RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii

by Taylor, Theodora

  A pause. Then instead of a recording, a familiar voice says, “I am sorry to have disturbed you. Zahir also complains that I do not properly track the time when I reach out to him. Would you like me to call you back?”

  I sit up straight in bed my heart racing. “Rashid is that you?”

  Another pause. “Yes.”

  “Is everything okay? Why are you calling?” I ask. And why do I suddenly feel like crying?

  Another pause. The longest yet. Then he finally answers, “I don’t know…I don’t know why I am calling.”

  “Okay…” I’m somehow confused and in complete agreement at the same time. “Hi, Rashid. How are you?”

  “I am…” I can almost hear him thinking on the other side of the phone, and deciding to go with, “fine.”

  He takes an audible breath and then asks, “How are you doing, Mika?”

  “I’m fine, too,” I manage to answer calmly, even though my heart is beating a mile a minute.

  “You sound like your old self on the phone,” I tell him. I think of him as he was the first night we met in Jahwar: warm, congenial, with a smile just like Aisha’s lingering on his lips.

  “Do I?” he asks, sounding honestly surprised. “Well, I am trying.”

  “I like the sound of you trying,” I tell him.

  More silence. I think we’re both trying to figure out what to say next.

  “Mika?” he says eventually, getting there first.

  “Yes, Rashid?”

  “I am calling to hear the sound of your voice. Like, I said, I am trying. But sometimes it is…very hard. Sometimes it feels too hard.”

  “Too hard like you found where Faizan hid the gun safe, even though I told him he should just get rid of it altogether?” I ask, clutching the front of my nightshirt.

  He makes a sound somewhere between a hum and a laugh. “Too hard, like I need to hear your voice. Please do not worry. I have decided not to attempt that again. Ever.”

  I let myself breathe. “I’m glad to hear that. Are you talking to anyone? Like a professional. Or Stone or Keane?”

  “I’m talking to you,” he answers.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have baby pictures. And I’m still dying to see one of Garnet I tried looking them up, but Naima doesn’t have any social media accessible to the public and Stone doesn’t have any social media at all.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He never saw the point of it.”

  “Well, I don’t see the point of anybody sending around a wedding announcement like that and not including pictures of the freaking kid! I bet baby Garnet’s so cute.”

  “Aisha…she loved babies, too.”

  My heart stutters at the mention of the daughter he lost. And I remain silent, hoping he continues.

  “Whenever we visited her mother’s family in Ardu Alzuhuwr, she trailed after the nannies of her baby cousins, begging them to let her hold them.”

  “I can’t even imagine. Ender and Wes don’t think Lydia has any inherent value until she at least learns how to play video games. I know this because that’s exactly what Ender told me the last time I asked him why he doesn’t spend more time playing with his little sister.”

  He makes another hum-laughing sound. “Yes, Barron is quite the character.”

  “That he is…” I agree. I wonder how Rashid knew Ender’s real name, though. But he did mention hearing about Holt’s son at the wedding, I recall. Maybe he remembered that nickname detail, too.

  “Mika?” he says, interrupting my supposition.

  “Yes?” I answer.

  “Thank you for taking my call, even though it is very late there.”

  I swallow and think. Thank you for not hating me for leaving the way I did.

  But out loud, I say, “Thank you for calling. And you know, if you need a friendly voice, I’m always here.”

  “I most likely will not call again. But thank you…thank you for the offer.”

  I make myself ignore the wrench I feel inside at that prospect of not ever hearing from him again. “Okay, bye,” I say with forced nonchalance.

  “Good-bye, Mika” he answers. As always, he sounds way more sophisticated than me. His voice honeyed and smooth, like good brandy, as opposed to mine, the auditory version of a shaka given over a bowl of halo-halo.

  The phone goes dead in the next moment.

  So, I guess that’s my closure. I want to feel grateful for talking to him one last time, just like I want to feel grateful for my life in Connecticut.

