by Faye, Amy
The die is cast, then. I'm almost certainly violating every professional ethical standard. I'm fairly certain as well that there aren't many standards discussing getting revenge on your former kid sister for what her mother did to you, ten years ago now. That's an oversight they'll have to correct.
Because it's a huge ethics violation, but he's going to do it anyways.
Chapter Thirteen
I've never liked to leave early. It's a sign of weakness. That there's some priority you hold higher than the job. I never liked to create that impression. Hated it, even.
I like to push myself. A lot of people do. It's important to me that I show people that they need to take me seriously. There might be some deep down reason.
Maybe it's because I'm a woman, and one time someone assumed I must be someone's girlfriend. I think his name might have been 'Ethan,' the guy I was supposed to be waiting for.
Then again, the guy who thought that was an accounting major. Or maybe he was trying to suss out whether or not I had a boyfriend. Both make good sense.
Or maybe it's because of who my mother was, a woman who never was taken seriously, and never needed to be taken seriously. Anyone who knew her would look at my face, see the exact same looks, the exact same expressions—in many ways, I am my mother's daughter.
Then they'd assume that we were anything alike as people, and they'd instantly write me off.
Or maybe it's neither. Maybe the fact is just that anyone who wants to really excel at their profession puts in as much work as they possibly can, and I'm not special at all.
I don't know.
But I do know that today I don't have the option—perhaps the luxury—of staying late. Sadly. I would really rather stay here than go home, regardless of whether or not they get me a bonus or something at the end of the month, because I've got someone waiting for me back home, and it's not someone I was really looking forward to spending a ton of time with.
My mother's always been a frustration. I don't know how nobody else seems to see it. She puts on her smile and she pouts when she doesn't get her way and the world just seems to give her anything she wants. If she were twenty years younger, she would be past the age where it was cute.
Now it's embarrassing. Humiliating, even. A woman in her forties who continues to act like a spoiled child, and to make matters worse, she always seems to find someone willing to indulge her.
Well, it always comes to an end eventually. In the end, they all realize that she's not the victim of circumstances who never did anything wrong, the way she paints herself.
Her life is the result of a series of decisions she made. For herself. And nobody can take that away, no matter how much they might want to. She's got to realize that she can't just keep screwing up and expect other people to clean up after her.
Her latest husband—I really liked Ron, he seemed like a great guy—has finally realized the game, and he's gotten sick of it. The way they all do.
She's playing the victim, of course. He was mean to her, he never let her drink, he never let her spend any money, even though it was all her hard-earned money.
Money she 'earned' by… who knows. She doesn't have a job. Hasn't for years. And to the best of my knowledge, she has no under-the-table income. I'm not aware of her having any money, but she insists that it was her money to spend.
Likely it was his money that was hers to spend, a little, at her discretion. Then he'd gotten wise to the fact that whenever she's up, she doesn't just buy a new pair of shoes for herself, to look nice.
She ends up with a new puppy, or a new Lincoln, fresh off the lot, with that new-car smell. Then it's a song and dance trying to get her to take it back, trying to get the salesman to be reasonable. She's sick, you see, she doesn't really know what she's doing.
Risk-seeking behavior, they call it.
She wants to unsettle things, and she's got no sense of what is or isn't a bad idea. So anything that pops into her head, if it seems good for a moment, she does it.
I take a deep breath and I wonder what she's done this time. She doesn't burn bridges. Not badly. Not bad enough that she can't come back from it. Which is why I'm more than a little concerned that she seems to be hiding out at my apartment.
If I could at least know what I had to watch out for, I could at least… prepare, or something. But no; she won't tell me. Of course she won't. That would make my life far too easy.
Instead, I've got to just assume that something's come up, and she's lying when she says that everything is totally fine.
I pop my head into his office. The red-headed secretary has been a lot less friendly since I started working there. I think she's annoyed that Eric's been paying me attention, but maybe I'm just reading into it.
Maybe she's going through a nasty breakup, or something. Either way, she doesn't stop me going in.
"Hey, Mr. Warren?"
"Autumn. What's up?"
"I need to leave at five today. I've got some stuff to take care of at my apartment."
He nods, ever so slightly. "That's fine. Still on for tonight?"
I nod back. "Yeah, no problem there. Where should I meet you?"
He gives me an address that I don't immediately recognize. I write it down on a scrap of paper and pocket it. I'll just get a taxi ride, either way.
Something makes me want to tell him. How much I could tell him without sounding like a liar, that's up for debate. But I want to tell him whatever I can.
I keep it to myself for now. I can't get him involved in family stuff. He might not remember me, but he'll remember Mom. And she'll remember him.
I'd like someone else to take some of the weight off my shoulders. It's all I've wanted for years, someone to come along and—it's horrible of me to say—take my mother off my hands for a little while. Just, you know, shave off the edges a little.
But I can't. Nobody can. And then the question becomes, who else should have to carry that burden, and the answer is pretty obvious at that point.
