Heart of Ice

by T. B. Markinson

  “Please, shock me with your bartender brilliance.” Her usual sarcasm was tempered with a conspiratorial wink, or possibly an awkward blink. Laurie wasn’t sure whether she’d closed one or both eyes.

  “If you don’t want to spend your fiftieth birthday alone, do something about it.”

  “Some bartender you are. First, you won’t pour me a drink, and now, you aren’t listening to me,” Laurie argued.

  How dare a total stranger think he knew her like that? “I don’t need someone to spend it with.”

  “I am listening to you.” There was a sadness in Mack’s eyes that struck a chord deep down, and suddenly, Laurie wanted to cry. “And, you most definitely need someone.”

  “I should fire you.” Laurie blinked back tears. Seriously, he had no right to talk to her like this. None at all.

  “Is that right?”

  She raised her chin haughtily. “Yes.”

  Instead of being chastened as Laurie had intended, Mack laughed as if she’d told a funny joke. “Good thing I don’t work for you.”

  “Give me your boss’s number. I’ll get it done like—” She tried to snap her fingers but couldn’t get them to cooperate.

  “Let me let you in on a little secret, sweetheart.” Mack leaned forward and o ered her a shit-eating grin. “I own this joint.”

  “Do you?” Laurie blew a raspberry, or tried, but it ended up with her spitting on the bar.

  “I do, and between you and me, I’ve wanted to fire myself for years.”

  “Fire yourself?” An unexpected longing welled up in Laurie’s chest at the suggestion. It’d never crossed her mind, but something about the prospect, after drinking half a bottle of gin on an empty stomach, seemed like the perfect solution to everything. “How do you do that?”

  “Don’t know. Why do you think I’m still here?” The bartender and the CEO sighed at the same moment, finding common ground in their shared predicament. Mack straightened back up. “I think your nachos are ready.”

  As he disappeared into the back, Laurie tried to imagine what her life would be like without Emerson Management.

  She’d had a taste of it during her sabbatical on the island, and it had been terrible. Not working wasn’t an option for someone as driven as her. But if that was the case, why did the fantasy of telling Toby and the rest of the board at Emerson to shove it hold such appeal? Her head was swimming too much to yield any answers.

  The kitchen door opened, and Mack returned with a plate piled impossibly high with steaming nachos. “Eat up.”

  “Stop telling me what to do.” Her voice lacked the vim she usually reserved for these moments. The smell of cheese and salsa reminded her of Jack, and for the second time in as many minutes, she found herself on the brink of tears.

  “Let me tell you about my granddaddy back in Dublin. He was like you. Didn’t believe in love or anything involving the heart, but, every night, he went into the same pub and spilled his guts out to a dark-haired beauty behind the bar.”

  “Got to watch out for those dark-haired beauties,” Laurie muttered, a vision of Jack in her head. She wiped a smear of sour cream from the corner of her mouth and gave Mack a lopsided grin. “Are you suggesting I’m secretly in love with you?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m suggesting people who cling to certain notions do so because that’s all they have. Notions.” He wiggled his meaty fingers, hoity-toity like.

  “Is there a point to this story?”

  “There is, but you won’t get it.”

  “Why is that?” Laurie sat up straight and crossed her arms. “You doubt my intellectual capacity?”

  “It’s not your brain that’s the problem. You don’t want to see or hear what’s right before you. Deep down, though, you know.”

  “You know what I know, Mack?” Laurie gulped down air, unable to banish the specter of Jack, in all her youthful glory, from her memory. Bitterness overtook her. “I know I’m almost fifty, and she’s not. Not by twenty years.”

  “Fifty’s just a number. So is twenty years. What matters is what you do about it.”

  “I already did it.” Laurie let out a humorless laugh. “I fired her.”

  “That is a wrinkle.” Mack nodded in his even-keeled way, so like a bartender. “Do you want to fix it?”

  “C-can it be fixed?” Something resembling hope struggled through Laurie’s constricted throat. “I’d like her to come back. To work, I mean. We worked well together.”

