Next in Line for Love
Page 8
“Sometimes. Brief mentions. But it was enough that it was obvious you were in his thoughts. Jeffrey’s so in his head, always thinking, always parsing the information that flows toward him non-stop, always trying to make the right decision. That’s what he lives for. But that has changed recently, since before you came back. It’s been one health scare after another. Never anything life-threatening, but it adds up. And I think it’s a big blow for him that his body is letting him down more and more. That he’s getting old. Maybe he somehow believed he was above that.”
“Sounds like Dad.” I appreciate her honest answer. “Have you been to Paris?”
Jill shakes her head. “Haven’t had the opportunity.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Sure. Some time. Maybe when I retire.”
“Fuck retirement, Jill.” Something inside me lifts—it always does when I have an idea like this. “Why wait until you’re old like Dad? We can be in Paris this weekend if we want to. Say the word and I’ll make it happen.”
Jill shakes her head. “I don’t doubt that you can do that, Ali. Not for one second. But I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” I’m like a dog with a bone now. “What’s stopping you?”
“Let’s see. Work, for starters. I always have things to catch up on Saturday. And I don’t much feel like arriving at the office on Monday with jet lag. Also, the idea is just too outrageous. It’s madness. It’s something you would do.”
“That doesn’t make it something you couldn’t do.” I lean my elbows on the table. “You can work on the flight, if you really have to. But ask yourself this, Jill: what will happen if you don’t work for 48 hours? What’s the absolute worst that can happen? You have a team, don’t you? And you won’t be dropping off the face of the planet. You’ll be reachable—for emergencies only. And I promise you that if you take an actual weekend off, you’ll return to work so much more refreshed on Monday. Plus, I have some tricks to beat jet lag. Sounds to me as though your arguments are not valid.”
I can’t help but smile smugly, although that’s probably not the best course of action. I also need to take a minute to ask myself what the hell I’m doing asking Jill to go to Paris? But I’ve started this. I need to finish it now, otherwise it’ll sit in my gut like a missed opportunity.
“You may have forgotten that we have to get you board-approved very soon. We should both be working overtime the next few weeks.”
“Have you ever even heard of work-life balance, Jill? It’s all the rage these days. I know my father doesn’t practice it, but it’s his company. It’s different for him. And I bet he wishes that he’d been on more impromptu visits to Paris now.”
“Ali, I’m not going to Paris with you this weekend. It’s out of the question.”
Jill’s words are like a red rag to the bull inside of me. The more she protests, the more I want her to come.
“How about this: we’ll be together all weekend long. You can update me on all the LB secrets for hours on end, with no one listening in or becoming suspicious. Look at it as an intense team building activity, because you and I, we’re a team now, Jill.”
18
Jill
I’ve gotten to know Ali well enough to know that I’m going to have to throw her a bone if I want her off my back at all for the rest of the evening. She has inherited her father’s stubbornness. But whereas I can usually work with stubbornness, in Ali, I will have to find a way to mold it into the thoughtfulness that being the big boss of a large corporation requires.
“Let me think about it. Don’t make any arrangements yet,” I say.
She nods. “Okay. I will need a few days’ notice. Money can make a lot of things happen in very little time, but there are limits.”
“Let me sleep on it.”
Neil slides open the patio door and collects our plates.
“Ready for dessert?” he asks.
“Sure,” we both say, and he disappears into the house again.
“I wonder what the sommelier is doing right now,” I say, to change the subject.
“Letting some dessert wine breathe,” Ali says, in all seriousness.
I’ve traveled in her circles for a while now, but I didn’t grow up like this. There will always be something inside of me wanting to push back against this ridiculous lavishness.
“If you need any more convincing, I can go on for a while,” Ali says.
“I bet you can, but it’s fine. Just let me sleep on it.” I pick up my glass of wine again. “I’ve had a bit too much of this.”
Ali nods, although I can tell she has to keep herself from sharing more of the greatness of Paris. And it was true what I said, I have always wanted to go, but I’ve simply never taken the time. By the time I was earning enough money to afford such a getaway, I was too busy making the money to enjoy it. I guess I still am. At least in that respect, she has a point.
But it’s as though Ali is always trying to convince me to do one thing or another. It’s as if she sees me and has the spark of an idea, but there’s no filter to stop herself going with it. That may be how she has lived her life, but I most certainly haven’t. On the other hand, I am definitely entitled to a number of vacation days I’ve never used. I take the requisite week in summer and another one around Thanksgiving to visit my parents, but that’s it.
Ali’s suggestions may come out of the blue, but the things she says do have merit. And more and more, even in the media I consume, I encounter articles about taking adequate time off and giving the brain time to recuperate. If I don’t, I might end up like Jeffrey. On the other hand, however, I don’t see how a weekend in Paris with Ali could ever be relaxing. I’d have to have my guard up all the time, and she’ll want to drag me from one thing to the next and will probably end up introducing me to her millennial friends from her time there. The whole thing will be so exhausting.
