Heels of Steel

by Barbara Kavovit

  “We have an excellent relationship with Mark Harrington,” said Larry. “My daughter actually went to grade school with his eldest son. I’m sure he’d be more than pleased to see that the job was safely in more experienced hands.”

  This time Bridget did laugh. She darted a look at Lee, who was also obviously trying to keep a straight face, and then she couldn’t hold it in anymore. She giggled. Then Lee giggled, which only made her laugh harder. Then she looked at the Ludleys, who both looked so offended that she tipped back her head and basically howled.

  For a whole year she’d been forced to put up with these assholes. She’d given a pass to every condescending lecture, every patronizing pet name, every leer, every “accidental” touch, and, worst of all, their insistence on chronically underestimating her intelligence and skill. She had stood in this office and taken it all and reminded herself that she needed the job, she needed the money, that she had a child to support, and that she just had to shut up and never, ever call them out.

  But, she realized with a rush of delight, that was over now. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes.

  “Screw you,” she said calmly. “Screw both of you. You can’t fire me because I quit. And I’m taking Lee with me.”

  “Yeah!” chimed in Lee. “I quit, too, and I’m going with Steele!”

  “Well, now, wait,” said Larry. “No need to be so hasty—”

  “Oh, this is not hasty,” said Bridget. “Do you know how many times I have wanted to quit this past year? Do you know that there hasn’t been one day since we met that I didn’t want to tell you to shove this job up your ass? I did my job and I did it well for you guys. I brought in client after client. And you guys still insisted on treating me either like a stupid child or a pair of tits you bought to decorate the office.”

  “Hey, now,” said Linus. “Slow down, honey—”

  Bridget stepped forward and slammed her hands on their desks. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Honey.”

  The brothers reared back, fear in their eyes.

  Lee put a hand on her shoulder. “She’s not wrong, guys,” he said. “You’re real assholes.” He pulled on her arm. “Okay, Steele, time to go.”

  She took a deep breath and let him lead her out of the room, but then, at the last second she turned around and stuck her head back in the door. “Linus!” she said sharply.

  Linus and Larry cringed.

  “That mole on your neck? It’s disgusting. Nobody wants to look at it, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to kill you. For God’s sake, get it checked!”

  “What mole?” she heard him say as she walked away. “What is she talking about?”

  Chapter 78

  With the ring in his pocket, Liam ran the last ten blocks to the loft, hoping that Hana would be home. His conversation with Jay had sent him flying, filled with hope, though he was starting to curse the fact that he hadn’t probed a little deeper before he left. Who had made the decision not to get back together, for instance? Jay or Hana? Maybe it was mutual? That suddenly seemed like something he should have taken the time to find out.

  He reached his street and slowed down, giving his phone a cursory look. He knew he should probably text first, or call, but this was a conversation he wanted to have face-to-face, and he really didn’t want to give Hana the chance to refuse to see him altogether.

  It’s my loft, anyway, he reasoned as he hit the button for the freight elevator up to his place. He had every right to return if he chose to.

  He had his key out and had almost put it in the door when he stopped, suddenly afraid of what he might find. What if she’s not alone? He shook his head. He was being ridiculous. He knew she wasn’t with Jay, and it wasn’t like she was going to run out and find someone in the meantime. He needed to shake this off and go in, he told himself. Still, he put his keys back in his pocket and prepared to knock instead.

  A voice came from behind him. “Liam? What are you doing?”

  It was Alli, home from school, carrying her backpack and looking at him with wide eyes.

  “Oh, hey. Hi, Alli. How are you?”

  She reached past him and unlocked the door with her own key. “I’m fine. But I think the bigger question is how are you?”

  “I—I was hoping your mom was home. We need to talk.” He followed her in sheepishly.

  “No shit,” she said. “Mom!” she called. “Mom!”

  “Hi! Hi! I’m upstairs,” called Hana back. “I’ll be down in a second!”

  “Mom! Liam is here!”

  There was silence. No answer.

  Alli looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “So that went well.”

  He bit his lip. “Do you think I should go up?”

  Alli turned to him, her hands on her hips and her eyes blazing. “How should I know? I have zero idea what’s going on with you guys. One day you two are all over each other, the next you move out. You just ghost—not a word to me about anything. Mom gives me this whole stupid story about how you’re taking time apart to figure things out. Well, guess what? Last time she said that, she and my dad got divorced.” Her voice caught on a little sob and tears filled her eyes. “I mean, I know you’re not technically my stepdad. I know that you don’t have to be in my life if you don’t want to. But I thought you at least liked me enough to talk to me one last time before you just disappeared, you know?”

  He stared at her for a moment, stricken. “Oh, God, Alli. I’m sorry. I—I never meant to disappear. My plan has always been to come back and I was just trying to figure out how to make that happen. You’re absolutely right, though. I should have talked to you. And listen, no matter what happens between your mom and me, I want you to know that I will always be around if you need me. I think of you as my kid, I really do. Even if I don’t do a great job showing that all the time.”