I don't get to just dump her on other people because it's convenient. They have to want to get involved. That's the difference between Eric and Ron. Ron wanted to get involved in Mom's mess. He'd married her, for Pete's sake.
In spite of all the signs, all the hints, all the little things. No doubt he wrote them off as quirks, as her being energetic. Until the chrome wore off and underneath he saw that it was something else entirely, a big problem that wasn't going away and wasn't 'fun' or 'exciting.'
Eric didn't ask to deal with it, and he didn't deserve to be put into that position. So as much as I'd like to ask an adult to come fix my problems for me…
I can't. Mom's my problem.
Chapter Fourteen
I'm not made to wait long. I don't like waiting, but I accept it. It's part of my life. Part of my job. I've gotten used to it, for better or worse.
But when things come together, and waiting isn't necessary, it's perfect. The best feeling in the world. And just as soon as I've been guided to my table, there's barely time to get settled into my chair before the young man brings Autumn.
He's terribly professional, so he manages to hide the fact that he's interested in her well. I wonder for a moment if she even notices. I decide that she doesn't. He's probably flown right under her radar—if I pointed it out to her, then she'd either deny it, or at least act surprised.
On the other hand, it's little interactions like that, that drive men's interactions. Surrounding women especially, but in every other way as well.
Instinctively, I know what they want, and it makes me want it more. Nobody needs to make me want my former sister more than I already do. And nobody needs to tell me that I'm barking up the wrong tree.
Every part of this plan is a mistake, from the dating to the payoff. But I'm not worried about that. I've made plenty of mistakes in my time. This is just going to be another one, no different from the last ones.
I turn on my smile as she settles into her chair. "You get your thing taken ca
re of?"
"It's not really something I can take care of. More of an ongoing project."
"Did you make any progress?"
"Talk to me about it in ten years," she says. She looks a little frustrated, though I can't tell with what. It's not me, I figure. If it was, then she wouldn't be trying to hide it. More than likely, she wouldn't have agreed to come at all.
She would have found some excuse to call off the date, even if it was at the last minute, after I'd already sat down at the table. Oh, my cat's sick. Need to go to the vet. I have to wash my hair tonight. I'm not feeling great.
Some other time maybe.
But this was different. She was annoyed by something that had come up and gotten in the way of what she really wanted to do, and I can't imagine that it's a coincidence that the same day she takes off from work early, she's annoyed at something that came up all of a sudden.
"You want to talk about it?"
She looks up from the menu sharply. "Talk about it? Nothing to talk about."
"Okay," I say, my voice not hiding the fact that I know she's full of shit. She can lie to me all she likes. It's not something I'm taking seriously. I knew to expect it.
"What's good here?"
"What's good? They've got a great pizza. Very traditional Italian. Good stuffed pasta. Decent lasagna if you want something more traditional. But I have to tell you, if you were on the menu, I'd take you over any of that."
She looks up at me, an eyebrow raised. Her lips are pressed together to hide the halfway-smirk.
"Oh yeah?"
"That's how it is."
She's not hiding the smile as well any more, or she's given up on trying. "I'll keep that in mind when they ask about dessert."
"We'll get it to go."
"That's good thinking," she says. Her voice sounds smooth.
I don't know if she was planning on accepting my offer from the minute that I asked her to dinner, or if she's just playing along. Or maybe she just made up her mind as I asked, and she hadn't thought about it.
Whatever it is, I have to admit that I like this part of her. It's a lead-in to the parts that I don't like—the reality is that it's all part of a trap, whether she knows it or not.
Some women like to make bad decisions, just to prove that they can. They want the attention, so they get it however possible.
But just as many of them are on a constant roller coaster, and they keep insisting that they'll get off as soon as they can, that they hate the roller coaster and they just want smooth sailing.
Then they keep getting back on, in spite of themselves. As if they really liked the roller coaster all along, no matter how much they might claim otherwise. It's impossible to say which is which, and both insist to being totally ignorant victims of circumstance.
"You know, Eric—"
I look up. She's still looking at her menu, in a strange, hyper-focused way. The way that she scans isn't to read the menu—though she may be reading it. It's also partway putting on a show of looking at the menu. As if the visual is as important as the rest.
"Hm?"
"I couldn't help but notice that your secretary and I look very similar."
"Is that so?"
I hadn't thought about it when I hired her. But when Autumn had walked in, it had all started to make sense. She'd reminded me, on some level, of attractive women. I wanted an attractive secretary.
"Practically identical."
"I think you're imagining things." Let her chew on that a minute.
"You really didn't notice?"
"Well—okay, I guess I see it a little. Passing resemblance. Shannon's a good girl."
"Just a passing resemblance?"
"Well, who knows. There could be big differences."
"Oh yeah?"
"We'll have to get you two together some time and do a side-by-side comparison."
"You don't know what she looks like very well?"
I hear the question she's really asking, even if she's not asking it very clearly.
"Not well at all. Then again, she's married, so—"
It had never stopped Deborah.
