The landline rang. Becca picked it up. She said a few words, then beckoned Jo vigorously. Jo mouthed, “Who?” Becca mouthed something Jo couldn’t read. The girl pointed to the calligraphy scrolling across her screen, installed while she was working on the Saudi pamphlet. Jo thought it must be Owen. She took the receiver from Becca. It was Myriam, calling from Riyadh, saying the director would be coming on the line. Jo shot out her arm toward the studio, and Becca darted out of the room. In the three seconds it took Myriam to transfer the call, Jo zoomed into high alert.
Madam Deputy Director said, “Good evening. Thank you for the brochures. They are beautiful, and the tone is right. Did you show them to the committee in Dubai?”
“No, we didn’t. We were so surprised by their decision.”
“The timing was unfortunate. I was attending a family function.”
Jo held her tongue.
The director said, “I want you to know that I want you to develop the exhibits for my museum. You interpret my intention properly.”
“Thank you. But the committee has selected Owen Associates as the lead.”
“Please do not misunderstand. That is administration. I am urging you to accept the conditions. If you encounter difficulties, call Myriam. I have complete confidence in her.”
“I will discuss your request with my husband. He will be very glad to hear how much you liked our proposal.”
The director said, “Good. I will say good-bye. Myriam wishes to speak.”
Jo heard a snatch of Arabic and Myriam came on the line.
“I want to help you. Please tell me what I can do.”
Jo decided to test the director’s candor. “May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“If this is the director’s project, why is there another layer of administration? I am concerned that too many people will interfere.”
“The director is not from Qassim. The government is loyal to her husband’s family, not to her. She must work carefully. She understands the value of your design. She will approve.”
“But Owen will set goals and define procedures. Our work will come second.”
“The director and I will watch. There is no payment unless she approves. You will see that we control, in our way. Please. We want to work with you.”
“Thank you. This helps.”
“You must call me when you have questions. I accept no one else.”
“Understood.”
Jo replaced the handset. Ev and Becca popped into the room and gathered around her. Diane joined them.
“The director wants us to build her exhibits. She said the deal with Owen is bureaucracy. She said we can back-channel to her through Myriam.” Jo scanned Ev’s face.
Becca said, “Myriam’s the woman I spoke to. She’s cool.”
“But why did the director call?” Jo asked. “Why does she need a back-channel? Maybe she’s powerless. Maybe she’s window dressing to make the project look better to Westerners.”
“If they cared what Westerners thought, they wouldn’t push us around,” Ev said.
Diane said, “Maybe it’s hard for a woman there. Shouldn’t you support her?”
“It should be the other way around,” Jo said.
Diane looked away.
Ev said, “Well, I’m glad the lady likes our stuff.” He pointed to the studio. “Got some plastic in the heater.” He loped away.
Jo rose, saying she needed that cup of tea after all, and went to the kitchen. Diane had provoked her. Of course she sympathized with women seeking equality in a man’s world, but she did not feel compelled to act on their behalf. She was no feminist. She expected to compete on an equal footing with every other design firm, to win projects because of D-Three’s excellence, not because a client could check off the “woman-owned business” box on a government procurement form. No one in the business had ever accused her of playing the woman card. She wasn’t about to play it now.
She turned on her heel and went to her desk to email a provocative reply.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJ: counter offer
We will forego being paid for the demonstration displays until you receive payment from the Saudis, but we expect to be fully reimbursed within 48 hours. And we’ll ship to any US location of your choice. Your team can handle the demo from there. Thanks for your consideration.
The reply came immediately.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJ: “you’ve got to be kidding”
Phil had to leave the office. He told me to send you his reply, above. He will communicate with you himself tomorrow.
Good, Jo thought. He’s riled.
Owen phoned the next afternoon, and Jo put the call on speaker so the others could witness. Diane and Becca gathered round. Jo texted Ev to come in from the studio.
“You are doing your best to sabotage our relationship,” Owen began.
Jo said, “What are you talking about?”
“I suppose you’ve heard from the committee?”
“No, nothing since the RFP.”
“Well, now they want every drawing to show three signatures. Yours, mine, and the deputy director’s.”
Jo gave her team the high sign.
Owen got louder, “Why did you go to the deputy director behind my back? Where is your sense of fair play?”
“She called me. I didn’t initiate.”
“How am I supposed to work with a bunch of whining women?”
“You can back out of the project.” She stared at the hostile speakerphone, feeling heat spread across her face.
“You have added unnecessary steps to this thing. You are stealing my time. I should have listened to my friend Roberto. He said you were capable but you showed bad judgment back then. Clearly you still do.”
Jo could not talk. Images of Robbo flashed through her mind’s eye.
Owen continued, “I don’t want my team touching the demo, it’s all yours, installation as well. If you get the director out of this, I’ll consider simultaneous payment. That’s my offer.”
Jo could not talk.
Diane looked questioningly at Jo, then across the table to Becca, then back to Jo. She said, “Mr. Owen, this is Diane Dunhill. I’m sorry that Mr. Dana was not able to be here. May we call back after we talk with him?”
