Where Dreams Reside

by M. L. Buchman

  Jo had been brought in because, putatively, the fisherman were being chased out of the entire Beaufort Sea even though only a small wedge not much bigger than New Jersey was all that was under contention. Yet the oil companies had been granted six leases for exploration in the disputed region. The yelling had barely begun and because of her success fending off the madness in the last lawsuit, she’d been brought aboard to do so once again.

  As to what fisherman was crazy enough to want to fish in the Arctic, she couldn’t imagine. Or perhaps she could.

  Jo pulled up the legal complaint that had started the whole cascade of suits and countersuits on her screen and scanned the signatories. Earnest J. Thompson had signed. The chance of him ever striking a hundred miles beyond Ketchikan were so minimal as to be laughable. That her father might make the insanely hazardous three-thousand mile voyage simply to fish wasn’t even a possibility. But he had signed nonetheless.

  It was so ludicrous that she could almost certainly use it against the small fishermen if needed. Probably one signatory in a hundred actually might fish the Arctic Ocean if given the chance. After all, she wasn’t being paid to represent the fisherman. Or, it would give her a chance to recuse herself from the case based on conflict of interest that now existed, no matter how marginal.

  Jo set that thought aside. First, it was a flimsy excuse to get out, and second she knew that to do so was always tempting in the first month or so of research on a new matter. In the beginning, lawsuits were terribly messy. The larger the lawsuit, the worse the mess. Relevant documentation could be spread across dozens of states or even countries. The pertinent fifty-eight articles of UNCLOS had clearly been drafted by committee, worse, an international multi-lingual committee. Hundreds of pages of brilliantly impenetrable legalese that, once analyzed in the full sight of legal case precedents, probably signified little to nothing.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. The lack of sleep was starting to tell on her and it was only two o’clock. Three more hours, plus she really should put in four or five more to make up for missing all of Friday afternoon. Her whole body throbbed with the exhausted beating of her heart, as if it were pumping out tired blood with each stroke instead of the freshly oxygenated little red cells she so needed.

  “You need a break, boss.”

  Jo hadn’t heard Muriel come in. She didn’t bother to open her eyes.

  “No, I just need sleep. And maybe one of those big shots of adrenalin they punch into your heart.”

  “How about another piece of chocolate? I saved some.”

  “Anything would help.” Jo held out a hand without bothering to look. Something cool and solid slid against her palm and she looked up.

  A slim tube-style vase of pale-blue blown glass bore a single red rose.

  She blinked again, but it remained in her hand. It really was there.

  “Let me guess. No note again.”

  “Not even a ‘PPM’ one this time,” Muriel simply smiled at her. “What am I doing wrong that I’m not getting gift baskets and beautiful red roses?”

  “I’ll get you one of each for Christmas.”

  “But then I’ll know who it’s from. Besides, that’s over six months away.”

  Jo considered if another piece of chocolate with an aspirin chaser would avert the pending headache.

  “I’m too tired to guess, just tell me.”

  Her assistant raised her hands palm out. “I don’t know this time. Honest. I even grilled the delivery guy, a nice young boy named Marko. Phone-in order, no idea who sent it. Even gave him a nice tip from your petty cash, and he didn’t give. Want me to hound the owner for the name on the credit card? Actually, I can’t, I’m not sure what shop he was with. But I could call around.”

  Jo scowled at the rose. Renée? Not likely. Angelo? She’d left him less than a dozen hours earlier at the bar. He and Russell had been talking about speedboats and parasailing. Apparently, despite Russell’s broken leg, his head was dense enough to think it had been a pretty cool experience. That left Yuri and she definitely didn’t want to think about that.

  She set the rose by her monitor. It was pretty after all and the vase was exquisite in its simplicity. Another Renée bribe she decided.

  “That wasn’t chocolate.”

