by Monroe, Lila
Justin looks at me for a long moment, like he’s measuring something. I stare back.
Stalemate.
Finally, he lets out a sigh. “I need a PA,” he tells me, motioning to the mountain of paperwork scattered over every available surface of the office. “Do you have admin experience?”
“A PA?” I repeat. Seriously?
“A personal assistant,” he explains, like maybe my problem is the acronym and not the demotion itself. “Of course, if you think that kind of work is beneath you . . .” He trails off, looking hopeful.
I hesitate. I know that I literally just said I’d do anything to stay on the masthead, but I wasn’t counting on having to pick up a billionaire’s dry cleaning and pluck the walnuts out of his salad, or whatever it is personal assistants do. I already served my time in that particular entry-level dumpster. Hell, I’ve got unpaid internships up the wazoo.
On the other hand: I meant it. This place is my home. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve worked way too hard to get where I am to let them push me out at the first sign of trouble. Besides, how am I going to prove just how indispensable I am if I’m not even in the office?
“Sure,” I say, straightening my shoulders and putting on my best “happy to help” smile. “Let’s get to work.”
3
Natalie
I spend the rest of the week running all over the city to do Justin’s bidding—I mean, errands—hopping from subway to Uber to yellow cab, from Battery Park to Canarsie and back again. The guy hasn’t even been in the office—believe me, I’d know that ass anywhere—but my phone has been blowing up nonstop with an endless stream of “friendly” requests: he needs staffing records. He needs his new office furniture moved over from the Rockford HQ. He needs lunch for a meeting from a special deli all the way up in the Bronx.
He needs his ass wiped.
OK, I’m making that last one up. But that’s what it feels like. I’ve been an assistant before, but usually they’re “answer the phone and manage an iCalendar” gigs, for people who deign to say “please” and “thank you” once in a blue moon. Justin may have attended the best prep schools the East Coast had to offer, but it looks like they didn’t include those polite words in his Latin vocab lists, or whatever other useful language they teach rich kids these days. I don’t like being at the mercy of some man’s every beck and call.
No matter how hot he is.
And he is, for the record. Very hot.
By the time Friday rolls around, all I want to do is swan dive directly into my bed with a bottle of wine and a bendy straw, but one New York City tradition that’s as stalwart as New Year’s Rockin’ Eve is Friday-night dinner at my parents’ house. The last time I missed it because I was feeling under the weather, Mom was on my doorstep by nine with antibiotics and her famous pozole rojo, expecting me to be dying of the plague. Nothing else would justify my absence, so a minor professional crisis doesn’t even come close. I run a comb through my hair and catch the train to Queens, smiling in spite of my weariness at a group of buskers singing an old Sam Cooke song in four-part harmony. I drop a few dollars in their bucket before picking up a white paper box of cookies at the Italian bakery around the corner from my folks’ house, looping two fingers in the red and white string as I let myself in through the front door.
The first thing I register is the sound of Frank Sinatra’s “It Could Happen to You” blaring on the stereo, layered over the yapping bark of my dad’s twelve-year-old terrier, Ol’ Blue Eyes, and the sizzle of chilies in a stainless-steel pan as someone curses in Spanish. What can I say? Put together a third-generation Italian guy with a first-generation Mexican woman, and the house is guaranteed to get loud.
But the food is always good.
“It’s me!” I call, feeling myself relax as I make my way down the hall toward the kitchen. “Anybody home?”
“In here, baby!” My mom’s voice rises over the clatter of pots and pans. I can hear our neighbors, the Giacinos, having one of their knock-down arguments through the open window. The Yankees game hums on the living room TV. To an outsider the cacophony might feel stressful, but to me the chaos is familiar, even comforting.
“Come on, Joanie,” my brother Frankie Jr. is saying, leaning back in his chair at the kitchen table and motioning to the Best Buy circular. He’s wearing sweatpants and a thin white tank top, though Lord knows he’s never seen the inside of a gym in his life. “Seventy-two inches for $499? We’d be crazy not to jump on a deal like that!”
