His face turned red. Eyes shining, he leaned under his desk, pulled out a briefcase, and flipped it open as he swiveled it around to her. “See? Just my lunch and the paper. You can walk me to the door.”
“Hold on. Just hold on.”
“Aren’t you firing me?”
“Sit.” She pointed at the chair. “There’s more I need to know.” She wanted to fire him—right after she’d impaled him with his Clancy hardcover—but she had to think of Fite first. If he left now, like this, with payroll hanging by a thread—
“I’m getting a lawyer,” he said.
And they could not afford a lawsuit right now. She leaned closer to him. “You might not need one, Richard, if you help me.”
He hovered over his chair, bracing his hands on the desk, and shook his head. “Right.”
“You know I’m desperate.”
His eyes fixed on her, unblinking. “Fite really is in trouble.”
“I believe it. But is it as bad as you’ve been saying?”
“We can’t go on like this indefinitely. If we lay off the numbers I told you, the rest of us should be good for another year,” he said. “Ellen said you’ll be gone by then.”
Don’t kill him. Later, maybe. Just not yet. “I’ve given up too much to walk away now.” Her nose was only inches from his. “Or even a year from now. I’ve alienated my mother, my sister, given up my apartment, been kicked out of my house, turned away—” she closed her eyes and thought of Liam’s hands sliding over her hips, “—money, more money I’ve ever had in my life—and after all that I still don’t regret a thing. Even keeping you around is going to turn out to be good—for both of us.”
He stared at her. “You’re not going to fire me?”
“Not even if you want me to.”
“You should. What I did was very unethical.”
“I believe in second chances. Fite just needs a little time to get its mojo back.” She pointed a finger at him. “Without any layoffs. If Liam says you can work miracles I believe it. He’s not the type to throw around compliments.”
“Liam said that?”
“He did.”
Richard pursed his lips, squeezed them between his fingers, and sighed through his nose. “I can buy you another two months,” he said. “After that you can include me in the two dozen.”
It took her three days to reach the teen pop star she’d first met as an incontinent, hyperactive five-year-old.
“Oh, I totally got it, Bev,” Annabelle said that Saturday morning, sounding short of breath. From the sound of the music and the humming machines in the background, Bev guessed she was at the gym. “Don’t stress about a thing.”
Bev was on a long walk through Golden Gate Park, sucking in as much fresh, foggy air as she could after a week of living and sleeping in the Fite building. For once getting her heart rate up felt really, really good. Nobody needed to know she was wearing a Fite bra and Power Panties, or that her new crosstrainers made her want to break into a run. Liam couldn’t nag or tease or pressure her to do anything anymore, because he was gone.
Because he left.
After she’d rejected him.
Bev massaged her temples. “Whatever you do, I need to know it’s okay with your mother.”
“My mom? Please. She wants me to accidentally release a sex tape on my eighteenth birthday.”
“No!” Bev remembered Tina Tucker as being a bit—ambitious—about her daughter, but wow.
“It’s something I was going to do anyway. I’ll just make sure to wear Fite when I do it,” Annabelle said, laughing when Bev squealed in protest. “Not the sex tape. Something else. Anything in particular you’re marketing right now?”
Bev shoved aside her memory of Annabelle gluing macaroni to empty toilet paper rolls, feeling ancient at thirty. “Something not too sexy. Something other girls could wear, not just a pop star.”
“No, you’ve got it all wrong, Bev. I am the pop star. That’s why they’ll want it.”
Bev smiled, grateful but uneasy. “I’ll mail you something new we’re working on. Just a hooded sweatshirt, but it’s got a huge Fite logo that will stand out in pictures.”
“Send me more than that,” Annabelle said. “I’ll improvise.”
“You don’t have to go crazy—”
“Leave it to me, Bev. I’m really good at this stuff.” Then the machine in the background came to a sudden stop, and Bev could hear her gulping down water. “I was ready to take the Annabelle brand to the next level anyway.”
