Great Exploitations (Crisis in Cali)

by Williams, Nicole

  Henry looked as old and weary as he had the first morning I’d seen him on the beach. He looked as if he’d aged a couple decades in a few minutes. “I’m asking if you’ll try.”

  I nodded, although I wasn’t sure if I was ready to agree to it. “G, the woman I work for . . . does she know about any of this?” I eyed my purse where I could almost sense her phone about to ring.

  “She knows nothing.”

  I shifted on the chair. “Good, because if she did or even if she suspected any of this, we’d probably all have targets on the backs of our heads.”

  “This woman, this business…” Henry swallowed hard, like something had gotten stuck in his throat. “You’re in deep, aren’t you, Eve?”

  As hard as it had been hearing Henry explain what he’d done and why, this would be harder. To an outsider, what I did seemed repulsive and reprehensible. I guessed that a man who’d once loved me and still seemed to shelter a good deal of concern for me would label what I did as glorified prostitution. I’d always held some pride for my job and the lives I’d set free in doing it—few were strong and brave enough to do what I did—but having to look Henry in the eye and give him a proper explanation was turning out to be far more difficult than I’d anticipated.

  “Do you understand what I do?” I asked, lowering neither my voice nor my eyes. I wasn’t ashamed and I didn’t want to come across that way. Perhaps conflicted, but not ashamed.

  “I understand the basics, and that’s enough for me.” Henry’s jaw tightened.

  “Do you understand why I do what I do?”

  His jaw would not relax. “I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about that, and I believe I might have a good understanding . . . and I’m going to guess that what you saw the day you ran away from me might have been the catalyst for this career.”

  I bristled over his tone. “Is my career so much more shameful than anyone else’s?” I popped out of the chair and crossed the room to stare out the large window. The city looked the same, its abundance of lights flickering in the dark, but my entire world seemed forever changed.

  “Only you can answer that,” Henry replied, rising from his knees. “I’m not going to judge you for what you’ve done or tell you I’m disappointed or take the moral high ground. You did what you had to and wanted to, I’m sure, and that’s all I need to know.”

  For some reason, dressed in a revealing cocktail dress, I felt more naked than I did when I was actually naked. “What I do—what I’ve done—doesn’t bother you?” There was a hint of doubt in my voice because I found it hard to believe that a man who cared about any woman wouldn’t be bothered by her having a career like mine. Most men were jealous, possessive creatures who didn’t want to share their bedmate with another man . . . or men.

  “It bothered me at first. It bothered me a lot.” Henry stared at the chair I’d just been in, as if I was still there. “But it doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  My eyebrows pinched together. “How can it not bother you anymore?”

  Henry’s stare left the chair to find me. “Because I told myself that when I found you, if I found you, nothing else would matter. I’ve committed years to waiting for this moment when I could apologize, explain, and if you weren’t flashing a ring on your left hand, try to win you back. I ran through every possible scenario I might find you in . . . from the most illustrious of careers to the lowest of them, from being engaged, seriously dating, or batting for the other team.” I lifted a brow, but he kept going. “I went through every possible situation I believed I could find you in, and even in those worst ones, I arrived at the conclusion that I wouldn’t let it bother me.”

  I went back to staring out the window. “But you didn’t think of the scenario you actually found me in, did you?” It was a wasted question. How could he have run through this possibility? What I did wasn’t a career one heard about or would even believe existed.

  “No, I didn’t.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That’s why it took me a while to . . . get used to the idea.”

  “And you’re used to the idea now?” From his inability to meet my eyes, I had my answer.

  “I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to the idea, Eve. What you do is difficult to wrap one’s mind around, despite whatever reasons I’m sure you have for doing this.” Henry waved around the room I’d arrived at to lure a married man into bed so his wife could be free to leave him with money on her side. “But me getting used to the idea doesn’t change what you’ve done as a profession, and it doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

  He couldn’t be saying what it sounded like he was. “So?”

  His shoulders lifted. “So it’s a moot point. I’ve known for a long time that if you’d have me back, I’d take you as you were, however I found you. No questions asked, no conditions applied.”

  “You can’t mean that,” I replied, shaking my head.

  “But I do.”

  Exhaustion rolled over me, making me wish I hadn’t left that chair. “What do we do now, Henry?”

  “Whatever we want.” He moved a few steps closer to me, the shadows on his face fading some. “What do you want to do?”

  That was the question. What did I want to do? In the span of half an hour, my whole world had been torn from its axis and was just waiting for me to direct it where to orbit. What I did and who I worked for had been discovered, and while I wasn’t worried that Henry and the Wallaces would keep my secret from the rest of the world, going back to G wasn’t an option. My work had lost its sparkle. I’d lost my purpose.

  I’d always known that when my bank account reached that magic number, I’d be out. I’d worked hard and believed in my job, but I’d always accepted that it wouldn’t be a long-lasting career. I’d always known that one day, I’d say good-bye to the Eves. While I hadn’t woken up anticipating today was that day, that didn’t change the fact that it was.