  Muriel pulled out a bar of chocolate she’d tucked in her skirt pocket. She wore a close-fitting white angora sweater and an actual fifties’ poodle skirt, except that it was black with pink poodles instead of the other way around. Knowing her assistant’s attention to detail, she probably had on bobby socks and two-tone whatever they were called shoes. Jo sat up a bit straighter to see as she reached for the chocolate that Muriel broke off and handed over, but the desk still blocked her view.

  Without being asked, Muriel raised a foot for her to see. Black bobby socks topped with pink lace and those white-and-tan shoes.

  “Saddle oxfords,” Muriel informed her recognizing the blank moment.

  Jo nodded. They’d long since stopped trying to figure out how they knew what the other was asking without, well, asking. It wasn’t because they’d been working together for five years either. They’d done it since the first day Muriel had showed up, fresh from college with a resume in her hand.

  Jo ate the chocolate, dark, candied ginger–chili pepper this time. She wanted to close her eyes and just lay her head on the desk, instead she focused on convincing her body that she’d just eaten some magic, high-energy candy rather than soothing dark cocoa.

  “You also have a visitor. Or will in another two minutes.”

  “Who?” that straightened Jo back up a bit. Yuri had gone back to Alaska, hadn’t he? She waved a hand toward her jacket.

  Muriel took it from the hanger on the back of the office door and handed it over.

  Jo pulled it on and checked the lie of it in Muriel’s appraising look and quick nod. She was going to have her power armor in place in case it was Yuri.

  A tap on her partly open door and Renée Linden stuck her head in.

  “I’m not interrupting, am I? Oh, what a pretty rose. Who sent you that?”

  “I thought you might like to see the shoot for my final ad campaign. They can be quite fun actually.” Renée led Jo out of the office and toward the Market. “I still haven’t had a chance to talk to the board, their next meeting isn’t until tomorrow evening. I hate to impose, but I’d appreciate keeping it between us girls until then.”

  “Of course,” Jo granted easily. What she hadn’t found, despite two days of thinking about it, was a gracious way to inform the most influential female power broker on the Seattle scene that Jo’s answer was a definitive, “No.” Part of the problem was she didn’t know if her guess was right, though she had circled back around to it being a job offer.

  However, the answer was no even though Renée hadn’t technically made the offer, at least not in as many words. Even if she had, Jo wasn’t going to take the Executive Directorship, it still made no sense.

  Her first intention, of informing Renée of her decision while in her own office and on her own turf, had somehow failed. Perhaps on a stroll through the Market she’d find the right moment to acknowledge Renée’s kind and subtle offer to suggest her for the Executive Directorship and to thank her kindly as she turned her down.

  “We do a great deal of tourism marketing,” Renée was telling her as they walked together down Pike Place and into the heart of the market. “We use websites, airplane magazines, participation in television cooking shows, and the like. I decided that it was time we expand that clientele. The Pike Place Market has long been a destination visit for travelers, but I think there is a high-end that we’ve been missing.”

  Jo nodded. It made sense. She’d seen the Market change and shift over the decade she’d been in Seattle. There were still the odd little kiosks at the north end where amateur artists rented six feet of table to display hand-crafted earrings or their latest knit fashions for toddlers. Cute and very good for what it was. But in the he
art of the Market there were some true artists selling their wares. Clothing designers, high-end galleries, and antique stores specializing in rare collectibles had joined the food entrepreneurs which were the backbone of the Market’s image.

  There was no mistaking the photo shoot when they found it at The Glass Shoppe. There were two photographer’s assistants adjusting umbrella flashes, one with a couple extra cameras dangling around her neck. A thin, young man sat next to an open makeup case of immense variety. A short rack on wheels waited outside the shop sporting a small but tasteful selection of high-end clothing to be ready when needed.

  At the center of the bustling array were a photographer and his model.

  Jo gasped. There was no mistaking her. She’d been on enough covers over the last year to be unmistakable.

  “Melanie.”

  Renée simply nodded. “You see, I’m right. Everyone knows her. She’s immensely marketable right now. I managed to find her when she was traveling through Seattle, so it was not too hideously expensive to hire her. We only have her for the day, but I think it will definitely be worth it.”

