The Heat

by Alice Ward

  I scratched at my face. “There’s got to be a way to make them change their minds. Maybe they’ll hear the data I bring back, and it’ll change their perspective.”

  He ripped the sheet of paper off his pad and balled it into his fist, then gave me a doubtful look. “In my head, they don’t even know Malaysia exists, and they don’t want to know.”

  “So, you think this is a waste of time?”

  He tossed it at the wastebasket, sinking the shot. “Pretty much.”

  I could always count on Ryan to give it to me straight. But so what if it was a waste of time? I was out of ideas. I pushed away from the table and stood. I had to go back to my house on the Upper West Side and pack. “All right. Off to Malaysia. It’s not Australia, but… it’ll be an adventure.”

  Ryan laughed. “Yeah. You can say that. Probably the last one you’ll have before the company sucks you dry. And Wy…?” I was already at the conference room door, but I turned to see him going through his wallet. He lifted a condom out and flung it at me. “Get yourself laid while you’re there. At least then you can say it was worth something.”

  I rolled my eyes but picked up the condom and shoved it in my pocket. “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Atlee

  Too emotional, my ass.

  Not a shark, my ass.

  Roger Stapleton can kiss my ass.

  Well, those had been my thoughts, up until I got my last in a long line of rejection letters from area law firms.

  All the rejections were pretty much the same: Although your qualifications are impressive, we’ve decided to pursue other candidates…

  I stared at the latest form rejection email on my laptop, feeling like an ass.

  I lowered my head into my hands and started to sob.

  It’d been a month since I quit my job. I’d done just as I promised, with great gusto and a positive attitude for my future career. I’d blanketed Greater Manhattan with resumes, filled with plenty of details on what a superior asset I was. I’d bared my shark teeth. And what did I get for my troubles?

  A whole lot of nothing.

  There wasn’t a single law firm in the city I hadn’t contacted, begging for a job. I’d gone to job fairs, cold-called, pounded the pavement. And… nothing. Turned out the old adage was true, it wasn’t what you knew… it was who you knew. Or blew, I was beginning to think.

  Ugh.

  Every open position required four to six years of experience. I had just over two. And all those friends I said were becoming associates? I learned that they’d all had to move elsewhere to get that opportunity.

  My roommate, Emily, walked in after work as I was in danger of shorting out my Mac, dribbling tears and snot all over the keyboard. She dropped her briefcase on the floor. “Uh-oh. Not another one?”

  In response, I cried harder.

  Emily went to our modest little kitchenette and put the tea kettle on. That was why I loved her. Every time I got a “no,” she put on tea.

  And I’d been drinking a lot of tea.

  There were a lot of other things I loved about Emily. I met her my first year at law school, and we’d become inseparable. Her focus was family law, but she’d gotten a job right out of school working for a major insurance company. It wasn’t glamorous, but not only did it pay her bills, it’d paid most of my bills too. I’d put in whatever I could, telling her I’d pay her back when things looked better. I had some money coming in from the environmental blog I ran, Atlee’s Angles, and my parents had sent me a little too, from Oklahoma.

  But of course, it wasn’t enough. Not in this city.

  I needed a real job.

  Emily dropped tea bags into two huge mugs and turned to me as I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. She looked good, in a black pantsuit that matched her smart black bob. She looked very professional, like she had her life together. I’d been wearing the same sweatpants for two weeks straight.

  “You’re going home for the Christmas holiday in a couple of weeks, right?” she asked brightly. “Maybe that’ll help recharge you.”

  A stone dropped hard in my stomach as I pictured that oh-so-happy event. I usually loved my trips back to Tulsa for the holiday, but this would be an exception. Last year, I’d had a 4.0 in law school and was due to graduate at the top of my class. This year, I couldn’t wait to meet up with all of my friends and tell them that I was unemployed. That’d do the opposite of recharging me. My batteries would probably die altogether. Or explode, destroying everything in my vicinity with what little acid was left.