“We don’t need a 72-inch television, Frankie!” His girlfriend Joanie rolls her eyes, tapping her long, lacquered nails. “Besides, we need to be saving for the wedding.”
“The wedding?” Startled, I drop the bakery box on the counter, my gaze darting back and forth between her and my brother. He and Joanie have been together since high school, and she’s been trying to get him to propose just about that long. “Wait, did I miss something?”
“Nope,” Frankie says pointedly as Joanie glares, “you sure didn’t.”
Ah.
I moonwalk right out of that particular conversation, joining my mom at the stove. “Hi,” I say, dropping a kiss on her smooth, soft cheek. She’s dressed in the same uniform of black capri pants and patterned button-down she’s been wearing as long as I can remember, her dark hair scooped into a practical tail at the nape of her neck. “Smells amazing. Can I help?”
“You know your dad would kill me,” she says. “All I’m allowed to do is stir.”
I smile. Dad’s Sunday Gravy pasta sauce is legendary—and so is his attitude about it. “I’ll keep my distance,” I promise. “Want me to do the garlic bread?”
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
I wash my hands at the sink and get to work, listening with one ear as she chats about my Great Aunt Gloria’s gall bladder surgery and the latest drama in her neighborhood book club. Ol’ Blue Eyes—whose eyes are and have always been a muddy brown—dances around our feet, hoping for a snack. “What about you?” my mom asks finally. Over at the kitchen table, Frankie and Joanie have reconciled, Joanie leaving bright red lipstick marks all over my brother’s stubbly cheeks like she’s stamping a seal of approval on his person. “How was your week?”
I fill her in on what’s been going on at the paper, trying to keep my voice light and upbeat, but my mom isn’t fooled for a second. “Personal assistant?” she asks, wrinkling her nose as she chops a handful of basil from her garden for the salad. “That’s a real demotion, isn’t it?”
I wince at the bluntness of her words. I’ve been trying not to think about it in those terms, but it’s not like she’s wrong, exactly. “A temporary one,” I promise. “Once the paper rights itself I’ll be right back to doing what I was doing.”
“Are you sure?” My mom does not look impressed. “Shouldn’t you be applying for other jobs if they don’t appreciate you there? Updating your resume, at least? You know, I saw this segment on The Today Show about networking—”
I shake my head. “Mom, working at the Gazette has been my dream since I was a little kid,” I remind her. “I’m not going to let some walking trust fund chase me out after a few days. This new management situation is a temporary blip, that’s all. Once he sees how indispensable I am—which I fully intend to show him—I’ll be right back to reporting the news just like always.”
I sound more confident than I feel, but I must do a reasonably good job of convincing her, because my mom smiles, her narrow shoulders relaxing just a bit. “That’s my girl,” she says, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ears. “You always persevere.”
My dad comes downstairs just as we’re setting the table. “There she is!” he bellows, checking on his precious sauce, before wrapping me in a bear hug to say hello. “How you doing, honey?”
“I’m good,” I say with a smile, breathing in his familiar Dial soap smell. I may not have grown up in a family of billionaires like some people, but some things are more important than money—and knowi
ng my parents always have my back is one of them.
Even if they do operate at a volume best described as . . . enthusiastic.
Now, though, my dad steps back and looks at me, sobering with a trace of concern. “Nat, honey . . . don’t take this the wrong way, but you might want to do something with your hair.”
“What? Why?” I ask—raising a hand to my admittedly drooping ponytail, suddenly suspicious. This is family dinner, not a night on the town. “What’s wrong with me?” I ask.
“It’s the color, doll,” Joanie adds from the table, oh-so-helpful. “You should really stick to bright colors. Black just washes you out. You’re more of a Spring complexion.”
That’s when the doorbell rings.
“Who’s that?” my mom asks, frowning.
“Oh!” My dad smiles sheepishly. “Did I forget to tell you?” he asks, in a voice like butter wouldn’t melt. “I invited Keith from work to join us. I thought maybe it would be nice for him and Natalie to get to know each other a little better.”