  Yet, as I plug the phone back into the nightstand, a bittersweet feeling lingers in my chest.

  18

  RASHID

  I promised myself I wouldn’t bother her anymore. Not until I was worthy. But not calling again, like so many of the things I tell myself about Mika, turns out to be a promise I cannot keep.

  Only two weeks pass before I break down. Shortly after tangling with Torture, I use the last of my remaining strength to press the number now at the top of my Favorites list. Then I put the phone on speaker because my back and legs are spasming too much to hold the device to my ear.

  “Hi, Rashid!” she says as if she’s been expecting my call.

  Maybe she has been. I think about how she said the exact right thing to get me to hand over the gun and never try to find Faizan’s safe again. Perhaps she really does know me better than I know myself.

  Sayonne…the word floats into my head and lodges, even though I can’t be sure my new big plan will work.

  “Hello, Mika, how are you?”

  “I’m so great. How about you?”

  Mika is always “so great” I discover when I continue to call her over the next few weeks. Sometimes I call when I am in so much pain, I need something to distract me while the drugs kick in. Sometimes I call when I’m frustrated that something in The Big Idea prototype didn’t quite go to plan. Sometimes I just call.

  Mika seems to naturally accommodate whatever mood I’m in when I get in touch. She talks more when I’m quiet and listens thoughtfully when I talk about my old life. Aisha and Future Bionics and growing up Indian in Jahwar.

  She finds it fascinating that I don’t have official Jahwar citizenship even though I was the second generation of the family born in the United Arab Kingdoms emirate. She laughs whenever I tell her a story about Future Bionics that has to be heavily redacted because of the military contracts we held before GoBionics acquired us. And she gently encourages me to talk more about Aisha, even though she never speaks of her dead husband.

  “I am curious about why you decided not to pursue Psychology,” I tell her at one point after the new year. “It seems you would have been very good at it.”

  “I dunno, I didn’t want to go back to being a nurse, and I thought becoming a child psychologist would be a good way to earn a living because I like kids so much. But as it turned out, I just liked kids. I got the job with Sylvie and Holt and started resenting all the homework. Plus, my dad got sick, so I needed to send more money home.”

  “Your father was sick?”

  “Is sick, unfortunately. He’s got a rare form of muscular dystrophy, so he’ll probably never stop being sick. But now he’s on these great drugs that are really slowing its progress. We’re hoping they’ll add years of mobility to his prognosis. Luckily, Zahir paid way above my usual fee for that summer. If I hadn’t been able to send Jazz those paychecks, I don’t think we would have been able to pay for his medicine.”

  Surges of anger at myself run through me as I realize out loud, “So the entirety of your summer paycheck went toward buying these drugs for your father?”

  “And, you know, surfboard wax. But I had everything I needed at your beach house, and that’s what made it possible for me to use the money for other things. So no worries, right?”

  No worries…actually just the opposite.

  I realize at that moment that Mika has a lot in common with The Big Idea. At first, she was just a rough sketch in my mind. A possibility that I wanted to get out of my head
so that I could focus on something else. But then she jumped into my lap and became more than just a concept. And now, my attraction isn’t just about the dark cravings that have been swirling around inside of me since the day we met. The more I talk to her and get to know her, the more I admire and appreciate her on a personal level.

  She was worried about her father last summer, yet she put so much energy into pulling me out of my pit of despair. Despite the way I treated her and her own personal turmoil, she takes my calls and gives me exactly what I need, no matter the time.

  I don’t just want her anymore. I want to give her everything. I want to be her everything.

  Worthy…that word floats back into my head again. This conversation has given me even more reason to stick to The Big Plan. To do whatever it takes to make myself worthy of Mika.

  As if on cue, a text message interrupts my silent recommitment to The Big Plan. It’s from Barron Calson.

  “Almost finished with the bioHelmet modifications you asked for but have a few questions. Can you FaceTime right now?”

