Going Wild

by Gretchen Galway

  “Damn it, I’m not confused,” Mr. Whitman said. He rubbed his eyes. “I remember the name.”

  “You may recall,” Nicole said, “we had a meeting about that, ah, client and—”

  “And we decided she had to go. This one. Why is she still here?”

  During this exchange, Jane felt the muscles that had been holding her cheeks in the unnatural smile begin to cramp. Both corners of her mouth began to sag. Clamping her jaw shut failed to slow their descent.

  Lorraine, the newest hire, had been let go with severance because their department was contracting. That was what Troy and Nicole told them, although there had been rumors about performance problems. Jane’s reviews had always been stellar. Even after that problem in the spring.

  Nicole moved between Jane and Mr. Whitman. “Could I get you something to drink, Mr. Whitman?”

  “You’re trying to change the subject.” He began coughing violently, his face turning red.

  “Would you like me to get Troy?” Nicole asked. “Your grandson?”

  “I know who the hell he is,” Mr. Whitman barked. “And I know who the hell she is. Garcia. Jane Garcia. I want her gone. Out of here. Fired.” He doubled over with more coughing.

  “Yes, Mr. Whitman, of course.” Nicole took Jane’s arm and pulled her away. The gaping crowd closed in, blocking his view of Jane. “We need to get you out of his sight. I’ve never seen him so upset.”

  “But I have no idea why! Do you?”

  Without a word, Nicole led her away through the courtyard, into the house, and out the front door, then down the steps to a spiral rosemary topiary set in a stone urn.

  “Jane, I think you should go home,” Nicole said.

  Jane was too blindsided to think, let alone argue coherently. It had all happened so fast.

  “And I don’t think you should come into the office on Monday,” Nicole continued. “In fact, you might want to brush up your resume.”

  Jane gaped. “What?”

  “I’m afraid he’s serious about this.”

  “But you can’t be,” Jane said.

  “You’ll have to talk to Troy,” Nicole said. “I don’t have the clout to oppose Mr. Whitman.”

  “He must’ve confused me with Lorraine.”

  “I don’t think so. He was too angry.”

  “There’s no reason for him to be so upset—” Jane stopped. Nicole knew about the problem a few months ago and that everything Jane had done had been by the book.

  Nicole adjusted the chain around her neck. For such a tall, thin woman, she had a rather chubby throat. Her favorite necklace was too short, and she was always pulling at it. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

  “So that’s it? I’m fired?” Jane had that weightless, out-of-body feeling you got when you were living a moment you’d never forget.

  “I don’t know.”

  “This is crazy,” Jane said. “I’m a fabulous employee. I have great annual performance reviews.”

  “I know that. I gave them to you.”

  Grudgingly, Jane thought. “Do I get severance?” She heard the submissiveness in her voice and shook it off. “I’ll need severance.”

  “It’s too soon to talk about this,” Nicole said.

  “Now it’s too soon? I just got to the party, was fired within the first few minutes, and I’m being hasty?”

  “Calm down. Nobody can do anything right now. It’ll have to wait until next week.”

  “Nicole, I just bought a house.”

  “You inherited a house. You refinanced. Not quite the same.”

  “To the bank, it’s the same.” Jane clasped her hands together to stop the shaking. “I owe them quite a bit of money. And now I don’t have a job, apparently. Suddenly. For no reason whatsoever.”

  “Don’t overdramatize. Nobody has died. You’ll do fine.”

  Nobody had ever accused Jane of being dramatic. To hear her cold boss say that to her now, when she was being quite insanely calm about being shit-canned in front of her colleagues at a work party in a Mediterranean villa in Marin after getting into a car accident at the front door—

  Well, it was enough to make Jane want to gather that tight gold chain around Nicole’s neck and choke the life out of her.