“Frank!” my mom chides, even as I feel my mouth drop open.
“You set me up?” I ask, before whirling around to look at my mom. “Did you know about this?”
Right away she shakes her head. “Of course not. Your father knows you don’t need him orchestrating blind dates on your behalf. And,” she says even more pointedly, “he knows how important it is that you put your career before a relationship in the first place.”
“Keith is very career-minded,” my father says, wounded. “He’s the best junior plumber I’ve got.” Then, looking guiltily at my brother, who fell into the family business last year after a wildly unsuccessful attempt to make his name as New York City’s Hottest Guido DJ: “No offense, Frankie.”
“None taken,” Frankie assures him, already grabbing a hunk of garlic bread from the basket.
“What are you waiting for?” Dad gives me a nudge towards the door. “Go let him in. He could be your Prince Charming!”
I take a deep breath, bracing myself, and head down the hallway—to my doom. OK, my minor annoyance. But annoying it is. Because instead of spending the evening diving face first into a plate full of spaghetti, I have to make polite conversation.
And Prince Charming he ain’t.
Keith is only a few years older than me, but already balding so fast he makes Prince William look like the president of the Hair Club for Men. He lives at home with his parents in Bay Ridge, where his hobbies, so far as I can tell from our stilted dinner conversation, run to comic books and the more unsavory corners of Reddit.
“This spaghetti is great, Mrs. Martinelli,” Keith says, once we’re all seated and getting stuck in to the main event.
“Thank you.” My mom manages a polite smile. “But it’s all Frank’s doing.”
“Let’s hope you take after him in the kitchen, huh?” Keith chortles, jamming his elbow in my ribs.
Kill me now.
“So, Keith,” I say brightly, trying to ignore the way he’s dissecting his dinner in a diligent attempt to remove anything that might resemble a vegetable, “what made you decide to get into plumbing?”
“It was my mom’s idea, actually,” he tells me. “She said I ought to learn how to snake a toilet, considering I clogged the one at our house every time I took a—”
“Joanie!” my mom interrupts, as my brother snorts with laughter. “Tell us! How’s work at the salon?”
I’m thinking up possible escape routes—and/or murder—when I feel my phone vibrate in my back jeans pocket. “Sorry,” I say, pushing my chair back when I see Justin’s number on the display screen. “It’s work.”
I head into the kitchen before I press the button to answer. “Hi,” I say, torn between relief and annoyance at the interruption—after all, it’s not like I’m exactly dying to listen to any more of Keith’s scintillating dinner repartee. “What’s up?”
“Hey there,” Justin says, his voice deep and infuriatingly sexy. I swear, the guy could work for a 1-800 hotline if this whole Titan of Industry thing doesn’t work out. “Listen, I know it’s late, but you don’t happen to still be at the office, do you?”
At eight o’clock on a Friday night? I think and don’t say. “Sorry,” I tell him. “I’m actually at dinner with my family.”
“Ah.” Justin, to his credit, sounds faintly apologetic, which doesn’t stop him from making the ask anyway: “I’ve got some contracts I need to review for a conference call first thing in the morning,” he tells me. “Any chance you can go grab them from my lawyer’s office and drop them at my place?”
“Um, seriously?” I ask, thinking longingly of the bath I was planning once I finally extricated myself from Keith and his three wolves T-shirt and his tales of digestive pyrotechnics. “Tonight? I’m probably like an hour away, is the thing, so—”
“If you’re not interested in the demands of the gig, Natalie, I totally get it.” Justin’s voice is perfectly friendly even as he channels Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. All he needs is a pair of sunglasses and a silvery bob. “If you want me to start looking for somebody else—”
“I’ll be right there,” I interrupt.
“Great,” he says, rattling off the address, which I scribble on the back of an appointment card for my dad’s foot doctor. All glamour all the time, here at home. “Don’t be long.”
“Sure thing.” I hang up. “And would a ‘thank you’ hurt?” I demand to the dead handset.
