by Claire Adams
“I’m going to call down for something. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m famished.”
“Go ahead.”
He picked up the phone, and he was only three words into his order when the strangest words started coming out of his mouth. From the sound of it, I wouldn’t have known what to order even if I wasn’t trying to pretend I never ate. I felt a little better when I heard him say, “Chairman Bao.” Even I knew it was Chairman Mao. I was starting to feel like maybe I should be the billionaire, and he the plus-sized intern living with my brother.
It occurred to me that a man like him may very well be conversant in any number of languages and maybe the way he was saying it was actually closer to the true pronunciation of the name that I didn’t know because I was just a stupid uneducated American who preferred sitcoms to history (or social studies—I could never remember which) and would humiliate herself if she were to try to correct him. Because there would be some reason why he said “Bao” instead of “Mao,” only I hadn’t cracked the code and he’d call me on it. Even if I wanted to know the reason why he said one instead of the other, I never could because of the aforementioned humiliation; but I really didn’t think it through that much.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” he asked.
I stood there a moment, pretending like I wasn’t trying to use any excuse to distract myself away from how hungry I was. It was clear enough he didn’t mind too much I wasn’t exactly model-thin, but eating in front of him, however properly and discreetly, would end in one of only two ways: either he’d lose the sex goggles he’d had since I went home with him that first night, see cause and effect, and realize, “Wow, she’s fat and she’s eating; that’s disgusting.” From there, he’d realize he’d prefer someone much smaller.
The other possibility was he’d end up standing over me with a video camera, telling to smear more mayonnaise on my cheeks while I took another bite out of a six-foot sub sandwich. If that’s what he was into behind all the suits and the magazine covers and everything that gave him his decent public image, that was his business. That didn’t mean I wanted to know about it, though.
“Marcy?”
“I could go for some coffee,” I said.
He said into the phone, “Yeah, and could you send up a mug of Kopi Luwak?” He turned toward me, covering the phone again. “Just never look into how it’s made and you’ll love it,” he told me. “Are you sure you don’t want something else? You haven’t eaten in at least as long as it’s been for me, and that’s quite a while.”
“Actually,” I told him, “it’s getting really late. I think I should probably get home before Luke sends the Feds to come find me or something.” It seemed like the smart play, reminding Dean who my brother was. The forbidden fruit thing was a good deal, and a hell of a lot less complicated than actually engaging with each other.
“Hang on a minute,” Dean said into the phone. Covering the receiver, he said, “You don’t have to go. I know your boss, and I’m pretty sure he’d be okay if you came into work a few minutes late tomorrow.”
“Thanks, but I really should get out of here.”
“I’m here all night if you change your mind,” he said.
I went back into the bathroom, finished drying my hair, and then I got dressed again, folding the bathrobe neatly and setting it on the counter.
Together in that hotel suite, we were actors. The words we spoke were canned laughter the way I felt walking out of that room, hearing Dean finish up his order as I closed the door behind me. It was a charade. I knew that going into it, but for some reason, it had become a lot more real. It was probably the natural evolution of the little game we played with each other, pretending we belonged in the same world, much less the same hotel room. Still, the way it all came together, it was so sweet in a way; but that only exposed its cruelty.
It made it easier, pretending I had any kind of control over what was starting to build inside of me. I knew it was all just meaningless sex. Maybe one day I’d write a book about it and we’d see each other again, years after he’d fired me and I’d lost interest in starting over, and I’d give him a smile as we stood across from each other in the courtroom while he called my book—which would have become a worldwide bestseller, naturally—a slanderous piece of filth. That was the only future I allowed myself to imagine with him playing a recurring role.
Something was different as I made it out into the parking lot, though. I didn’t have that wonderfully satisfying mix of pride and the consciousness of the pending, inevitable loss. Those feelings were replaced by something much different, something I didn’t expect. It was a small thing at first, that feeling; but as I paid it more attention, it began to show itself for what it was.
It was hope. I didn’t know where it came from, and I didn’t know why it was there, but I did everything in my power to kill that feeling on my way to the car.
The problem with being human is you always want more of everything.
Chapter Six
Regressing
I was happy. Despite near-constant self-deprecation and being resigned to the fact I was probably most of the way through what would undoubtedly be the most interesting experience of my life, I couldn’t help noticing I’d been walking around with a smile.
I hadn’t seen Dean again, but that wasn’t surprising. Luke said there had been an unexpected hiccup with one of the overseas accounts a couple of days earlier and that everyone at or near the top of the company was scrambling. Luke still didn’t know what was going on with Dean and me, but my brother’s nightly rants about the tragedy of being him sometimes came with a side of useful information. That is, assuming I could listen to him complain about how much money he makes long enough.
It was a struggle.
I had learned that Dean used to have a very different image when he was first coming into the business world. No one ever directly accused him of anything, from what my brother said, but there were “wild stories flying around for a while.”