  I sighed dramatically, flopping back in my chair and looking up at the ceiling, which was now forever water-stained from our brilliant neighbor above. The shape of the stain seemed to spell out the word, Loser.

  “You know,” she said gently. “You should just keep blogging. That post you did last week was awesome. You make sense, but you’re also hilarious.”

  I frowned. Atlee’s Angles had been my baby since I started law school. I had a steady following of three thousand subscribers. I posted religiously, at least once a week, but the closest I’d ever gotten to making real waves was when my blog was mentioned in USA Today two years ago. Since then? It’d been pretty quiet, making about a thousand dollars a month from advertising.

  That’d rent me an apartment in Greenwich Village… for like one day.

  “It doesn’t pay enough,” I reminded her. “I did add a YouTube channel, though.”

  She poured the steaming water into our special mugs, then brought them to the table. Sitting catty-corner from me, she kicked off her heels and pulled one of her long legs up, resting her chin on her knee. She looked at the channel on the screen of my Mac.

  “Oh, wow. You have six thousand followers on your YouTube? That’s more than you ever had for your blog.”

  I nodded. “Twice as much. And I just started it a month ago. Turns out, being an attorney gives me credibility online, even if it doesn’t give me credibility anywhere else.”

  She watched a clip of me discussing one of the latest rulings out of the EPA.

  “It’s not because you’re an attorney. It’s because you’re cute.”

  Cute as a freaking button. I smacked her arm. But maybe it was true. Maybe there was a certain allure to someone who looked all of fifteen, discussing legal matters like a real adult.

  Of course, I looked nothing like a real adult at that moment since my head was buried in my elbow, drying up the last of my tears. “Maybe I can work at the Seven E on the corner?”

  She bopped me on the head. “It was robbed last week, you know. And I don’t trust you not to go after whoever is committing the robbery and get your head blown off.”

  That was true. I got a little crazy and hotheaded in the face of injustice. I couldn’t help it. People who took advantage of other people sucked.

  “I’ve never waitressed before. But what about that? I’m cute, right? I bet I’ll get good tips.”

  “No offense, Atlee, but you actually have to have some sense of balance in order to be a waitress.”

  I slumped farther until my chin was resting on the table. She was right. I sometimes fell over, just trying to stand up straight. I blamed it on my crappy eyesight, since I’d needed the thickest of prescriptions from the time I was a toddler. But really, I was a klutz.

  “I’m a failure,” I moaned.

  “You’re a failure only if you give up.”

  I peeked at her through the fringe of hair surrounding my face. “I think I am giving up. Give me a towel. I’m throwing it in, and maybe I won’t sprain an ankle in the process.”

  She laughed and stroked my hair back from my forehead. “Lee, you’re insane. Stop thinking on all these tangents that will take you absolutely nowhere when you have your future right in front of you.”

  I looked at the table in front of me. My Harry Potter, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” tea mug.

  She wanted me to be a wizard?

  As if re
ading my mind, she rolled her eyes and pushed the laptop into my face.

  “You should see if you can expand upon your vlog, Lee. Make it your full-time job. People do it all the time. Like that couple that travels around the world and blogs about it?”

  “Uh, Em. They actually have money, and thus, they can blog about things that are of actual interest to people,” I muttered and wrapped my hands around the mug, absorbing its warmth.

  She shook her head. “They have sponsors. That’s what you need. A few good advertisers, and you’ll be on your way.”

  I studied my latest YouTube video, frowning. I had one comment there, from someone in Vermont. Great thoughts. Love hearing your ideas. “How would I get that?”

  “Keep being witty and cute.” She ignored my look-of-death. “Get more followers and make a name for yourself.”

  I shoved my computer to the side and took a sip of the tea. Peach raspberry, a new flavor I’d gotten at the store. I did all the shopping now for both of us, since I had nothing better to do. “I guess I need to grow my following.”

  She took a sip. “Mmmm. Good tea.” She licked her lips and dragged the computer toward her. “So how do you do that? Oh, I know. What you need is for one of your videos to go viral.”

