Trouble

by Kira Blakely

  “Please. Don’t,” Charlotte whispered, her voice rough.

  “Oh, I’m not going to yet,” Pamela said. “I want to watch you suffer in shame for a few days before it all falls apart. I want to see you cower in this room, crying, even. I want to make sure you feel like the piece of shit you are, and then I want to turn you in. I’m sure you know all about the non-fraternization policy. And if you don’t, I’m sure Maggie will fill you in.”

  Several of the interns shifted uncomfortably, jittery with Pamela’s spat-out words and clear anger.

  “Guys, is it really that big of a deal?” Charlotte murmured, trying to find someone, anyone, to hold her up. “If you’d just let me tell you how it all happened, I think you’d understand.”

  But the writers returned to their computers, beginning to type furiously. She was a tumor, a rat, something best avoided, best not discussed. She collapsed at the side wall, leaning heavily against the white-wash, and opening her computer. Slipping her headphones on, she dove into a raucous world of 2000s grunge music, trying to get in the right headspace to write the feature.

  But it soon seemed impossible. Her mind raced. She understood that the world was crumbling around her.

  Angered, she stood and burst from the room, stomping toward Quentin’s office. She entered without knocking, watching as his downcast eyes turned to hers lovingly, saying all the things she wanted them to say. In response, she slammed the door and began to gasp with hysterics.

  Quentin burst from his desk chair, reaching her quickly and wrapping his arms around her thin, bird-like shoulders. He shot his palm down to the small of her back, trying to hold onto her, stop her shaking.

  “What is it?” he asked her tenderly. “You can talk to me. Something’s been up since last night…”

  Charlotte’s tears blurred her eyes. Swallowing sharply, she finally found words. “Quentin, it’s been such a wonderful time, getting to know you. But Pamela—she saw us last night. She saw us kissing. And now, she’s going to hold it over my head for a few days, and then she’s going to tell Maggie.”

  Quentin huffed, slipping his fingers through his dark hair. “Fuck.”

  “I know,” Charlotte murmured, her head spinning. “I should probably just leave. Maybe Pamela won’t have a vendetta against you and spare you. This can’t get to the owners.”

  “How about you let me worry about Pamela and the owners?” Quentin said firmly, pressing his lips together. “In the meantime, you have a job to do.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte whispered.

  “You have to write your feature. More than ever, now, you have to focus on it. It has to be the best fucking thing you’ve ever written. You need to show these assholes how good you are. That this magazine doesn’t even deserve how good you are.” He smacked his fist against his other palm, giving her a fiery look. “And you can leave. Go home. Do it there, or anywhere. This is a poisonous place for you right now, and I blame myself for that.”

  Quentin took a dramatic step forward and placed his palms on either side of her cheeks, his breath hot. “I’ll see you when you’re done,” he whispered simply.

  Charlotte nodded, biting her bottom lip. With a dramatic motion, she swept from the office and went to gather her things, listening as several of the interns muttered things under their breath at her. “Sell out.” “Slut.” “Groupie.”

  At the doorway, she turned quickly toward Randy, who was still bent over his computer. His eyes flickered toward her for the first time since the morning. They were heavy with disappointment. Charlotte’s lips parted, yearning to state another apology, anything to link them together. But she felt the moment slip away.

  Chapter 27

  The moment Charlotte slipped from his office, her eyes heavy with the news of their escaped secrets, Quentin collapsed against the side of his large mahogany desk, his shoulders slumping forward. Jesus. He hadn’t been careful enough, always robbing Charlotte from her intern offices and fucking her hard against the desk, lifting her dress over her spine to reveal the moon-like curvature of her porcelain ass. Inhaling the scent of her during her office day had become like a ritual, something he associated with office life, now.

  But everything soured with time.

  Throughout the day, he focused his attention on another feature he was writing for the online MMM landing page, an article about a band named Everest, which he’d toured with during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The nights with Everest had been heroin and cocaine-laden, with powdery mountains lining his memories. The lead singer, a guy named Walt, had actually passed away from his addiction during the summer of 2011, becoming a harrowing story for Quentin, who was just beginning to clean up his act around that time.

