New Money

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  Every so often, she’d open her mouth and the wisest words would fly out. “That’s exactly how I feel. Now I’ll never get a chance to know him, or to find out who he really was,” I said before spilling out every single thing that had happened since I left Charleston. She got all outraged when I mentioned I’d been ambushed this morning and I might be—as Caroline had said—on a lunatic’s hit list.

  “Treachery and deception is all it amounts to,” Tina said assuredly. “Those two weasels are trying to mess with your head … so don’t let them.”

  I smiled into the phone, grateful that part of Team Savannah was back. “Come up for a visit, Tina. There’s plenty of room for you in this apartment, and it’s in a great location … Fifteen Central Park West. Maybe you’ll like it enough to stay.”

  She paused once more. I heard the crickets again. “I can’t leave Raylene,” she said, and I couldn’t blame her. If I had a little sister, I’d have a hard time leaving her, too. “Daddy wouldn’t pay for my plane ticket, anyway … and I’ve already blown my latest paycheck on the sweetest pair of Badgley Mischkas.”

  I wasn’t surprised about the shoes, and I agreed with what she’d said about Mr. Brandt. He was a pushover when Tina wanted a car or jewelry or clothes. But he’d slam that checkbook shut if what she wanted had anything to do with me.

  “I can pay for your ticket,” I told her.

  “He wouldn’t go for that, either,” she said, and wisely changed the subject. “So are you happy there, Savannah?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “I didn’t think so. I can hear it in your voice. And I’d like to tell you to come back … but that’d be selfish, wouldn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” I agreed, gazing through the window at the dark sky above the forest of trees in Central Park as Tina filled me in on the latest Charleston gossip. There were stars in the sky, and it was hard to believe they were the same ones I saw from my porch at home. Home felt so far away.

  Six

  Tony picked me up the next morning. “Marjorie loved the doll,” he said when I sat beside him and he drove toward Stone News. “She made this for you.”

  He handed me a piece of construction paper covered with Thank You in crayon scribble.

  “That’s the best thank-you card anybody’s ever given me,” I said as my heart swelled. “It’ll be displayed prominently on my refrigerator.”

  Tony smiled. I carefully folded the paper and slipped it inside my purse, and soon I was at work. The protesters were outside as usual, and I found out that Kitty had a stomach bug and was taking the day off. But there was plenty to keep me busy. I was in the middle of some online research when my phone rang and I grabbed the receiver without checking the caller ID.

  “Savannah Morgan,” I said, still focused on my monitor.

  “Edward Stone, Junior. I need you in conference room C on the fiftieth floor.”

  He hung up. I stared at the phone, wondering what he could possibly need me for and wishing I didn’t have to obey his orders. But there was no choice if I wanted to keep my job, so I went upstairs to the corporate division and found conference room C.

  I knocked on the door, heard Ned’s voice telling me to come in, and found him sitting at the head of a long glass table. Men and women in suits were to his left and his right, and there was a platter in the center of the table filled with discarded muffin wrappers and banana peels.

  “My secretary left due to a family emergency,” he said, barely looking at me as he thumbed through a document in front of him, “and as you’re not assisting Kitty today, you can fill in. Clear this mess and bring us more coffee.”

  He shifted his attention to everyone sitting around the table and started talking business while I stood there, completely humiliated. He wanted me to wait on him like I was his scullery maid, and I felt lower than a soot-faced urchin in a Dickens novel.

  “I’m…,” I began, but my voice cracked.

  Ned and everybody else looked at me like I had a lot of nerve to interrupt.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said.

  I cleared my throat and started again. “I’m not your secretary. Somebody else can clear the—”

  “I asked you to do it. I know you’re new to the corporate world, but that isn’t an excuse for not respecting authority. Don’t forget, Savannah … I’m your boss.”

  He said the last sentence in a half-smug, half-joking way that made a woman sitting beside him lift her hand to her lips to stifle a laugh. I glanced around, thinking there were too many people here. I couldn’t cause an ugly scene, and that was probably what he’d been counting on. And I could tell how much Ned loved being my boss.