Luke passed it off that Dean just came out of the wrong part of the wrong city at the wrong time. It helped me understand why Dean might be so standoffish. If I was starting to make a name for myself and everyone just assumed the worst without knowing anything about me, I’d be a lot slower to open up to people, myself. What would be the point? People’s impressions of each other rarely change, and even when they do, it’s usually a grueling process.
There was a meeting scheduled for today, but those had been postponed until Luke and everyone figured out whatever the problem with “the overseas account” was. He never went into too many specifics when he felt the information might be sensitive. I don’t know who he thought I would tell. Even if I were to try to leak some sort of information to whomever people leak information to, I wouldn’t understand enough about what I was leaking to know it was something important.
I’d been working at Farnsworth & Temple for a couple of months, and I still only had a vague idea what they did. They were a software company, but due to their focus, it was also a de facto financial services provider. The company didn’t give out loans or anything, but its software had already been adopted by the majority of major banks in the country. Other products were available to the normal consumer, and almost everyone with a bank account in the U.S., whether they were aware of it or not, either owned something with Farnsworth & Temple software on it, or used an ATM or a card swipe machine run by F&T Software at least once a day. Luke said the numbers from overseas were less impressive, but they were still pretty solid.
That is, except for whatever was making Luke’s face red and his temper short as I came into his office to drop off a memo.
“Don’t you knock anymore?” he asked as I opened the door to his office.
“Marika told me to come in,” I answered, blinking a couple of times. “She got you on the intercom, and I heard you tell her to send me in.”
“Still,” he said, his eyes focused on his computer, “it’s polite to knoc
k.”
“All right, well I’m going to pretend for the both of us that I didn’t just interrupt a porn run, and I’m going to drop this on the farthest corner of your desk and I’m going to go.”
“I wasn’t looking at porn,” Luke said. “I never would have had Marika send you in here. What’s the matter with you? It’s this stupid thing in…well, I can’t really talk specifics, but it’s driving me crazy.”
“You should really consider a vacation. You know how Dad said he started going bald when he was about your age, and how he said it was the stress of working too hard that did it?”
“The bald gene goes through the maternal grandfather. Dad going bald doesn’t mean anything,” he said, trying to appear unfazed. Still, I could see the corners of his mouth start twitching the moment I said the word “bald.”
“Grandpa went bald pretty young, too, didn’t he?”
“You’re thinking of Dad’s dad. Mom’s dad was….” Luke trailed off. “There’s not a lot I can do about that.”
“I’m just saying, because I think you’re starting to thin a little in the back.”
I hadn’t seen the back of his head since I walked into the office. Of course, I didn’t really pay all that much attention to the back of my brother’s head anyway, but it was the one thing that would distract and overpower everything else in his life. All possible tragedies, in Luke’s mind, were overshadowed by the looming specter of him losing his hair. I told myself I was doing him a favor, helping him get his mind off of whatever was going on wherever. The truth of the matter, though, and what I’m reasonably certain was the reason for the slight smile I couldn’t quite get rid of, was it was gratifying watching him freak out and go through his twelve-point scalp inspection.
While he was positioning himself with the mirror on his wall at his back and pulling out his cellphone to snap a picture of the possible issue area, Luke asked, “So, what’s going on with you and the big guy?”
The smile vanished from my lips and my heart paused mid-beat, causing all the blood to drain from my face. I could see the whole thing in the mirror, just above my brother’s phone screen as he searched for areas of noticeable thinning. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” he said, snapping a few pictures, each from different angles so he could make a better determination about whether his glorious hair was in jeopardy.
My mouth was dry, and now my heart was pounding three times too fast to try to make up for missed time. “What big guy?” I asked. My voice was raspy, almost unfamiliar. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I know it’s not something you want to talk about with me, but I’m really worried about you. The way things have been going around here, I know I haven’t been making things easy on you, and staying with me was meant to help you get your life back on track. I guess I just want to know if you have something in your life to help you when times get difficult. You know: something other than just me and my possibly thinning hair.”
I was both terrified and annoyed. I’d dreaded Luke finding out about Dean and me, and I’d imagined it going any number of ways if he did. Condescension wasn’t something I’d expected, though. If I wasn’t frozen in place, trying to think of any way out of actually having that conversation with my brother, I’d probably have walked around his desk and smacked him in the back of the head.
My life hadn’t been “off-track.” I’d simply gotten buried by student loans, underemployment, and a general lack of prospects for the future. All right, so maybe Luke did kind of dig me out of a hole, but he didn’t have to gloat about it.
“Are you okay?” he asked, going back through the photos he’d just taken of the back of his head. “Do you not want to talk about this?”
“Can we not?” I asked, barely letting him finish speaking. “If that’s an option, I think that would be spectacular for all involved.”