  Jesus. He remembered Charlotte’s face when he’d considered doing the drugs with those kids in Brooklyn. He’d felt such rapturous emotions, having her on his arm, and listening to that music—that music!—and feeling a kind of zealous energy he’d abandoned when he’d become a boring dad. “Just a small hit,” he’d told himself. “It can’t hurt anything.”

  But Charlotte had held him back. He owed her everything for that.

  Standing casually, he made a pass through the offices, watching as his editors and writers typed furiously or else snapped away from social media screens, making it appear as if they worked hard all day. He peered into the intern offices once or twice, finding Charlotte’s now-familiar space to be empty, her chair removed. Pamela, the woman on the hour, sat haughtily, her nose seemingly higher than the others, with terrible, burnt curls coating her back. Who on earth had allowed her into that party? Why had Pete the bouncer led he and Charlotte to the fire?

  Maggie’s office door was open halfway, revealing her own red-headed form, slicing at pages with a rogue pen, editing ruthlessly. He peered at her from the door, wondering if, when told about the affair, she would really take the steps to rid him of his position as editor. Didn’t their friendship matter?

  It had been a one-sided friendship, Quentin realized. He hadn’t given her much in return for her padding along after him, eyes like a doe’s, her body aching for his touch.

  Perhaps he should have fucked her once more, just to shut her up. But the thought of it now made his dick soft, untouchable in his pants. He knocked on the side wall of her doorway, causing her to cut her chin upward, surprised.

  “Hi, there,” Maggie said, her eyebrows moving to make smooth peach circles above her eyes. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

  “You mean I can’t just come by and ask my favorite lady what she’s up to in here?” he asked, sounding false.

  “Just editing, as usual,” she said, standing. “You have anything you want to talk about?” She hesitated. “I know Charlotte’s writing that feature. Are you really sure you want her to do something of that importance? She’s just an intern, and the magazine literally hinges on that.”

  Quentin held up his palm, his fingers flat. “I am. She deserves the chance. Perhaps they all do. I’ll figure that out myself, down the line.”

  Maggie’s head tilted. “You’re willing to let them all write features?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Okay, maybe not all of them,” Quentin said gruffly, already losing ground. He needed to tell her about Charlotte, he knew. He needed to get ahead of it. “By the way. Charlotte went home sick, I guess. Going to work on the feature from home.”

  “Ha. As if some sad little apartment in Queens or whatever is going to be more consoling than staying here,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes.

  “Is that where she lives?” Quentin asked, feigning ignorance.

  “She lives at the bottom of a well for all I know,” Maggie said, stacking her edited pages evenly. “Listen, I’m about to start writing that feature you assigned to me the other day. About music downloads. Want to run an eye over it when I’m finished?”

  “Absolutely,” Quentin said, backing toward the door. His heart rushed into his stomach, recognizing that Charlotte was well hated amongst bo
th the interns and Maggie. His smile faltered. He remembered Charlotte saying they should turn back, that it was their last chance to cover everything up. But he’d ignored it, listening only to his innate, animalistic desires.

  Quentin left the office early, knowing he needed to pick up Morgan from school that afternoon. Grateful to uncoil from the stress of their current situation, he stopped to nab a few apple-based pastries from the French bakery and waited near the school as a slight drizzle began to coat his jacket. Several mothers tittered around him, complaining about the weather and comparing notes on how they got their kids to practice their music.

  “I take away video games,” one mother said.

  “I just don’t allow a snack until after.”

  “My daughter screams if I make her practice over forty-five minutes. Let’s just say we’re transferring schools next year if this keeps up. I don’t think she’s going to be the next singer-songwriter, that’s for sure.”