“You can call back until the cows come home.” He hung up.
Becca said, “He’s nasty.”
Jo nodded. Her throat would not unclench.
Diane said, “I’ll type it up for Ev.”
Jo whispered, “Excuse me” and pushed away from the table. She climbed the stairs.
In the spare room, she sat on the floor, back to the wall, to steady herself. How had Owen known about Robbo? Could they really be friends? Perhaps Owen had done the interiors for one of Robbo’s buildings. He did that kind of thing between museum jobs. Owen probably thought he could shock her into submission. He’d shocked her all right, but not the way he’d anticipated. At the sound of Robbo’s name bursting from the phone in a male voice, her heart had contracted, not with shame but with something like love. Perhaps because she’d dreamed about him and dispensed with her sorrow in the dreaming, she’d felt a tiny surge of joy at hearing him invoked. Somewhere deep inside, her body remembered the happiness she had found in his embrace all those years ago, and the memory now radiated through her. She hugged her knees into her chest in wonder at her pleasure. She hoped it would last.
She rose and straddled the exercise bike. She pedaled hard because it helped her think. She recalled the way Robbo had laughed, head thrown back, at her tentative jokes, and how his hands had skimmed her skin. Of course she had fallen for him, the elegant sonofabitch. She’d been a kid. For the first time since college, Jo felt compassion, not blame, for that awkward girl dazzled by a commanding man.
That was it, was
n’t it? She didn’t miss Robbo, she missed following a strong man’s lead. Ev never led her anywhere, except in design. She was always the one in charge, monitoring his appearance as well as his activities. Sometimes she felt more mother than mistress. Evidently, part of her wanted to surrender control. Of course, she wouldn’t tell Ev about this little longing. They were better off maintaining things as is, in the business and the bedroom.
She pedaled a while longer, feeling the burn in her thighs, until she realized the others might be waiting for her. She dismounted and went downstairs. Sitting at her desk, keeping a neutral face, she made order: she checked her calendar; she checked the weather. And when she felt perfectly calm, she emailed Owen, copy to Ev and Becca and Diane, saying they accepted his offer with the proviso that they could not influence the director.
In a minute, Becca loomed over Jo’s desk. She crossed her arms and said, “Will it work?”
“I think so. Owen’s getting a good deal. He doesn’t have to touch the demo, and he keeps the overhead. He knows no one can control the client.”
“Why wouldn’t he sign?”
Jo shrugged her shoulders. “Pride? Ego? Maybe delay is a tactic?”
“Why do you want to work with him?”
“I don’t. The client imposed him on us.”
“Ev says we could back out anytime. Ev doesn’t like this job.”
Jo wondered where Becca got her information. “Have you been talking to him about it?”
“No, but I see how he acts. He’s usually so happy when he’s designing something. He’s been … I don’t know, somber?”
True enough, Jo thought. Becca must be watching Ev closely, like a colleague rather than a junior employee. Or, it suddenly occurred to her, like a crush. Becca never talked about boyfriends or dating. Jo had thought she liked her privacy, but perhaps there were no boyfriends, and she had a thing for the boss. After all, she went for a beer with him now and then, and she made coffee for the two of them every morning. In staff discussions, she usually endorsed his opinions. But not inappropriately, and Ev had never mentioned her flirting. Perhaps he had missed the cues. Perhaps there were no cues, and Becca bore her crush with perfect composure. Perhaps there was no crush.
Jo said, “You know Ev. Allergic to bureaucracy. He’ll be fine once the job starts.”
“I hope you’re right.” Becca’s face clouded over. She pursed her lips in a gesture that looked to Jo like concern.
“We’ll see soon enough.” She suppressed a smile.
Becca turned on her heel and went back to her desk.
If she is in love with Ev, Jo thought, it wouldn’t affect the business. Ev wouldn’t exploit her. But Becca would suffer in the end. Jo felt a wave of sympathy for the girl, pining away for an inaccessible man, just as she now felt sympathy for her younger self.
12
Two days passed without word from Owen. Ev stayed focused on his whirligig, and none of the others seemed to notice that Jo took more walks than usual. She forced herself to think about how hard it had been to recover from the blow Robbo had delivered, and her nostalgia gradually subsided. She welcomed its retreat; it wasn’t fair to Ev, and it got in the way.
Then on Friday, Owen wrote to accept the deal, and the team decided to party.
Diane threw a cloth over Carlos’s drafting table and laid out cheese and crackers. Becca brought beer, a dark, local brew she and Ev liked. Carlos contributed the home-made tamales he kept in Tupperware in the fridge, and Andy cut school to join them. They gathered around the table, nibbling, waiting for Ev to return.
Jo said, “I feel like we’re on Star Trek. Full speed ahead into the unknown! But this team can handle anything. Within reason.”
Becca asked, “Do you think the Saudis will be reasonable?”
Jo said, “Some will, some won’t. They’re just people.”
Becca’s lips tightened. “They’re religious fanatics whose government bombed the hell out of Yemen. And our government looked the other way.”
Andy said, “Yeah. Like Syria, only the media ignored it.”
