The VIP Room(124)
“What did I do to make him do this? Do you know he’s having me evicted from my apartment? And he tried to keep me from getting a job.”
The woman’s eyes dropped. “I know. He made me make some of the phone calls.”
Emma stepped into her, pushing her shoulder a little harder than she had intended. “Then don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”
The woman looked her in the eye, was at least honest enough to do that much.
“You stood up to him, told him what you really thought of him. No one has done that in a long time.”
“I called him a jerk, and that gave him the right to ruin my life?”
“He’s trying to prove a point. Once it’s proven, he’ll probably back off.”
“What about my apartment building? What about all the other, innocent people who live there?”
She shook her head. “It’s scheduled for demolition on February 1. There’s not much anyone can do about it now.”
Tears filled Emma’s eyes.
“Just like that, he ruins all those people’s lives.”
“Be happy he stopped with that one building. It could have been worse. He could have sought out your parents and foreclosed on them. Or your high school sweetheart. I’ve seen him do it.”
“It’s like he thinks he’s God.”
“Oh, honey, he doesn’t just think it. He knows it.”
* * *
Emma walked for a long time, trying to decide what to do next. Reasoning with him clearly wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t go to the police because he wasn’t doing anything illegal—which seemed kind of outrageous all on its own. Ruining someone’s life should be illegal, no matter how a person went about it.
She wondered how many times he’d done this before. How many people were made homeless by him just because they said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing in front of him? It must be frightening to be his girlfriend. Imagine if the girlfriend didn’t pay enough attention to him, didn’t stroke his ego as often as he wanted her to. Imagine what he could do to someone he knew well as opposed to how colossally he was ruining Emma’s life when he knew absolutely nothing about her.
She didn’t envy the people in his life.
Lunch hour over, she went back to work. It was an easy job-kind of boring, really. But she had enough time on her hands that she could do some studying between customers. And her supervisor didn’t mind, which was a definite plus. For the first time since she started school two semesters ago, she was completely caught up on her reading assignments.
Today she was working math problems for her calculus class until a customer came up with a load of men’s dress shirts. Emma looked up and found herself staring at the same newscaster who’d reported on DJC, Inc. the night before.
“Hi. Did you find everything alright?” she asked.
He was still piling shirts on the counter, so he didn’t answer. Emma glanced over at her supervisor, but she was busy with another customer who just happened to walk up at the same moment. Emma wasn’t too worried, she’d figured out the computer system pretty quickly. In fact, she was kind of glad the woman was out of earshot because she didn’t want her to hear Emma breaking one of the main rules she’d set forth at the beginning of her training: never discuss anything with a client that doesn’t revolve around store merchandise.
“You’re the anchor from the channel seven nightly news, aren’t you?”
He looked up, annoyance in the gesture until his gaze fell on Emma’s face. His expression softened as his eyes took in her rounded face, mahogany-colored hair, and the hint of cleavage under the top button of her shirt.
“I am.”
“I thought I saw you last night, talking about that businessman, Dante Caito.”
“That was me. You watch the news every night?”
“I’m afraid not.” Emma flicked her fingernail against her book. “Too much studying.”
“Too bad. It can be quite educational.”
“Yeah. I learned a lot about Caito from your report. I actually live in one of the buildings he bought on the east side.”
The newscaster’s eyebrows rose. “Do you?”
“Did you know that his project is displacing sixteen families? And that one of them is a family with two disabled children?”
His eyes stayed fixed on her eyes. “The company hasn’t arranged any sort of compensation?”
“We’re all renters. Law doesn’t require it.”
He tilted his head slightly. “Disabled kids, huh? Maybe I’ll suggest one of our reporters check into it.”
Emma slid his purchases into a bag and handed it to him, a smile on her lips as she allowed their fingers to touch.
“Thank you.”
* * *
The story hit the airwaves the following day. Everyone in the building was talking about it. There was hope in their faces when Emma came home from work. It gave her hope, too. Until, of course— “What do they mean, everyone’s getting evicted? Does that mean us, too?”
“Sophie—“
“Where will we live? What about our stuff? How are we supposed to take all this stuff to a new place? And will I have to change schools? I really don’t want to change schools; all my friends are here. I have plans with Jill over spring break that I refuse to miss out on.”