  Morgan appeared in the school doorway moments later, her backpack bobbing along her spine and her smile wide, making an invisible tension in Quentin’s brain loosen up. He lifted her with a swift motion, twirling her and causing her to squeal. The other mothers looked on, either worried or else uncertain about the lack of boredom in the father and daughter’s relationship. For this moment, perhaps, Quentin could forget about the trouble brewing at work.

  “What do you wanna do today, kiddo?” he asked Morgan. He snapped her coat’s hood over her blond hair, ensuring that she was covered.

  “Let’s go out for dinner,” Morgan insisted. “I don’t want to eat spaghetti again. Unless, is Charlotte cooking for us?”

  “No. Don’t think so,” Quentin said sadly. “She’s working pretty hard right now.”

  “Well, she has to eat,” Morgan said pointedly.

  “She might need to work and eat at the same time,” Quentin said, sighing. “How about burgers in Greenwich Village?”

  Morgan lifted her arms in a mighty, victory motion, agreeing. Quentin flashed his arm for a taxi and the pair corralled inside, with Quentin telling the man the address of their favorite burger, fry, and milkshake place—again, a place best-avoided in conversation with Morgan’s mother. Kate hadn’t so much as looked at a burger in years.

  They arrived at the restaurant and were seated in the corner, at a high-top, where Morgan swung her feet playfully and read out the menu to her father, showing off the skills she’d learned only in the previous year.

  “The Big Heaven burger has three types of cheese, bacon, pickles, and hot sauce. Damn, that sounds disgusting!” she cried, aghast.

  “That’s what I’m getting. No question,” Quentin said, teasing her.

  Morgan ordered a strawberry milkshake, a kid-sized burger, and fries, while Quentin ordered a large burger with Brie cheese and an IPA beer. They sat, awaiting their food and chatting, as several dark-haired, gruff-looking men in suits entered, their aura powerful, matching even Quentin’s.

  His eyes snapped toward them with recognition. As they sat at a four-top near the street window, he pinged two of them as being top writers for Rolling Stone, a magazine MMM would never beat in either content or readership, not for miles.

  He wouldn’t approach them. His pride was stiff, unbending. He sucked his IPA down, trying to concentrate on Morgan’s twittering about a fight she’d had with a boy at school about grace notes and just how long was too long. His brain felt stretched.

  After a small infinity, the editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone, a man named Tommy—keeping his once-rock star persona name, instead of just switching to Tom—cracked his chair back and began a long trek to Quentin’s table, deciding to bend to Quentin’s ego.

  This was a victory.

  Quentin’s eyes turned toward Tommy the moment he appeared at his table, as if he hadn’t noticed him before. He flashed a quick smile before rising and swiping his hand into his, shaking with professional strength. Tommy’s band had never gone as far as Orpheus Arise, but Quentin still remembered the little strappy guy at the occasional gig, seeming to falter to the floor with the weight of his guitar around his neck.

  “Tommy. Good to see you.”

  “And you, Q,” Tommy responded, his voice deeper than it once had been, when he’d been a man in his twenties. “How’s it going over at MMM? Holding down the fort?”

  “Trying to,” Quentin answered. “Have an issue coming out next week, so you can imagine the panic at the office.”

  “Sure. We just released, so we’re out celebrating,” he said, lifting his thumb toward the table behind him. “Would still love to do a feature about Orpheus Arise’s comeback soon. Some of our interns are still really into your shit, listening to your albums while they write. I try to tell them what a bum you were back then, but I can’t say they believe me. Your swagger is timeless. Surprised they ever wanted to write for Rolling and didn’t just go straight to you.”

  “Ha. Well, your magazine has the ultimate prestige,” Quentin said. He felt his daughter’s eyes upon him. Did she still see the “swagger” from the mid-2000s? He hoped she only saw her boring dad.

  “Anyway, interns are assholes to have around,” Tommy continued. “They think they have all these ideas, but they haven’t been around the block long enough to know what the scene was and is really like. They’re just cocky. They’re fucking exhausting.”

  “Language!” Morgan cried from below before slurping at her strawberry milkshake, her eyes large, like saucers.

