“All right, well, we all thank you for bringing in your germs. What’s this other file?”
“I’m not contagious anymore.” Emily looked over Charley’s shoulder, pushing a piece of her modified pompadour that had fallen down back into place. “These are notes from some of the London meetings that I need you to transcribe pronto. I have to go to Abu Dhabi in two weeks, and everything I need for that trip is in those notes. I’m already way behind the eight ball because of this damn flu.”
“Abu Dhabi? Care to share what’s going on in the Middle East?”
She glanced around like she wanted to make sure she couldn’t be overheard. “I realize I should’ve told you. It’s a huge new start-up, possibly a takeover for us, but a merger for sure. That’s what the London trip was really about. Donnie and I secured most of the deal, now we’ve got to sew it up for Hans. Come into my office, though. There’s something I want to go over.”
Charley stowed her bag under her desk, wondering if she should be worried, and picked up the log and a pen. Mergers weren’t necessarily good news for employees like her. And she had never liked Hans Wolff, their CEO. Brought in by the board several years ago to consolidate things, his first move had been to ax three of the conglomerate’s oldest companies and their many employees. The stock had risen, but Charley knew that what had been lost could never be quantified. And it had become patently clear in the ensuing years that he didn’t care about his employees.
Sitting in an almost formal manner, Emily thanked Charley for unpacking the last of the boxes that her previous employer had finally sent over right after she’d gone to London. “I can’t believe it took them nine months to clear the last of my things, those sons of bitches. Anyway, you left this one.”
“It was marked ‘personal,’” Charley replied, noticing that it had been opened.
Emily slid out a framed photo and handed it to Charley. It was of a very handsome woman, about Emily’s age, with short jet-black hair and intense light blue eyes. Charley hoped her noncommittal expression held, not sure what was coming next, but, her gaydar having pinged on Emily months ago, she suspected her boss might be coming out to her.
“That’s Terry, my wife. We’ve been together ten years.”
Charley nodded; she was right.
“I asked her to call on my cell phone until I had my bearings here and with you. My last assistant had a problem taking Terry’s calls. Had a problem with us.”
“I’m sorry. That should never happen.”
“Hmm. In a perfect world.” Emily looked down at her hands in her lap, and then back up at Charley. “I told HR that couldn’t be the case here. But I’ve sensed it won’t be.”
“No, it won’t.”
She nodded. “Then Terry will be calling on my direct line now.”
“As she should.”
“Good. I thought you’d be okay with it. Nothing seems to ruffle you.”
“‘Impossible to ruffle’ is, I believe, at the top of my job description.”
“I think the building could be burning around you and you’d go right to the fire extinguisher without a second thought for yourself, wouldn’t you?”
Charley laughed.
“That’s why…” Emily picked up an envelope on her desk and bounced the corner of it on the blotter. “I have something else here for you.” She handed it to Charley.
Charley slit the envelope, took out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. Reading it, she blinked several times, speechless.
“When I first signed on, I told HR that I needed a crackerjack assistant, the deal being that I would cycle through assistants until I found the right one, but that when I did, he or she should be fairly compensated for what I’d be asking in the way of time, temperament, and loyalty. Someone clearly did their homework to match us up.”
Charley was still stunned at the amount of the raise. “Thank you.”
“Well, you may not want to thank me down the road. This is my way of putting a pair of golden handcuffs on you. It comes with a fifth week of vacation. You’ll be earning all of it. But this stays right here. No one else on our team is receiving further compensation until well into next year.”
Charley nodded.
“Now, let’s talk about the Middle East.”
An hour later, Charley was making calls to the new venture in Abu Dhabi, connecting with the assistants she’d be working with, most of whom were British or German; she appreciated how organized they were. No matter what the outcome of the merger, she already knew some of these men and women would become part of her extensive worldwide network of assistants she could call on for almost anything at almost any time.
That evening, on her walk to the pool, her mind was on tomorrow night’s date with Neely. Until she wondered if Joanna would be here, and all thoughts of Neely disappeared. The internal excitement hit her. In the locker room, her favorite row was empty. She went right to the last row, though, closed her eyes for a second, and turned the corner. Joanna wasn’t there. Then Charley remembered that she was working tonight and would be tomorrow night as well.
At the Amish market after class, she picked up dinner and went right to the computer to edit Sunday’s work. Bob was curled up on the desk, one paw draped across the keyboard as if claiming it his territory. He looked her up and down unblinkingly and Charley laughed at his show of ego, shooing him off the desk. Just as she was getting to work, her phone dinged. She checked it and found it was a text from Neely.
Neely: pick you up fri night again?
She hesitated. But she knew what she wanted. Can we go out to dinner instead?
Neely: ??
Would be nice to talk, just the two of us.
Neely: k, gd idea.
Charley breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t have faced another night in a noisy club, or another second of Stacey. Her phone dinged again. Neely had sent the name and address of a restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen, and a clock face that read seven o’clock.
Terrific. See you there.
Neely: no, c u there.
