“Unfortunately, I have only have about fifteen minutes,” Frank Casey said as he stopped in front of an office and indicated that Robyn should enter ahead of him. “We’re working on something that’s apt to take up the better part of my life for the next several months. Including every waking hour Chris can squeeze out of me, I’d imagine.”
Hearing the older man, use Chris’ first name was strange. Robyn wondered at all the sides of Chris Scaife she had no idea about. It had been more than three weeks since he took her number, standing at the curb in front of her mother’s house, and she hadn’t heard from him, nor had she given a thought to whether or not she was going to get a call from his legal department. So when the call had finally come two days earlier, she was beyond surprised—not just that it had come at all, but that the person making the call was the general counsel himself.
Robyn took the seat Casey indicated to her, not opposite his desk as expected but on a sofa in a sitting area at the far end of the room, overlooking the downtown skyline.
“Would have been a great view of the Twin Towers from here,” he said, almost wistfully. “Hell of a thing thinking about them not being there, huh?”
Robyn nodded and arranged herself on the sofa, setting her leather portfolio on the coffee table in front of her, trying to swallow a rush of nervousness. Suddenly, she wanted to work at Scaife Enterprises very, very much. Something about the offices, and about Frank Casey himself told her that not only would it be several steps up from the crappy job she had now, it would be a step up from the job she’d had before—the one that had, for a time, seemed like the ultimate pinnacle of career success.
“Anyway.” Frank Casey took an armchair opposite the sofa and across from her. He sat forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “So. Second in your class at St. John’s Law?”
Robyn nodded, surprised. “Yes. How did you . . ?”
“You were over at Doug Scanlon’s shop not too long ago, I heard. I know Doug, so I called and asked him about you. Said you were very much on the partner track when you decided to leave.”
Robyn nodded. “Yes, it was a difficult decision,” she said, hoping he didn’t ask her to explain further.
While he might understand her wanting to leave for personal reasons, Frank Casey could just as easily decide it made her a little too emotional, a little too weak to join a team as demanding as this one was sure to be.
But instead, Casey just nodded. “Well, I’m assured by Doug that you would be an asset here,” he said.
“I would be happy to talk to you about my work. As you know, I generally worked on the talent management side. And of course, one of my big cases . . .”
Casey held up a hand. “No need for that, Ms. Crandall. I have your CV, I’m told your work was exemplary. In other words, I’m satisfied. I’d like to have a contract drawn up, have you take a gander at it and get back to me. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a negotiation to be had regarding salary though. We have a scale based on years of experience that sort of thing, and above and beyond that, we have a very generous bonus structure to separate the men from the boys. So to speak.”
And then he recited a base salary figure that was well above what Robyn had ever made before.
Swallowing hard, she looked blankly at him. Wait a second. This could not possibly be all there was. Could it? Was Frank Casey offering her a job?
“I’m afraid that’s as high as we’re prepared to go for the base,” Casey said, probably misreading her expression. “And as far as being on the talent management side, we have no need for that at the moment. You would be on the business and contracts side here. If that’s something you’d like to think about, I understand. It’s not as sexy as that other stuff, for sure.”
“No, the business and contracts side has always been an interest of mine.”
“Good. There’s plenty of room for upward—and lateral, if you prefer—mobility here. The company is in a growth period, as you probably know. And no signs or plans of a slowdown. In fact, quite the opposite.”
His words were coming at her from a place that seemed far away. Was this really happening? Was she being offered a job not ten minutes after sitting down with one of the most respected attorneys in the city, in the business? Finally, Robyn allowed the elation to come. Nothing good had happened to her in so long, this was almost mind-boggling.
“The work is demanding,” Frank Casey continued. “And the expectations are high. We’re in the process of opening an office in Paris, and while that makes for a few attractive-sounding business trips, it also means lots of late nights as we navigate that time difference.”
“I’d love to see the contract,” Robyn said. “Before I make any commitments.”
Like there was any doubt about what she would do.
“Of course.”
Frank Casey got up and went to retrieve a folder on his desk. When he returned, he handed it to her without sitting, and Robyn knew that it was because he didn’t have time to spend on her much longer. So she stood as well and picked up her portfolio, sliding the folder inside.
“Mr. Casey,” she extended her hand. “It was a pleasure.”
“Frank. Just so long as I can call you Robyn.”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“So, if you let me know by the end of the week,” Frank Casey said, smiling at her, “we should be golden.”
She would be golden, alright.
Robyn tried to contain the silly grin in danger of spreading across her face.
If this was real, if this actually happened, she would be working somewhere that most entertainment lawyers only dreamed of. In an organization that was so incredibly solvent, you could almost get rich just from being employed there. She would work with one of the best lawyers in the business and with the salary he’d quoted her, she could move out of her mother’s place, maybe even buy—by herself—a house comparable to the one she’d been looking at with Curtis.
