Afterwards
Page 7
“What’re you doing here?” she asked, going to sit behind her desk, a safe distance away.
Curtis smiled. He had a great smile, she would give him that. He sat when she did and looked about her office. Robyn tried not to feel smug. This office was far and away above the standard of anything either of them had at Doug Scanlon’s outfit. Maybe even far and away above what Doug himself had as a partner.
“Heard you were over here now and was in the neighborhood so just thought I’d stop by and say, ‘hey’, check out your new digs.”
Robyn turned up the corners of her mouth. “How’s Natalie?”
Curtis’ eyes became cautious. “She’s good. Coming along, y’know.”
“Good. Good for you. So . . . when’s the big day?”
“Let’s not talk about anything that’ll make us argue,” Curtis said shaking his head. “I just wanted to see how you were. I’d heard about this move and I wanted to stop by, let you know that I’m happy for you, wish you well . . .”
“Well thank you,” Robyn said, leaning back.
She wasn’t about to make this easy for him. Let him suffer through the awkwardness and try to carry the conversation, because at least she knew it was going to be only five-minutes in duration. She could stand just about anything for five minutes and she’d definitely withstood a lot more discomfort and pain for a lot longer than that this past year.
“How’s Carolyn?” he asked, inquiring after her mother.
Her mother and Curtis had always gotten along, and of course they’d known each other for so long and so well, that Curtis was practically like one of her own children. It was only now that the clouds had begun to part that Robyn could see past her own pain and begin to acknowledge her mother’s. She wondered whether she still wanted to speak to Curtis, the way they used to. And maybe he still wanted to speak to her. Maybe one day Robyn would be healed enough for her ex-husband and mother to resume their friendship, but she damn sure wasn’t there yet.
“She’s fine. I’ll tell her you asked.”
“Will you?” Curtis leaned forward, trying to meet her gaze. “I do love . . .”
“Curtis,” Robyn cut him off. “It was nice of you to stop by.”
“Are you dismissing me?” he asked, giving a brief laugh.
“Are you feeling dismissed?” Robyn asked, feeling her ire rise. “Because I certainly can relate to what that feels like.”
“Robyn, look,” he began.
“No. You look. I’m glad you stopped by, but unless you have . . .”
“I wondered whether you could get me a meeting with someone. His name is Jamal Turner, and he represents . . .”
Robyn leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. “You are unbelievable! Is that what this little drop-in is really about?”
“Look, that wasn’t my only reason for coming, but now that you’re here you had to know we’d cross paths. I work in talent management, Robyn. How could we not?”
“Crossing paths is one thing,” Robyn said. “Seeking me out just for the purpose of using me is another!”
“That’s the business we’re in, love,” Curtis said. “We use our contacts to . . .”
At that moment the phone on her desk buzzed and Robyn immediately hit the answer button, relieved that Pam had made the call before she really lost her shit.
“Robyn,” Pam’s voice emanated from the speaker. “I just wanted to remind you that you have an appointment in a few minutes. And I’m afraid it’s the one you can’t change.”
“Thank you, Pam,” she said. “I was just finishing up here.”
“Okay,” Pam returned. “I’ll buzz you again in five minutes in case . . .”
“That won’t be necessary,” Robyn said. “Thank you.”
She ended the connection and looked up at Curtis. “I have to go,” she said shrugging. “I need to prepare for a meeting.”
She stood, to urge him to do the same. And he did, re-buttoning his suit jacket and smoothing his trousers.
“Look, I know things between us are still a little bit . . . tender. But all I need is for you to tell this guy Jamal Turner that you know me and to return my call.”
“This is a huge company, Curtis. Even if I was inclined to help you, I have no clue who Jamal Turner is.”
“He’s in talent development. You could look him up in the company directory or something,” Curtis said, even as she led him to the door.
“I don’t know. Don’t count on me,” Robyn said.
Curtis stopped and turned to look at her one last time.
“I know I hurt you,” he said. “But I can’t undo that. Now we can work on another kind of relationship, you and me. We can be friends, Robyn. We’ve always been able to be at least that to each other.”
And for a nanosecond, Robyn felt it, that Old Lovin’ Feelin’. Of her and Curtis, young and infatuated with each other, talking about dreams that seemed to mirror each other’s, realizing that not only could they do it all, but that they could do it all together.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’ll see.”
“Can I call you about it?” Curtis pressed. “This would be a big one for me, Rob. And if you could help at all, it would mean a lot.”
“I’ll see.”
When he was gone, it took her twenty minutes to regain her composure. Seeing Curtis felt like much more of a setback than it should have. But by the time she’d convinced herself it was nothing to get all bent out of shape about, it was almost time to go face Chris, and the potential firing squad.
8
“Did you commit?”
Robyn licked her lips, wondering whether she dared admit it.
When she didn’t answer right away, Chris looked up from the hastily typed one-pager she’d pulled together on her meeting with Bill Stafford.
“I gave him a strong, positive forecast,” she said.
Chris’ eyes met hers and then he looked down at the paper again. “How strong, and how positive?”