  She sniffed. “You do?”

  He stepped over and put his arms around her. “Yeah. I really do. I love you, kiddo.”

  She clung to him for a moment and then stepped back, wiping her eyes. “Okay. This is getting a little too extra. Go on up. Maybe she’s not, like, totally crazy today.”

  He laughed. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  She waved him up the stairs. “Mom!” she called. “Stop hiding! Liam is coming up!”

  Hana was standing in the middle of their bedroom, her back toward him. He could tell from the way her shoulders were set that she was tense and miserable. All he wanted to do was cross the room and take her into his arms but he forced himself to stop and wait.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk to you,” she said without turning around.

  “I heard that you and Jay aren’t happening,” he blurted out.

  She swiveled around, surprise on her face. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Jay,” he admitted.

  She blinked. “So you guys are buddies again?”

  “Something like that.” He shrugged. “Maybe not totally just yet.”

  “Oh. Liam, listen, now isn’t a—”

  “Don’t say that,” he said. “You can’t say that. You owe me an explanation, Hana. You know you do.”

  She sighed and sank down on the edge of the bed. She was wearing a sleeveless black cotton shift dress. Her hair was piled up and secured with a drawing pencil. Her feet were bare. She looked achingly beautiful. “You hate our dining room table,” she said at last.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Our dining room table. The one that I brought over with me when I moved in. You hate it.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes. You do. But you still wanted it. You insisted that I take it with me. Why was that?”

  He shrugged. “I knew you liked it. You were already giving up a lot. I wanted you to have it.”

  She shook her head. “I think you wanted it because you knew that Jay loved it.”
/>   He laughed. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You hate that table, Liam. You think it’s tacky and cheap and that it doesn’t go with anything in your place, but you wanted it, anyway. Because you want everything that he has.”

  He scrubbed his hand through his hair in frustration. “Okay. I see where you’re going with this. And no, I don’t want you because you were Jay’s, Hana. I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  “Yes. While I was on Jay’s arm.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He paced the room. “So you think I don’t love you?”

  “I think that you think you love me. I think that you desire me and like claiming me. I think you like to win and I’m tangible proof that you won. I think you like to take me out and show me off. I think you like to hold me, caress me like I’m some precious ornament that you acquired. But I also think that, if you had met me in any other circumstances, if I hadn’t already been with Jay—you wouldn’t have looked twice.”

  “That’s insane!” he exploded. “Why are you even with me if you think that’s true?”

  “Because I do love you, Liam! I didn’t choose you because I wanted to be with someone else. I didn’t end up with you so I could win anything. I left Jay because I fell hopelessly, terribly in love with you! And it’s horrible! It’s horrible to love someone who doesn’t really know you at all!”

  He was stunned. He felt as if he’d been punched. “This is crazy,” he said. “Of course I love you, Hana.”

  “No. You hate yourself. And you’re desperately trying to be someone else. Namely, Jay. I mean, look at you. Look at the life you choose to live. You have a job that you never wanted. You live in a city that you can barely tolerate. You have a dining room table that—”

  “The hell with the table!” he yelled. He grabbed the nearest thing, a glass vase full of violets on the bureau, and smashed it to the ground.

  They were quiet. Both of them breathing heavily. Hana looked at the floor, refusing to meet his eyes.

  Finally, she spoke. Her voice was quiet. “I hurt all the time, Liam. I love you so much and I look at you and I think, he has no idea who I really am. I can’t work. I can’t be a decent parent to Alli. I can’t be anyone’s friend. I’m constantly trying to fix things between us. I keep thinking that I can fight past this image of who you think I am and make you see me. Or even, maybe I can just actually become who you want me to be. But I can’t.” She slumped onto the bed again. “And I’m too exhausted to keep trying. This is not your life, Liam. I am not your love. This is all just what you think you should want. And I can’t keep living with that.”

  She stood up. “I have something for you.”

  He was numb as he watched her cross the room and go to the closet. She pulled out a small parcel—wrapped in brown paper.

  “I just finished this,” she said, unwrapping a painting and handing it to him. “It’s the first piece I’ve done in a year.”

  It was his portrait. He was naked, in a bed full of fruit and vines and flowers and insects, surrounded by fecundity and rich, blooming life. But his face... He recoiled when he saw how she’d painted his face. Oh, it looked like him, all right. Her portraits were hyperreal and she had an eerie way of taking someone’s likeness and replicating it so that you felt seen on an almost uncomfortable level. But the expression on his face... It was a sexual painting. His body looked postcoital to him, relaxed and spent. But instead of the sleepy, satisfied look he thought she might create, which, really, was intimate enough already, he looked sad. And lost. It made him feel sick to see it.

