The Love Coupon

by Ainslie Paton

  Until something happened to make it seem like a mirage.

  Harry hung up and lunged for his glass of water. “That was Beau.” He sipped. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “We all wait for Beau.” There’d be no Rendel without first Graham and then his son Beau Rendel. Harry and Graham, who was retired, were near contemporaries, but Beau, the current chairman, was a good ten years older than Tom. They weren’t friends. Beau wasn’t a friends kind of guy. He was an “eat the opposition for breakfast without silverware” kind of guy. Tom’s contact with Beau was limited and he’d liked it that way. Managing Beau was something he’d have to adjust to.

  “You’re well, Tom?” Harry said.

  “I am.” His face looked normal again, without the bruising, if that’s what Harry was alluding to.

  “Your talk at the convention went down nicely.”

  That was generous of Harry. “Slow start, but I hope I caught up.” Tom had watched the recording. It looked like he’d completely checked out, no one home, and not all of the laughter was kind. If he ever weakened about ending it with Flick all he had to do was watch that recording and read the snarky online comments about how he’d been too busy sampling the free drugs to know it was the right decision to stay on task. It was personally embarrassing as well as disconcerting for the firm.

  “We need to talk about my retirement plan,” Harry said.

  It was too late to guard his body posture, not to look like he was about to leap the desk and wrestle Harry for his chair, but Tom stopped himself leaning any farther forward.

  “I’m putting it off.”

  Tom’s back hit the chair upright. “For how long?”

  Harry stalled. Two, three sips of his glass of water. “Indefinitely.”

  “By indefinitely do you mean months?” He gripped the chair arms. Months was a non-issue. Annoying at worst.

  “I mean indefinitely. I’m sixty-two. I’m in good health. There’s no reason why I need to retire anytime soon.”

  Jesus H. Christ. “That’s not what we agreed.” Were the rumors true? Was there an affair, a divorce in the offing?

  “You’re, what, Tom? Thirty, half my age. You have time on your side. I wasn’t CEO till I turned forty-five.”

  “I’m supposed to wait around for you to decide to retire.”

  “That was our agreement.” Harry dropped the friendly tone. “You’d take over after me.”

  “But you announced your retirement date.” Tom tried to keep his own tone neutral, but it was like he could hear the color red.

  “I just unannounced it. I did you the courtesy of telling you first.”

  Red was discordant jazz, a loud jangle of irritating sound that sparked up his spine. “And if that’s not suitable for me?”

  “What’s not suitable is that sounds like a threat, Tom.”

  He couldn’t unhear his own anger but he couldn’t let it take him over. “It’s not a threat. It’s a fact. Waiting on you with no indication of how long I’m supposed to stick around isn’t what we agreed.”

  “Look, I’m not unsympathetic to your disappointment,” Harry said, eyes sliding sideways to his desktop. He wanted out of this conversation. Here come the platitudes. “We value you. You’re a sharp operator. A superstar. But you’re not the only suitable candidate in the city, or the Rendel network, for MD.” He refocused on Tom for the punch line. “If you should choose to move on, we’ll regret it. As you well know, Rendel is stronger than any one employee.”

  Stronger than Tom O’Connell. Not, it seemed, stronger than Harry Hardiman.

  He left Harry’s office, fifteen minutes after he’d arrived. That’s how long it took to break a promise and derail years of deliberate commitment, unshakable loyalty, and single-minded ambition.

  Wren was waiting in his office, her lips crumpled into a cartoon character look of distress. “He doesn’t mention family trouble in the memo,” she said. “Just that he’s not retiring.”

  That was quick. It accounted for the eyes on him as he made his way across the office. Now everyone would be waiting for his reaction.

  He looked at his desk. He was supposed to sit in it and bill clients for the time he spent thinking about how to help them sell more drugs, devices and procedures. He was supposed to manage a team of consultants who did the same, each with their own portfolio of clients. He made this firm millions of dollars every year. That was his job, as long as he still wanted it.

  “You should get outta here,” Wren said. “Go hike a mountain.”

  He had deadlines, a 4:45 work-in-progress meeting.

  Fuck ’em. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  “Will you?”

  He shut her down. “I’ll see you Monday, Wren.” She had the right advice, but it wasn’t mountains he needed. He stepped outside the elevator and pulled his phone from his pocket to turn it off. There was a text from Wren: Don’t fall off.

  Another from Josh. Shit, T. Am so sorry.

  He should read Harry’s memo, so he knew what everyone else was seeing, right across the Rendel network, all the way to Beijing.

  He responded with, Totally pissed off with Harry.

  Josh was online. Three little dots and then, Understandable. What now?

  Fucked if I know. Need to think.

  Here if you need me.

  Tom typed his thanks and muted his phone. That red jazz was still in his head, it clattered in his body all the way to the market, down the fresh food aisle. It accompanied him while he slung chicken breasts, mozzarella and parmesan cheese, onions and breadcrumbs in the cart. It thumped behind his eyes while he got eggs, then detoured for beer before checking out of there. He couldn’t think for the distraction of it, just went through the motions.

