Jana and I do our time with the politicians. This is where she shines—the Jacabowski women are total movers.
A councilperson compliments me on the dog PR stunt. I laugh it off.
We discuss the Ten, the project everyone is excited about. “The Ten is transitional,” I tell him. “It’s forward-looking, yes, but I’m taking things much further now that I’m moving into leadership.”
Translation: it’s too late to make the Ten into the cool project it could be.
“Once you take over leadership from the dog?”
“Yeah, once I take over from the dog,” I say smoothly.
“You guys actually did a stock transfer. That’s ballsy.”
“He really is in charge. He and his advocate.” I wink. “We’re doing our best to guide him. Smuckers would be putting fire hydrants all over Manhattan if he had his way.”
Jana laughs. “The dog has more vision than some builders.” I suppress a smile, enjoying her dig at Dartford & Sons, assholes of the building community.
Brett’s there and we’re posing for photographs. Somebody grabs Jana away and I use the opportunity to hit the bar again, but then I see Renaldo, hanging out on the fringes of the place with one of the retired city managers.
They’re elderly guys who are still important for their wealth of knowledge, but they have zero power anymore. I go over, keep my back to the brightly colored dresses and black tuxedoes, so many peacocks peacocking it up.
Renaldo lumbers up from his seat and claps me on the back. “Henry!”
“He was telling me about the Ten,” the man says.
Through my scotch-fuelled haze, I scramble to remember my picture for him—a fish. A whale.
“Jonah,” I say, taking his hand, clapping mine over his.
The three of us take a seat at the edge of the place and talk development. Bonding. We talk about the Ten. I want another scotch, but I go for a club soda to avoid the famous Renaldo side-eye.
Jana Jacabowski waves from across the room—she’s leaving with a friend. I sit back and relax.
“So what’s really going on?” Renaldo asks me as soon as we’re alone.
“I fucked up. I didn’t go with my gut.”
“Tell me,” he says.
It’s been ages since I went to Renaldo with something. He knows about Vicky and Smuckers, of course. I lay it all out. I tell him about humoring her until the competency hearing. I tell him about taking her around the company, and how incredible it’s been. The bright, fun energy she brings. The goodness of working with her. I tell him about the makers space. “You would love it,” I say. “Spending just that time with her without all the bullshit, that was amazing. We were amazing. She’s special.”
I tell him I’m move convinced than ever that she accidentally fell into this thing. Lay out everything about that.
Then I tell him about the joke she made and he winces. “Ouch. A dog face?”
“I didn’t have to let it fuck me up. Like I couldn’t be strong for the firm and open-minded about her at the same time? I had to react.”
He smiles into the distance.
“What?” I demand.
“She hit your button,” he says. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Henry.”
I watch him warily, bright brown eyes and skin like leather.
“Your mother was a crazy bitch. She dedicated her life to smashing every sand castle you managed to build. My picture of your childhood is you sitting on the front stoop of your mansion, clutching that bear of yours, crying your eyes out because she’d left. Yet again. Bernadette was a narcissistic gold digger who blamed you for everything. And your father didn’t do shit to correct that.”
“Don’t,” I say. “That’s enough.” He’d always kept opinions like that to himself.
“Yet you always wanted her love. You’d follow her around. Remember how she always called you Pokey?”
Pokey. Her nickname for me. “I never could keep up with her.”
“Of course you couldn’t. You were a child.”
I shrug. “I'm glad for how she was. She taught me to be strong, to rely on myself.”
“You’ve never been a liar, Henry. Don’t start now.”
I turn to him. It’s been a while since Renaldo lowered the boom. “What?”
“Please.” He mimics my shrug. “Like you don’t care. You loved her and she broke your heart. These last few years, I know the Christmas gifts you’d send her would come back unopened. The cards returned, the calls unanswered. You never stopped trying to be a good son to her. You didn’t want to be made strong. You wanted a relationship.”
I frown.
He gives me a long look. “I watched you build this company, even with Kaleb blocking your best ideas. You sweat blood for this company. These people. Then your mother comes along and gives a strange woman absolute power over it. A woman who has zero reasons to care about it.”
Who seems to actively hate rich guys, I think, but I don’t say it. “Vicky’s starting to care about it. She’s starting to get what we’re doing.”
“Not the point.” Renaldo crosses his legs, face grim. “She makes a joke about repainting the cranes in some ridiculous image? That’s what your mother would do. Except she’d actually do it. You believed the worst because how else could it be?”
“I acted like she was my mother.”
“Your button,” he says.
“I need to apologize. I need to tell her…” Something. Everything.
“Do it, then.”
“She won’t see me. She won’t answer my calls and texts.”
“Think of something. You’re Henry fucking Locke, for crissake.”
That’s how I end up in the waterfront workshop at three in the morning. I'm up in the third floor model room. My tuxedo jacket is slung over a drafting table. I have an extra-large coffee at hand, but I barely need it.
I’m awake. Sobered up. Somebody was fucking with my world, but it wasn’t Vicky.