  Ugh. “Yes. I’ll just go and do that.” I snapped my fingers.

  “No, I’m serious!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Like, instead of talking about all of these things from a lawyer’s perspective, why don’t you talk about it from a human perspective? Talk about something that affects us all, something that everyone is interested in.”

  I thought hard. I was interested in saving the planet. In pets. In nature. In hunting down and killing anyone who tossed a candy wrapper on the ground when there was a garbage can five feet away. “What kind of story?”

  She shrugged. “You know all the big environmental buzzwords.”

  Okay. That made sense. The first thing that came to me was what had gotten me into environmental law in the first place, my hometown of Picher, Oklahoma. I’d spent my early life there, but mining had contaminated the town’s water, making it uninhabitable. Our house, my school, the playground where I spent so many afternoons… we had to leave it all behind. They tested our water supply and found toxic amounts of lead in it, so we were uprooted and moved to Tulsa when I was ten. It killed my grandparents and would’ve killed us too, if we’d stayed.

  “Oh!” Emily banged her open palm on the table suddenly, sloshing our tea. She ignored it. “I was just reading about this online. What about sustainable materials and deforestation? There’s this global summit somewhere in Asia. Crap. I can’t remember where, but it’s a pretty big deal.”

  That got my attention. I’d read about it because the summit that Emily was talking about was due to happen in a few days. CEOs from all over the world were going to attend, and it was aimed at creating global cooperation and worldwide rules for promoting sustainability. It was more than a big deal. It was a huge coup for people like me. “I know, isn’t it great?”

  “And?” Her dark eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Why don’t you go there? Maybe it’ll give you some footage for your videos.”

  “Um. Because it’s in Malaysia?”

  She shrugged. “So? That’s why planes were invented.”

  “That’s also why money was invented. And as you should well know because you’re unofficially my foster parent now, I don’t have any.”

  I grabbed my computer and opened the internet browser, where I brought up the latest news. The first article that popped up caught my eye. Major Manufacturers’ Last-Minute Reversal on Summit Attendance: Does This Mean There is Hope?

  I clicked on it, scanning the article. It was about Watts Enterprises, one of the largest and most recognized brands in corporate America.

  My lip curled up in a snarl. WE. I hated everything WE. They had about four thousand different brands, littering every supermarket shelf around the world. When I went to the store, if I saw their bright orange logo on the back of a product, I not only put the product back on the shelf, I buried it behind other products.

  Why? Because, simply, they sucked. They were notorious for their bad business practices and had recently been voted number one on the list of American Companies with the Worst Reputations. It was well deserved. For so long, they’d been digging their heads into the sand and ignoring anything and everything that had to do with the environment. I didn’t know who headed it, but whoever they were, they were disgustingly arrogant, and, just, well… assholes.

  And they’d decided to attend the summit in Malaysia? Really?

  I smiled. “They’re going to get their asses handed to them in Malaysia when the environmental groups get ahold of them. Good.”

  Emily sipped her tea, and her dark eyes lit up. “Wait. Wait. Why couldn’t you hand them their asses?”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “Just think. You. Your phone’s video camera. Cornering them in their cushy hotel. Asking them the questions they need to answer. If anyone could do it, you could!”

  I opened my mouth to say she was crazy. And yes, it was. But she had a point. It could be. . . effective. Entertaining. Worthwhile.

  And total click-bait.

  Hello, viral.

  I might have been meek at times, but if one thing could get me brazen enough to get heads rolling, it was corporate assholes fucking with our environment. I imagined myself confronting them. My looks might be an advantage. I could play the wide-eyed, innocent teen bystander until I got close enough to them. Then, I’d switch into destroy-mode, getting in their faces and giving them the cold, hard facts so they couldn’t run away. Maybe then, I could prove to Stapleton and everyone else just what kind of shark I was.

  “Okay, okay…” My mouth was rambling as my thoughts went spiraling out of control, landing with a thud at my empty checking account. That was okay. My parents had just sent me a check for a thousand dollars to cover that month’s living expenses. I could use that. “When does the summit start?”

