“Wow,” she says. “Nice.” She goes right for the menu. I love that she loves to eat. “Another tiny menu with no prices,” she says. “A San Fran fashion, huh?”
“See anything you like?” I ask.
“I might like it all,” she says.
“There won’t be a bad dish on there,” I say, signaling the waiters. We order two more drinks and a feast off the menu, including more bruschetta.
“Our favorite food,” she says.
Something strange shimmers through my chest at that.
I quiz her about her favorite eateries in New Jersey. I usually quiz people about their lives because it helps me gain control over them, but with Elle, I want to know all.
She doesn’t like to talk about Newark, but she comes to life when she talks about her friend group. They all seem to live near each other—maybe in the same neighborhood? I’m glad that she found what she set out to find.
She nearly dies with each plate that comes across the table. It’s not about corrupting her anymore—I can feel her pleasure as if it’s my own.
“Thank you again for this,” she says, motioning to her dress.
“You look stunning.”
She waves it off. “It’s not my usual thing, but I really love it. I know I’m not the most fashionable person ever,” she says.
“I like the way you dress.”
“Oh, come off it,” she says. “Nobody likes how I dress.”
“I do. You’re utilitarian. Taking the decision-making out of dressing saves bandwidth. I admire it. It’s what I do.”
“That’s why you wear your black suits every day? To save bandwidth? So you can save your vast brilliance for the negotiating room?” she asks, grinning.
I reach over and wind a lock of her hair in my finger. “Among other things.”
“For me, it’s more about a proven outfit. It gives me one less thing to feel awkward about. I’m not good with people.”
“I’m not really, either.”
“Oh, please,” she says. “So what have I been watching in those negotiation sessions for the last two weeks? What was that?”
“Business skills,” I say.
“Oh-kayyyy,” she says.
“It’s true, I’d far prefer to stay away from everyone.”
Her gaze locks on mine.
“Except now,” I add.
“Okay, then,” she whispers.
People think I’m misanthropic, that I don’t like my fellow human being. It’s more of a chicken and egg thing, though. Not liking my fellow human being came after my fellow human being not much liking me. Elle has carved out an exception to that rule. For whatever bizarre reason, she’s decided to believe in me, to think I have a good heart. I find it…compelling.
Every entrée comes with a creative presentation—a squiggle of sauce, or a sprig of something stuck upright in the food like a flag, and she seems to find it funny. And really, it is funny, and we laugh as each ensuing entrée has more extreme artiness to it, which is something I never paid attention to before. We decide the cook is trolling us.
I ask her if she’s ever seen the small mammal exhibit at the San Diego zoo. She hasn’t. I tell her about the extensive hedgehog display. She looks excited. I’m thinking about a side trip.
We order decaf and three desserts and I watch Elle dig into them with gusto. It’s the perfect dinner.
Until I look across the room and see him there.
He’s standing next to the host station while his driver/bodyguard attempts to land a decent table, because he stays above that kind of thing. Or he might be too drunk; one never knows.
I set down my fork. He seems to be scanning the place. Did somebody tell him that I was dining here, or is it just bad luck?
“What’s wrong?” Elle asks.
“Unwelcome visitor,” I say. “Whatever happens, don’t react. Hopefully he’ll just go away.”
“Is he a murder hornet?”
“If only,” I mutter as he makes his way toward our table.
First thing he does is to set his hand on the back of Elle chair, already going for a fight, I see. I stand, letting him feel my full height.
“I heard you were in town. The Germantown Group?” he asks.
My pulse thuds low and hard. “Is there something you want, or did you just want to ruin our appetites? If so, you’re too late. We had a lovely time.” There’s nothing he hates more than to see me happy.
“I understand they’re in a mind to sell,” he says.
I sigh as if I’m bored, though I’m anything but. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows about the Germantown Group. He always did have a large network of spies.
“They are well positioned for a takeover and a revamp,” he says. “I was thinking I might put in a bid. If they want to sell, they shouldn’t sell to a chop shop.”
Just like him to use my legwork and intel, and then swoop in for the kill. I smile. You never let him see anything.
He smiles back. We’re in a pitched battle, though if you didn’t know us, you might mistake this for a happy father-son reunion.
And for the record, my father would chop up the Germantown Group, too, but he has better PR. It’s a lot of lies and fake philanthropy.
I can’t let him take it out from under me. How did he discover that they were in a mood to sell?
“The look on your face? The acquisition is already paying off.” Then he turns to Elle. “Royce Blackberg,” he says. “And you are?” He holds out his hand.
“Don’t touch her,” I say.
Elle frowns at him, refusing to offer her hand and even as he beckons with his, instantly taking my side. The feeling of her being with me without question is almost worth all of this. People never take my side. They never think I want or need it.
Usually I don’t.
But this now…it feels amazing. Like we’re a team.
“Is this the executive coach?” he asks. “Delivering coaching with a happy ending, from the looks of it. I’d love to arrange a session with your office. Bexley Partners, is it?”