  If anyone had told me a few months ago that I’d be talking on my phone regularly, not only to Mika but also to Holt Calson’s prodigy son, I wouldn’t have believed them. But as it was…

  “I’m sorry. I must go now,” I tell Mika.

  “Oh, okay…” Mika says. “Bye, Rashid.”

  She sounds disappointed and that makes me want to stay on the phone. But everything I’m doing, I’m doing for her. To make myself worthy.

  “Good-bye, Mika,” I say, reminding myself of the bigger goal. Then I make myself hang up.

  MIKA

  After months of phone calls with Rashid, I feel like I can tell him anything. But there are some unspoken rules for our conversations.

  He can speak about Aisha because he needs to process his daughter’s death, but I don’t speak about Albie because I sense that hurts him.

  Neither of us talks about our dead spouses.

  Or what happened the night I left.

  Or the attraction I still feel crackling between us, even when we’re talking about the most benign topics five-thousand miles apart on the phone.

  Last, but definitely not least, we never speak of the future. When we talk, which—despite Rashid’s initial prediction—we do at least once and sometimes twice a week, he never promises to call me again. Our conversations always revolve around the present or the past. We never discuss, what, if anything, comes next.

  That’s totally okay with me. I like living in the present with him without having to pin down exactly what our relationship is…or what it’s becoming as we spend more and more time talking on the phone over the Fall, Winter and beginning of Spring.

  But then one day in early April, Lucynka intercoms me in the back house to announce there’s a lawyer at the front door. “And he’s asking to see you, not Mr. Calson!” She sounds both shocked and intrigued.

  By the time I make it to the front of the house, I find a man in a full three-piece business suit waiting for me in the living room with a cup of tea. He has dark curly hair, tawny brown skin, and a teddy bear face.

  “Hello, Ms. Hayes. I am Mohammed Al Safar, and I am here on behalf of Mr. Rashid Zaman,” he says, standing up when I come into a room.

  He has an English accent, I notice. And if he’s here in Connecticut, does that mean he flew in from abroad for this meeting?

  “What is this all about?” I ask, more than a little alarmed.

  Lucynka chooses that moment to appear in the hallway outside the open archway with a feather duster.

  “Wow, Lucynka! Eavesdrop much,” I call out, busting her “oh this foyer needs dusting, like, right now” act.

  “No eavesdropping! Only dusting!” Lucynka assures me, making a big show of feather dusting down the simple white floor trim I’ve already seen her clean this week. With a much more efficient dust mop.

  The teddy bear lawyer’s eyes twinkle with amusement as he asks, “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  Ten minutes later, I’m sitting across from Mr. Al Safar, bewildered. “You want me to sign a non-disclosure agreement? Isn’t it a little late for that?”

  “Oh, it is never too late for that,” Mr. Al Sar assures me with a jolly laugh. “And this is the first of two NDAs actually.”

  “What’s the other one for?” I ask.

  “You’ll have to sign the first one to find out, won’t you?”

  Okay…I’ll bite. I sign the first contract he slides toward me with barely a glance over it. And it feels like Mr. Al Safar is giving me an award when he places the second NDA contract in front of me. I do a better read of this one, and frown when I see it says that I agree not to discuss this meeting or any contracts I might be presented with during it.

  “Are you planning to offer me some kind of contract?” I ask as I sign.

  Maybe not surprisingly, Mr. Al Safar waits until I’m all the way done signing before pulling out what turns out to be an employment contract.

  “Rashid wants me to come back to work for him this summer again?” I ask, already picking up the pen, because, of course, the answer is yes.

  Sylvie already told me she’d be spending the summer with Lydia before beginning to look for a new job. And Wes decided to go to sleepaway camp in Portland for three months, now that Ender’s been asked to head his own bioHelmet division at GoBionics.