“Promise me you’ll show your mother first.”
“Bev, she so doesn’t care.”
“Humor me.”
“Tell you what. Send me extra Fite merch, and she’ll place them herself. She loves underground marketing. Since I fired her as my manager she’s been kinda bored.”
Poor Tina. “I’ll send a truckload.” Bev thanked her again and hung up to get to work. She swung around so fast she nearly collided with a trio of cyclists coming up behind her. One of the guys screamed, careening off the road while his friends laughed and weaved around her, Lycra-butts pumping. She watched them ride off around a grove of eucalyptus, mentally screen-printing Fite logos on each skinny ass.
She had to get back to Fite to write up the cut sheets and sample requests so they could start working first thing Monday morning. If she was fast enough, she thought, breaking into a jog, she could find enough new stuff lying around the showroom to make it into the Saturday afternoon mail.
Liam wouldn’t see that she ran east through the rest of the park, all the way down the panhandle and up and down through the lower Haight, across town and south of Market Street. Liam wouldn’t see anything.
Because Liam had left.
One week without Fite and Liam was restless, disoriented, cranky, and bored out of his mind.
After two weeks he started seeing things. Hallucinating, like a shipwreck victim on a raft in the middle of the ocean, seeing bottles of water and ten-course meals everywhere. Except what he saw, while he washed the dishes and painted the trim in his bathroom and replaced the garbage disposal, was Bev standing next to him, sharing in his chores, in his life. Sometimes—all right, often—she was naked, which was some consolation.
The third week, things got scary. On this Monday evening drive over to Oakland he could see Bev sitting next to him in the passenger seat, disturbingly with no skin showing, because going to have weekly dinner at Mom’s was just the sort of thing people did together. Committed, boring, married people.
“Thank God somebody’s going to feed me,” April said. It was his sister, not Bev, who sat next to him as they passed onto the eastern span of the bridge. “I’ve been starving since you tore up the kitchen.”
“Property comes with responsibilities,” he said. “I’ve been putting maintenance projects off too long.”
“Replacing the tile countertops with hand-crafted concrete was hardly necessary.”
“You don’t like it, get your own place.”
She sighed. “I wish you’d just call her.”
When they pulled up the road to his mother’s house, he only glanced at Bev’s house, determined to be relieved if her RAV4 wasn’t in the driveway.
But it wasn’t in the driveway, and when the dogs burst out of the house and ran across the yard to nibble on his legs, Liam wasn’t relieved. He hadn’t been breathing well since they pulled off on Broadway, and now, realizing he wouldn’t see her today, after he’d worn a new shirt and his favorite cologne and shaved extra close—
His mother waded through the wriggling puppies and put her arm around his waist.
“He still hasn’t called her,” April said.
Trixie said, “He will,” and for once left it at that.
When they went into the house, Mark was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by Legos and a laptop, drinking beer and wearing an apron. “I’m making Mom a new napkin holder. Robotic.” He grinned. “I've programmed it to dispense on voice commands.”
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Liam patted him on the back. “To think you almost didn’t get into MIT. What a waste that would have been.”
“Blow me,” Mark said, and the machine in his hands beeped and raised a lever. “I hear you’re unemployed too.”
“And me too!” April popped a stuffed olive in her mouth, looking at their mother. “Don’t worry. Liam hates being a bum. You’ll only have two losers to support soon.” She reached over the kitchen table and hit the button on the flat screen TV mounted to the wall.
“I don’t mind,” Trixie said. “It gives us more time together.” She squeezed Liam again and sat next to Mark and the Legos. “Plus, Mark is an excellent cook.”
Liam opened his mouth to make a joke, insult him in his loving, brotherly way, but he didn’t have it in him. So he got himself a beer instead, and when the TV seemed too loud and the kitchen too crowded for his mood, he wandered back to the porch to see the dogs and remember the last time he’d been there.