  Thinking like that wasn’t good. It was definitely not good. She prided herself on her calm, her reason, her long view thinking. Murdering Nicole wouldn’t look good on her resume unless she was applying for work in the criminal underground, or maybe corporate lobbying, and she had no interest in moving to Washington. She’d begun the process to build a separate entrance at her house in Oakland—

  She spun around on her heel to lose the view of Nicole and her coral-pink silk blouse and too-tight necklace. Now the work on the house would have to wait. But the whole point of doing the remodeling was to have paying tenants or Airbnb guests to cover her new mortgage.

  “Really, Jane. I’m surprised to see you be such a drama queen about this,” Nicole said behind her.

  To soothe herself, Jane stroked the soft pleats of her dress as if it were her cat waiting for her at home. That gold chain was short, but it was thick and ropey, probably a thousand dollars’ worth of twenty-four karat, more than strong enough to cut off the air supply to an icy-hearted woman who probably didn’t have any arteries, because that would involve a heart, and Nicole had demonstrated no such thing in the two years Jane had worked for her.

  She turned to face Nicole again. “I am not being overly dramatic. I’ve had a shock.” She kept her voice low and world-weary, like a heavy smoker with five ex-husbands who’d lived long enough to give absolutely zero fucks. Not like some young, lonely little girl who was afraid and wanted to cry. “If you were in my shoes, you’d be hysterical right now.”

  “I strongly suggest you not burn any bridges with me,” Nicole said. “You might need me to write you a recommendation.”

  Jane reached into her bra and pulled out her car key fob. She hadn’t wanted to carry a purse around, and sometimes there were advantages to a D-cup. “I think I’d better leave. We can discuss this later. Email my personal—”

  “You shouldn’t do anything in writing,” Nicole said. “Certainly not with me. You’ll have to clear this up with Mr. Whitman when he’s up to it. From the sound of that cough, you’ll have to wait.”

  “Maybe instead of waiting, I’ll start looking for another job.”

  Nicole shrugged. “Your decision. But you know as well as I do that leaving now will slow down your career.”

  “I’m not leaving voluntarily.”

  “Then be patient.” Nicole raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Or don’t you have enough of a financial cushion to survive a sudden end to your direct deposits if Mr. Whitman follows through on this?”

  The implication that she, Jane Garcia, of all people, was irresponsible about money was too ridiculous to take seriously. “We’ll talk later, one way or another.” Jane turned and walked down the steps to the circular drive.

  She held her temper as far as a trio of Teslas before she began swearing under her breath. She began small, with entry-level swear words her mother had used around the house when she was little. Damn, shit. Just the basics. But by the time Jane was fifty yards away from the front door, she’d moved on to the really bad ones that even her sister, no prude, didn’t approve of. And she wasn’t whispering them, either.

  “I hope you’re not upset because of me,” said a voice behind her. A man’s voice, one she’d heard for the first time less than an hour ago.

  Belatedly she recognized the black SUV she’d most recently walked past during her verbal tirade, the one bearing a fresh dent in the front bumper.

  She was too numbed by the soothing balm of profanity to care. She turned and gave him a polite wave. “No, not because of you. Sorry about that.”

  “Did you used to be in the navy? My grandfather swears like that, says he learned it all there.”

  “Listen, uh—” She hesitated, realizing she’d never
gotten his name.

  “Grant,” he said. “Grant Whitman.”

  “Grant, I’ve had a really bad—” At last her brain processed the sounds that had just come out of the bearded, scruffy man’s mouth. “Whitman?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and offered an apologetic shrug.

  “You live here?” she asked.

  “No, just visiting.”

  “You’re Troy’s brother.”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I was kind of embarrassed,” he said. “I’m not always good with people. I could see you were a little tense already. Didn’t want to stress you out more.”

  “Right. Fine. OK.” She massaged her temple. “I gave you a wad of twenties.”

  “I told you not to.”

  “You’re a Whitman,” she said, suddenly angry with him as if everything that had just happened was his fault. She scowled at his old vehicle. “Why don’t you drive a nicer car?”

