Beyond the Point(67)
While Pete finished the presentation, Dani took a moment to walk to the office kitchen and refill her coffee mug, ignoring the ache in her hips. The pain had increased rapidly in the last few weeks, as she’d spent more time in her office chair, staring at a computer screen. Her general practice doctor had referred her to an allergist—apparently changes in her diet might help with the pain—but the allergist didn’t have a free appointment until after the holidays. Her GP had prescribed a narcotic to help with the pain, but Dani hadn’t filled the prescription. She’d heard how addictive those pills could be and didn’t need to add that to her list of problems. Pain was nothing new. The only new thing was the word chronic.
Thankfully, there were more important things for Dani to focus on than her body. Though her town house in Boston’s North End had been in various states of disarray since she’d moved in last fall, she’d used her incoming houseguests as an excuse to finish decorating. In a rush of hard work and expense, an interior designer had arrived with a team of handymen that helped finish positioning the furniture, hanging the art, mounting the television, and styling the tables. Yolanda, her cleaning lady, would do a deep clean Wednesday morning, and a local chef she’d found on Craigslist would come that afternoon to get a head start on the feast. The chef would arrive again Thursday promptly at six A.M. to finish off the preparations, filling her kitchen with aromas of thyme, sage, and cinnamon. It would be worth the cost.
Dani wanted this Thanksgiving to be perfect, but preparing the house hadn’t done a single thing to prepare her heart for her guests—Locke in particular. I’m thinking I might invite Amanda to come to Boston, he’d written. What do you think? While changing the sheets on the guest beds, Dani couldn’t stop thinking about what he would look like with a different girl standing beside him. The thought made her sick. But how could she say no? As soon as he arrived and saw her house, he would know that there was plenty of space at the table.
Tightening the sheets on the guest bed, Dani had tried not to think about who would soon be sleeping side by side on the mattress. She was going to have to meet Amanda. Worse, she was going to have to pretend to like her.
Dani sipped her coffee and stared out the office kitchen windows at the brilliant city below. The Charles River, a choppy dark navy, split the city into two sections: Cambridge to the left and North Boston to the right. If she squinted, she could nearly see her apartment, tucked near the harbor, surrounded in orange foliage. If they were lucky, the weather would stay like this all week: brisk but golden.
“Boston’s skyline,” said a familiar voice behind her, “compared to New York City. It’s just so . . . quaint.”
Turning from the windows, Dani found Jim Webb standing behind her. He wore a navy suit with a gray and burgundy striped tie, as dapper as the day they’d met. Dani suddenly felt like a foreign dignitary had come to visit.
“Surprised?” he said.
“Completely! What brings you here?”
“My wife’s family does Thanksgiving in Nantucket. Thought I’d pop in. I had a few things I wanted to run past you about Gelhomme anyway. You have a minute?”
“Yep. Actually, Pete’s about to finish up the report.” Dani started toward Pete’s desk. “Let me show you.”
They walked through the numbers and figures, Dani pointing to each perfectly designed chart and graph, as Pete sat with his arms crossed, listening to the vice president of the company interrogate Dani about the work. From the questions Webb asked and the smile on his face—Dani could tell that their boss was impressed.
“You did this?” he asked the graphic designer once they’d finished.
“Yes, sir,” said Pete, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. It wasn’t every day that someone as senior as Jim Webb showed up to your cube. “Dani’s been feeding me the numbers. But I did the design work.”
“Not bad,” Jim said. “Not bad at all. Has Laura Klein seen this?”
Laura Klein, the woman who had helped Webb interview Dani last year, led E & G’s London office. It was Laura’s team that would create a commercial campaign informed by the insights Dani and the other junior research fellows had compiled into this report. Dani secretly wished she could follow the report through to completion—help with the creative side. But her job was nearly finished. Soon, Jim Webb would assign her a new research project for the next E & G client and the process would start over again.
“Not yet,” answered Dani. “We’re going to send it to her as soon as Pete finishes the design.”
“Incredible. She’ll be thrilled.” Jim Webb straightened his tie. “Hey, let’s step into your cube for a moment, Dani. I wanted to have a little chat.”
Seated in Dani’s nook, Webb looked like a giant—long legs crossed, mind deep in thought. Her desk was orderly, bare except for a coffee mug and a silver framed photo next to her keyboard. In the photo, she, Avery, and Hannah stood in the middle of Times Square, laughing. To this day, the thought of that crazy twenty-four-hour trip made Dani smile. Twenty years old, alone in the city. Dani was between injuries. Avery’s world had yet to be rocked by scandal. And Hannah had just fallen in love with the man of her dreams. The shine on their faces said it all. They were unencumbered. They were free. It was hard to imagine that at the time their biggest grievance was Coach Jankovich. Now that woman was long gone from West Point. But then again, so were they.