The Assistants(29)

I stood up to go, but Emily grabbed me by my shirtsleeve, pulling me back down. “Just hear her out. She wants to join us, and she has a lot to offer.”

“No, I’m not doing this.” I shook my sleeve free. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you told!”

If there had been anyone else in the bar drinking their lunch, they would have turned to look to see which adult woman was throwing the tantrum.

Ginger sat down beside Emily and made herself comfortable. She removed the silk scarf that had been modestly wrapped around her ample chest, and for a split second I felt my eyes bulge out like Bugs Bunny’s.

“I heard one of the fish in Robert’s yacht aquarium cost eighty thousand dollars,” Ginger said with a devious calm. “One fish. I heard he had it flown in from Singapore.”

That was true. I’d overseen the flying in of the fish myself.

“I owe one hundred sixty K,” Ginger said. “The equivalent of two fish.”

There wasn’t a hint of desperation to Ginger’s tone. She hadn’t come to beg.

“That’s a lot of money,” I said. “Is it all in student loans?”

“I went to Brown.” Ginger tied her silk scarf to the strap of her purse with an elegant knot. “Then Columbia Law School.”

“Shouldn’t you be a lawyer, then?” I asked. “Instead of a lawyer’s assistant?”

“I dropped out of law school,” Ginger replied matter-of-factly. “It was all wrong for me, not that where I’ve ended up is any better, working for Glen Wiles of all people. No one is worse than he is. No one. Except Robert.” Ginger had a glint of crazy in her eye that made me nervous. “Nobody deserves to make that much money,” she said. “That’s why I want to join you and Emily. Imagine what the three of us could accomplish if we joined forces.”

I turned to look at Emily and she was good as gone. Her mind was off planning a stable for her pet horse.

Ginger leaned back, crossed her long legs, and the emerald in her crazy eyes glistened into something more pointed. “Glen Wiles is in the pool of executives who make so much money they buy West Village mansions just to house their art collections.”

Emily moaned at the word pool.

“That’s a true story,” Ginger said.

It was. I’d read about that sale in the Times. Wiles needed the mansion for his new Picasso.

Emily waved to the bartender and ordered us a bottle of chilled champagne with three glasses.

“We’re not doing this,” I said, for Emily’s benefit as much as Ginger’s.

“Don’t listen to her,” Emily said.

“No, I’m really not doing this,” I said. “I’m going back to work.”

Emily retaliated with a lockjawed severity I hadn’t heard since that first morning up on the forty-third floor. “Not for anything, Fontana, but what makes you think we can’t just go ahead without you?”

I’d already stood up to go, to storm out brandishing my self-importance like a flag. What made me freeze in place? Was I really shocked that Emily would be so quick to disregard our weeks of collusion and bonding, the bottles upon bottles of Asti Spumante we’d shared—that she’d drop me in a second for an upgrade to a shinier partner in crime? Since when did I believe in friendship?

“I’m leaving,” I said.

“Bye then,” Ginger said.

Emily called to my back, “I want you with us, Fontana; that’s why I set up this meeting. But if you’re not with us, I’m certainly not going to let you stop us.”

I kept walking, without turning around, all the way back to the office.





12




I MUST NOT BE cut out for genuine alcoholism because a liquid lunch just did not do it for me. So before returning to my desk, I beelined to the cafeteria’s sandwich station to grab a BLT.

One might wonder how I could eat at a time like this, but I needed to eat because I needed to think. Fucking Emily Johnson. We’d done it, we had crossed the finish line, and she had to go and screw it all up by telling someone. Ginger Lloyd, who was obviously terrible.

This was what I got for letting my guard down, for thinking Emily was my friend. And for believing, even for an instant, that anything could go right, ever.

I ordered my BLT as usual—heavy on the B, light on the L and T—then scanned the table area for the standard sights: the four sharp corners of suited power lunches, the anxious outer perimeter of interns unpacking brown-bag PB&Js, the showy center of look-at-me fashionistas picking nuts and berries off plates of lettuce, and off to the side, in her no-man’s-land table for one, sat the Lean Cuisine Lady, who always ate alone.

It was by accident that our eyes met. Or so I thought.

Then a light came on behind her thick, pink-tinted grandma glasses (which I had the sense to understand were not intended to be ironic) and she raised her fingers.

Was she waving? I checked behind me, saw that my BLT was ready, took it in hand, said thank you, and when I turned back around, she still had her fingers raised.

The Lean Cuisine Lady was waving me over. The plastic-tray-loving crackpot who assisted Margie Fischer in accounting. But what could I do but make my way to her table? Allowing her to continue waving from across the crowded cafeteria, even if I pretended not to see her, would only draw more attention.