  Jo had seen her in person once, but she couldn’t quite place where. A failing that she could only credit to how Renée was overloading her neural pathways. She absolutely couldn’t afford to be out of the office, yet here they were, chatting pleasantly at an advertising shoot that had absolutely nothing to do with her.

  They watched as the magnificent, six-foot tall supermodel swept her waist-length blond hair over her shoulder and flirted, using her trademark ever so slight French accent, with the slightly shy vendor in his small shop. The photographer snapped away. Like most of the Market’s spaces it was deceptively small but had been used incredibly well to display the blown glass art making it feel much larger.

  Blown glass. She glanced around. There, behind one of the photographer’s silvery umbrella flashes stood a display of exquisite little bud vases in all the shades of flowers. It only took a moment to note that there wasn’t one to match the pale blue vase now holding a rose on Jo’s desk.

  A delivery boy named Marko, huh? From an unknown flower shop? And a vase purchased right here in the Market. She kept her smile to herself but placed a small wager with herself that Angelo had someone named Marko working in his restaurant. One who wouldn’t reveal the sender despite a nice tip because he was protecting his boss and his job.

  Neither Yuri nor Renée, Angelo had sent the rose. Well, that was awfully sweet of him. She knew this shop well enough to know that the vase hadn’t been cheap either, she owned a couple of this artist’s pieces herself.

  But she had reconsidered their kiss during the rest of their run and only seen it reemphasized last night at the airport bar. Angelo was nice enough. And he would be too easy to get close to with his smooth accent and stunning looks. But he suffered from a problem similar to Yuri’s. First, she wasn’t ready to be involved with anyone for a couple more years and second, she wanted someone as serious about their career as she was.

  That wasn’t quite right, Angelo was serious about his cooking. Maybe even as ambitious in his own way. But her career was a whole different world than a single nice restaurant in Seattle. And his college had been cooking schools, not Vassar. Not University of Washington’s School of Law.

  He wasn’t beneath her, that was too demeaning a thought. But neither was he what she was looking for, even if her body kept reacting as if he were.

  “This is the last shoot of the day,” Renée interrupted her spiraling thoughts as they watched a clothier offer Melanie a different jacket and a dark scarf that transformed her from casually elegant to delightfully urban.

  “We did jewelry, antique cars, the little ones that were toys in the 1930s and ‘40s. I’ve been working here for almost two decades and had no idea they commanded such prices. And a number of others. The haute couture shop was to have followed this, but it closed last week. I always thought it was a tad silly myself. Simply too surreal for even an opening night at the opera. At least on this coast.”

  Jo inspected Renée’s outfit and saw another reason the woman might feel that way. She was ruthlessly fit, as was probably only achieved with a personal trainer, and impeccably dressed in a simple maroon dress that shouted to take this woman seriously, without masking that she was a woman. It was an outfit that Jo herself would have selected if she could afford such tailoring. Her dark blond hair had highlights and not a hint of gray, worn just long enough to reach her collar, and held back in a no-nonsense clasp that was simple enough to have come from Bartell Drug Store but perfect enough that it probably came from Nordstrom.

  An image was forming in Jo mind’s eye. It started with Melanie and filled out slowly like a camera pulling back to reveal the surroundings. An image of this beautiful, shining woman in a dusky, warm Italian kitchen.

  “Did you shoot a restaurant?”

  Renée shook her head. “We considered Maximilien’s, but we frequently feature them in our ads and we wanted these to be different.”

  “Have you been in Angelo’s Tuscan Hearth since they remodeled?”

  Renée inspected her intensely for half a heartbeat then smiled radiantly.

  Jo wondered at the meaning of those two emotions side by side.

  “No, I haven’t.” Renée’s smile didn’t diminish, but it felt as if were part of another conversation that was again eluding Jo. “I do keep meaning to go in. Coming back into the city with Nathaniel after we both finally get home from work simply hasn’t happened.”

