The Professional

by Laine Stockton

  “Alright, Miss Harmont,” she said with the smile of someone really getting into the dirt, “if you were a different kind of celebrity, which kind would you be?”

  Huh? I tried to interpret the question and realized she was asking which type of entertainment I would be in if I wasn’t already in entertainment. Which I wasn’t. Apparently I wasn’t getting the best journalistic effort Humans had to offer. Or maybe I was. She waited expectantly.

  “Oh, uh. Well, I don’t really think of myself as a celebrity,” I said. “I’m just a college student with a famous last name. But I would like to be a director.” At least that was honest.

  “Really?” she asked. “Not an actress or a singer?” It was less of a question and more of a prompt. I guess being behind the camera was less glamorous a headline. Cora Harmont - Pop Star Wannabe really popped off the page.

  I considered insisting, but decided to just play along. I’d already sold my soul just sitting in this office. “Maybe an actress if I had to choose. Of course, that’s probably because I’m a terrible singer,” I said.

  “Ha ha ha,” went the journalist who I was just realizing had never introduced herself. “Now, what’s your weirdest fear?”

  What the actual fuck kind of questions were these? My fears were just as practical as I was - dying alone, torture, my brother’s plane going down. I struggled, but realized if I thought this hard about every question I’d be here forever. “Rabbits,” I lied.

  “Really?” the journalist acted like this was a revelation. “That’s so weird.”

  “Right?” I said.

  With this new strategy in mind, the rest of the interview went ahead fairly smoothly. I played Cora Harmont the celebrity, not Cora the student, and kept my answers to questions such as “Where would you live other than New York?” (home in Athea) and “If you had a super power what would it be?” (flight) as intentionally boring and non-controversial as possible.

  “Alright,” the journalist said, “this is our last one and then we can get you out of here.”

  Thank God.

  “Who’s your celebrity crush?” she asked

  Oh Jesus save me now. I racked my brain for celebrities I found attractive and all I could picture was Alex’s grinning face in my pink apron.

  “Um…” I said, struggling. Then, before I could stop the words, I heard myself saying, “I’m actually dating someone right now so I wouldn’t want to say.”

  Oh fuck me. The journalist’s eyes bugged and she quickly asked, “Anyone we might know?”

  “Nope,” I said, standing. “You said that was the last question?”

  She looked like she was going to force more questions on me about my mysterious boyfriend, but I was already walking out the door. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Shit.

  Alex stood from the couch where he was surrounded by three young girls who were acting irritatingly giggly. Their smiles faded when they saw me.

  “We need to go,” I said, walking past them and to the elevator. Alex said something to them that I didn’t catch and hurried to follow me.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, slipping past the closing doors to stand next to me.

  How could I be so stupid? Telling them I had a boyfriend was the very worst thing I could have done. It would get back to Mother immediately and when I couldn’t produce a man, she’d be suspicious. She’d never believe me if I told her that it was a lie. She’d assume I was covering something up.

  I had to call her immediately and explain. I pulled my phone out and dialed the number. The phone rang four times and then the line disconnected. I tried again and it hung up after the first ring. Dammit!

  “What’s wrong?” Alex asked.

  I tightened my hands into fists, willing the elevator to go faster. I did not want to be in this building for a second longer.

  “I told the interviewer that I had a boyfriend,” I said finally.

  Alex leaned against the elevator wall. “So what?” he asked.

  I glared at him. “So what? My mother is going to see this. She’s going to think I’m telling the truth and she’s going to try to ruin my life over it.”

  “So tell her it was a lie. It was.” His casual tone irritated me. How could he not see the gravity of the situation?

  I tried, was what I wanted to say, what I should have said. Alex was annoying me, but no more than he normally did. But for some reason, all my anger at my mother boiled inside of me and overflowed onto Alex.

  “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I asked.

  He grinned. “A couple of times,” he said.

  I failed to see the humor of the situation. “Well, maybe you should remember that you work for me and it’s really completely unprofessional for you to act the way you constantly do.”

  The smile slipped off his face and I felt a glean of triumphant pleasure. He straightened against the wall and when he spoke his tone was hard. “I do remember who I work for and I believe it’s your mother, not you.”

  “Well whoever you work for, you’re overly familiar for your position.” I winced at the words as they left my mouth. They sounded exactly like something Mother would say.

  “And you’re a little loose about what you say to me considering everything you do gets back to your mother.”

  My head whipped around to lock him in my gaze, mouth open, rage about to pour from my mouth, when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor. A small group of business people stood waiting for us to exit.

  I clenched my teeth, threw him a look of complete and utter disdain, and stormed from the elevator, barging past the people waiting.

  So that’s the game he wanted to play? Fine. He could go fuck himself and so could Mother. I was tired of all the bullshit and even more annoyed that I was starting to fall for it. The breakfast, the stupid apron, the almost pleasant conversation. It was all part of the plan to get my guard down so he could tell Mother everything she wanted to hear. Alex Flynn was a snake and our relationship or friendship or whatever I thought was developing went no further than this.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cora

  It had been twenty-four hours since my fight with Alex, and somehow I’d managed to not see him once. This was less attributed to skill and more to the fact that I’d been hiding on the third floor the entire time.