“I virtually . . . guaranteed there would be some form of . . . support.”
At that Chris looked at her again and put the sheet of paper on the coffee table between them.
They were in the sitting area of his office and he was eating what looked like a very insipid salad. Robyn wondered whether he was still getting migraines, and whether foods with salt or spices had been removed from his diet as a precaution as they had been for her brother at one time.
“Do you know how much I give to charity every year?” he asked.
Robyn shook her head.
“A lot,” he said, his eyes still fixed on her. “I have a foundation. People who want money for their projects generally apply for it. Bill Stafford was using his position as a friend of a friend to get to the front of the line. Just go around that whole process and come straight to the money-tree. Do you think that’s fair?”
Robyn blinked. “I didn’t know any of that. You didn’t tell me . . .”
“He’s one of Riley’s friends. She has these little artist soirees and he goes to them. So he asked her to get this meeting, and because Riley can’t say no to anyone, she got him the meeting.”
“And you agreed to it, let’s not forget,” Robyn said growing impatient with his condescension “So you can’t say no, either. At least, not to Riley.”
Oops.
Her mother always told her she was a little impulsive, and that one day it would get her into hot water. Perhaps today was the day.
It was an open secret among their friends that Chris had at one time (and maybe still?) had a little . . . thing for Riley. Married to Shawn, one of his best friends and most successful artists, the crush on Riley was of course untenable. But people still talked.
Chris leaned back and folded his arms, his face expressionless.
“Tell Bill Stafford to put his request through the foundation,” he said, pushing aside her one-pager. “Now what else did you need to talk about?”
“Chris,” she
said, leaning toward him, hands clasped. “You can’t. This is a good program. I didn’t present that well, and I shouldn’t have. . .”
“What you shouldn’t have, is committed my money to a cause that you have no idea I can, or will want to, support.”
“Of course you can!” Robyn said, forgetting herself once again. “You could write enough out of your personal checking account to fund ten of these programs for a year. And if you don’t it’s because you don’t want to.”
Another oops.
A vein at the side of his neck was visibly pulsing, and Robyn tried to think of something to placate him, to salvage both the meeting and the prospect of getting a donation for Save the Music, but then Chris spoke.
“You women, man” he said, his lips curling. “You . . .”
“What?” Robyn said. “Don’t you d . . .”
“Making plans for someone else’s money, like you’re entitled to it. Like somehow . . .”
Robyn shot up out of her seat, trying to control the swell she felt in her chest, the pressing, pulsating urge to slap him.
“I’ll check with Stephen to see whether there’s another time for us to talk about my other business,” she said; her tone was clipped. “And I’ll let Bill Stafford know that he should send a letter of inquiry to the foundation. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
Then before he could say anything—and before she could—Robyn left.
___________________
It wasn’t even about her.
It was about Sheryl and her bullshit. And to make matters worse, not two hours later, Karen had called. She was supposed to be low-maintenance one. A woman he didn’t actually regret fathering children with. Except while Sheryl was always asking for things for herself, Karen asked for crap that her lazy-ass siblings wanted. She had a brother who was just two years out of Sing Sing and a sister who was constantly making her feel badly because unlike Karen, she had kids by a man with neither the will nor the means to support them adequately.
At one time, Chris had actually thought a relationship with Karen was possible. He was just turning thirty, and already had financial security well beyond his wildest dreams when he met her while she was hostessing at a restaurant downtown. A pretty, Puerto Rican girl with a shy smile, she’d flattered him by blushing whenever he came in, and by not being able to make eye contact.
Chris saw her as a welcome change from the bold-faced women he met every day who were all coy smiles and flirtation, so he’d asked her out on a proper date. Turning thirty made him feel like maybe it was past time for him to grow up, and have a grown-up relationship instead of casual hook-ups. So he was with Karen, and only Karen, for about three months when she got pregnant. And confirming his instincts about her, she was apologetic about it. Remembering all too well the smug self-satisfaction Sheryl had upon learning of her pregnancy, Chris took Karen’s reaction as a good sign.
Finally, here was a woman who wasn’t out for something.
He moved her into his house where she lived all throughout her pregnancy with their daughter, Jasmin and for a time, it was like having a family. When he came home in the evenings, Karen was in the kitchen with Mrs. Lawson, cooking for him. And when he went to Germany for a month for work, she kept busy, and redecorated some of the rooms in the—at that time—almost Spartan house. Chris didn’t know whether he loved her or not, but he liked having her around. She was a quiet, feminine presence in a life that lacked both quiet and true femininity.
And then gradually—at first because he was away so much and she needed the company—her family was around as well. Her sister, her cousins, her mother and father. And then finally her brother. A few times Chris came home from a long trip to find a whole rack of folks out by the pool, playing music, barbecuing, living it up on his dime. Jasmin was only an infant then, so he let it slide, knowing that he was less than a full partner in the raising of their daughter, and not wanting to begrudge Karen the comfort of her family’s company.
But their presence was one thing, the requests were quite another.