  It was still there when he entered the quiet of the condo. When he scanned the place for a sign of Flick and got annoyed when there wasn’t one. Today, she picked today to live inside the walls of her bedroom. He needed a necklace or a scarf or fucking hair tie where it shouldn’t be because then he’d have something to direct his anger at.

  He unlocked the balcony door. Unlocked the fucking thing, because goddamn Spider-Man was going to come and take his indestructible fucking coffee table that’d cost a shit load to buy and have installed. He looked at the view he’d also paid a fortune for and it was a haze. Had to get rid of the clang in his head.

  One beer didn’t help. Two took the edge off. Bowie, the Stones, Queen, Roy. Not even Springsteen did it for him. Still the red jazz. He needed Flick’s angry playlist, unfamiliar and outside of his routine, artists he’d only vaguely heard of, songs he’d never felt till that night.

  When she got home he’d ask her to play it. Maybe she’d teach him how to move like she did. He couldn’t dance for shit, avoided it, did that side-to-side sway thing that looked like he was moving when he couldn’t.

  Three beers. His phone filled up with messages. He didn’t respond to any of them. He should’ve gone for a run. Flick didn’t come home. It’s not like he’d made a plan to cook for her. She could be anywhere. She could be with someone. She didn’t need Tinder to hook up.

  He stripped out of his work gear and took a shower and she still wasn’t home. Had to eat, so he started pounding the chicken, seasoning it with salt and pepper. Had another beer.

  He didn’t hear her come in, too stuck in his head. She turned Bruce down and said, “Hi, what are you cooking?”

  Chicken parmigiana and a hangover. “You’re late.”

  “Yeah, I was going to catch up with a friend, but at the last minute he had to work.”

  “He had to work?” He. He. She was going out with a he.

  “Pete’s an anesthetist, got called in.”

  “A friend?”

  “Strange as it may seem, I do have friends. What’s the deal here? You’re drinking.”

 
“It’s Friday night. I don’t need your permission.” He gestured to the refrigerator. “You want one?”

  She stepped around the counter and got herself a beer. “Two kinds of cheese?”

  “You don’t have to pretend to be interested, I’ll feed you.”

  “Tom?” He’d kept his back to her since she came in, moving things around the kitchen, washing his hands, checking on the vegetables. “Tom.” Her hand on his back. “What happened?”

  “Bad day at work.”

  That hand stole around his chest and Flick hugged him from behind. “How bad?”

  It stopped. The jangle in his head, the color leached to pink, to apricot, and cleared like pollution burned off by the sun.

  “You don’t have to tell me, but I’m here if you want to talk.”

  “I’m in a crappy mood, Flick.” And he’d reached the analytic stage. His relationship with Rendel had to change. If it didn’t he was letting them take advantage of him, hold him on a string.

  “And you thought Springsteen?”

  She rubbed her hand over his ribs; he had no urge to make her quit. “I don’t know what I thought.” About Springsteen, about trusting Harry, fronting the office on Monday, about what this meant for his career and what to do next.

  “Food helps with alcohol consumption.” She released him and stepped back.

  “I thought you would’ve eaten already.”

  He’d been waiting for her. Ridiculous. He should’ve made a formal appointment if he wanted to eat with her, but then it would be like a date and she’d be in his face and he’d pretend to be pissed off by that, but that’s the last thing he’d be.

  Flick could make him be unlike himself, make him want to break patterns and change routines. That should make him twitch, it did, it did, but he didn’t hate it, and what was the point?

  “We’re not fucking again,” he said.

  “How many beers have you had?”

  He opened a cupboard and lifted the lid of the trash can, counted them. “Five.” She had the sixth in her hand, and there were more.

  “Should you be anywhere around sharp knives?”

  “I want to, that’s the problem.”

  “With the knives?”

  “Fuck you.” Impossible not to want to be with her, for the soul-deep thrill and the peace, the recovery that followed.

  “Ah. Tom, you’ve had a bad day and that’s the beer talking.”

  “I had a bad day, but it’s not the beer.” Beer didn’t make you see the truth, it made you think what you saw was the truth. Flick was like beer. You never had just one. You got an appetite for it and if you weren’t careful, you overindulged and made yourself sick.

  “What happened?”

  He told her. He could’ve called Josh, but he spilled his guts to Flick while he finished off the parmigiana and put it in the oven. The linguine had boiled dry. The meal was going to be late and poorly organized. They ate dinner rolls while it cooked.

  “What’s your gut telling you?” she asked.

  From his stool at the counter beside her, he watched the timer on the oven. Another ten minutes. “To quit.”

  “Why?”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “They broke a contract with me.”

  “That stuff happens all the time.”

  “If I stay, I’m letting them take advantage of me.”

  “True. What’s the advantage of quitting?”

  Fuck if he knew. The chicken might be done. He’d steamed the broccoli too long. He took the second pot of linguine off the heat. He was starving. Flick’s stomach had rumbled. He got plates out, realized he’d already done that and put them away.

  “You’re swearing in your head, aren’t you?”

  Fuck yes.

  “Tom, I don’t care if you’re furious, cursing, wetting yourself. You don’t have to be anything with me, except here.”

  He burned his hand on the baking tray. “Fuck!”

