She also offers to print off the rest of the images on my card so that I’ll have hard copies. Of course I agree, and while she copies my files, I hang out in the department talking with the artists and looking at the preliminary sketches of the proposed logos for the resort.
“I’ll have a messenger walk them up to you when the slew is printed,” Joan says as she hands the memory card back to me.
I thank her profusely, then head up for a meeting with Aiden followed by a telephone conference in Damien’s office with Dallas Sykes about that boutique that I’d mentioned at dinner. Turns out he thinks it’s a great idea.
I want to go down to twenty-six and see Jackson, but he dropped me at my car this morning before heading on to a warehouse in San Bernadino to look at samples of various building materials and won’t be back until late.
When I return to my desk, I’m pleased to see that Joan has come through. There’s a thick clasp envelope with my name on it lying on my desktop, and I can’t wait to see how the photos turned out.
I open the clasp, dump the contents on my desk, and then back away as quickly as if I’d been attacked by a snake.
I stand there, my back pressed to the fabric-covered wall of my cubicle, my stomach roiling.
These aren’t the photographs I’ve taken of structures around Santa Monica. Instead, the pictures are of a teenage me. Half-naked. Arching back for the camera. Touching myself. Arranged in all the poses that Reed dictated. And I’d complied, because that was the job—to do what he said. To get the money.
To save my brother.
What did it matter that I’d been ashamed? That I’d hated it?
I realize with a start that I am standing there frozen. But this is a cubicle, and anyone can pop by and stick their head through the door.
With a small, panicked cry, I burst forward, then start to shove all the photos back into the envelope. As I do, I find a small, white envelope mixed in among them. It has no address, just my name.
I stare at it, certain that whatever is in the envelope is worse than those photos.
I don’t want to open it. I don’t want to know.
Roughly, I shove it to the far side of my desk, and then scoop the photos back into the big envelope. I seal the clasp. I cram the whole thing in my purse.
I want to run to the shredder, but I know that I can’t. I have to keep them.
And, dammit, I have to know what the letter says.
Slowly, I open it. Inside the envelope there is a small piece of paper with just a few words, but they are enough to send me falling into my chair as my knees buckle.
The public sees the movie or these pictures. Tell Steele it’s up to him.
Oh god oh god oh god.
I sit there, my hands on my knees, trying desperately to remember how to breathe. I’m not doing a very good job, and I’m afraid that any minute, I’m going to pass out. But I know that I have to hold it together. I’m in a fucking cubicle and I don’t want anyone to see me like this.
I try to think what to do, but my mind doesn’t seem to be working right.
Jackson. I need Jackson.
I fumble for my phone, then have to resist the urge to fling it across the room when it rolls to voice mail. I try again and again, but there is no answer. I start to send a text message, but my hands are shaking too much.
I need to get out of here. If I can just get out of here, then maybe I can breathe.
I take my tote bag and my phone and I head toward the elevator, then ride it all the way to the lobby. When I arrive and have cell service again, I text Rachel. I’m proud that I’ve calmed enough to manage that small task. I tell her that I’m meeting with a list of contractors and will be out of the office for the rest of the day.
Then I get back into the elevator and descend to the parking garage. And then, when I’m finally in my car, I clutch the steering wheel, close my eyes, and cry and cry and cry.
Enough.
After a good ten minutes lost in a crying jag, I grip the steering wheel, squeeze my eyes shut tight, and force myself to calm the fuck down. This sucks, yes. It’s completely, totally, one hundred percent fucked up.
But that doesn’t mean I have to go spiraling down into hysterics like some doe-eyed twit from the seventeenth century.