  “I’m not a relationship expert—”

  “Not a romantic relationship,” Laurie corrected hastily.

  “Work.”

  “To hear you tell it, isn’t it all the same to you?”

  “Touché.” Laurie cocked her head to one side, curiosity getting the better of her. Mack had already proven himself smarter than she’d given him credit for. “What is your completely nonexpert take on this non-relationship of mine?”

  “I know one thing about women. They like to be heard.”

  “Heard?” Laurie shook her head. That was it? She’d been expecting more.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Because you’re always the one doing the talking.” He mimed flapping her lips. “Have you tried listening?”

  “What makes you say that?” demanded Laurie, incensed.

  “How dare you say I never listen? If this cockamamy advice you’re dispensing wasn’t already free, I’d demand a refund.”

  Instead of getting angry or backing down in fear, Mack let out a throaty laugh. “You’re proving my point right now, you

  know.”

  Laurie pressed her lips together, vowing to remain silent, a resolve which lasted about three and a half seconds. “Fine.

  What do you suggest I do, oh wise one? How do I win her back?”

  Mack shrugged. “How the hell would I know? My advice?

  Eat the rest of those nachos, and once you’ve sobered up enough, get your ass o that bar stool, get your girl some flowers, take ’em to her, and then shut the hell up and listen while she tells you what you should do. She’s the one with the answers you really need, not me.”

  Taking away the empty gin glass, Mack put a full cup of water in front of her and gave it a suggestive nudge. Without waiting for her to respond, Mack turned to greet a group of customers who’d entered the bar. Laurie glared daggers at his back, but not because he was wrong. She snatched the water and chugged it down, followed by a couple of chips.

  Head still woozy, she grabbed her cell phone.

  “Marian?” she said before her assistant had a chance to say a word. “I need Jack’s home address.”

  She was already outside by the time Marian finished rattling o the address. “Can you tell me where to find a florist on the way? Actually, never mind. I’ve got an idea.”

  Across the street, at the front of the train station, was a stand selling bouquets of flowers wrapped in printed cellophane. Laurie darted across the street, wallet in hand.

  They weren’t as fancy as the flowers from her usual shops, but they were convenient, and Laurie had no time to spare if she was going to convince Jack to take her back.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N

  THE VERTEBRAE IN JACK’S LOWER BACK CRACKLED AND POPPED AS SHE

  leaned close to her laptop, but she was too engrossed in the figures on her screen to pay any attention to the physical discomfort. It was Thursday afternoon, almost the end of her first ever week spent as an unemployed person since she’d graduated from college. She’d already put in twice the number of hours as when she’d worked for someone else and wondered if it’d deflate Laurie’s ego if she learned she wasn’t the most demanding boss in the world, after all.

  An image of Laurie’s face flitted through Jack’s mind, and her heart clenched. It was unfair that the woman had that e ect when Jack would wager big bucks Laurie hadn’t thought of Jack once since the firing. What made it worse was knowing that half the joy had gone out of Jack’s work
without Laurie to share it with. And half the inspiration, too.

  Maybe more than half. A week of nonstop concentrating on Othonos was behind her, and Jack had never felt so stuck.

  She couldn’t shake the belief that the answer to winning the Othonos account was right in front of her, if only she could concentrate. She was so close, but intuitively, she understood she was missing the mark.

  Jack squinted at the screen until her vision blurred, then sat back with a heavy sigh. The financial ventures she’d

  proposed were solid, the forecasts o ering an enticing level of profit for even the greediest prospective investor. But the proposal lacked… magic, for want of a better word. What was absent was that certain something that would make hers scream pick me! Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like Jack had the connections to get her work in front of the billionaire, anyway, nor the resources to manage the account if by some miracle the Greek gave her the go ahead to manage his fortune.

  It was all a pipe dream. Still, she would continue plugging away at it for a few more weeks. At the very least, it’d give her something interesting to talk about in a future job interview, assuming the name Jack Kennedy hadn’t become too toxic in the Boston finance scene to merit a call back, thanks to the combined e orts of Laurie and Carmen. God, she hoped she wouldn’t have to move to New York City to find work.