  She looked at him carefully. “You don’t like it.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s beautiful. It’s just that—”

  She stopped him. “It’s okay. I don’t think I like it, either.” She reached out and grazed it with her finger. “But it’s true. It’s what came out once I really let go. And when I finished, when I saw what I’d done—that’s when I knew—” she shrugged sadly “—we’re never going to work.”

  He gently placed the painting down against the wall. Suddenly, he was exhausted. “Actually, I have something for you, too.” He fished the ring box out of his jacket pocket. “It’s probably not appropriate at this point, but...”

  Her eyes went wide when she opened the box. She slipped the ring onto her right hand ring finger and held it up to the light. “Alexandrite,” she said, smiling. “My mother had a necklace.”

  He shook his head. “Of course you already know what it is.”

  She looked at him; her eyes were full of sadness. “It’s perfect,” she said.

  * * *

  After he left the loft, Liam stood on the street for a moment, trying to get his bearings. He was full of churning emotion; sadness and anger and a loss so deep that he felt dizzy. He was thinking of Hana, of course, seeing her face as he walked out the door, and he was thinking of Alli, wondering how he would keep his promise to her, but he was also thinking of Jay. He was thinking that if Hana was right—and he still couldn’t even begin to decide whether she was right or not—then he had pulled Jay’s life apart for no reason at all. Jay and Hana could still be together. Alli’s family would be intact. He was a selfish asshole, and he wanted to do something to make it up to Jay.

  He pulled out his phone and made a call.

  “Hey, Sal. It’s Liam Maguire... I’m guessing you saw that live stream of Bridget Steele going for the HealthTec build? Well, there was a part of it that I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss...”

  Chapter 79

  Jay and Leela were sitting on the floor of his office and going through stacks of old, dusty files.

  Leela’s eyes and nose were running. “Did I mention that I’m allergic to dust?” she said as she sneezed for the fifth time in a row.

  “Sorry,” said Jay. “You don’t have to do this with me.”

  “Oh,” she sniffed, “I’m in it now. Might as well. But God—” she opened a new file and sneezed again “—please promise me you’ll let me have these all scanned and digitized when we’re done. This is positively primitive.”

  They were looking for records of the last ten years of Jay’s father’s time as CEO of Russo Construction. They had already found all the contracts with Harrington, more than Jay ever knew about, and now they needed to see similar projects that his father had done in the same time period to compare.

  “Hmm,” said Leela, wrinkling her nose at a file. “Here’s another one that’s interesting. Really close to the build-out that your dad did with Harrington about six months before. Same square footage, similar Class-A building and office finishes. And look,” she said, pointing at some numbers, “nearly one half less in charges.”

  “Shit,” said Jay, taking the paper out of her hands and squinting at it. “Some of the same people working for him, too. God damn it.”

  “So,” said Leela, “do you want to actually talk about the fact that we’re sitting here digging up proof that your dad was bid rigging with Harrington or should I just keep looking through the papers and pretending I don’t know what’s going on?”

  Jay threw the file down with a little slap and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. “He was, wasn’t he? Shit. My dad was totally breaking the law in like fifty different ways.”

  “Well,” said Leela as she picked her way through the mess on the floor and leaned up against the wall next to him, “it seems like he only did it with Mark Harrington, if that makes it any better.”

  “Somehow that makes it worse,” he said. He opened his eyes and looked at Leela. “You never met my dad but he was...difficult, in a lot of ways. He wasn’t particularly warm or supportive. He worked too much and he certainly wasn’t any fun. But he was moral, you know? I mean, the construction industry has a history of being corrupt, no doubt. You know how bad it can be. But back then, it was horrifying. The mob and all the
politicians, the unions, everyone had their hand in the cookie jar. Except my dad. He was literally known as the last honest contractor in New York. His reputation was impeccable. And he was so proud of that. He always told me that if something couldn’t be done honestly, it wasn’t worth doing. And when I took over, I swore to myself that I would follow that same path. I mean, I regret a lot of ways that I ended up being like my dad—I work too much, I’m probably not much fun, but being honest was always the one connection I had with him that felt good.”

  “And what now? I’m assuming you won’t work with Harrington.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with him. But if I don’t—”

  “Someone else will.”

  “Exactly. And listen, I mean, bid rigging seems fairly harmless. What’s the big deal? But it’s actually everything that’s wrong about this industry. It’s why the same five families have had all the business for the past fifty years. It’s why no one new can ever break in. It’s why undocumented workers get hired and paid nearly nothing to do the worst work. And it’s literally dangerous. It means that builders and developers are skimping on safety measures. It means people might get hurt or even die. It’s wrong. And I hate that my dad was involved in it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. If I make this public, it will ruin my family’s reputation. I mean, I’m proud of my dad. Or, at least I used to be. It would really hurt to expose him like this.”

  “Not to mention what it will do to the business,” said Leela. “We’ll lose all sorts of work. It might shut things down permanently.”

  He looked at her. “You think?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Being known as the guy who snitched on his dead dad isn’t exactly going to make you a hero in this industry.”