  “Sorry,” Quentin said, placing his palm against her head. “She’s learning what to say in public and what not to.”

  “Well, with a dad like Quentin McDonnell, I’m sure the lines become blurred in the best ways,” Tommy said, chortling. He shook Quentin’s hand a final time before spinning back to his own table, making a final comment. “If you ever want to talk shop, man to man, we should grab a drink.”

  Quentin nodded. As he sat, slumping in his chair, he realized he wasn’t top dog over people like Tommy any longer. The game board had changed. Screaming little indie grunge rockers had lurched ahead of him, in some respects, and become top-tier editors at major magazines. His heart burned, yearning to fight to make MMM a better, more sophisticated magazine—one that could blast past that sort of competition. One that could become an institution.

  “Dad. You’re lost in your thoughts again,” Morgan said, sighing. Ketchup spattered itself across her cheeks, making her look clownish. “And you look like you need another beer.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Quentin said, hailing the waitress. “You always know me best.”

  The next night, when Morgan was no longer with him, burning curiosity sent him down the hall to Charlotte’s. He rang the bell, waiting, his heart hammering against his chest. Normally, they fucked every single day, at least once or twice, and his cock pulsed heavily against his crotch, wanting to dip within her, to fill her.

  Charlotte answered the door after a long pause, her hair swept up in a ponytail and her eyes blackened, singed with tears. A pen twirled in her fingers, showing her manic anxiety. “What is it?”

  “I wanted to check in on you,” Quentin said. The sadness in her eyes burned into him, making him recognize this was his fault.

  “Just writing. Still,” Charlotte murmured.

  “You’ve been writing since I sent you home yesterday morning?” Quentin asked, incredulous.

  “Well, yes,” Charlotte said. “And I’m not going to stop until it’s perfect.”

  There seemed to be a boundary between them now. Quentin tucked forward slightly, trying to bend it back, to kiss her soft, pillow-like lips. But she ducked away, stabbing panic pins into his chest. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, like a child who refused to leap in the pool.

  “I can’t. I have to get back to this,” she murmured. “I have to remember what’s important to me. And right now—this is it.”

  “Charlotte,” Quentin began, shoving his hand against her door, trying to keep it open. �
�Let me read over what you have so far. Let me see if I can help you.”

  “No,” Charlotte said, her eyes flashing. “I need to do this on my own. I got caught up in—in whatever this is, and I lost sight…” She trailed off, ducking behind the door. “I’m sorry, Quentin,” she breathed. “I’m really sorry.”

  Quentin stood still as the door snipped closed in front of him, becoming a barrier between him and the girl he’d begun to allow himself to love. He scrambled his fingers through his hair, frustration brimming. Trudging back to his own apartment, his mind began to spin with the first bit of creative juices he’d felt in ages. Deep in his soundproof studio, he cranked up his guitar and blared upon it, feeling the life come back into his fingers. He howled song after song, making up various, already-forgotten lyrics along the way, and feeling his heart drip with the pain of not seeing Charlotte—and the potential of losing her forever.

  Chapter 28

  Charlotte wasn’t at work the next day or the next, which was Friday. Marching past several interns at the coffee machine, he heard them whispering, incredulous that Charlotte hadn’t yet made an appearance, despite Pamela “not telling Maggie yet.” He darted around the corner, his ears perking up, listening.

  “Do you think she will?” Randy asked in a harsh whisper. “I mean she talks a big game. I could see her holding this over Charlotte’s head for the rest of the internship, rather than giving her name over…”

  “No. I think she wants destruction,” another intern said. “She doesn’t know a ton about music, so she’s eternally on the defensive. You know, she thinks she deserves this life that Charlotte already has such a comprehension of. It’s a tragedy she ever got caught up with Quentin.”

  “Yeah, but, who could resist him?” Randy whispered. “Charlotte is a little Midwestern girl from Ohio. She didn’t have a chance the minute Quentin laid eyes on her. You remember that day.”