Diane said, “Becca, you promised.”
Becca faced her. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to spoil the party, but we need to keep our eyes open.”
Diane said, “Of course.”
Jo thought Diane was the last person to promise open eyes. Diane had stumbled through most of life blinded by sentiment.
Ev appeared in the doorway carrying a carton. Diane made room in the center of the party table and he deposited the box. He reached into it and pulled out a book with a shiny, laminated jacket.
“Been to the library. Got everything about Saudi Arabia. I’ll give these out and we’ll do book reports.” He turned to Becca. “This one’s for you. About the political system.” He pulled out another book. “I think Carlos will go for this one, about the Bin Laden dynasty.” He took out two more. “For Jo, story of Gertrude Bell, the British woman who divvied up the Arabian Peninsula after World War I. For Diane, true life interviews with Arab women. Andy, you’re excused. You have school.”
Andy said, “I want to do my part. I’ll monitor Reddit and a couple other sites.”
Jo asked Ev, “What do you get?”
“Poetry.” He picked up the carton and slid it under the table. “Pass me a beer, please.”
Diane frowned. “When do you want the book reports? I won’t be able to do mine right away. I need to get Joey ready for his check-up in San Francisco.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Ev said. He took a long swig.
Jo turned her book over to read the blurb on the back. She said, “How will you report on the poetry? In a slam?”
“Nope. You’ll see it in my work.” He took another swig. “That’s good.” He tipped the bottle toward Becca, who returned the gesture. He turned to Carlos, “Which are the veggies?”
“You have to eat chicken. My abuela ran out of green chilies,” Carlos said.
Ev looked shocked and everyone laughed. Carlos told him to relax because the chicken tamales were just as delicious as the veggie. He toasted his abuela, and the others raised their glasses. Jo felt a surge of gratitude toward her unpredictable husband. The staff would not have reacted as well to book reports if she had assigned them. Together, she and Ev could pilot this starship anywhere, in any universe.
After the others left, Ev bundled Jo into his pickup truck to drive into the hills to watch the sun set from under his favorite live oak. He often disappeared for hours into the hills at the eastern edge of the city. He called them “salad hills” because in the dry summers, the ground cover smelled like oregano. He would drive up, saying he needed quiet to listen to the trees, and return refreshed, with a new approach to whatever lay on his workbench. So Jo let him be. Now, it tickled her to be invited to go along.
Ev drove far more slowly than she would on streets that wound steeply upward. She assumed he was preoccupied with the surroundings, processing everything in the peculiar light of his mind. Last week, for instance, while taking a walk they had come across a mound of feathers on a strip of grass. She had speculated that a cat had gotten a bird. He had replied that feathers and fur were the same item, skin cover made of keratin. Then he calculated how many crow feathers could be converted into a square inch of cat fur, if evolution so demanded. No one else would make such a connection. Ev lived in a singular wonderland that she glimpsed every once in a while, but never for long. In her opinion, the best place to watch the sun set over the Bay was the deck of the Claremont Hotel, but she was content to be driven in companionable silence to the ridge above.
They wound upward to Redwood Park. He parked on the shoulder, and they walked a couple hundred yards along a faint trail to a gap in the trees. Behind them a gnarled live oak stood among the tall redwoods. A boulder lay near the oak tree, and Ev invited her to sit. They perched beside one another and looked west, past the flatlands, across the glittering Bay to the distant San Francisco skyline and the hunched hills of the peninsu
la. An orange sun hung momentarily between two layers of cloud, and a light breeze brought bird sounds and muted road noise. Jo felt at peace.
“I see why you come here. You own the world.”
Ev put hands on knees and leaned forward. “Actually, I come for the tree. More accurately, for the bark. I thought you’d like the view.”
Jo turned behind her to observe the gray trunk, which seemed to be shedding an outer layer, like an insect molting its shell.
Ev said, “There’s a system to the way the bark peels off, but there’s no pattern. I never know what it will look like the next time.”
“Don’t you know in general?”
“Yes, but I want detail.”
“What’s the difference between knowing in general and detail?”
Ev thought for a moment. “It’s the difference between having a recipe and tasting the food.”
Only Ev would make that comment. She wanted to thank him for being Ev. “I do like the view.”
“I like to see you happy.”
“I am happy. I love sticking it to Owen.”
Ev sat up. “I thought it was the view.”
“That, too.”
He began to root around in the ground at the base of the rock. He picked up a shard of grayish bark. “I got a vibe from the staff. Everyone’s uptight. Me, too.” He waited a beat. “I’m having second thoughts.”
“We’ve been over this. You agreed it’s good for the company.” She didn’t want to break the mood, and she wanted to pretend he had no grounds for concern.
“Yeah, but this is going to be a tough one. I’ve been rethinking it. If we’re lucky, we’ll struggle to produce something in Saudi Arabia that we already know how to produce. It won’t advance our work. I’m more interested in developing something new.”
“Fine, but who’s going to pay for it? Develop something new for the Saudis.”
He shook his head. “I don’t see it happening. They’re hung up on formality. I won’t be free to invent.”
The Contract Page 10