She won’t answer my calls, but I can still talk to her—in a language she understands better than English. I work into the night and all through the morning.
Twenty-Two
Vicky
I sip coffee at our little table, trying to be quiet and not wake Carly, who’s sleeping in her little curtained-off area with Smuckers.
“It never would’ve lasted anyway,” I whisper.
Across the room, Buddy the parrot jerks his head, watches me with a shiny black eye.
I drop my head into my hands. Henry wanted to talk. What would he have said? But it doesn’t matter.
Henry builds bridges from metal and stone, but trust is harder to build. Trust means crossing an invisible bridge made out of something you believe in. He wasn’t ready to do that. Not for me. And why should he?
Why should he believe me when I said I’d make things right? But god, it felt good when he seemed to.
It felt like the world was new.
Nice fairy tale while it lasted. But he’s just like everyone else. And maybe it was too much to ask.
Not like we could ever have a real relationship. He’d find out I’m Vonda and hate me. And if he let it slip, that would endanger Carly. Mom would find her.
I’ll give him back his stupid company and that’s it. That’s all it ever could have been.
Carly comes out with her iPad, Smuckers at her heels.
“I thought you were sleeping,” I chide.
“I sort of was.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says.
“What?” I press.
Her gaze goes to the black screen.
I grab it and tap it to wake it up and there’s Henry, looking dazzling in a tuxedo. A beautiful woman on his arm. In another shot he’s got her down in a dip, and they’re both laughing.
I swallow. “What is this? Is this last night?” I look at the date. Yes. Last night.
Carly’s behind me. “It means nothing. Rich guys have to go to a lot o
f those things,” she says. “It’s part of being rich.”
I scrub my face, telling myself it’s good. I told him to fuck off in every way possible.
“I don’t know how to feel about you knowing so much about the lifestyle of the rich and famous. It’s a useless thing to study.” I shut the thing off, but the image of Henry dancing with a gorgeous redhead is burned into my mind.
“That girl got a dance,” Carly points out unhelpfully. “You got a company.”
“Is it stupid-amount-of-candy-in-ice-cream time yet?” I ask.
She grins. “For breakfast? Don’t bluff, I might take you up on it.”
I get up and start her eggs. “Tonight.”
On the way out, we discover the box in the lobby, addressed to me. It’s the size of a coffee mug, but perfectly square, wrapped in Locke-blue paper.
“Uh,” I say, shoving my key into the lock.
“Aren’t you going to open it? Don’t you want to see?”
“I already know what’s in it. It’s whatever rich guys think they can use to buy anything and anyone. I don’t want it.”
“Maybe it’s something nice.”
“I don’t want it.”
She grabs it. “Can I open it?” She shakes it. “Light as air.”
“You need to toss that package.”
“Without even looking inside?”
“Without even looking inside,” I say, heading out.
Rich jackass, rich jackass, rich jackass, I tell myself, all the way to Carly’s school. But it doesn’t sink in. I need to get deprogrammed off Henry. There needs to be a service like that. I need to be strapped to a chair, and every time I see a picture of Henry I get shocked or doused with cold water.
But that just makes me think of that thing Henry said—If I wanted to wear my hair in a marshmallow Afro and live in a woman’s purse, I think I could find a dominatrix to make it happen.
I smile.
I go to the makers space and of course everyone is asking where Henry is. Apparently he showed up looking for me. A few people have questions on the commission work. I give them April’s number. April has instructions that I’m on vacation. She’ll alert me to anything important.
Its on the third day that I turn officially pathetic. We were together for more than two weeks straight and I miss seeing his face. I miss the careful way he explained every last thing about his company. His dorky mnemonic devices for memorizing everyone’s names. I miss the way we got to be finishing each other’s sentences.
I won’t see him. Can’t.
Then comes the phase of jonesing so much for him that I start making jonesing bargains. I tell myself if I don’t open the package, I might go online and look for new pictures of him, and that would be even worse. Right?
So it’s entirely preventative.
Must. Open. Package!
I go find Carly. “You can open it.”
She frowns. “You asked me to throw it away.”
“Got get it.”
She furrows her brows. “I’m sure the trash man’s hauled it off by now.”
“Yeah. Go get it.”
Carly springs up and goes behind her little curtain. She comes back and sets it on the kitchenette table between us, practically rubbing her hands.
I slide it over to her. “You do it.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” She starts opening it, carefully. She was never a rip-open-the-present type. “A box,” she teases, turning the box that was inside. “A really, really nice box of tag board. I wonder why he got you a box.”
“Stop it! Stop screwing around.”
She pulls up the lid, peers in. Her grin dissolves. She looks…stunned. Or is it a look of horror? For once I can’t read my little sister’s expression.
“What?” I ask.
“Oh, my god.” And then, as if that wasn’t clear enough, “Oh. My. God!”
“What?”
“Wait. Close your eyes,” she commands.
I sigh and comply.
“Now open them.” I open my eyes.
My heart skips a beat.
There on the table between us stands a tiny, beautifully carved balsawood griffin. It’s a perfect replica Brave Protector Friend, the griffin that guards our favorite building. Our adopted friend and champion.