  I’d admit, starting a fight with Alex wasn’t my best move. It was uncalled for, brought on by anger more for my mother than for him.

  The fight had been helpful though. I’d gotten a reminder, a reality check, of what Alex was really here for. Sure, he was tall and charming and looked good making eggs, but behind that enticing exterior was an agent of Mother’s. I wasn’t so paranoid to think that his obvious attraction to me was faked just to get information. He’d have to be a complete psychopath to pull that off. But I’d gotten a feeling that some unspoken secret lurked behind those brilliant green eyes, a guilt that had shut him down in the passage and made him pull his hand away at the Park.

  This guilt was obviously about being in Mother’s ear. I could forgive Alex Flynn a lot of things, but at betrayal to Mother, I drew the line.

  I got up from the dusty bedroom and went into the hall, entering another one just for a change of scenery. Below, there was a great commotion, filling the manor with noise unlike any I’ve heard here since I was a child. Jackie had brought in a crew of workers yesterday afternoon, and ever since they’d been chewing at my home like termites, washing and dusting and preparing for the arrival of the family on Saturday.

  Soon they’d get here, to the third floor, and then there’d be nowhere left to hide except in the walls. And once everyone arrived in two days, nowhere would be safe.

  I pictured my mother entering the house for the first time in close to a decade. The image made me wince.

  My brother and I used to love this house when we were kids. Trips to New York happened infrequently, maybe once or twice a year, whenever Mother had business in the city, but when we did get to cross the ocea
n and spend weeks in the old manor, it was all we would talk about for months afterward, begging our parents to let us return. I’d never have guessed then that I’d one day live here. I’d also never imagine that I’d despise it.

  I was glad my younger self was spared the knowledge of why.

  I flopped on a bed in one of the spare bedrooms overlooking Fifth Avenue. I was always a Daddy’s girl and, oddly, I became even more so after his death. There is no good age to lose a parent, so I guess twelve was as good as any. Your childhood is close to over and the best memories of your father are fresh in your mind. It isn’t considered uncool to love your dad yet, but it’s getting there. You’re becoming a woman and the boys at your exclusive prep school are just starting to seem like they aren’t quite so disgusting and useless after all and you’re starting to not want to have movie nights anymore even though you do miss them a little. If tragedy hadn’t have struck they would have come around again, after the teen years, once I grew up a little more, once I became a real woman and realized that a good relationship with at least one parent was worth all the boys in the world. It came a little too late though, as these things always seemed to do.

  Dad died in New York in a cab accident coming home from a meeting with his editor during our last family visit to the manor. He was born here and he was buried here, next to his parents. I remember his funeral as snapshots of gray and grief and the feeling that it should be raining or at least have an overcast because who gets buried on a cool, blue summer day? My father, apparently.

  I like to pretend that my mother didn’t cry, even though I sat next to her, close enough to see the tears, factual evidence of humanity. She’d worn a small black veil and a Chanel dress and looked “stunning” in the pap photos. Grief suited her and she relished it. Once someone had read her a bedtime story about a princess in a castle in a magical land and she’d taken it to heart; she was that princess and my father her prince and his death was just the part of the story before the wizard came down from the sky and made all her dreams come true. She romanticized his death because the truth was that their lives weren’t very romantic. Sure, they’d had the storybook meeting and wedding and children, but as the years slipped away and the glamour became just another picture in a photo book, life had become, well, normal. Business and birthdays and charity events. My father had grown a stomach and a beard. He didn’t fit the picture anymore. But in death? Oh, in death he was perfect. Displayed in uniform, solid oak casket, plot under the trees in his home country (she’d wanted to bury him in Athea, but his will stated otherwise), hoards of sobbing masses. It was just perfect. So perfect you could cry.

  A chilly relationship grew sour in the years after his death. I’d moved to New York to be closer to him and further from her. The family never visited the manor again. Until now. In less than a week, my mother would be walking across the hallowed halls for the first time since the funeral. It made me sick.

  But my family’s visit was inevitable. There wasn’t anything I could do except batten down the hatches and weather the storm. Alex on the other hand…

  I needed a second opinion so I called Diana.

  “What an asshole,” Diana said on the other end of the line.

  “Right?” I said.

  “How dare he!”

  “I know!”

  “You need to get a new bodyguard,” she said.

  “It wouldn’t matter. Mother would just get someone else and that’s assuming I even have the ability to fire him. I tried with Jackie and she brushed me off.” Now that I was on a rant against Alex, I couldn’t seem to stop. I told her about the incident in the park two days ago, how he mocked my “royal fragility” and his other snide comments about my (Mother’s) money.

  “Typical,” Diana said. “Derek’s the same way. He assumes once he has as much money as me, everything will be perfect. It’s like he can’t even see that I have issues in my life.” She paused. “I hate him.”

  “You haven’t even been back together for seventy-two hours,” I reminded her.

  “Nah. What time is it? Two o’clock? It’s been about that.”

  “Not really my point,” I said.