“All right,” he said. “We won’t talk about it, but you know I’m here if you ever change your mind. I know my faith has been strained quite a bit over the years, and I know it’s not something you and I really talk about, but if you ever do want to chat, or, you know, let me know where you’re at with that sort of thing—”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” I interrupted.
“No, you’re right,” he said. “Now’s not the time. Whether you pray or not, it isn’t any of my business, anyway.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like the world was spinning too fast the wrong direction and like I was about to faint dead away.
“Okay, now you’re laughing at me.”
“It’s not you,” I said, snickering. “We just had crossed wires there for a second. I should probably get back to work.”
“What did you think I was talking about?”
And, the panic was back just like that. If I could have just kept my mouth shut, I would have already been out of the room. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? You said we had a communications mix-up. What did you think I was talking about? Is this about your love life?”
“I, uh—”
“I really don’t care what you do as long as you don’t do it in my house, or at least I don’t hear it or hear about it or—no, actually I like the first way better. As long as it’s not in my house, we’re good.”
I had to make a conscious effort to keep my lips sealed. My stupid curiosity had me about to ask Luke if he knew about Dean and me. It was the stupidest thing I could think of doing, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I think, maybe on some level, I was hoping to get caught. Luke would never go for the idea of his boss and his sister being involved in any way, much less the way we were. Luke would put an end to it so Dean wouldn’t have to, and that way, maybe, just maybe, I could convince myself somewhere down the line things would have worked out “if only Luke hadn’t intervened.”
Leaving the office, I noticed the level of ambient conversation dropped a little. It was like walking into a room where everyone was talking about me, but nobody was looking at me or noticeably avoiding looking at me, so I shrugged it off as coincidence. Eventually, I knew people would start turning on me because of my brother. I wanted to make sure I was more than proving myself when that happened. I wasn’t there yet.
With the added responsibilities connected to being Luke’s sit-in assistant during the planning and update meetings, some of my tasks had to be reassigned. I hadn’t asked Mr. Johnstone to do it; he just did. That was down on my floor, though. There was no reason the people working up here had any reason to be suspicious or envious of me.
I got down to the fourteenth floor and there was no question this time. As soon as the elevator doors opened and I walked out, full conversations stopped and people were looking around, nervously avoiding directing anything which could be called attention anywhere my way. That was walking in on a floor of people talking about me. I tried to ignore it, though.
Lunch came, and I went down to the cafeteria. Just like any other day, I found the group of interns that worked on my floor, and I picked a seat toward the edges of the group. Nobody looked up when I sat down. If there was any group of people who might want to hate me in this building, this was it. Fortunately, if there was growing resentment against me, it was still far enough below the surface my co-interns could hide it pretty well.
“Hey, Marcy,” Tim, one of the interns under Mr. Mickelson, said. “Are they still sending you up for those meetings or whatever?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. I’d been hoping to avoid the topic. “They said today’s was cancelled, and they don’t give me any details about that, or anything, really. I’m still not quite sure what it is I’m supposed to be doing in those meetings, but I guess I’m doing it.”
Four or five people down the long row of tables smirked, almost in unison, but they stopped short of saying anything. I knew how those people saw me. Whether they’d come to loathe me entirely yet or not as
ide, I was never going to be popular among the interns. Tim was nice enough, though.
“I think it’s so cool you get to go up there and hang out with all the bigwigs,” he said. “About an hour ago, Mickelson told me to run into the bathroom ahead of him and make sure the seat in the third stall on the left was properly cleaned and sanitized before he got in there. I thought he was joking, so I just kind of forgot about it. Twenty minutes later, he comes out of the bathroom screaming, and he was screaming my name, so you know I was off hiding somewhere. Talk about—”
About half the table joined in as he finished the sentence, “Talk about a shitty job.”
People love their puns.
“He can’t honestly expect you to do that sort of thing, though, can he?” I asked.
“That’s nothing,” Isabella, who worked up on 15, said. “Last week, I had someone ask me if I could test the temperature of their coffee for them. When I asked how, they said, ‘In a negligée.’”
Down the table a little further, someone chimed in, “I’d test Mr. Carrick’s coffee in a negligee any day of the week.”
A few people laughed, the rest casually glanced around to make sure no one high enough in the company to care about that kind of talk was listening. I was in the latter group, though I was relatively certain I was the only one who was cripplingly embarrassed as I did. Only a few days earlier, Dean was on the phone with room service, ordering me coffee. Granted, I was in a bathrobe at the time—not a negligée.
Isabella said, “Vince, I thought we’d talked about putting images of your naked body in people’s heads while they’re eating. It’s not right.”
Down the table, Vince lowered his head.
Isabella said, “Did you guys hear about how he got the business?”
Tim jumped in with a fake announcer’s voice, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for Conspiracy Corner with your host, Isabella Somethingorother.”
“It’s Somogyi,” Isabella responded, rolling her eyes. “It’s Hungarian.”