They started out small enough—a dress for a cousin’s fifteenth birthday party, a limo for a prom. And then it became a “loan” for a long overdue bill, for a television for her sister, a car for her brother, and on and on and on. By the time Karen was pregnant with Kaden, they’d been together for more than three years and she was still living with him but Chris had become disgusted enough with the whole lot of them to be living as a single man once again. He stayed in the city more often than not, coming home to Karen after being out for two days at a time, smelling like pussy and booze.
Thing about it was, she didn’t complain. Not once. She had to have known he was cheating on her, but she didn’t say squat. And it was then that Chris began to feel whatever affection he had for her, dwindle along with the very last remnants of the respect. The final straw had come one morning when he’d rolled in sometime past three a.m. and Karen was in bed, hugely pregnant with their son, and scarcely able to sit up without assistance. He’d walked in, drunk, blunted and having just fucked a model at a Ford Modeling Agency party, and all Karen had done was get up, slide her swollen feet into her slippers and ask if she could make him something to eat.
In that instant, Chris knew that he could never touch her again.
Karen was a good person, but she was weak. And of all the human traits there were, that was the one he disrespected the most. And as if it wasn’t bad enough that she couldn’t stand up to him, there were the daily reminders that she also couldn’t stand up to her family—people she should have easily felt empowered to tell to back off—because they were using her man and compromising her relationship.
Truth was, Karen couldn’t stand up to anyone. And so the month after Kaden was born, Chris bought a house in Bronxville, got her a car, a baby nurse and housekeeper and told her they were over. Hell, she hadn’t even had enough fight in her to protest the break-up too much. She just took what he doled out.
The only annoyance was the continued requests from her family.
This latest one was for computers. Apparently, Karen’s sister had seen the laptops Chris got for Jasmin and Kaden and it made her feel bad that her kids had nothing of the sort. And so like the sucker she was, Karen had called him and asked if he could buy computers for her nieces and nephew.
I wouldn’t ask, Karen had said. But I just hate when they come over and see that Jasmin and Kaden have so much, and they . . .
But you are asking, he pointed out.
When Karen said nothing in response, he gave in. What was the point in fighting with someone who never fought back?
The call had come not twenty minutes before his meeting with Robyn, and so he was still in ill-humor, thinking about how Karen’s sister Gwen had probably manipulated her into thinking it was her idea to call. Not wanting to hear the rest of the sob story, Chris told her he’d have a couple computers delivered to her house for Gwen’s kids.
And I wanted to remind you of Jasmin’s swim meet, Karen added before he hung up. It’s Friday.
Yeah. I’ll try to make it, Chris told her, though he knew he would do no such thing.
He loved his kids. All of them. He loved them in the way that any decent human being loves the creatures they helped make. But there was no point pretending they were other than little strangers. The boys he could handle; they tended to show enthusiasm just because he brought them stuff, and he could talk to them about sports and cars and things that boys liked.
But his daughter was a whole different kettle of fish.
Jasmin looked at him with a mixture of trepidation and distance, hugging him with one arm when he saw her, speaking in a low, hesitant squeak of a voice. She was a beautiful, with Karen’s large eyes, long dark eyelashes and ropy black hair, and Chris’ darker skin. And when she was with her cousins, Chris heard her smart mouth and spirit, things she definitely had to have inherited from him since Karen had neither.
But with him she was quiet.
On
her ninth birthday, watching her launch herself at her uncle for a bear-hug, Chris contrasted that greeting with the cool one he had received, and realized again that at best, to her, he was the dude who paid for shit.
So that was frame of mind he was in when Robyn showed up to meet with him. Thinking pointless thoughts about the ongoing limbo he lived with his kids and their troublesome mothers.
Chris had listened to Robyn describe her lunch with the guy from the Met, and watched as she kept using her fingers to push an imaginary strand of hair back behind her ears, a gesture that was probably a remnant from when her hair was long, the way he remembered it. Now it was a pixie-cut with a long shock that hung over her forehead on one side, causing her to tilt her head that way, as though the hair bore extra weight.
She seemed nervous while she tried to make her case that he should donate to the charity, and when she told him about the commitment she’d made on his behalf, he knew he had to ding her for that. But there was no question he’d been a little too harsh, and made things a little too personal.
Personal. But weren’t things already personal between them? He remembered how she’d laughed when he showed her his motorcycle collection, and the feel of her small hand in his. But that was almost two months back. She was a little fragile then and unsure of herself. It was that fragility that made him decide not to try to get her into his bed that night. He had no doubt he could have, because she was in a bad place and had been so obviously in search of some reassurance—any reassurance—of her worth. But then what? His inevitable pulling away afterwards would only have put her in a much worse place, and they shared too many of the same friends, would have to see each other too often for him to be that reckless.
And of course, she was just about to become one of his employees, so it would have been an all-around bad idea for them to wind up in bed together. Then. But still, while she may have been fragile a couple months ago, she damn sure wasn’t now. The way she’d come for him about the donation to Save the Music had taken him aback. And that crack about Riley? Chris smiled. Ol’ girl had some guts about her, huh?