  “Well, I’m regretting it already,” she said. “You know what he’s pissed about? That I didn’t immediately agree to pack it up and move to LA with him. He thinks that if I need to think it over I don’t really love him.”

  “You’ve just been on a break for two months,” I said. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The same thing that’s wrong with yours,” Diana said. “He’s a guy and guys are stupid. Everything’s black and white with them. Rich or poor. Love you or hate you. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

  “First of all, Alex is not ‘mine’,” I said.

  “Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Diana said. “I’ve still got five bucks on the bone train and this fight is just increasing my odds.”

  “It’s doing the opposite,” I said. “I really think I hate him.”

  “Yeah and I thought I hated Derek when he told me I needed lip injections. If you didn’t care about his opinion then it wouldn’t get to you.”

  “I don’t care about his opinion and that’s not even why I’m mad at him,” I said. “I just can’t trust him knowing that everything I say or do gets back to Mother!”

  “So I know it’s not super consequential, but that doesn’t also happen to apply to Sarah Summers’ party tonight, right?”

  Oh shit, I’d completely forgotten about that. “Yeah, about that…” I started.

  “Oh come on Cora! I already told Sarah you’d be there,” she pleaded.

  “You talked to Sarah Summers?” I asked.

  “Well not her, but Derek told his friend who’s friends with her boyfriend. I’m sure its gotten back to her by now.”

  “I doubt she cares if I show up or not,” I muttered.

  “Are you kidding? A real life princess at her party? Bitch, you’re like Grace Kelly.”

  “I assure you, I’m not. You just want someone to hang out with because Derek’s going to be off with his friends and it’s going to be a bunch of Hollywood hotshots and their required cling-ons.”

  “Well, then if I’m the Hollywood hotshot, then you have to be my cling-on. I never have cling-ons,” she fake-whined into the phone. “Please Cora, be my cling-on. Just for one night.”

  “I want to go,” I lied, “but have you been listening? Flynn’s sole mission is to catch me doing stuff like this. I’d be playing right into his hand.”

  “Well there you go. You want to get back at him for being a dick? Slip out on his watch and make him feel like an idiot.”

  I considered how badly that had gone a couple days ago, but Alex had to have been tipped off by someone that I ran in the mornings. I was the only one in the house who knew about this party, and as little as I wanted to go hang out at some rich singer’s penthouse, the thought of disappearing on Alex Flynn made me pause. I’d have to be tricky, make him think he knew what was really going on while I held all the cards. I pictured telling him about the party tomorrow and the look on his imagined face made me practically giddy.

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll try. But no promises.”

  “Fantastic!” Diana said. “I’ll text you the address. I’m getting there around ten. Good luck!”

  “I’ll need it,” I said.

  After I hung up, I stayed lying on the bed for a while, staring up at the rafters and trying to think of a way to escape Alex’s oppressive presence. After I’d run through a variety of options that ranged from impossible, like scaling down the side of the mansion on bedsheets, to fun but impractical, like hiring a gang of goons to beat him up while I slipped away, I realized that the simplest was the best. Alex wasn’t tracking my phone (as far as I knew). As long as I was able to get out the door without him right behind me, he’d never be able to know where I’d gone. And with a house the size of mine, it wouldn’t be hard to distract him long enough to get away.

  By t
he time I’d worked out my plan, it was only three and there wasn’t much point in getting ready for another four hours or so. I tried to read for a while, but the noise from downstairs had kicked up a notch and permeated the room with such force that I truly believed the workers must be cutting a hole right up through the floor. When the rattling, hammering industrial symphony failed to quiet or even falter, I used a window to climb onto the rooftop where I kept a folding chair overlooking the best view of the city from the southwestern side of the manor. I brought headphones and my book and sat there until it got too dark to read and after that I stayed a while longer, just looking out over the city at the lights above and flashing traffic below. It wasn’t until my phone read eight that I ducked into my bedroom window and started to gather my things.

  The house was much quieter than it had been during the afternoon, but I could still hear the distinctive sound of footsteps walking through my halls. I started getting ready, showering, applying my makeup, and slipping into a simple black dress and shoes that I knew I could move quickly in. Out in the living room, I could hear the television softly playing. He was still out there, but not for much longer.

  “Flynn?” I called through the door.

  The television quieted. “Do you need something?” His voice came directly from the other side of the door. It came through the wood like he was speaking directly into my ear.

  “No,” I said, keeping my voice steady and casual. “I just got a call from Jackie. She needs you in the grand parlor.”

  The other side of the door was silent. I stared hard at the wood, willing him to believe me. After a moment, he said, “OK.” He sounded a bit disappointed. I heard his footsteps walking away and then the distinctive sound of the elevator doors opening. Gotcha.

  I slipped a light jacket over my dress, grabbed my bag, and darted down the stairwell, walking as quietly as I could to avoid Alex’s hawk-like ears. He would be reaching the grand parlor soon although if the fates were on my side, he’d get lost on the way. The moment he arrived and saw that not only did Jackie not call for him, but that she wasn’t even there, he’d book it to the exit knowing I was making a run for it.