And for what? Because she’d helped Chris Scaife out when he had a migraine?
“Mr. Cas . . . Frank. I wonder if I could trouble you to tell me which floor Mr. Scaife’s office is on?” Robyn asked as they walked back out to reception.
“He’s on the twentieth,” Frank Casey said. He pressed the elevator call-button for her and offered one last smile. “Pleasure meeting you, Robyn. Hope to hear from you soon.”
Robyn was able to contain her smile only as long as it took for the elevator door to close, but then, when she was realized she was alone, she let out a high-pitched squeal and jumped up and down. Undoubtedly, the receptionist on the floor she’d just left had heard it, but she didn’t care. Pressing the button for the twentieth floor she allowed herself to begin to fantasize. She would quit her job just as soon as this contract was signed. She was dying to quit, and move out of her ratty office with the bottom-feeders of the legal profession, scraping nickels and dimes out of insurance companies for dubious claims made by clients of even more dubious character.
“Calm down,” she reminded herself out loud. “First rule of contracts: the deal isn’t done until the deal is done.”
When the door opened on twenty, Robyn was faced with yet another receptionist. She was young and pretty, wearing her hair up in exquisitely beautiful coiled dreadlocks dyed an eye-catching shade of red. Upon spotting Robyn, her crimson lips parted into a warm smile and she sat a little more upright.
“May I help you?”
“I was hoping to get a few moments of Mr. Scaife’s time,” Robyn said.
Immediately, the pretty receptionist’s smile turned regretful. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked, as though she doubted it was possible.
“I don’t,” Robyn said. “But . . .”
“Your name?”
“Robyn Crandall.”
“Just a moment.” The young woman dialed a number and spoke so quietly, Robyn couldn’t hear a word she said.
Waiting, she looked around. This floor looked less stuffy than the
one she’d just left, and the people she spotted walking by and in the offices seemed younger. Clearly the legal department had a less relaxed culture than the rest of the place. Still, in even this department—whatever it was—everyone appeared to be all about business, albeit of a different kind.
“Ms. Crandall, he’s at the end of the hall. The very last office.” The receptionist indicated the direction Robyn should head in.
Again, she felt the tiniest pinprick of nervousness. Robyn headed down the hall, glancing left and right as she did, noticing the CD covers blown up to the size of corporate art hanging on the wall on one side. Wearing her powder-blue suit and grey pumps, she’d felt confident as she left the house this morning, but with each step, that confidence seemed to be melting out through the bottoms of her three-inch high heels. Chris could have come out of his office to greet her but hadn’t. Walking alone to meet him in his territory made her feel like a supplicant.
At the end of the hall, the largest office opened up. It seemed to run the entire length of the building, it was so large. Robyn was momentarily stunned by its size and forgot to speak. God, he didn’t believe in having anything compact, did he?
By the time she regained her senses, she realized that she was being stared at by six pairs of eyes. Chris was sitting in armchair, in a sitting area somewhat like Frank Casey’s but bigger of course, and with him were two women and three men, all of them looking to be in their mid-twenties, hipsters dressed like they’d attended the Andre 3000 School of Fashion, all clashing patterns and vivid colors but still managing to pull it off and look uber-cool.
The look on Chris’ face was perplexed, as though, one: no one told him she was coming, and two: she was a complete stranger. He waited for her to speak, his expression slowly transforming to impatient.
“Hi,” Robyn said woodenly.
Still he waited. And his staff waited with him.
“I was just downstairs talking to Frank Casey,” she stumbled. “And I wanted to . . .”
Chris had a sheaf of papers in his hand that he put down on the table before him. His brow wrinkled and he looked even more confused.
“Anyway,” Robyn said.
One of the young women sitting with him pursed her lips, hiding a smile and looked down at the carpeted floor as though mortified on Robyn’s behalf.
“I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your . . .”
She began backing away from the door. Robyn felt her face growing hot. Though he didn’t speak, his eyes traveled her length.
“I don’t know what you’re thanking me for,” he said finally.
“Well,” Robyn said nodding. “Perhaps nothing. I mean, nothing yet.”
Chris looked even more confused at that.
Great. So he didn’t even know about Frank Casey’s offer. How stupid was she?
It was probably self-centered to believe he’d taken the time to intercede on her behalf, or that he would give her more than the most superficial of thoughts. After all, he’d given her an expensive bottle of wine and passed on her number to the legal department. That was plenty, given how little she’d done for him. And of course he had more important things to think about. Like the five people sitting with him right now, in need of his attention so they could get their work done.
“So I’ll just leave you, then,” Robyn said, wishing she could melt into the carpet, or just disappear in a puff of smoke. Of all the embarrassing . . .
Chris offered her a thin smile that seemed to say: I’d appreciate that.