  So I was out. I’d worked my last Errand, attended my last Meet, manipulated my last Greet. My bank account might still lack the number that would set me free for the rest of my life, but I’d crossed the line. There was no going back to the other side. Henry knew . . . Henry knew.

  “How could you pretend that you didn’t know what I was doing back in your life?” I asked slowly. “How could you not have hated me for what I was trying to do to you?” I knew that if I’d been in Henry’s shoes, I wouldn’t have been a fraction so civil.

  “How could I hate you when all I’ve felt for you since college is love?” He admitted it like it was a sin as he continued toward me.

  I shook my head feverishly. “You couldn’t have loved me this whole time. There were years of silence and separation between us. How could you have loved me when you haven’t seen me for almost five years?”

  “Because love isn’t conditioned by proximity. It isn’t even conditioned by reciprocity. It’s conditioned by nothing.”

  I heard his words, and I wanted to believe them, but I couldn’t. “I believe your version of unconditional love is different from mine. You see, in my version, I don’t walk in to find the person I love in bed with someone else. To me, being faithful to the person you love without condition isn’t just a guideline but a requirement.”

  As expected, Henry flinched at my words. After recovering, he turned, popped open his briefcase, and pulled out a large file. “You need to see something,” was all he said as he approached me with the file, holding it out for me to take.

  I lifted my chin at the file, but I wouldn’t take it. “What is that?”

  “Explanations.”

  I glared at the file, sure there was nothing inside it that could explain sufficiently to ease the betrayal I felt when I remembered that day I’d found Henry with another woman. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the file—scour through every last word of its contents, or throw it out the window and let it scatter across the city—but then my phone rang. The one that had interrupted Henry and me so many times I wanted to throw it out the windo
w.

  “I’ve got to go, Henry.” I was already charging across the room to grab my purse from the floor. I needed to sort out so many things, the thought of it all made my head pound. I had to sort out what Henry had told me, as well as figure out what I was going to do with my life now, and none of that would work itself out on its own or while I was in Henry’s presence.

  “Don’t go. Not yet.”

  I heard Henry’s footsteps follow me, but I wasn’t about to slow my momentum. If I slowed, I’d be in danger of staying and staying was just that—dangerous. “I have to.”

  “Would you stop saying that.” His tone was sharp. “You don’t have to do anything, and what’s more, you’ve never done anything you didn’t want to, so stop telling me you have to leave when what you mean is that you want to leave.” My hand was on the door when he caught up to me, but instead of grabbing my hand and keeping me from leaving, he jammed the file into my hand and stepped back. “Take a look at this. You deserve to know the truth. If you want to keep on hating me when you’re done with it, fine, I’ve accepted that that might be the outcome, but if anything in there changes your mind about me and my ‘indiscretion,’ you know how to get a hold of me.”

  For the first time I could recall, Henry was the one backing away from me. His hands were raised like he was surrendering, his eyes lowered like he was broken. I was about to drop the file, but I found myself stuffing it inside my purse. Without another word from him or me, I slipped through the door, quite certain I’d never see Henry Callahan ever again.

  THE CONDO WAS quiet as usual, except for the continued ringing of one of my phones. After the sixth call from G, I’d just turned it off. I could have silenced the ringer of course, but turning off the phone was significant to me. That part of my life was behind me. The Eves were a chapter in my life I wouldn’t flip back to, and shutting off the phone was the first big step in the many that would follow.

  I knew when G couldn’t get a hold of me, she would eventually show up at the condo to find out what had happened, so I had to be out of there before that moment came. I didn’t have a clue where she was or how long it would take her to get to Seattle, but I did know that I didn’t want to have to give my notice to her face. I wanted as much distance between us as possible when I told her I was washing my hands of the Eves. She didn’t know her precious Ten had all been a calculated ruse, and I didn’t want her to ever find out. I wasn’t a bad liar, but G could sniff out a lie like it was a sixth sense.

  After packing up my whole life—which sadly fit into one large suitcase and a carry-on—I rolled my bags onto the porch and sat in one of the loungers, determined to listen to the ocean waves until I’d made sense of at least five percent of what I needed to work out.

  From my purse, the file seemed to whisper my name. I did my best to ignore it. Whatever was inside it, I guessed it had something to do with Henry being tucked into bed with some other woman, but no explanation could appease me or erase the scars. No explanation would make me forgive and forget, so what was the use of flipping through the file? All that would do was reopen past hurts, and I was already experiencing enough of that after what had been revealed inside that hotel room.

  So I ignored the file, pretending it wasn’t there and I’d never been given it. At least . . . I ignored it for five minutes. But when the whispers became shouts and my curiosity won over my willpower, I pulled the file from my purse and flipped it open like I was ripping off a bandage.

  What I saw was not what I’d expected to find. Not in a hundred lifetimes. In fact, I was so perplexed, I closed the file to inspect the outside to make sure it was the same one Henry had handed me. It was, but the inside looked identical to the files I was used to reading after meetings with my past Clients.

  My breath hitched when I found two names jotted on the first page. In the Target column was Henry Callahan. In the Client column was . . . Meryl Callahan. His mother. My breath was no longer stuck—it felt out of control. I checked the date—it was only a month or so prior to when I’d found Henry in bed with that woman . . . Oh my god . . .

