Programmed for Peril

nerves were stretched to their limit. Diabolical Lois had discovered Trish’s secret: To destroy her business was to destroy her mental stability as well.
    To pull out of her tailspin Trish toured her little empire, batting with employees and reviewing their current projects. She eyed Tran, knowing that he had kept silent about their frightening file save yesterday morning. She had never been able to read his scarred face. This afternoon was no exception. She called saleswoman Samantha Swords on her oar phone to ask for her projected month’s sales figures. She was sitting in traffic. It was hot. PC-Pros couldn’t afford to lease air-conditioned vans. Horns blew in the distance “Next van we lease, forget the AC,” Samantha said. “Just get one with wings!”
    An hour later her mother called. She insisted the two of them have a wedding action meeting. So much remained to be done. Trish curbed her normal hostile reaction. The wedding, being threatened, had taken on a greater importance. Detailed preparation would make it seem more of a certainty. She told Marylou she would come over with Melody early that evening. Her mother’s intuitions were Cassandra-like in their accuracy. “How are things going with Foster? You’re not upsetting him, are you?”
    “I’ve had some more trouble with the business. I had to ask him a favor.” Trish couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother she had sent him to Lois.
    “I think you’re being stupid. Are you?”
    “Mother!”
    “Have you acted on my suggestion that you two go off for a short while together?”
    “I have some people here,” she lied. “I have to go.” She hung up. Her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath, held it, exhaled slowly.
    What is happening to me, she wondered.
    Michelle had been holding a call. A Mr. Perkins of Zealmont Start and Perkins. Trish took it, introduced herself. Mr. Fletcher Perkins, though he represented the Smith-Patton family, was calling this first time as a friend. He wondered how familiar Trish was with the laws concerning slander and false accusation. His tone was patient, fatherly even. He had a newscaster’s baritone that made one want to believe whatever he said. He summed up the point of his call: Before she went ahead and made the charges she was contemplating against certain members of the Smith-Patton family, she should first check with legal counsel about her liability in the event those charges were proven false. Believing that a word to the wise was sufficient—he actually said it!—he wished her a pleasant day and hung up-Into the dead mouthpiece she said, “Lois is lying.” Then louder: “Lois is lying!” Against her good sense she shouted,
    “Lois is lying!”
    She had to be lying.
    If somehow she wasn’t, and hadn’t been involved in all Trish suspected, then... who else cared whether or not she married Foster?
    She couldn’t imagine.
     

9
     
    POSSIBLY HE SHOULD ABANDON THE PIRC IN FAVOR OF the old Colle System, recently resurrected with new bells and whistles in interzonal grand master play. Think Colle! Opening sequences—white’s first move, black’s response, white second move, black response—spun out like spiderwebs. They were swept away, then respun with incremental changes. Pawns inched forward, minor pieces danced into enemy territory or bulwarked advanced forces. Where could he introduce a new move to set back, if not bewilder, his opponent? Possibly he should devise a gambit. Sure, they all were unsound in the end. But across the board, with the clock ticking... the strongest response was difficult to find. Maybe he could earn a footnote in the next edition of Practical Chess Openings. The Smith-Patton Gambit. Yes!
    From his van’s homemade CD system Dexter Gordon’s sax poured out a bath in which he floated happy as any princess in her milk or demimondaine in champagne. Was he at work or at play? Or busy with something in between? He had no idea, and that was good. Only the happiest man couldn’t tell the difference between labor and leisure.
    He had never bothered to repaint the van. Its sidelong banner still read “Ed’s Sewer Maintenance.” And in smaller letters beneath: “Sanitary Engineering for the New Age.” Nicholas had bought it at a bankruptcy sale, gutted its interior, and installed the sophisticated array of electronic equipment used in his consulting business. The windowless van was protected from prying hands by a security system of his own design. It