Neil serves us dessert. It looks like a banana, but it’s actually ice cream encased in a white chocolate banana shape. Once again, it’s scrumptious, and it makes me wonder why I don’t spoil myself more. Maybe I think I don’t deserve it? Maybe I feel like I can always work a little harder. Maybe, the crippling anxiety that made me flee New York like a thief in the night is still, after all this time, a part of me?
Maybe going to Paris with Ali on a whim is exactly what I need to do. If only I can make it so that she doesn’t perceive it as another thing she succeeded in making me do, something I complied to, something she can lord over me in the future, when our partnership goes into effect and I will need memories of standing up to her to fall back on.
I’ll do as I promised. I’ll sleep on it and if, by morning, I can swing it so that something about it feels like it’s on my terms, I might just say yes.
“I’ve been wondering about something,” Ali says, after we’ve finished dessert and are on our second glass of the wine the sommelier paired with it. I’m no lightweight when it comes to drinking, but because of my small stature, I’ve learned to sip instead of actually drinking—and most sips are just pretend sips. But in this setting, it’s harder to do. So when Ali asks me the question, I don’t see it coming because of the fuzziness in my head.
“Was Melissa your lover?” she asks.
“Aren’t you quite the detective tonight?”
“It doesn’t take a lot of detecting when one of the most prominent pictures in your living room is of a woman you used to know.”
“She could just be a friend.”
“She could. Just a wild guess, then.”
“Yes, she was my partner, back in New York.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Ali says, as though I’ve told her the biggest secret in the world. Or maybe she’s just trying to encourage me to say more. “Is she the reason you moved to L.A.?” She just can’t help herself. She always has to push. Always needs one more answer.
“That’s a story for another time.” I look at my watch. It’s almost midnight. “How about we call it a night?”
She heads inside and I look at her empty chair. I can’t even remember the last time I had an evening like this in my own home. A dinner for two on my patio. Most evenings, my mind’s too preoccupied to come out here and appreciate the beauty of my surroundings. At least Ali has given me that.
19
Ali
“Let’s make a deal,” Jill says. “If you can find out more about your dad’s health, I’ll go to Paris with you.”
“Are you giving me a deadline to accomplish this?”
“Yes. The last possible moment you can arrange the trip.” Jill looks pretty pleased with herself. I’m not sure if she has set me an impossible task or not. I’ll find out soon enough. Maybe it’s difficult enough in her eyes for her to be sure that she won’t have to come with me. I try to detect the tiniest indication from her that she wants to go, but I can’t. This is not the version of Jill I sat across from last night. This is corporate, buttoned-up Jill, although she’s not wearing a turtleneck today.
“Okay, leave it with me. I’ll report back tonight.” At least I don’t have to suffer through the internships she arranged for me any longer.
“Good luck.”
I walk into my office, which still feels so foreign, and try to come up with a plan of action. I already had one that I came up with on the ride home last night, but now I will have to accelerate it. The first step is to talk to my brother. Only now, I will have to find a way to stay cool and collected so he doesn’t become suspicious—I’ll have to find a way to restrain my enthusiasm at the prospect of a weekend in Paris with Jill.
I only manage to see Sebastian at lunch, which he orders to have in his office.
“Gluten, lactose, and taste-free,” he says, when I sit across from him.
“Sounds delightful.” First, I need to find out if Dad has told him about announcing his successor earlier. “What have you been up to?” It’s an innocuous enough question.
“Why don’t you just come out and ask me what you really want to know?” His hackles are already up. Great. “How much coke have I been snorting?”
“That’s really not what I meant, Seb. I just want to know who you’ve been hanging out with, what you did over the weekend… stuff like that.”
“Ah, you want to pretend we’re friends.”
“I don’t need to pretend. You’re my fucking brother.” My swearing always seems to increase exponentially when I’m around him.
“Which doesn’t automatically make me your friend.”
“Sure. Fine. What am I then? Your acquaintance? Your co-worker?” I’ll be your boss soon enough, you moody motherfucker, I think.
“Maybe I can be someone you hang out with from time to time. You don’t have to go to every party in this town, you know.”
“I don’t. And we’re hanging out now, aren’t we?”
“And then, when you throw your own party,” Sebastian continues as if he hasn’t heard me, “at your own fucking house, you don’t even invite me.”
“I didn’t think it would be your scene. Sorry.”
“You could have given me the opportunity to turn down your invitation and let me be the judge of that.”
“Fine. Next time, you’re numero uno on my guest list. How did you know I had a party, anyway?”
“I make it my business to know everything that goes on in this family.”
I wonder if he knows about my dinner at Jill’s last night. I make a mental note to be more discreet.