  “Not my style, I guess.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Great. Just great.”

  “Sorry.”

  After a split second, she managed a weak smile in spite of herself. It wasn’t this guy’s fault. Twice now she’d run into him, first with her car, then with her temper. “No, I’m sorry. I just got fired. Sort of.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what, exactly.”

  “Just now? At the party?”

  She nodded.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. She thought he might ask her a question, but all he said was, “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “Still, I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Well, I’m out of here. Sorry about denting your car.”

  “It really doesn’t matter.”

  Nothing seemed to. She walked away, thinking of all the hours she’d worked late, the Sundays spent in airports on business, the coffee she’d fetched, the email she’d answered, the reports and spreadsheets and presentations, the—

  All for nothing.

  She kept her swearing silent as she marched the rest of the distance to her van.

  3

  Grant watched Jane of the Impressive Vocabulary disappear behind the row of parked luxury sedans, hybrid hatchbacks, and SUVs. He didn’t turn away until he saw her minivan pull onto the asphalt and drive out of sight.

  He wondered if she swore around her kids like that. Maybe it was bad of him, but that was something he’d like to see. They were probably used to it. The woman obviously had a temper.

  Smiling, he got the bag that he’d forgotten to bring inside earlier and slammed the tailgate. Out of habit, he’d locked the doors, although nobody was likely to steal anything up here, certainly not out of his ’94 Land Rover. Far better pickings in the new BMWs.

  His amusement vanished as he remembered she’d just been fired. So soon after arriving at the party. Sounded like his grandfather’s style, indifferent to people’s feelings. When Grant was younger, he’d disliked his grandfather intensely, had even imagined he hated him for what the eldest Whitman had done to Grant’s father. Now that he was in his thirties, Grant still didn’t understand the man very well but he respected him and in an odd way, loved him.

  Maybe Grant was just getting old and sentimental. Grandfather would say he’d spent too much time alone in the woods.

  Walking into the house, Grant endured the suspicious glances the guests lingering in the foyer shot his way. He probably didn’t look like somebody who should be walking in the front entrance, especially not during a party. He’d been hiking Mt. Tam that morning and was sweaty and coated with grime. Again he thought of poor Jane and her dented minivan. She’d naturally assumed he was a manual laborer or something, to push that money on him, and now she was the one without a job—

  He wished he’d made her take the money back. If she’d argued, he would’ve insisted, pointed out he was one of the Whitmans, and she would assume money was the last thing he needed.

  More assumptions.

  Truth was he had to finish his book soon or his publisher was going to give up on him and demand he return the advance. The manuscript was already late, very late, and getting later every second. Although his first and second books were best sellers, the demand for outdoor creative nonfiction wasn’t guaranteed. He wasn’t a movie star with a drug problem and photogenic abdominal muscles. If so, he could’ve published a fifty-word stream-of-consciousness poem about banana slugs and, if sprinkled with photographs of his famous abs, sold ten million copies in a month. Forget book signings without anyone showing up; he’d need a security detail. An entourage. There would be groupies.

  Grant was headed back to see his mom in her cottage when Troy, one of his younger brothers, bumped into him carrying a box of Band-Aids and a bottle of hand sanitizer.

  “Who’s bleeding?” Grant asked.

  “One of our guests cut his hand on the suit of armor,” Troy said. “Grandfather told him to get a tetanus shot on Monday, just in case.”

  “Dad always did hope one of us would become a doctor,” Grant said.

  Troy cheerfully lifted his middle finger off the box and aimed it at his big brother. “It was that one at the bottom of the stairs with his foot sticking out, like he’s trying to trip everyone.”

  Their grandfather had amassed an odd collection of all kinds of old stuff over the years: suits of armor, medieval swords, muddy portraits of English dukes, frayed tapestries, uncomfortable mahogany chairs you weren’t allowed to sit in. In no way did the collection match the Italian-inspired architecture of the house and grounds, but Grandfather couldn’t care less; he just went out and bought another lance and nailed it right on top of a hand-painted Venetian mural.