“He’s beautiful,” Carly says.
I pick it up and inspect it, turning it around and around, admiring how he captured the bold and grippy claws. The ornate detail of the wings.
“He got somebody to make our griffin friend.”
“He made it himself,” I say. “He got up there somehow and got some photos, and he carved it. This is all Henry—this vision. The passion of it. The way he knew.”
“You’re quite the expert.”
Yeah, I think sadly.
“There’s a card.” She slides a tiny blue envelope across the table.
I take it and open it.
I should’ve trusted you. Let me fight for us.
Twenty-Three
Vicky
I put on my favorite sweater—dark purple, so dark it’s almost black, with black obsidian buttons down the front, and a black pencil skirt and a few white Smuckers hairs, unfortunately. I pick them off one by one in the back of the cab to Locke Worldwide HQ with Smuckers in his pleather purse. I need to see Henry. Partly it’s to thank him for Brave Protector Friend. The note.
Mostly it’s to see him. I’ve listened to his voicemails. Read his texts. In different ways they echo the small note in the griffin box.
The cabbie pulls up. I make my way through the grand lobby and up to the executive floor. It’s unusually quiet. Henry isn’t in his office. I head over to the admin area and find April.
She stands. “Hey!” She comes over and scratches Smuckers’s little head. “We didn’t expect you guys.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Queens,” she says in a tone, like, where else would they be? “The Ten?”
“Is something going on?”
“The emergency meeting?” Her face goes pale. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“They carried on as if you knew. I assumed you didn’t want to come—it’s more detail then you usually get into. It’s an emergency meeting.”
I straighten up, unsure what to think. “Well, let’s get a car.”
Five minutes later, April and Smuckers and I are riding in the back of a speeding limo.
April has Smuckers in her lap. “It came up fast,” April says. “The project is in jeopardy. It’s bad.”
“What happened?”
“Dartford & Sons. They’re blowhards. Total asshole developers.”
“So I’ve heard. What’d they do?”
She’s absentmindedly playing tug with Smuckers. “Here’s the thing with a development like the Ten—if Locke tells the neighbors about their plans before they’ve bought up all the properties, word will leak and a competitor will buy one key lot and hold it hostage. Dartford & Sons is notorious for that.”
“So Dartford bought a lot in the middle of the Ten?”
“No—we just closed on the last property, so the Dartford brothers can’t wreck it that way. Instead, they poisoned the neighbors against it. Acted like Locke has been doing things in secret. They’ll get the councilperson to veto the project, make the land worthless, then try and get a racetrack through.”
“Who wants a racetrack in their neighborhood?” I ask.
“Nobody, but the Dartford brothers’ll bribe and lie their way into projects. They cross lines most people won’t.”
Sure enough, when we arrive at the community center, there’s a red truck with the words Dartford & Sons on the side of it.
I pull open the door and we enter a cool lobby with a lot of bulletin boards and stacked chairs all around. A hallway leads left and another leads right. Down to the right is where we hear the yelling.
We enter the meeting room, which turns out to be a small gymnasium packed with so many people
that they can’t all fit on the chairs, so they crowd around the corners. We stand by the door, in back of it all. I nestle Smuckers in my coat.
The people seem angry.
At Henry.
He’s in front of them, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. There’s a PowerPoint image—an architectural drawing, all sketchy and with watercolor touches—on the screen behind him.
I recognize it as the artist’s version of the Ten.
He’s talking about it. How they’re going to decontaminate the site. His vision for the walking bridge. Residences along the water. It’s kind of amazing to see him in “on” mode—passionate about what he loves. Full of fire, even in the storm.
He spots me through the crowd, settles his gaze on me, and I feel warm all the way through.
He starts strolling with the mic, being the master orator that he is, a super hot Julius Caesar. He moves around the edge of the crowd, eyes fixed on me, like we’re the only two people in the room.
Dizziness washes over me.
One of the angry neighbors gets up and starts criticizing how the walls go right to the sidewalk with no room for greenery.
Henry answers him, still coming at me. I straighten up, feeling like a virgin, bound and ready to be a sacrifice for the billionaire architect who can carve a griffin out of balsawood. Ready for him to ravage and tear me apart.
All in all, not a bad feeling.
He stops in front of me. My heart pounds. He lowers the microphone. Under his breath, he says, “Hi.”
I swallow, overwhelmed by the effect he has on me, by how much I missed him. “Hi,” I say.
He turns back to the room, addressing another objection, moving on like he’s all about their conversation, but he’s all about me. I know it when he stops, when he turns, eyes finding mine.
He defends the way the walls are, even though it’s not what he ever wanted. It’s Kaleb’s stupid design, but Henry will defend it.
More angry people raise their voices.
“Those guys are Dartford plants,” April whispers. “Planted in the audience to sink this project. They’ll complain about the amount of greenery, which always rallies people. And they’ll complain about the lack of public input—which they would actually get more of with Locke.”
Most Eligible Bastard: an enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy Page 18