Charley was confused. Had she missed something? She sent Neely a question mark.
Neely: abbrevs r faster.
Charley was a little astonished. She wasn’t used to being corrected, and most definitely not used to how Neely’s generation handled social media. But she sent back a thumbs-up emoji. A moment later, Neely replied with a smiley face and the kiss lips.
A half hour after kickoff of the Raiders-Broncos game, Charley took a break, turned on the TV, checked the score, and brought her swim bag to the bathroom to hang up her suit. She noticed the message light blinking on her phone. Pressing play, she expected to hear her mother.
“Charley,” the familiar voice spoke quietly, “please don’t hit erase before you hear all of this message. I need your help. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be calling. Please call me back.” Hearing the note of fear in her voice, Charley reached for the pad and pen by the phone as Tricia left her number. After a moment’s hesitation, she erased the message, ripped the sheet off the pad, balled it up, and hurled it into the trash can. She was still staring at the phone when it rang again. Brooke’s name came up on caller ID, but Charley was frozen on the bed.
“Hey, pick up, I know you’re there. I want to watch the game with you.”
Charley picked up.
“You up for the game?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”
Agitation bubbled below the surface of Charley’s skin. “Tricia called.” The anger she hadn’t allowed herself to feel when she’d heard Tricia’s voice came through her like a backdraft, and it blew a hole in the wall she’d spent the last three years carefully constructing around her emotions. “One fucking phone call! That’s all it took, Brooke!” Charley could hardly breathe she was so angry. “Why does she think it’s okay to call me? Does she know what it would cost me to have to deal with her again?” She wanted to throw something or fling open the window and scream.
“What does she want? What did she say?”
Charley struggled to control her voice. “I don’t know. She left a message, something about needing my help.”
“Okay, take a deep breath and sit down.”
“She left her number. I know she’s going to call again.”
“Then let’s talk about what you’re going to do when she does.”
Charley began to breathe little by little, knowing Brooke was throwing her a line and would pull her back in. She picked Tricia’s number out of the trash.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Charley handed her ID over the counter to Neely. Neither one of them acknowledged that they’d be seeing each other tonight. They simply exchanged glances, and as she headed for the stairs, Charley laughed at the feeling of covert flirtation she hadn’t felt in years.
At work, Charley immediately knew something was wrong. Eavesdropping on Emily’s phone conversations, she gathered that there had been a fight between her and Donnie in Hans’s office early this morning. Emily hadn’t come out on the winning end. She decided to hold her counsel and let Emily come to her if it warranted bringing her in on the problem. It occurred to her that office politics were just as bad as lesbian drama, and there could be just as much on the line.
* * *
Charley dashed home from work to get ready for the date with Neely. She wanted to make sure tonight was simply a laid-back evening and that her attire said nothing more than “friends,” so she opted for jeans, sneakers, and a button-down. Shortly before the appointed meeting time, she stepped off the crosstown bus into the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that had been her home away from home thirty years ago.
Looking around at the stores and buildings, it seemed like everything had changed. Her first job out of college had been at a hardware store nearby, a placeholder until she could break into the corporate world. It was now a vegan restaurant. And she had spent many nights in bars and clubs up and down these streets with her friends who had lived here before it became the gentrified Clinton, before the AIDS epidemic. The clubs were all gone now, those friends long dead, part of the reason she never came to this neighborhood anymore. She didn’t want those memories.
Down the street, she noticed the Westway Diner. It seemed to be the only holdover from that time.
She spotted Neely a block away, the black leather biker jacket unmistakable, especially with Neely’s cherry-striped curls spread over the shoulders. She had on a sheer white shirt beneath the jacket, tucked into a pair of black jeans, a black bra visible underneath the shirt. Neely’s kiss was tender, the desire clear in her eyes. Charley began to worry about how best to distance the possibility of anything physical between them without losing the friendship that was fast becoming important to her.
“Wait, don’t move,” Neely said, her arms still around Charley’s waist. She kissed her neck, inhaling. “I can’t get enough of that perfume. Are you ever going to tell me what it is?”
“Maybe. But not tonight.” Charley disengaged herself from Neely’s arms and held open the door of the restaurant. “Tonight, I want to talk about your writing process. That short story you got published was exquisite.”
Neely smiled ruefully. “I was pretty sure when I was writing it that it was good. Yeah, sure, we can talk process.”
“And tonight, I pick up the tab because I asked for the change of venue.”
Neely nodded. “I won’t fight you tonight.”
“Good, because I wouldn’t let you.” A waiter led them to a table in the window. “I remember how tight things were when I was in school.”
“But you had Tricia.”
“Doesn’t mean I let her help me. Or that she would have.” Charley looked over the small menu.
“But you were a couple.”
“With separate financial lives.”
“No, come on. Really?”
“She was particular about her money. And I would never have let her pay my way. It was too important to me to prove that I was independent.”
“This blows my mind. And scares me. I didn’t think couples did that.”