I watch myself move around the table toward him, grab him with brutal force. My arm comes around in a left hook, connecting with his jaw with a satisfying crunch. It’s the only hit I get in, because his driver, Steen, and his other bodyguard are on me, one holding me so that Steen can get in a few hits before the staff intervenes.
“I won’t press changes,” my father says.
“Yeah, you go ahead and take the high road,” I say through the pain of my split lip.
“All one can do around you.”
I laugh and throw several hundreds onto the table—enough to cover the dinner and a couple hundred extra—something for the staff who has to clean up this mess. “Let’s go,” I say, taking her hand.
In the back of my car, she presses a green napkin to my forehead and tells the driver to do a pit stop at the drug store.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Yeah, your lip and forehead are only completely split. That guy hit you so hard. It made such a loud sound!” Gently she repositions the napkin. “Who was that?”
“My father and his driver and his assistant, but they’re really his bodyguards.”
“Wait, that was your father?”
“Unfortunately,” I say.
“What’s going on? You think he’s going to try and steal your acquisition out from under you? Why would he even do that?”
“It’s a long story,” I say. “We don’t have the most harmonious relationship.”
“That seems like an understatement,” she says.
“I’m much more concerned about how he got his information,” I say.
Do I have a spy in my midst? It could be somebody from Gerrold’s team, but how would anybody from Gerrold’s team know about the animosity between my father and me? Know enough to capitalize on it?
I hate that it could be somebody from my team. I hate the idea more than I normally would. As if the loyalty of my team suddenly m
eans something. What’s going on? I hate it—I really do.
Is this soft skills? If so, I’m not loving it.
I want to be alone—I feel this need to get right to work on fending off my asshole of a father from the acquisition and figuring out who the corporate spy is, but Elle insists on patching me up.
She’s back from her room, having changed into a tank top and stretchy pants. Does she iterate on this one too? If we were together, would she wear different colors of this same outfit when she comes over? Would she keep a version of this outfit at my place?
“Is that your comfort uniform?” I ask.
“Yes, exactly.” She sits me in my bathroom and cleans up my wounds. She has bandages and skin glue that work on my forehead but not so much on my lip. It’s ineffectual, but she keeps trying.
I like the feeling of her caring for me, and I encourage her to keep trying even though I know she won’t succeed. It’s the trying that does something for me. I want to reach out to her as she works on me, just to touch her, or maybe to pull her closer, but I don’t want to ask for it. It’s not the kind of thing a man like me asks for.
“It’s going to be in the paper now, too,” I say. “I’ll be the aggressor and he’ll use it with Gerrold. He wanted this.”
“I’m sorry. You were standing up for me,” she says.
“And it was worth it. I don’t care—I’d do it over again,” I say. “It’s worth it, even if I lose the Germantown Group. Not that I plan on losing it. I need to figure out his spy and hit back.”
“I don’t think it’s anybody on the traveling team,” she says. “At least not the admin group.”
“Why would you think that? Everybody has their price.”
“They just really believe in you. They’re proud of you,” she says.
“Now whose soft skills are not in evidence?” I joke.
“I know what I know,” she says. “They admire you. They love being able to add insight after the sessions. Those moments when you seem to appreciate their observations—it means a lot to them.”
I grunt, like I’m not convinced. Really, I don’t know what to say to that. Things are simpler when people don’t like you.
“Sooo…” she begins, “what’s up with you and your dad?”
“He’s just an asshole. But then again, so am I. Peas in a pod.”
“You’re not an asshole,” she says.
“Elle,” I say. “My being an incorrigible asshole is the whole reason you’re here.”
She narrows her eyes. “So…your mom…”
“I don’t know. She left when I was ten—moved to Australia. Had enough of the two of us. I’m sure she would’ve volunteered to be a colonist on Mars if that had been an option.”
“Leaving you with that guy?”
“Who could blame her?” I stand and unbutton my now-bloody shirt. “It was good not to be coddled. It suited me. I made a hundred thousand bucks by the time I was fifteen. I hired a lawyer and got emancipated. Left that godforsaken boys’ school and came back to the States. He’s been after me ever since. I mean, not that he was father of the year before that.” I toss the bloody shirt and the T-shirt into the garbage and pull on a dark T-shirt.
“She just left for no reason?”
“Well, she said she was visiting her sister in Australia, but she never quite made it back. She wanted a different life. Away from my father and me.”
“I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”
“Dear old Dad had his part.”
“You were her son,” she says.
“But much more my father’s son, unfortunately.” I take a strand of her hair between my fingers. “It’s so cute that you’re looking for an explanation other than the fact that I come from a long line of villains. He’s an asshole, and I’m an asshole.”
“I won’t accept that. That’s not in any way true or at all how it works.”
“Are you so sure?”
“I know you. I know that you stood up for me,” she says.
“Maybe I wanted to get laid,” I say, forcing a grin. The bandage over my lip pulls off.