  He tapped his silver pen on the table and stared at me. “Sometime today would be nice.”

  My throat tightened and my fists clenched. I felt like spitting in his face. But instead I forced myself to walk toward the table, where I collected coffee cups and other breakfast remnants that I placed on a tray and carried across the room. I balanced it on one hand while I struggled to open the door with the other. Then Ned left his seat, stood beside me, and turned the knob.

  “I take my coffee black,” he said. “Please get that right.”

  I stormed into the hall in search of a kitchen, but the office was a maze of cubicles filled with people who seemed annoyed by my three aimless laps around the floor. I passed a corner office where Caroline was sitting behind a desk, staring bitterly at a maintenance man hanging her Harvard diploma on a wall. Nobody asked if I needed help, even when two cups slipped off my tray and landed on the carpet. They didn’t break, but cold coffee splashed onto a cubicle and the secretary inside rolled her eyes while she typed on a keyboard at warp speed.

  “Do you have any paper towels?” I asked her.

  “In the kitchen,” she said with her eyes on her computer screen.

  “And where exactly is that?”

  “I’ll show you,” said a bubbly voice. It came from Ainsley, who was suddenly next to me. She wore a button-down blouse and a short plaid skirt, and she smelled like she’d been doused with baby powder. She led me to the kitchen, where I slammed cups into the sink.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked from behind me.

  “Nothing,” I heard Ned say. “She’s just pouting because I expect her to pull her weight.”

  I spun around. He was in the doorway. “That’s not true. I want to work.”

  He walked slowly toward me. “Then what’s the problem? You’re above serving coffee?”

  “No,” I said, crossing my arms, “I’m above serving coffee to you.”

  He was in front of me now, standing too close and invading my personal space. “When I tell you to do something, I don’t want any back talk … especially in the presence of my employees. I’m in charge here, and you’ll do as I say or I’ll show you the door. Now get the job done. Such a menial task shouldn’t take so much time.”

  He turned and left. I flung open cabinets, searching for clean cups and muttering to myself about what a bully and a pompous ass he was until Ainsley squeezed my shoulder.

  “He’s a little grumpy in the morning. He doesn’t mean it,” she said with a sympathetic smile. Then she showed me where the cups were and volunteered to help me serve the coffee, and I thought that blessings often come from the most unexpected places.

  *

  For lunch, I bought a hot dog from a vendor’s cart and finished it as I headed to Fifth Avenue, where I walked through Louis Vuitton’s revolving doors and admired purses inside a glass case while a salesgirl trailed me like I was a shoplifter.

  “You know they sell the same purses on the street for twenty dollars,” I said with a grin.

  Her lips shrank. “Those are knockoffs. They’re trash. And they’re illegal.”

  Nobody around here seemed to get my attempts at humor. I pointed to the case and slipped my wallet out of my purse. “I’ll take two,” I said.

  One was for me. I brought the other to the post office, wh
ere I packed it inside a box along with a check that I sent to Mom. I was heading for the door when I felt my phone vibrating inside my purse, and I answered it as I hit the sidewalk and the humid air.

  “Hey,” Tina said. “What are you doing?”

  I leaned against a brick wall. The sky was cloudy, and everything was covered in an ashen haze—the buildings, the cars parked on the street, a pay phone that stood out like an ancient relic. “I’m on my lunch break,” I answered.

  “Remember when I’d pick you up from the library and we’d eat lunch at the Hominy Grill?”

  That was one of my favorite Charleston restaurants. It was in an old house with red shingles and the slogan Grits are Good for You. Tina mentioned it wistfully, as if we hadn’t been there in years.

  “We did that two weeks ago,” I said.

  She exhaled a lengthy sigh. “I know … it just seems longer.”