  Jack snapped her laptop shut, her eyelids closing with fatigue. She’d trusted exactly two women in her professional life. Both now seemed intent on destroying her, one because they’d slept together and the other, as far as Jack could figure, because they hadn’t.

  It reinforced her theory that, whether lovers, mentors, or friends, women were more trouble than they were worth. As for men, they weren’t any better. All that good-for-nothing Toby had needed to do was set a binder on a desk. Was that really so hard? For a useless drunk like Toby, apparently so.

  If he’d failed to do it on purpose to sabotage her, Jack might have been able to accept that, even give him a begrudging round of applause. But that wasn’t how things had gone down. There’d been no master plan, no evil plot to destroy her. No, her career at Emerson was over because an entitled jerk had been too lazy, or intoxicated, to walk an extra ten feet on someone else’s behalf.

  I am so done with people, Jack fumed to herself . If she were really lucky, she’d find a job working from home and never have to deal with humans again. Life as a hermit would be perfect. She’d never have to wear pants again, unless they were of the sweatpants variety.

  As if to mock her, the doorbell let out an electronic shriek like a robotic bird being strangled. Jack flinched but didn’t make a move toward the door. Their apartment used to have a real doorbell, the kind with deep, melodious notes that would make you think you were in a manor house, as long you didn’t look too closely at the cracked plaster and peeling paint. The bell had stopped working a while back, and Jack’s mother, ever the frugal New Englander, had replaced it with a battery-powered object from a grocery store sale table that o ered a selection of twenty di erent songs, all of them terrible.

  The bell shrilled again, setting Jack’s teeth on edge. The tune was currently set to a standard ding-dong, the least objectionable option, and Jack o ered silent thanks that it was no longer the Christmas season, when her mother got a kick out of switching the device to a tinny version of “Jingle Bells” that could make the ears bleed. Still ignoring whomever it was at the door, except to fervently wish they would leave, Jack made a mental note to call an electrician to fix the real bell as soon as possible. She might be counting her pennies due to being out of a job, but her sanity was worth the splurge.

  For a few blessed seconds, silence descended upon the apartment. Then the pounding started. It was either an excruciatingly determined fist rapping on the front door or else the police had shown up with a battering ram. Jack couldn’t remember breaking the law recently. Her mother, on the other hand? She wasn’t so sure about criminal behavior, but Jack did know the woman was seated in the

  front room, mere steps from the entryway, yet seemed not to have made a move for the door.

  “Mom, you going to get that?”

  More pounding, with the strangled warble of an electronic parakeet thrown in for good measure.

  “Can you get the door, sweetheart?” her mom answered.

  “My feet are tired.”

  “I thought it was your throat that was sore,” Jack called back, shooting a suspicious look toward the front room.

  “Oh. That’s bothering me, too.”

  What a faker! Jack massaged her forehead, refusing to snap at the woman not because she didn’t want to but because there was no point. Confronting her mother with the fact she’d changed her symptoms three times since being released from the hospital wouldn’t accomplish anything, unless Jack counted a vague feeling of self-righteousness as a win, which she didn’t. Meanwhile, whoever it was at the door was losing their patience, simultaneously pressing the bell and pounding on the door. Jack hoisted herself from her chair, trying to recall if she’d ordered a package that required a signature. Why else would anyone make such a fuss?

  “Hold your horses—” Jack’s words dried up as she swung the door open and saw Laurie on the front step, dressed like she’d come from the o ce and cradling a bouquet of flowers in the crook of one arm. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of a workday. Did the o ce burn down?”

  “I heard your mom was sick.” She shifted on her feet, and at first, Jack chalked it up to nerves, but upon closer inspection, she noticed Laurie’s eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks and the tip of her nose were red, as if she’d been drinking. “I brought her these.”