“Well, I did, we did. I never wanted to be beholden to her. She was always going to outstrip me financially. I will admit, the times I got laid off in the eighties and nineties, she ended up supporting me, but she got something in return.” Charley arched an eyebrow.
“Oh, I’m not going to touch that…”
She smiled and shook her head. “Whenever I landed a new job, she got a very expensive piece of jewelry with my first paycheck. Diamonds were her drug of choice, so I supplied whenever I could.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine not sharing my money with my wife.”
Charley was floored by what she perceived as Neely’s naiveté, but recovered as quickly as she could.
“So…what is your drug of choice?” Neely asked.
“The beach. Any time of year.”
“You did tell me you’re a beach junkie. And you’ve used the setting to maximum effect in your novel. Good, evocative.”
“That means a lot…thanks.”
“Let me look this over,” Neely said, waving the menu, “and then I can talk about another idea I had for your last chapter.”
Charley studied her, trying to fathom where the writer in her came from, and where she was going. When Neely looked up, Charley fiddled with her silverware for a moment, the question on her mind a difficult one. “Why did you take a break from your novel? I know you’re sending short stories out to websites and contests, but they don’t pay, do they?”
“Some do. Ultimately it doesn’t amount to anything more than good PR and a fishing lure for an agent.”
“But are you jeopardizing the bigger picture? I’d hate to think you’re making a mistake by putting that novel down.”
“I’m not. It’s not writer’s block like you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
For a moment, Charley felt like she’d been slapped in the face, although she knew Neely hadn’t meant it that way.
Neely reached into her pocket and handed Charley a flash drive. “This is the first half. No one but my professor has seen it. So, as someone said to me recently, be gentle.” Neely smiled sheepishly.
“You’re really trusting me with this?” Charley slipped the drive into her jacket pocket and zipped it up. “I’m honored.”
“Don’t stop your work too long to read mine.”
Once they’d ordered, the conversation turned to the art of writing and Charley questioned Neely about her work habits, her trade secrets, and many other things born of her own frustrations with her manuscript of late. Before she realized it, the check arrived at the table and the waiter hinted that with a line out the door, he needed their table.
Heading up Ninth Avenue, they moved from one topic to another, agreeing, disagreeing, finding common ground and the occasional chasm that Charley realized their age difference couldn’t bridge. When they threaded their way up Tenth Avenue looking in store windows and car showrooms, it was clear to Charley that neither of them wanted to leave the other’s company. She sensed she’d have to make the first move to call it an evening. Soon, however, Neely guided them toward Twelfth Avenue.
“I get the feeling you know where we’re going,” Charley said.
“I thought we could sit on the bleachers at the baseball field. It’s such a beautiful night, you wouldn’t know it was late September.”
Neely was right. After the cool days earlier in the week, it was almost like a summer night again. A game was in progress when they got there, so they settled in to watch among a handful of spectators in the stands. Half an hour later, the game ended, and everyone drifted out of the park, leaving Neely and Charley alone in the middle of the bleachers. They sat in contemplative silence for a couple of minutes until a few of the lights around the perimeter of the park buzzed statically and blinked out.
“I think that’s the universe telling me I need to say good night. I’ve had a wonderful evening, but
I need to get home.” Charley stood up.
“Do you, though? Need to go?”
For a minute, her resolve wavered.
“We could still go downtown and join everyone in the club. It’s only eleven.”
Charley laughed and touched Neely’s face. “I have an admission to make. My clubbing days are limited.” She took Neely’s hand. “Come on. Help me down.”
Neely walked down a step ahead of her, holding her hand up, steadying her.
“Look, we could do something else,” she said when they reached the lawn and Charley started walking toward the path leading to the gate.
“Such as?”
Neely pulled her into the shadows under the bleachers and kissed her. It was one of those long, slow kisses that made her stomach drop like an elevator. When Neely pulled back to look at her, she couldn’t even speak, unable to remember the last time she’d been kissed like that. Intoxicated, she grabbed the lapels of Neely’s jacket, so Neely kissed her again, her lips lingering until Charley could hardly breathe. As she skimmed across Charley’s jaw, kissing slowly down her neck and throat, Charley pulled Neely’s shirt out of her pants and ran her hands up Neely’s back, feeling the strong muscles move beneath her touch. Neely unbuttoned Charley’s shirt and tugged at it, and all she could do was moan in response. Taking that as a green light, Neely wrenched her shirt open and continued kissing her across her collarbone and down the rise of her breasts, putting both hands on them, her thumbs pressing into her nipples through the lace of her bra. Charley involuntarily arched into her, slipping her hands down the back of Neely’s jeans to her buttocks. Neely’s hand responded in kind down the back of Charley’s jeans, pulling her to her at the same time as she slid her tongue into Charley’s mouth and her other hand into Charley’s bra, her fingers hunting a nipple. Charley didn’t recognize the sound that broke its way out of her throat, but she thrust her hands farther into Neely’s jeans chasing the twin globes of the taut ass she’d admired a number of times on the dance floor last weekend. Neely’s tongue moved deeper and faster, and her hand made an inroad right between Charley’s legs.
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