I sigh, heading back out into the dining room, where Keith is now treating my brother and Joanie to a lecture on the best things he’s ever fished out of a septic tank. “There’s an emergency at the paper. I’ve got to take off.”
“So early?” my mom says with a frown—intuiting, I think, that I’m not exactly rushing to the scene of breaking news here. “Well, take leftovers, at least. I worry about you out there in that apartment with nothing in your fridge, the cupboards bare—”
“Mom.” I cut her off with a laugh. “It’s Brooklyn, not Europe during the Blitz. You can’t trip on the street without landing in a Whole Foods.”
Still, she never listens, and five minutes later I’m headed for the subway with a giant Tupperware of baked ziti weighing down my purse. I pop my headphones into my ears, listening to three full podcast episodes in the time it takes me to schlep all the way uptown and then back to Justin’s apartment in Soho. It’s nearly eleven by the time I introduce myself to his doorman, who asks surprisingly few questions before using a special elevator key to unlock access to the top floor. I wonder if Justin called and told him I was coming, or if possibly random twentysomething women just show up here every night.
I’m guessing the latter.
The elevator doors whoosh open directly onto the penthouse apartment, which turns out to be a giant loft with cathedral ceilings and a massive wall of windows offering stunning views of the city below. I guess being an evil corporate overlord really pays, because, wow. For a moment I just stand there in my jeans and ancient sneakers, gaping around the enormous space.
Do people really live like this aside from Million Dollar Listing? Apparently so!
“Hello?” I call. “It’s me, Natalie!”
Silence. I guess the overlord is out.
I set the papers down on the kitchen island where Justin can’t miss them, then swear quietly under my breath as I realize my mom’s ancient Tupperware of lasagna is leaking all over the inside of my purse. I pull it out of my bag and set it on the counter, looking around for paper towels and finding only expensive-looking dish cloths that are probably made of cashmere. “Perfect,” I mutter, wiping my saucy hands on the seat of my jeans.
I know I should take off before I somehow sully the loft with my regular-person energy, like a passenger in basic economy trying to sneak up front to first class. Still, I can’t resist the opportunity to poke around a little bit more while I’m here. Justin’s got good taste, I’ve got to give him that much. It would be easy for this place to look cold, with
its exposed brick walls and polished concrete floors, but the rich leather couches and layered Persian rugs give it a warm, inviting clubhouse vibe. The kitchen is immaculate—I can hear my dad sighing over the top-of-the-line appliances and full set of copper cookware all the way from Queens.
I catalogue the contents of Justin’s refrigerator—instead of the Soylent and Clif bars I’m expecting, I’m surprised to find drawers full of fresh produce and nice-looking cheese, some leftover pasta salad in a takeout container. I scan his overflowing bookshelves, making note of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood mixed in with the Franzen and Chabon. And—OK, this is probably ethically gray, but I’m a reporter and this is a fact-gathering mission—I take a peek into the lavish master suite and nudge open his underwear drawer, revealing the neat stacks of boxer briefs.
So. Good to know.
I head into the nearest bathroom, which boasts a massive shower as well an antique clawfoot soaking tub, the sight of which has me moaning quietly to myself. Why are the finest things in life wasted on people who don’t even appreciate them? I swear, if I had a tub like that, I’d never leave. I’d eat my meals and read books and write all my articles in it. I’d take up residence, until my skin was too pruny and waterlogged to move. I open the medicine cabinet, where instead of the boil ointment and hemorrhoid cream I’m hoping for, I find an impressive assortment of grooming products from Kiehl’s. I snap the lid off a bottle of face wash, getting a whiff of citrus and pine for my trouble—
And that’s when the elevator door opens.
Oh, shit.
“Just let me change my clothes really quick and we can go grab dinner,” I hear Justin saying, his footsteps echoing on the polished concrete as I look frantically around the bathroom for a place to hide. Could I flatten myself behind the door until they take off again? Lie down in the bathtub, maybe? I even look out the window, on the off chance there’s a fire escape and I can scale down twenty-seven floors—