  “You came all the way to the South End to give my mom flowers?” Jack spoke evenly, but leaned against the doorway

  to disguise a sudden swirling sensation.

  Laurie Emerson was standing on her doorstep, holding flowers. Was this a dream? And the woman could claim they were for her mother all she wanted, but the air was ripe with apology and the scent of cheap train station lilies wrapped in cellophane. This had to be a fantasy.

  “Why didn’t you just send them?” Jack slanted her head.

  Laurie opened her mouth to reply but stopped as Jack’s mom rounded the corner.

  “Who is this?” Her mother’s eyes lit up when she saw the flowers. “And what are those for?”

  Jack shook her head at her mother’s talent for inserting herself in the heart of any situation. “I thought your feet hurt.”

  “Oh, they do.” Her mom’s eyes widened, a theatrically stricken expression transforming her face. “It feels like there’s poison in the bottom that builds during the day until I can hardly stand.”

  Laurie gave Jack a puzzled look, whispering, “I thought she had a heart attack.”

  “It’s a long story,” Jack whispered back.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kennedy.” Laurie held the flowers out so that Jack’s mother could take them. “These are for you.”

  “How thoughtful.” Jack’s mom blushed, pressing a hand to her cheek like a beauty queen being handed her prize. “I don’t know who you are, but I like you already. Please, call me Eileen.”

  “This is my former boss, Mom.” Jack fixed Laurie with a hard stare, taking pleasure in the way it made her squirm.

  “She’s the one who fired me.”

  Jack’s mom tilted her head to one side and placed a hand on her hip. “I haven’t lost it completely, young lady. I remember what Carmen looks like, so don’t think you can pull one over on me.”

  “I thought you quit Bay State,” Laurie said, immediately tipping Jack o that she’d heard at least part of the story.

  Jack wondered how far the rumors about her had spread and whether they bore any resemblance to reality. The Boston finance world could spread gossip faster than a sorority slumber party.

  “I did,” Jack assured her before turning her attention back to her mom. “This is the other boss, Laurie Emerson.”

&
nbsp; “You mean the one you…” Mercifully, her mother’s thought trailed o before anything embarrassing fell from her lips. At least, Jack thought she was in the clear, until her mom’s brow furrowed as she peered more closely at Laurie’s face. “I didn’t expect her to be so… b-blonde,” she stuttered.

  Butchering the word made it clear the sentence hadn’t been intended to end with blonde. Jack could see it in her mom’s eyes, the way she was studying Laurie’s features and mentally adding the numbers, trying to figure out whether their guest was closer to her in age or to her daughter. From the expression on Laurie’s face, she also knew what Eileen had been about to say: I didn’t expect her to be so old.

  Laurie cleared her throat awkwardly. “May I come in?”

  “No—” Jack started to say, but her mom inserted herself between them.

  “Yes, of course.” Eileen waved Laurie in. “Never mind my daughter. She’s had a rough few days and has forgotten her manners.”

  “I heard you were in the hospital,” Laurie cooed, pouring on the charm, which was something Jack had never experienced firsthand. The politeness made Jack twitchy, waiting for the real Laurie to crash the party. Her mother, however, was lapping up the attention like a kitten with a bowl of cream.

  “It was such a trial.” As her mom elbowed Jack out of the way to reach for Laurie’s arm and escort her inside, Jack

  could hear the telltale Irish accent growing thicker. There was nothing her mother loved more than having a tragic story to tell, except possibly having a new audience to listen to her take on the events. “It started o with chest pains, you see—”

  “You should put those flowers in water, Mom.” Jack stared straight ahead without blinking, mostly to stop herself from rolling her eyes at her mother, the drama queen. “They’re going to wilt, and you know how you hate that.”

  Her mom pursed her lips as if about to argue but then seemed to change her mind, her face lighting up as she turned to Laurie. “Would you like a cup of Barry’s?”

  “She means tea,” Jack explained, noticing Laurie’s bewilderment at the unfamiliar Irish brand name, “and I’m sure Ms. Emerson’s got better things to—”