"Oh," she says, smiling. "So she's inoculated against your charms, then."
"You could definitely say that," I say, and I smile. "You're not married, are you, Autumn?"
"Your charms work fine on me," she says, not looking up. "You can bet on that."
Chapter Fifteen
'Coming up for drinks' is the oldest line in the world. I don't know if there was a time that you just went up and had a couple of drinks and went home, but if there was, that time is long-since passed.
It's a polite way of asking if someone wants to fuck. I don't know how I would answer if he asked me directly. I think I'd about die of embarrassment, first. Then I'd agree that I did.
Asking if I'd like to come up and have a drink in his apartment, on the other hand? No need for embarrassment. Just pretend that it doesn't mean 'do you want to fuck,' and go on up. Then it can be a big surprise when the kissing starts. Or at least, you can act like it is, which is the exact same thing.
The truth is, though, I did know. So when I step into his apartment, he flicks the lights on, and I settle into his couch, the only question on my mind is how long we're going to keep up the charade.
He steps into the kitchen and out of sight. I can hear the sound of glasses being filled from the couch. And then he comes back in.
The apartment reminds me of him, in different ways. It's a lived-in space. You could walk in and tell a lot about Eric from the place. It tells me a story of the past ten years that I don't know if I could have gotten otherwise. Little things that I wouldn't have asked.
Like how when I knew him, he was all classic rock—Bob Seger and Springsteen. Now he's got records hanging on the walls, still interested in music, but moved towards Miles Davis and Coltrane. It paints a story that you don't get without the apartment and the context.
He sets a drink in my hand. It's dark-colored and when I take some in my mouth it burns as it goes down.
"So how have you enjoyed your first month at the firm," he asks. As if we're just going to have a conversation. It's sweet.
"It's been a great time," I tell him. "Lots of eye-opening experiences."
"Good. I would hate to think that you would leave over something without giving me a chance to work on it."
I shake off the idea that he means something by it. I'm reading into the line too much. It's just chit-chat. Pretend-talk until we can get to the real business of why we both know we're here.
He presses in closer to me. Close enough for my mind to start filling in the blanks, for his scent to start filling my head, a haze coming through me. I can feel my chest heaving, and yet I can't stop myself.
Can he tell how badly I want him? His eyes focus on my lips. I pull one in between my teeth and let it out slow. His eyes tell me everything I need to know about how he takes it. The exact way I wanted it to be taken.
He leans in to take my lips with his. My phone buzzes, and for a split second I think about ignoring it. Something tells me that I shouldn't and I pull away.
"I'm sorry," I say. I check the line.
I don't recognize the number, but that feeling won't go away. That feeling of anxiety. Fear, even. Something's off. I answer the call.
"Autumn? It's me." My mother's voice on the other line sounds exactly like it always sounds. Like there's a big emergency and I'm going to have to drop everything. Usually the big emergency is nothing, just like it will be tonight.
"I don't have time for this. Where are you calling from?"
"Autumn, I've been arrested."
I look at Eric. He heard that, loud and clear. He pulls back and stands up.
I look at the clock on the wall, the records, the entire room that looks startlingly like the brother I'd always lusted after, just grown up.
"Yeah. I'll be right there."
Chapter Sixteen
The edge of arousal still digs in as I set
tle back into my favorite chair. Looking around, thinking about stereotypes and what you'd expect out of a chair, there's a lovely wing chair that looks like about the most comfortable thing you'll ever sit in.
My favorite is little and shabby and a kind of puke-colored green and it's the one right by the turntable. I'd think that it was just because of its placement, because I have to sit there if I don't want to get up every thirty minutes or so.
But the reality is, I've tried changing the room around and it doesn't work. Something about the green chair just sets me at ease, even though it's small and ugly and I could more than afford to replace it.
I set a record on the player and start it turning, set the needle down, and Ted Greene's guitar fills the room. Ease my head back.
So. Deb's been arrested.
I shouldn't smile. She's the kind of person who engages in that sort of behavior. If she were a client, I'd be frustrated out of my mind. But she's not a client, and in fact, I can't say I'd take her as a client if someone were to ask me.
She's the worst kind—almost certainly guilty, and totally unequipped to deal with what she's done and how to get out of it.
I don't mind a guilty man, not terribly, but at least give me someone who did it because they thought it through for even half an instant.
Deborah's like a child, who thought that it would be fine if she touched the stove. Only, she's got a memory like a goldfish, and three seconds later, what's that orange coil? It looks so wonderful, I think I'll touch it.
She never learns, and she always seems to feel bad just long enough to garner sympathy, but not long enough to learn any real lessons or prevent herself from doing it again. No, if she were to avoid the pain and avoid the injury, then she wouldn't be able to get people's sympathy as easily.
Still, it is good for me, I guess. Good that she's arrested. It opens avenues that I hadn't considered. Maybe I don't have to just go after Autumn and call it good. A feeling of something like relief surges through me. I could definitely do this. All I have to do is want to, and try hard enough.