  That was so true. We talked for a while and then I went back to work, where I walked through the lobby and into a crowded elevator. The doors were sliding shut when Darcelle Conrad slipped through them and squeezed her slim figure into a narrow space beside me. Her tresses were bleached so blond that they had the fake shininess of a Barbie’s hair, and she was close enough for me to see a millimeter of dark roots growing into her part.

  “Hi, Savannah,” she said. “I hear you’re working for my old college roommate. Is she here today?”

  I shook my head. “She’s out sick. Do you want me to give her a message?”

  She smiled. “Just tell Kitty I hope she feels better real soon.”

  We said good-bye after the elevator reached my floor. I strolled past the reception desk, headed down the hall, and stopped in front of my cubicle when I spotted Ainsley in my chair.

  “Jeezle Pete,” she said, holding her hand to her chest. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “And I’ve never heard anybody say Jeezle Pete.”

  She giggled. “It’s a Midwest thing. I’m from Indiana. Actually, I’m from New York, but my parents got divorced when I was a baby and Dad stayed here, but Mom took me back to Indianapolis. I’m visiting him for the summer. Oh, and Jeezle Pete is a nicer way of referring to Jesus Christ,” she said, whispering the last two words.

  “That’s what I figured,” I said with a wink.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “Kitty asked me to show you how to access Femme’s social media sites when I had a chance, and now I do. But I should give your seat back, shouldn’t I? It was wrong of me to sit here without permission.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t mind if—”

  There was no time to finish because she sprang up, dashed over to an empty cubicle, and returned wheeling a chair that she put next to mine. Then we sat side by side, she gave me log-in IDs, and she asked me to create a password.

  “Jessamine,” was the first word that came to mind.

  “Oh,” she said as her dark bob bounced around her face. It was as shiny as a mink coat. “The state flower of South Carolina. I learned all the state flowers in school. Now let’s see if I can remember the rest,” she went on, and I hoped she wasn’t planning to recite all fifty. “The peony is the flower of Indiana, and for New York it’s the rose, and then of course Iowa is—”

  “Just as dull as this conversation,” said Caroline, who’d materialized like a vampire and was standing beside my desk in a frumpy brown suit and clunky shoes. “Don’t put Savannah to sleep with your inane babbling.”

  “Ainsley isn’t babbling,” I said. “She was telling me some interesting facts about—”

  “Please,” Caroline said. She took off her cat’s-eye glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You were just about to nod off.”

  Maybe. But she didn’t have to say it. “Do you want something?” I asked.

  “Hmm,” she said as she put her glasses back on and folded her arms. “I want you to get the hell out of my father’s building … but since it seems that your stupidity is exceeded only by your tenacity, I’ll settle for Ainsley going to the corporate division. Ned has some work for her.”

  “On my way,” Ainsley said, then bolted out of her chair and sprinted down the hall toward the elevators while I swiveled in my seat to face Caroline.

  “You could be more patient with her,” I said. “She’s a kid.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes and leaned her back against a calendar that was tacked to my cubicle wall. “She’s a rah-rah class president on acid. And she’s not nearly as stupid as she seems. She was also an excuse for me to come down here and tell you that if you cop an attitude with my brother again, I’ll make you extremely fucking sorry.”

  The fluorescent lights were merciless. I saw every dent in Caroline’s face—the deep ridge by her mouth, the purplish indentations across her jaw. “He told me you were smart,” I said. “If you really are, then I can’t imagine you agree with the way he’s treating me.”

  She touched the scraggly ends of her hair. “I can’t imagine,” she said, “why you presume to know what I think about anything. And if you don’t care for my family, then maybe you should run along home to your own.”

  “That’s not going to happen. There’s so much to keep me here. Look at all this work,” I said, glancing at my cluttered desk.

  “Oh,” Caroline said lightly, “don’t worry about that. You can be replaced with any bubblehead from a shitty college that nobody’s ever heard of.”

  My toes clenched inside my shoes. She really knew how to needle a person, but I did my best to stay calm. “We can’t all go to Harvard. But isn’t it funny that our degrees have ended us up in the exact same place?”