  She looped a hand through Jo’s arm. “That’s a brilliant idea. Come.”

  Jo had intended to go back to work. Had to. But was making little progress in that direction.

  Chapter 12

  Jo felt a bit like a scout leader as she led the troop down the old bricks of Pike Place and turned up Post Alley. Behind her followed Melanie and Renée talking about how charming the Market was on a summer day. Apparently Melanie had been here only once before and that had been a chill and spitting winter’s day. Not a day when the smell of the sea was battled back by fresh flowers, sweet pastries, and rich coffee thick on the Seattle air.

  Following them were the photographer, his laden assistants, the makeup guy, clothier, and several others apparently connected to the shoot that she hadn’t noticed in the surrounding crowd.

  As it was only a block away, they’d decided it was better to show up and ask forgiveness later rather than calling ahead.

  She asked the others to wait outside, taking only Renée, Melanie, and the photographer in with her.

  “Table for four?” The slender Italian woman greeted them. Jo remembered her as the hostess from last week’s meal with Yuri. She’d been terribly gracious about Jo’s request to see Angelo. Gracious. Graziella.

  “Graziella. I was wondering if Angelo might be available.”

  The hostess’ memory was clearly up to the challenge as well. “Ah, Miss Thompson. Table seven.”

  They were both careful not to look toward the offending piece of furniture.

  “A moment please.” And the woman was gone.

  Angelo breezed into the room, his apron immaculate, his smile radiant.

  “Why hello, Miss Thomp— Melanie!” He rushed forward and greeted the supermodel with a kiss on each cheek and then a profound hug though she towered several inches over him.

  “Angelo!” They slid into rapid Italian leaving Jo stupefied.

  They laughed together. The kind of laugh that only happened when you were flirting. Angelo was flirting with a supermodel right in front of her. She’d been planning to thank him for the flower if they found a moment alone, but now he was holding hands with a supermodel and they were talking excitedly over one another, just inches apart.

  Jo’s body flashed hot and then very, very cold. The power suit she’d put on in case her visitor was Yuri, which then looked appropriate beside Renée’s perfect, understated attire, now did its job. Jo’s clothes wrapped around her like armor. Sensible heels, nav
y blue slacks with a perfect crease that matched her wide-lapelled jacket. The dress white blouse with the muted-floral bow tie. She’d taken down federal cases in this exact outfit. She could deal with one lousy Italian restaurateur while wearing it.

  Clearly the whole shooting plan had passed back and forth and been approved in Italian, as moments later Graziella was escorting in those who had waited outside while Melanie toured the restaurant on Angelo’s arm.

  Had the man been playing her? Simply wanting someone to amuse himself with while his supermodel lover was flitting about the world on her climb to fame and fortune? Melanie made Jo feel downright dowdy.

  Angelo couldn’t stop laughing. Melanie kept going on about how she’d clearly fallen in love with the wrong man, because Angelo was so much more handsome. Then she told a rather racy story of how Zaia, Essence, and Stella Star had been found naked together in a bathroom at the Carlton. He hadn’t heard that one about her fellow models, but Melanie told him he must search on it, as the person who found them had indeed had a smartphone that linked video directly to YouTube. It might not have been so bad if the three women hadn’t been having a screaming match about sleeping with the same film director.

  “You have made it so beautiful,” she kept looking around the restaurant and he couldn’t stop himself from grinning.

  “This was the second try. The first one was pronounced ‘uber-ugly’.”

  “Russell?” Her voice sounded a touch sad as she said his name, so he did his best to gloss over it as if he hadn’t noticed the change.

  “His words exactly. But he helped me do this.”

  “That man,” she sighed lightly. “He does have an amazing eye. No one has ever made me as beautiful as he did with a camera. Not even Claude, though he is better than most.” She flicked a long red fingernail in the direction of the photographer who was moving about the restaurant checking angles through one lens and then another.