched hers for an instant. He shivered, and felt a sudden need to urinate. He could not remember the last time he had seen her other hand naked, which was presently hidden somewhere under the water in the tub. Nor could he remember the last time they had made love, though he was pretty certain it was the evening before International Foods had thrown the yacht party for him to celebrate the success of Orange Fresh. Thinking of these things, he was momentarily hypnotized by the sight of her there in the tub, moving in the frothy pink water. His mind roared with the horrific image of her as she had appeared when the accident had occurred. Underwater. Stillness. Then her eyes bulging as her head splashed up out of the sea's redness. The screaming. The flailing. The blood. Splashing -
She was flicking bath water at him. "Matthew, are you here? I said I'm happy for you. Did everything work out okay?"
"Yes. Yes," he said, blinking. A few droplets had landed on his trousers. He brushed them away and said, "He's gone. It's over. They all chose me over Peter."
"There," she said, "you see. I told you everything would work out just fine."
He thought about how she saw things. A few months ago, when he had felt doubt, she had helped him regain his focus and set the stage for today's meeting. Her persistent belief in him had finally won out, and ultimately he had believed in himself enough to begin the painstaking maneuvers necessary to topple Jones after he'd balked at Matthew's suggestion to make the Joey more compatible with ICP's computers. That, he understood now, was when it must have happened, when he had begun to live in his wife's presence without really noticing her anymore, focusing wholly on his work. The first stage of detachment had been after the accident. The second was after he had gotten his plan underway. He had finally and completely shut her out, without ever really meaning to. In both cases he had told himself that it was temporary, that things would eventually return to the way they had been. But now he understood that those times would never return. They couldn't, for it seemed all was lost on that day of the accident. He thought of the object - that was precisely how he thought of it, an object of his lost affection - which he kept hidden in the inside pocket of his briefcase. Lost. What was he going to do? How would he end up? How would they end up? He knew what she was thinking, what her own hopes were. That now that Peter Jones was out of the way, he'd spend more time with her.
Turning his wedding band round and round on his finger in his lap, hidden from her sight, he spoke. "This is just the beginning, honey," he said, cautious. "Now, slowly and carefully, I have to reveal my plan for engineering our products to connect with ICP's systems to the board and executive staff so that they believe I'm doing it to increase sales and market share." He watched her expression.