  She laughed. She was beside him, his burned hand in hers. “You’ll live.” She took him to the sink and held his hand under cold water. Goddamn stung.

  It was orange, the dress she wore. It had a coat that matched. It was draped somewhere now. This dress was fitted against her body, showing her breasts, hips. She’d had shoes on when she came in, heels that made her legs look longer. He’d barely looked at her, but he knew all that.

  “This is a work dress?”

  “Yes, I wear this to work. That’s where I was.”

  “It’s sexy.”

  “Why thank you.”

  “You wore it because you were seeing him.”

  “Who?”

  “The aneth—aneth. The doctor.”

  She turned the tap off and dried his hand. “You don’t want to sleep with me, remember.”

  He remembered. “Fuck.”

  She kissed his hand and then pushed him. “Go sit down. I’ll serve up.”

  He let her do that. She couldn’t mess up any worse than he had. He had to quit. He had to quit Rendel and quit Flick. He’d already quit Flick, but the fix wasn’t taking. It didn’t feel like he’d quit her when he still wanted her. He only wanted her because he’d had a shitty day. Like beer. He only drank through a six-pack when he’d had a shitty day. How many weeks till she was gone? He’d be sane again when she was gone.

  “It was a bad day,” he said, when she put a plate in front of him. He’d forgotten to use the basil, and the cheese was black in places.

  “Eat your chicken parm.”

  He ate the chicken and drank the water she poured him. He wasn’t drunk so much as angry and confused. Angry and confused and pissed off and horny.

  “You’re beautiful, Flick.”

  She spluttered on a mouthful of water. “You are drunk.”

  “No.” Loose, definitely. Careless, probably.

  “You couldn’t say anesthetist.”

  “Anesthetist.” The food had soaked up the alcohol.

  “Lucky shot. Will you dance with me?”

  What? “No.”

  “Then I agree, you’re not drunk.”

  “How is that a test? I danced with you on the table and I wasn’t drunk.”

  “You stood there looking all brooding and anxious and let me strip you.”

  “I swayed.”

  She laughed. “I’ll give you sway.”

  “I can’t dance, drunk or sober.”

  “But you want to.”

  “Like I want to fall off a mountain.”

  “Oh, come on. You loved falling off the mountain. You got all bruised and splintery and it made you think about the things you really cared about.”

  “It made me think about how I couldn’t care for you.”

  She lowered her chin and puffed out air like she was deflating, and that was because he’d stuck a pin in her.

  “Get out of that dress.” He needed her in something shapeless that didn’t advertise her body so well. “Put some new music on and I’ll dance with you.”

  Her face lifted so slowly, she might be genuinely done with him and his foul mood and his disagreeable nature, his preemptory instructions.

  “I know just the song,” she said.

  Ten minutes later there was a snare drum, a woman singing about being left behind, and Flick in her yoga pants and a baggy top that hid nothing because he couldn’t look at her without knowing what she really looked like, angles and curves, tattoos and burns and places his hands, his hips fitted, places his lips wanted to be.

  When the bass squalled, Flick stepped into his arms and old-school they swayed to the beat of the snare and a piano. It was a tight and restrained sound, the group called Haim. Sisters, she told him. The song was called “Right Now.” Nothing like the angry rock Flick had been listening to when she wanted to kick the world. The song
didn’t soar too much or wail too much, he didn’t have to dance so much as rock side to side, take the tiniest steps, like in junior high, with Flick resting her face on his chest and letting him move her backward in an ever-decreasing circle.

  He got comfortable, and when the song changed, he was already dancing. This next track had an electronic Latin beat. A guy singing, “No vacancy.” Flick took his hand and stepped away, swinging her hips and moving her feet, a samba, a salsa, he didn’t know, only that she smiled and tossed her head and she made him want to move too. They both laughed when the guy sang a line about being done with sharing with people he didn’t know. It was written for them. They danced through that track and the next one and the sounds bled together, but the beat stayed in his head and used up all the space there that he’d been devoting to problems he couldn’t yet solve.

  If they kept dancing like this, getting hotter, freer, it would reset him. Flick got on the table and he could touch more of her, get his hands all over her, look in her eyes. It would set him straight, but first it was going to use him up. This woman and her way of talking him into things he didn’t want to do, leading him to places he had no business being.

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do things to her to make her feel good, but that was another of her sideshow alley tricks, making him want her, and he wasn’t drunk—a little numb, a lot easier about Rendel and the decision he needed to make, but not foolish enough to go back on what they’d agreed. It was right for both of them.

  They danced until the playlist ran out and they were both thirsty and Flick wanted to sit, and without the music it was two roommates who’d shared a meal, had fun together on a Friday night.

  “I’ll clean up,” she said.

  “Leave it.” He was sprawled on the sectional beside her. The cleanup could wait till morning.

  Her brows arced. She gestured with her glass toward the kitchen. “I don’t mind.”

  “Live dangerously.”

  “We danced you into a wild state of negligence.”

  Something like that. He didn’t hate the feeling, but he might by morning.

  “I should go to bed. It was a long week. I have to shop for kids’ bikes tomorrow. I’m going to hate every minute of it.”