“Malcolm, look what you’ve done!” She presses it back on the unhurt part of my lip, but the stickiness is worn off. “I have to put on a new one now,” she scolds. “And also, I personally know you’re a good guy.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
She takes a new butterfly bandage from the wrapper, concentrating on the placement, fingers trembling pressing the edges of the bandage flat, repeating the movement way more than she needs to. Is she nervous about something?
Her nervousness makes me nervous. Like something real is happening.
I keep my smirk up, but inside, my blood thunders.
What people don’t know about being a bad person is that it’s not that hard. When you’re already hated, more hate doesn’t hurt. Just like if you’re wet, more water won’t make you wetter. You become immune at some point.
People’s glares, once you get used to them, are easy to take after a while, even amusing.
What’s not easy to take is a beautiful little rube who believes in me. I don’t have a place to put that. I think that I’d have to carve that place out of flesh and bone.
“Hey, I almost forgot—I read your essay question answers.” She narrows her eyes at me. “The dryer-lint bandit? You don’t really have a theory, do you?”
“Oh, I absolutely do,” I say.
“What?” she asks.
“Do I get a free tick if I tell?” I ask.
“You know that’s not the kind of coach I am,” she says. “Come on, just tell me.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Oh my god, you are terrible!” Then, “Please?”
“Nope,” I whisper. Why would I tell her when it’s so much fun not to?
“Is it based on something specific, or just intuition?” she asks.
“Of course it’s based on something,” I say.
“I’ll get it out of you,” she says.
“Maybe.”
Soft fingers brush my cheek. Her gentle touch burns. She has no idea. “You got a good hit in on him,” she says.
“I did, didn’t I?”
She gazes at me, eyes impossibly green—army green. Because she’s a fighter. “The way you hit him,” she says, beaming. “Soft skills not in evidence.”
I snort. “They won’t be when I’m through with him. He expects me to hit back, but insulting you like that? I’m going to go at him so hard. And I’ll find whoever he has on the inside and squeeze that person. And I have to get Gerrold to sign before my father gets to him. I have to move fast.”
“Do you have to?” she asks naively.
I take a strand of her hair between two fingers. “Should I sing ‘Kumbayah’ with him instead?”
She says nothing.
It’s here that I get a strange new idea. More diabolical than any I’ve ever come up with. “What if I did something truly drastic?”
She looks wary. “Like what?”
“Really unexpected,” I say.
She blinks. “Loving kindness and selfless generosity?”
It’s interesting how well she’s gotten to know me in this short time. “Loving and selfless might be a bit overboard,” I say. “But imagine this. What if I threw in training for the displaced workers? That would clinch the deal and seriously mess with my dad. It would be so unlike me. He’d never see it coming, and he wouldn’t be prepared to counter it. The fact is, a few of my segments have expanding coding needs…”
“You would train and place the people who get let go?” she asks.
“Why not?” I say.
“What about the money?” she asks.
“What an interesting question from my empathy coach,” I say. “What about the money, my empathy coach wonders.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I’ll still lose my shirt offering retraining and guaranteed positions, but if we do a PR angle on it, then t
he publicity might make it worth it. Which would in turn make future companies more receptive to my bids.”
“So you’re doing it all for the PR,” she says.
“And to screw my father. And because I’m a billionaire who gets to do whatever ridic thing he gets into his head.”
She snorts and shoves at my shoulder. I make a few phone calls. I get my HR VP out of bed and pitch it. I instruct him to work up a proposal. I get my PR agency to weigh in.
“This is absolute madness,” I say a few hours later when things are in motion. “And it could work. It’ll definitely put a ticking clock under Gerrold.”
“Look at you being good,” she says.
“Yeah, look at me being good,” I joke. “How incredibly boring.”
“Stop. It suits you,” she says. “Also, people will not see this coming.”
“I have something you didn’t count on,” I say darkly. “A destructive secret weapon—yeah, that’s right, it’s a program that helps these workers thrive in the future economy, and I am going to crush your fucking balls with it.”
She laughs and comes and sits on my lap and kisses me. How is it that this is so much fun? This kind of giveaway, I should be weeping.
My phone rings. It’s legal from back home, returning my call. I’m running this all through New York—no way can I trust anyone on the traveling team. Who the hell has been feeding information to my father? And did it just start when we arrived on the West Coast? Or has it been going on?
But Elle I can trust. Elle is on my side. I conscript her into serving as admin and liaison, pulling together PDF packets and communicating instructions to the different teams while I’m on with the lawyers.
She goes back to her room and comes back with her laptop. She settles in next to me on the bed and I press my lips to her shoulder, enjoying the silkiness of her skin, and the faint smell of rosewood to the coconut berry, which I think might be her deodorant.
“They’ll never expect this,” I say.
“’Cause you’re sooo evil,” she says.
She loves to say that like it’s a joke now. Wishing so fiercely with her army green eyes.
25
Noelle
* * *
We’re working side by side, dreaming up Malcolm’s proposal, slowly putting the pieces together.
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