  Emily whipped out her phone lightning fast and began excitedly thumbing into the screen. “This Thursday.”

  It was Monday evening. I went on Expedia and looked up the next flights to Malaysia from JFK. I found one leaving tomorrow morning that was an eight hundred dollar round-trip to Kuala Lumpur. It had one layover in China and would take only twenty-three hours.

  Twenty-three hours? And that was the shortest flight. Ouch.

  But that would get me there well in time for the summit. There was also a hotel that only cost sixteen dollars a day. It was only a few blocks from the hotel that was hosting the summit in Shah Alam, which was right outside of Kuala Lumpur. It might have been a dive, but it didn’t matter. I could consider it an adventure.

  I stared at the itinerary once I’d added it to my cart. Should I? Or shouldn’t I? With tax and baggage and all that extra stuff, the whole thing came to just under a thousand dollars, but well, I had my parents’ check and exactly two hundred and six dollars left on my credit card.

  Plus, my parents always said that you couldn’t put a price on anything that was done to further your career.

  “Well, are you going to do it?” Emily practically yelled, breaking me from my trance.

  My twitchy trigger finger hovered over the “Purchase Now” button. Maybe I was being hasty. “I don’t know. Should I?”

  Was I really going to drop everything and travel to a foreign country on the other side of the world, alone, at the spur of the moment?

  Why the hell not? I had nothing else going on in my life. And sometimes you just needed to shake things up to make things happen.

  And I would make it happen, even if I had to strip off my clothes and handcuff myself to the CEO of WE to make a point.

  Well. Maybe I wouldn’t go that far.

  Of course, I had told that candy-bar-wrapper-litterer that he was a demon on earth and should go straight to hell where he belonged.

  Emily took a sip of her
tea. “Your passport up to date?”

  I nodded. I had one from a spring break trip to Cancun I’d taken as an undergrad. Once I’d gotten that stamp, I’d expected a whole lot more would follow. Now, a billion years later? I still had just that one, lonely stamp.

  “Then definitely.”

  I clicked the button and bought the ticket. Malaysia, here I come.

  The second that moment of pure exhilaration passed, my life flashed in front of my eyes. The only traveling I did these days was back and forth to Oklahoma, for Christmas and my mom’s birthday in May. This was definitely out of my comfort zone. “Um. What language do they even speak in Malaysia?”

  I googled it. Malay. I made a mental note to study the pertinent phrases on the plane and add Google Translate to my phone.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure a lot of people there will speak English. Especially for the summit.”

  I nodded, hoping she was right. If I got stranded in the airport after a day-long flight just because I couldn’t speak the language, it would suck. “Okay. I guess I should pack.”

  I pushed away from the table as she said, “Do you know what you’ll say to the CEO once you see him?”

  “Yes. Of course.” In fact, I’d been mentally preparing a speech like that since I’d been forced out of my home when I was ten. Something about how humans don’t matter to them over the making of a few bucks. How they should be ashamed. How they’d ended innocent lives in order to live in their mansions. Maybe I’d even spit on him. “I’ll give him hell. And you’re right, it will make excellent television.”

  Emotional? Hell, yes. So what if Stapleton was right? Certain things, you were allowed to be emotional about. And this was one of them.

  “Oh.” I broke out of my trance to see Emily gazing at her phone screen in a way that could only be described as hungrily. She shoved the screen under my nose. “Turns out, Wyatt Watts, the CEO of WE, is quite the dish.”

  I stared at the picture of a man with ice-blue penetrating eyes, a chiseled jaw, and movie-star looks. Paul Newman reincarnated.

  I read the surrounding article, getting more and more disgusted. It was a fluff piece in a Manhattan lifestyle magazine that boasted, You’ll find this hot CEO on the prowl at local clubs, but watch out! He’s rarely been seen with the same woman twice, which makes him number three on our list of most eligible bachelors in Manhattan!