Bev had rejected him, but—it hadn’t been easy. He saw how she’d looked at him, as if he’d come fresh from Gerard’s bakery in a warm paper bag. It had hurt him at the time, thinking she only wanted his body—
“I’m such a sissy,” he muttered.
“Shut up,” April said, coming up behind him. “It had to happen eventually.”
“Becoming a sissy?”
“No, you big homophobe. A human being.” Then, to his shock, April threw her arms around his chest and smiled up at him. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I want to kill myself, and you’re happy.”
“You’re just afraid she doesn’t love you back. But she might. She gave you that look.”
“Look?”
April opened her eyes wide, dropped her mouth open, and panted.
Liam frowned at her. “I’m in love with a zombie?”
Her face broke into a smile and she squeezed him so hard his ribs creaked. “I’m so happy for you.”
He sighed through the pain. “I’m going to have to go back.”
“But we just got here,” April said. “I am not leaving before we eat.”
“No, I mean to Fite.”
“Yay!” she said, squeezed him one more time until he cried out.
“Just until I can get another big deal back on track. So I don’t have to feel guilty.” And she can see what she’s missing. He sucked in his gut and ran his hands through his hair. She could gaze and yearn.
“New shirt?” April asked. “Kind of tight, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” He frowned down at himself before he noticed she was smiling. “Cut that out.”
“You’re so insecure.” She tilted her head and studied him. “Mom says it’s because you were a fat kid.”
He could feel the blood rush to his face. After all these years, to have phantom buttons wired to unwanted nerves. He rolled his eyes. “No, it’s because my father didn’t love me enough.”
“Sorry, that’s my excuse. You were his favorite.”
“Only after I started breaking records,” he said. “I was always one meet away from being thrown aside.”
“That’s not true.”
“He used to taunt me, threatening to train Mark to swim instead—”
April laughed. “Mark sinks.”
“—and when I didn’t take that seriously, he enrolled him in chess camp. He was going to be the next Bobby Fischer, and to hell with me.”
Her voice got soft. “I remember that. He went away all summer.”
“Poor Mark. You were right. I had it good.” He sipped his beer. “He was such a shitty father.”
She bit her lip and frowned into her glass. “I hate to hear you say it. He can’t defend himself.” She sighed. “He was okay to me, I guess. I was just, you know, there.”
Liam tousled her hair. “You’re never just ‘there,’ April, but you were a girl and you were the baby,” he said. “I used to wish Mom would dump him and marry someone else so you and Mark could have a new dad. By then I knew I was stuck with him. He’d invested too much in me to give up, but I wished I could do something for you guys.”
“He’s gone, Liam. Put him out of your mind.”
Liam finished his beer. “Actually he’s not the one on my mind these days.”
“Great. Keep thinking about her.”
As if I could stop. He was still afraid of turning into his father, of bullying a theoretical wife and their theoretical children, but—who was he kidding? He wanted Bev, with an ache that had spread into every corner of his body. If anyone could look out for herself and the little people around them it was her. She’d already proven that.
He put his arm around his sister and guided her back towards the kitchen. “You better sleep here tonight. I tore up the condo’s guest bathroom before we left.”
“And she’s next door,” April said.
Hopefully.
Mark was standing, pot in hand, by the kitchen table. “The macaroni and cheese is ready.”
“Like, from a box?” April asked, crestfallen.
“That’s my boy.” Liam slapped Mark on the back just as he noticed the images flashing across the TV. He froze with one hand resting on Mark’s shoulder.
“Hey,” April said. “Isn’t that Annabelle Tucker? What is that thing she’s—sorta—wearing?”
Liam stared at the screen, stepped closer. Then he smiled, happiness swelling up in his chest. “Fite,” he said. “The Bev version.”
Trixie whistled. “Holy moley.”
“Nice,” Mark said, staring at the TV, blushing.
That’s my girl. Licking his lips, Liam reached into his pocket. “Time to chat with my friends at Target again.”