  “Sounds like there’s a lot of bad luck going around at this work party of yours,” Grant said. “I’ve already seen one woman let go.”

  “That’ll be me if this guy bleeds to death in front of Grandfather,” Troy said, holding up the box of Band-Aids.

  “Seriously. A woman in the driveway just told me she’d been fired.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know about it?”

  Troy let out a pained sigh and gestured for Grant to follow him into a quiet corner off the foyer. “No. I didn’t know. His cough got worse, so Rachelle has been giving him a new medicine. It makes him a little groggy and pissed off.”

  Rachelle was his health-care aide. “Sounds like he’d be better off in bed,” Grant said.

  “I couldn’t stop him from joining the party.” Troy gazed off into space. “I’ll have to find out what happened. What did this woman look like?”

  Grant’s thoughts immediately flew to Jane’s body, full and lush in that almost-see-through yellow dress, one erect nipple standing out more than the other, which he’d tried not to wonder about too deeply. Her legs had been something else too, with dimples at her knees and curvy ankles and a hint of soft, soft thigh.

  “Brown hair,” Grant said instead. “Drove a minivan.”

  “A minivan?” Troy looked perplexed. “You aren’t giving me much to work with.”

  “Her name was Jane Garcia.” He still had her card with insurance information.

  “Jane? Garcia? Oh no.” Troy signaled to a random guy across the foyer, thrust the Band-Aids and hand sanitizer at him, gave some hurried instructions, and turned back to Grant. “Where is she? I should talk to her.”

  “She’s gone. I saw her drive away.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Grandfather,” Troy said. “Too many people around right now, though, and he won’t move out of that chair.” He put his hands on his hips and stretched his back. “Who knew throwing a little barbecue would be so hard?”

  “She was really upset,” Grant said. “You should talk to her.”

  “I knew he blamed her, but I didn’t think he’d do anything at a work party.”

  “Blamed her for what?”

  “We lost our oldest account. Her name c
ame up. He got wind of it last week and has been fuming about it for days.”

  “But you don’t think it was her fault?”

  “No,” Troy said. “But the politics are tricky.”

  Grant imagined Jane going home and telling her family she’d lost her job, hardly what she’d expected when she got dressed that morning. “I think you should talk to her.”

  “He’s still the boss. I can’t do anything just by snapping my fingers.” Troy sighed. “But you’re right. We have to do something.”

  Grant didn’t like the word “we” in that sentence.

  “I can’t leave the party, but you can,” Troy said.

  “Since when do I get involved with company business? Never. I never do.” Like his father, Grant had needed to take a firm stand against Grandfather’s pressure to join the family business. His sanity depended on it. “I need to write this afternoon.”

  “You need to take a shower and help me. I can’t leave the party. You can drive to Jane’s house and apologize for our grandfather’s behavior this afternoon and…”

  Grant waited. He didn’t see how Troy could fix the problem without openly defying their grandfather, which Troy wouldn’t do.

  Troy held up a hand. “And ask her to wait a few days, maybe a little longer, until I can figure something out.” He frowned. “I wonder if she’ll buy that. Jane likes to do things by the book.”

  If that book has lots of swearing in it, Grant thought. “Why should I put myself in harm’s way?”

  “I won’t tell Grandfather you’re involved.”

  “I’m not involved.”

  “Great,” Troy said. “I’ll get you her address.”

  Grant watched Troy take out his phone and begin to tap and scroll. “I haven’t agreed to do this.”

  “You’ll do it, or I’ll tell Grandfather you’ve changed your mind about working at the firm.”

  “He’d never believe you,” Grant said.

  “I’ll tell him you’ve got writer’s block on your new book and you’ve run out of money.”

  Grant whistled. It was close enough to the truth to hurt. “You’re getting cutthroat in your old age, little man. Is this how you’ll be when you make partner at Whitman?”