Confidential(56)

“I do feel passionately about the work,” Chenille said. “I learned from you.”

“You learned to do the work from me. But the passion—that’s something else. Don’t sell yourself short. Women do that far too often.”

“That’s why they need us to get in there and play hardball with their contracts. They need you.”

She was afraid. She suspected what was coming and didn’t think she could do it on her own. “Don’t sell yourself short,” I repeated firmly. “I plan to spend the next month or so grooming you to take over.”

“During your sabbatical?”

“That’s a good word for it.”

“How long will it be?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I don’t know that, either.” Travel seemed like a no-brainer, but honestly, I’d never felt the need. I’d been all over the world for conferences, but the hotels were largely the same, and I never ventured far afield. I hadn’t really learned much about local culture in Brussels, Tokyo, Helsinki, or Hong Kong. That was what I should do. Maybe I could move and start over, far from where my parents had lived and where they’d died. I could be reborn. Then I’d have my baby.

But did I want to be that far away from my baby’s father?

That was if Michael decided to honor my request. The fertility center had done all the basic tests and assessed that I was within normal limits for a woman my age. I’d been hoping to hear I had the ovaries and eggs of a twenty-five-year-old. He warned me that miscarriage rates were higher for “geriatric pregnancies” (yikes!) but that most likely, I would be able to conceive. In my mind, it was all systems go.

I could sell my condo and buy a house outside the city. Sausalito or Marin, someplace beautiful and bucolic, by the ocean or amid the trees. Someplace child-friendly, without so many hills and so much traffic. I could afford most anything I desired, and I didn’t need to work. I made a healthy income, I invested and I saved, but moreover, my parents had left me tens of millions, also well invested, and given how much I had, my current lifestyle was practically frugal. My condo had cost only a million but was worth triple by now. I could go wherever I wanted.

It was a frightening prospect, thinking for two. And while no one had ever had a more first-world problem than this, it remained a problem.

If I stepped away and Chenille performed as well as I envisioned, it would be hard to come back. My name would be on the masthead, but she’d have the real power. She’d have the relationships: with staff, with clients. There might be no real place for me. I’d never been a figurehead, someone to sit back and let others do the work while I reaped the rewards. I’d been a hustler, like my parents taught me. In their worldview, you could never have too much ambition or too much money; there would never be too much success.

But as Michael had excavated, what I wanted was love. I’d sublimated that desire for as long as I could, channeled it, and eventually stopped trying to attain the unattainable from my emotionally unavailable parents. Stopped trying to attain it from anyone. Intimacy, who needed intimacy? Not me, that’s what I told myself. In the end, though, our deepest desires always won out.

“Once you left, would I be able to reach you, or would I be on my own?” Chenille asked.

“I’d like you to do your own problem-solving, but I’m not falling off the face of the earth.”

“Are you sure I’m ready for this? I’ve been your assistant. I’m not even a recruiter.”

“So you won’t have a lot of clients we’d have to place with other recruiters.”

She was still hesitating. “How do you think the rest of the staff would feel? One minute, I’m beneath them, and the next, I’m doing your job.”

“You’ve never been beneath anyone. If that’s how they feel, then fuck ’em.”

She smiled, just for a second. “Maybe I should become a recruiter first. That’s the trajectory I was expecting. Honestly, it’s what I thought this meeting might be about, you offering me a promotion. A chance.”

“Well, you nailed it. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“I’d be jumping about eight rungs on the ladder.”

“You’re that good. You’ve proven it of late, when you handled all the situations I put you in with my mistakes.”

I could see she was struggling with whether to say something.

“Out with it. If this is going to work, I need to be able to trust that you’ll tell me the truth, even if it’s bad news.”

“Some of the staff think you’re gay. They might wonder if you and I are involved.”

“Who’s spreading those rumors?”

“I can’t tell you that. Not if I’m going to be managing these people.”

No one had ever seen me on a date or heard me talking about one, but that was because I observed appropriate boundaries. And at times, I could take on a certain male energy in my professional dealings. But gay?

Not that there was anything wrong with it, to quote Seinfeld. I just didn’t like the speculation, even if it was only natural that in the absence of information about their boss, they’d come up with their own theories. I’d kept them from knowing me, though as it was turning out, I hadn’t really known myself.