“Very often smelly,” Emily said.
Wendi crossed her arms over the chest of her black hoodie. “Well, what’s to stop me from telling people? What can you threaten me with? I can rat the three of you out tomorrow if I choose to.”
My eyes must have gone black or something because Emily, Ginger, and Lily drew back, awaiting my reaction.
“Okay, Wendi,” I said with a directness that surprised even me. I really wished she hadn’t gone there. It forced me to the exact position I didn’t want to go to. “Here’s how this is going to work. Look around this table, because it ends with us. We’ll use your site to pay off Ginger’s debt, and everybody wins. You get to screw Robert out of some money, and the rest of us all get to walk away debt-free. And most important, no one goes to jail. On the other hand . . .”
I paused and nobody moved. My apparent composure had befuddled them. I sounded like a boss.
“If you tell anyone else about this, I’m going to come after you. And that goes for everyone here.”
My voice was pure intimidation. I was reminding myself a little of Robert.
“Remember this.” I leaned back in my chair. “Robert likes me better than any of you. I’ve been to his ranch. He calls me Shooter. So he’s way more likely to believe me when I tell him it was all of you—that you all teamed up against me, forced me, blackmailed me, threatened me. Or better yet, that you, Wendi, are single-handedly trying to mastermind an anarchist plot against him.”
Silence.
Wendi stared at me hard, pulled her cigarette out from behind her ear, and contemplated it. Then she stood up, shook her horns, muttered something in Chinese, and headed for the door.
The others waited patiently for me to say something.
“Are we all clear?” I asked.
I found myself gripping my tequila too tightly. Robert’s drink of choice. Herradura A?ejo on the rocks with a little lime. I wondered how many limes I had cut into triangular wedges in the past six years. Eight hundred? Nine hundred? A thousand?
It didn’t matter. The lime cutter was officially gone, replaced by this woman sitting here now.
15
THE MOMENT I stepped into the office I knew something was wrong because Robert’s door was closed and all his electronic shades were in the down position. Motherfucker, I thought. I’d been hoping for a laid-back morning. I had just set my bagel and coffee down silently onto my desk and gently lowered myself into my chair when my phone rang.
It was him.
How in the world . . . ? Could he just sense me through the shades? Were they designed like a one-way surveillance mirror or something?
“Good morning, Robert,” I said as normally as possible.
“You’re here.”
“Yes.”
“Can you come into my office?”
Shit.
“Of course,” I said.
It was only three steps from my desk to his office door, a five-second walk at most, but in that time I was able to imagine in detail just how I would cover my face with my hands, throw myself down on his feet, and beg for forgiveness. I was being blackmailed, I would tell him. I’m still being blackmailed, I would lie. I’ll get all the money back for you, I’d promise impossibly. I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you, not after all you’ve done for me.
It was the longest five-second walk of my life, the aching in my chest and the metallic taste of fear in my mouth assuring me of what I was truly terrified of, more than going to jail—letting Robert down.
He believed in me and I had proved him wrong.
I flashed back to my first week on the job at Titan—me in the backseat of a chauffeured Crown Victoria, returning to the building from an errand: picking up Robert’s Derby Day party suit from the Zegna store. I’d just been wined and dined at the store by a staff of salesmen I was sure would have tried to escort me out if I’d been browsing on my own behalf. But since I was there for Robert it was all, “Can we offer you a cup of coffee while you wait, Ms. Fontana? Some Danishes? Complimentary cunnilingus?” They nodded agreeably when I made a breezy suggestion of how they could improve: “You should really start selling androgynous suits for smaller-framed women without many curves.” I pointed side to side at my own chest. “No darts here. You know what I mean?” They assured me they would relay my idea to Milan . . . So I was in the backseat of the Crown Victoria on my way back to the office with Robert’s suit beside me, and I was feeling utterly abundant. It was such a beautiful day, sunny and cool, and pulling up to the glossy Titan building with its sparkling LEED gold-standard revolving doors, I thought: I’ve made it. Even though I was only fetching a suit that cost more than my monthly rent, for a party I’d never see or even understand (what the hell is Derby Day anyway?), from where I had started, I’d made it so far.