Chapter 24
That same evening, on the other side of the San Francisco Bay, Bev toasted Rachel with a flute of champagne. “Here’s to Fite. I couldn’t have done it without you.” It had been a long couple of weeks, but Annabelle had outdone herself. Fite wasn’t going out of business for a while.
Rachel tapped her glass against Bev’s and sipped, eyes on the laptop propped open on the conference room table. The TMZ headline read: “A-TUCK FITES THE POWER.”
“I never imagined wearing a hoodie quite that way,” Rachel said.
Bev clicked on the photo to enlarge. To make the headlines they needed, Annabelle had worn a small Fite sweatshirt zipped up around her hips like a skirt, lavender hiking boots, a navel ring, a Fite bra—and nothing else.
Rachel poured herself another glass. “Is she wearing underwear?”
“Yes,” Bev said. “See? Right there. Plenty of underwear.” I have not corrupted an innocent sixteen-year-old. Her idea. Her idea.
“Oh, got it. Same purple as the boots.” Rachel looked dazed. “You told her to do that?”
“I asked her to wear Fite. She—improvised.”
Rachel sucked down her second glass of champagne. “Damn. Just—damn.” She slammed the glass down on the table. “You’re not what I expected.”
Bev wasn’t surprised Rachel was depressed, just that she wasn’t trying to hide it anymore. She got out the shopping bag under her chair and took out her package. “I got you something.” The frame was two by three feet, wrapped in heavy brown paper and bubble wrap. “To show my gratitude.”
Rachel stopped in the middle of pouring a third glass and frowned. “You got me something?”
“I know you didn’t like being the fit model, but you did it anyway. I’m convinced it made a difference—”
“Not the way ‘A-Tuck’ wears it.”
“—and it will make a difference,” Bev continued, “now that Target and Macy’s and Sports Authority and whoever is coming to us. We’re ready for them.”
Glass in one hand, Rachel picked at the tape holding the package together. Bev handed her a pair of scissors and set down her own glass to watch.
“It’s a picture?” Rachel banged her glass on the table, hand shaking, to tear the paper off the glass more quickly. When the image was exposed, her face, fl
ushed from the champagne, faded to gray. “Where did you find this?”
Bev leaned forward to study the enlarged photograph. “He looks so happy. I wish I had known that side of him. Or any side, really.”
Rachel threw her an enraged look over her shoulder. “Where? Where did you get this?”
“Here,” Bev said. Rachel scanned the walls of the conference room for clues, but Bev said, “No, here in the building. In his rooms upstairs.”
Rachel glared at her then turned her attention back to the photograph. “Of course. Your building.” She pushed the frame towards Bev, tears in her eyes. “This is your property.”
Bev didn’t move. “No, that’s a gift. I’m sure you’d like to keep it.” She looked down at her grandfather and Rachel embracing and happy in a living room she didn’t recognize. “I know you loved him. You don’t have to pretend anymore. All right? You don’t have to pretend.”
Rachel poured herself another glass, gazed down at the photograph with a tiny smile in the corner of her mouth.
Then she looked at Bev, the smile gone.
“Go to hell,” she said.
“What do you mean, she’s not here?” Liam asked.
Blocking the doorway of Ed’s old house, Kate chewed gum and glared.
“She has to be.” He looked at his watch. “It’s past eight. When did she go out? She’s not answering her cell.”
Kate snapped her gum, narrowing her eyes. “Are you fucking with me?”
“Not at the moment.”
“That explains the broken window.” Her upper lip curled. “You didn’t know she’d left. Well, nice try, but we’re not afraid of you. Or anything else.”
She started to close the door, but Liam stuck his foot inside and braced it open. “Broken window? Left when?”
Kate tried to kick him, but he was prepared. Within a second, Kate was hopping on one leg with the opposite foot in Liam’s calm grip.
“It wasn’t me, but I know who it is.” Kimberly had been thrilled to hear from him, tell him about her calls from Rachel, grovel for Bev to come to Minneapolis.
“Oh, right.” Kate thrust her leg towards his groin.
Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy) Page 28