  I didn’t need to read the rest to realize what that meant. I didn’t need to check the following pages, where Mrs. Callahan had detailed her son’s likes, preferences, and lifestyle. I didn’t even need to read the reason why she’d contacted the Eves, since she’d never made it a secret that she’d rather relocate to the Projects than have her son marry a girl like me. I didn’t need to read any of it because I understood it all.

  I did, however, flip to the very back pages, the ones we Eves filled out at the completion of an Errand. How Henry had procured these notes was beyond me, but there they were, right in front of me and unable to be ignored.

  The Eve who’d been assigned to him was no one I knew—not a huge surprise since G made it a priority to make sure none of us knew the others too well—but the thing that stuck out most about her notes was the conclusion box. After trying for close to a month to attract Henry in the old-fashioned ways, she’d resorted to those less well known tools in our toolboxes. A vial of this or a pill of that dropped into a Target’s drink, and voila, an Eve can render a man witless and powerless. Judging from the cocktail this Eve had dropped in Henry’s drink, it was a miracle he was still alive.

  My palms were so damp, the pages started to slip from my hands, but I’d read enough. I’d seen enough. I let the file and its contents spill to the ground. Henry’s mother had somehow managed to get in touch with the Eves once she’d learned of her son’s engagement in hopes that she could tear us apart before we reached the “I do” stage. An Eve had been assigned to Henry, worked Henry in what I guessed was the typical fashion, and after getting nowhere, decided to resort to means that weren’t necessarily unheard of in our line of business, but they were rare. Most of the men we dealt with didn’t need to be begged or drugged—they were usually the ones who pulled us down with them. I didn’t doubt that Meryl’s Contact had been somewhere inside that room, snapping the photos that would no doubt wind up on my desk or in my backpack, but me walking in . . . not even Mrs. Callahan could have planned that more poetically.

  Henry had been a Target before. G had to have realized that, so why hadn’t she told me? I guessed she wouldn’t have known who Henry’s fiancée was, but that my Target had been one before shouldn’t have been left out of my initial briefing.

  After the file, I was done. I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover from it. My life had been filled with lies and deceit these past five years, the lies I gave and the ones others fed me. I’d lived with lies for so long, I wasn’t sure I knew what the truth was anymore.

  Somewhere along the way, the ocean waves lulled me to sleep. When I woke, I could just make out the morning light starting to touch everything around me. The release of sleep hadn’t helped me make sense of the chaos surrounding me, but it had managed to create a peace within me that I wasn’t used to feeling. It was a peace that couldn’t seem to be shaken, even when I thought of everything I’d learned over the past twelve hours.

  The more I contemplated it, the more at peace I felt, which didn’t make sense. Nothing about what had recently happened stemmed from a peaceful place. Whatever the reason for my newfound tranquility, I’d take it, but I couldn’t waste any more time reveling in it at the condo. I could sense G was on her way, and with her, she was bringing a boatload of difficult questions and scalding accusations.

  I couldn’t be a part of this life any longer. I was done. Out. The career I’d dedicated myself to for years was the same one that had been responsible for decimating the very best thing I’d ever had. My salvation had also been the reason why I’d needed salvation in the first place. That was all too much irony to continue condoning. I wasn’t going to turn on that phone again, so my silence and disappearance would have to suffice for G.

  As I peeled myself out of the lounge chair, I noticed a note in the file that I hadn’t seen last night. It was paper-clipped to the last page, a simple m
essage scratched down in Henry’s familiar handwriting. It read, If you can and want to leave it all behind, the plane leaves at seven a.m.

  No specifics, no information about where the plane was going or with whom or for how long—just those few words. Could I and would I leave it all behind? Everything? Not just my work as an Eve, but what had happened between Henry and me? How he’d hurt me, how I’d hurt him? How we’d deceived each other?

  Could I leave it all behind? Would I?

  Those were questions I didn’t stop asking myself as I rolled my suitcases to the Mustang, and they were the same questions I was asking myself as I left the condo behind forever. They were the questions I didn’t stop asking myself the entire drive to the small airport where Henry kept his plane. When I’d crawled behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, I hadn’t realized that was where I was going, but I knew I’d arrived at my destination.

  The sun had risen enough to cast light over the entire airport, and I saw Henry’s jet gleaming on the runway as a couple of people hustled around, prepping it. I left the keys in the Mustang, grabbed my suitcases, and jogged across the parking lot, through the hangar, and onto the runway. I didn’t check to see if any jets were coming in to land, nor did I check to see if any were about to take off. The only jet I was concerned with was the one I was running toward. He was on it, waiting for me, and I couldn’t stand the idea of being left behind.

  I heard a few shouts as people noticed me racing across the runway, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop until I was a few steps away from the plane, and even then, I dropped my suitcases at the foot of the stairway to leap up the stairs.

  When I charged into the cabin, a stewardess gave me a startled look before a slow smile worked across her face. “Someone’s been expecting you.”

  The other stewardess across the aisle added her own smile. “Someone’s been holding up the runway waiting for you.”