“So what is going on in this family?” He’s just handed me the perfect opening.
“You’re being prepped for the big announcement.”
I wait to see if he’ll continue of his own volition, but he doesn’t. It looks as though me being appointed CEO still doesn’t sit very well with him.
“That’s it?”
“Our family’s quite small,” he says on a sigh.
“How’s Dad?” I ask.
“Dad’s… Dad.”
“You spend much more time with him than I do—”
“Yeah, about that,” he cuts me off. “Just coming back might seem good enough for you, but it’s not for the old man, okay? You should really spend some time with him.”
“Wow, now I should spend time with both my brother and my father, neither of whom have ever given any indication that’s what they want.”
“You may think the only reason Dad asked you to come back is to be the face of the company for a while, but, you know, these days family seems to be more important to him. I swear the other day he wanted to talk about grandchildren, but I quickly disabused him of the notion that I would provide any. Unless you have any plans in that direction?” He smirks, as though it would hurt him to actually smile.
I’m trying to process all the information Sebastian is hurtling at me. My dad wants to spend time with me?
“Maybe we can get together some time soon.”
“We should,” Sebastian says. “How about this weekend? Or are you throwing another party?”
“This weekend might not work for me. I’m thinking about going away.”
“Where? He sold Napa, so don’t think about going there.”
“Napa’s sold?”
“Nobody had gone there in years.”
“But Napa was always there.” Leah always claimed that Dad only bought the vineyard to look more sophisticated—to not just be a beer man.
“Now it’s not.”
“Who bought it?”
“I really couldn’t tell you.” Sebastian finally starts picking at his food.
“I’m not sure yet where I’ll go.” It’s true, because if Jill doesn’t want to go to Paris, I’m not certain I’ll want to go on my own. “I just want to get out of the city for a few days.”
“It’s probably too short notice for Dad, anyway,” he says sullenly.
“Do you speak to his doctors?” I decide to forego the cardboard-looking lunch being offered to me altogether.
“No. Only Dad speaks to his doctors.”
“Have you ever asked him about his health?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“No, I don’t believe I am. He’s our father. We should know what’s going on with him.”
“You ask him then, Ali. See what he has to say to you about it.”
I will do just that, I think. This conversation hasn’t been very enlightening with regards to my father’s health, so I can only get the information I need straight from the horse’s mouth.
I walk up to Evelyn’s office and ask for the first available appointment in my father’s schedule.
“I’ll see if he can squeeze you in now, Ali,” she says, with a wink, and gently knocks on the door. She closes it behind her when she goes in, and comes out a few seconds later.
“You’re in luck. Go on in.”
I try to imitate the gentleness with which Evelyn opened the door, assuming that’s how Dad likes his office door to be opened, but being brusque by nature I end up barging in as usual—I got my brusqueness from my Dad, so I’m sure he won’t mind too much.
“Alexandra,” he says, and smiles at me.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Has Jill talked to you?” He cuts right to the chase. Maybe I truly only have a few seconds to have this conversation.
“About moving up the announcement date?” I sit as close to him as possible so that I can observe his features. Jill was right, he does look a bit worse for wear. “Yes, she has. We’re working on it.”
What strikes me most of all is that he no longer looks like the formidable man I used to be scared of—all three of us were. His shoulders are slightly hunched forward and, at times, he looks as though he is gasping for breath. He’s just a shadow of the man I left behind ten years ago. Maybe that’s what losing Leah did to him, over time.
“Is there a reason why we’re spee
ding things up?” In this moment, he looks pliable enough to give me a straight answer.
“Of course there’s a reason.” The thunder has returned to his voice briefly.
“Do you want to share that reason with me?”
He sighs. “I do, but I’m not sure I can. Not right now. Maybe you should come to the house. You and Sebastian.” Christ, he and my brother really are beating the same drum—for different reasons, I imagine.
“Of course, Daddy. Whenever you want.” I just hope he doesn’t say this weekend.
“Come tonight.”
“Tonight?” It’s not often my father has an evening off to spend with his children. “Sure.”
“Tell Evelyn on your way out, will you? Tell her to call the house etcetera.”
“Okay.” Is this my cue to leave? He doesn’t say any more and returns his attention to the stack of papers in front of him.
I get up and head to the door.
“Alex—Ali,” he says, suddenly. But he doesn’t say anything else, despite me getting the distinct impression he wants to. “I’ll see you tonight. Let’s say eight.”
20
Jill
“I’m going to the house tonight,” Ali says, as though I should be packing my bags for Paris already. “Dinner with Dad and Sebastian.”
“Good.” Even though Ali’s none the wiser yet, I’m still impressed by the progress she has made.
“And you were right. He doesn’t look as though his health is very good.”
“If you need to talk afterward, call me,” I say, without thinking.