  Plus, Albie’s whined non-stop ever since we came back to Connecticut. Last summer didn’t get Hawaii out of his system like I’d hoped. On the contrary, it’s seemed to have made him more cranky about living somewhere cold. He’d jumped at the chance to go back, and now that Rashid and I are big buddies, it would probably go a lot better this time.

  But Mr. Al Safar stops me when I try to go directly to the last page’s signature line. “I must insist that you finish reading the entire employment offer before you sign.

  “Okay…” I agree with a snort, humoring him. “But just so you know, Zahir asked me to do the job at a party and we just shook on it.”

  “To be clear, it would not be Mr. Al Jahwari hiring you this time, but Mr. Zaman himself, paying you out of his own funds.”

  Yes, the rest of the first page makes that very clear. Rashid’s name, not Zahir’s, is all over the document, but I gape at the price listed for three months. “I think this must be a mistake,” I tell Rashid’s lawyer. “This is twice what Zahir paid me!”

  “As I said, this is a special deal between you and Mr. Zaman. And, I’m certainly willing to answer any more questions you might have after you have finished reading, yes?”

  Whoa…this guy is weirdly insistent about me reading the entire employment contract through and through.

  I find out why when I turn the next page. Which is basically a retroactive agreement to either not sue Rashid for sexual harassment at all or agree to arbitration for any and all harassment claims. Makes sense, but it feels like a case of extreme CYA covering your ass on Rashid’s part. I mean, I really think he has death by mutual destruction on his side.

  I could just see us in arbitration. Him explaining that he tried to hire a lookalike hooker to give him a blow job. Me explaining how I got so angry with him about it, I jumped his bones.

  Yeah, never going to happen. But I keep on reading because I can only guess what his lawyer will say if I try to point that out.

  And that’s when I see the paragraph about how I’ll be getting a bonus payment of one million dollars at the end of the summer, as long as I agree not to sue for anything on the following list.

  Wait—what?

  Believe me, I don’t waste time asking questions this time. I can’t turn the page fast enough. And my eyes bug when I see the list.

  When I’ve been staring open-mouthed at the contract for what feels like five years but is probably only five super shocked minutes, Rashid’s lawyer finally speaks up.

  “If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them now.”

  I have so, so many questions.
Where to start?

  “So, what is this? A list of things Rashid wants to do to me? Like, he wants my consent?” I sputter, my face hot. An hour ago I was doing my taxes, and now I’m talking to a lawyer I just met about a very long list of things his client may or may not want to do to me? With a huge emphasis on the to me. There are some things on the list, I’ve never even heard about.

  And as for the things I had heard about or could guess at… well, they certainly weren’t anything I ever did with Alberto. Wild for us had been missionary and doggy style in the same session.

  “To be clear, consent is another agreement to be signed after a private discussion between you and Mr. Zaman,” Mr. Al Safar answers, folding his hands.

  He is way more calm about all of this than me right now, and I have to wonder how many times this Arab teddy bear-looking guy has done this. “The list is a way for Mr. Zaman to reward you if you choose to sign this particular employment contract in a way that would be legal in Hawaii.”

  Granted, my lawyerese has never been great, but I think he’s trying to tell me that this is a list of stuff that Rashid is totally willing to pay to do to me. And again, and emphasis on the to.

  “And if I say no, then this offer goes away?”

  “If you say no, I have another employment contract that offers the same fee, but without the bonus offer. If you sign that contract, Mr. Zaman understands that nothing in the first contract will be permissible.”

  So Rashid has thought about next steps. They just weren’t nearly the ones I was envisioning. I swallow…and flip through the contract again.

  Mr. Al Safar lets me read the contract over a second time. Then a third time.

  “Have you come to a decision then?” he asks when I flop back in my chair, still hardly able to believe what I’m reading.

  I look at the contract. Then back up at him.

  Then taking a deep breath, I come to a decision.

  19

  RASHID

  “Your head’s not in the fight today, Zaman,” Torture tells me when I fall to the ground after he surprises me with a body shot.