  “Not the exact same place, Savannah. I’m up there,” she said, pointing to the ceiling, “and you’re all the way down here where you don’t matter to Stone News in the slightest.”

  I pretended that didn’t bother me. “Well,” I said, “at least I don’t hate my job and I come to work with a smile on my face. Hold that scowl long enough and it’ll stick.”

  Her mouth shriveled and turned white. “Don’t be too confident about keeping your job. Kitty’s fired scads of assistants for screwing up … and you’re no better than they are.”

  “You’re right, Caroline. I was raised to believe I’m no better than anyone … and no one is better than me. But you’re wrong about the job. I’m not going to screw it up.”

  “We’ll see,” she said with a smug smile before vanishing down the hall.

  *

  I stayed late that night since Kitty wasn’t there to make me leave at a civilized hour. Her stomach virus kept her at home for the rest of the week, and I worked overtime every day because as long as Ned and Caroline kept clear of me I was happier at the office than at my apartment. All those rooms felt empty and still and much too quiet.

  Then it was Friday. The office had emptied out and the cleaning staff was vacuuming when I decided to leave. I called Tony to pick me up, and I was walking through the lobby when my phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out, flipped it open, and heard Mom’s voice.

  “Thanks for the fancy bag … and for the money. I won’t use either, but it was sweet of you anyway.”

  “You should use both,” I said. “And I don’t want what’s happened to change anything between us. I know you don’t want me to be here, but—”

  “You’re right … I don’t. So let’s leave it at that and drop the subject.”

  I sighed, we said good-bye and hung up, and a few minutes later I was walking past the anti-Stone protesters on the curb. Then I got into the front seat of the black sedan, where Tony lowered the volume on a Yankee game and pulled into traffic just as my phone vibrated again and someone started talking before I could say hello.

  “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  It was a man whose accent was southern, but I couldn’t figure out who he was or why he sounded so angry. “Pardon me?” I said, glancing at the caller ID. Sawyer Brandt, I read, which was still confusing. I’d
known that man for nineteen years and he’d never once called me.

  “No, I won’t pardon you. You convinced my daughter to secretly charge a plane ticket on the credit card I gave her and run to New York without consulting me.”

  Had she really? “Mr. Brandt,” I said, “I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t know Tina was coming up here. I asked her to, but she—”

  “Don’t lie,” he said. “Of course you had something to do with it. She’d never do such a thing on her own.”

  He had no idea that Tina could be secretive and crafty and devious, but that was her fault. All these years, he’d thought she was fast asleep in her bed when she was wide awake in someone else’s.

  “She shouldn’t have done it this way,” I said. “But maybe she couldn’t find another.”

  “Don’t psychoanalyze the situation. Just tell my daughter to call me when she gets there.”

  A few minutes later, I found out that Tina was already here and in front of my building, sitting on a pile of designer suitcases in a lime-green sundress like a queen in exile from a foreign land.

  I flung open the car door, rushed toward her, and gave her a hug as I savored her Victoria’s-Secret-and-cigarette smell. I’d never been so happy to see her big emerald eyes, her clip-on hair extensions, and her lips smeared with that stupid plumping gloss.

  Seven

  Tony loaded Tina’s bags onto a luggage cart the concierge had let us borrow. He pushed it into an elevator and offered to bring everything upstairs.

  “That isn’t necessary,” I told him.

  “But it sure is nice,” Tina said, giving him a coquettish wink.

  The elevator took us to the eleventh floor, where Tony wheeled the cart into the hallway and walked ahead of us toward my apartment while Tina kept her eyes on him like she was a lioness and he was a hunk of raw meat that had just been tossed into her cage.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “He’s married. And he has a daughter.”

  She puckered her lips into a pout. “That figures. He’s sweet looking … and the best guys are always taken,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “But he works for you, which means he has to obey your every command and we can make him do anything we want.”