Walking quickly back down the hall, Robyn couldn’t even bear to raise her head long enough to bid the receptionist a good afternoon. When the elevator came, she got in quickly and let her chin fall to her chest, groaning in embarrassment.
Okay, that was brutal. But still, in her hands was the portfolio with a contract, and that contract was an offer of employment at a place where she’d never imagined working at before, but only because she hadn’t been imagining big enough. Robyn smiled and was still smiling when she got to the ground floor and was heading for the exit.
“Ms. Crandall?”
She was just past the security desk when she heard her name and stopped, turning around in surprise. The uniformed security guard was looking directly at her and holding a telephone receiver. Confused, Robyn went to take it from him, putting it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“What are your plans for later?” the voice on the other end asked.
5
When Chris pressed the button that opened the garage, bright lights illuminated the expansive space and Robyn squinted until her eyes adjusted. Inside were motorcycles. Many, many motorcycles, all of them gleaming and in showroom condition. Red ones, black ones, an orange one with flames on the chassis; one that had an old-fashioned sidecar, and a miniature one that looked suited only for someone about three-feet tall.
Throwing her head back, Robyn laughed and put a hand to her chest. It took her a minute or two to stop, while Chris waited. When finally she looked at him he was smiling.
“Oh my god,” she said. “You weren’t kidding!”
Chris shrugged. “I was young, with new money. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Robyn looked at him for permission and when he nodded made an incursion into the garage, walking around the bikes, touching some tentatively, crouching next to others and looking but not daring to touch because they were so incredibly exquisite.
“But do you ever ride them?” she asked. Something about the space made her want to whisper, like she was in a shrine to the magnificence of engineering.
“Hardly ever,” Chris said. “Don’t have the time.”
“Seems a shame.”
“Just mad-busy,” he said.
“I could tell,” Robyn said.
When she’d stumbled into his office and interrupted the meeting with his staff, tension lined his face; tension, sheer focus and intensity. It was a surprise when he called down to the security desk to stop her on her way out, but not an unpleasant one. Though he didn’t seem to think so, his introducing her to Frank Casey was extraordinarily generous and while for him it was nothing, for her it had the potential to quite literally change her life. But when she tried to thank him again, he’d cut her off, asking whether he could stop by her mother’s to take her for dinner.
Somehow the way he asked made it sound like something other than a date. Which was perfectly fine since Robyn didn’t feel equipped for ‘dating’. And of course, everyone knew he only dated models. Famous ones, many of them taller than him in the pictures on the society pages, but still appearing somehow less consequential than he was.
So here they were, back at his house once again. Instead of a fancy restaurant, he asked if she minded if they grabbed a bite at his place. To Robyn that meant they would probably have something no-frills, like pasta and a salad. Of course, he didn’t mention—though she should have guessed—that there was a private chef and household staff-person to serve them while they ate overlooking the rolling hills of his considerable backyard. If one could call several acres of trees and an English garden a “backyard.”
Over a dinner of tuna tartare, Chilean sea bass and garlic asparagus, they talked about his early days in the music business and listened as Chris described his rapid ascent in the industry. He made it sound like a fluke, a luck-of-the-draw type of thing, but she knew better. His work ethic had been well-documented, so much so that it was now the subject of criticism. People said he no longer had anything to prove and implied that it was almost selfish of him to hog all the success this way, hinting that he should make room for new blood.
The revelation that he had a stable full of motorcycles had come when Robyn asked what he did for fun.
I collect things, Chris said. Not as much anymore, but that’s what I used to do. Collect things.
Like?
Motorcycles, for starters.
How many motorcycles would you have to have to call it a �
�collection’? Robyn had challenged.
About . . . fifty, Chris said.
No way.
Yes, way.
Here? On the premises?
Chris nodded.
Show me.
And so he had.
Robyn stopped next to a pink one with white and silver trim, turning to smile again at Chris who was standing a few feet behind her, watching her peruse the evidence of his youthful stupidity.
“This looks like a woman chose it,” she said.
“Probably,” Chris shrugged. “I can’t remember where most of them came from.”
“I’d love to ride this one.”
“You know how to ride?”
Robyn stroked the white leather seat. “No. But I wish I did. Then I would take the fastest bike I could find, go out to the desert somewhere and just open that sucker up.”
“You would, huh?”
Robyn looked at him, noting the skepticism in his tone. “Yeah, I would.”
He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans that were baggy and slung low on his hip, though not below them any longer. He seemed to have stopped doing that in the last couple of years, thank goodness. In fact, he seemed more . . . adult now than Robyn remembered, more like a man than the man-child she was accustomed to thinking of him as.
He had a smooth, chocolate-brown complexion and dark-as-night, deep-set eyes, the barest hint of a moustache, and an angular jaw-line that made him look hard. And when he wasn’t smiling, an almost cruel mouth. He was mean-sexy. That’s how Robyn would describe him if someone asked. A hard, but magnetic man. Maybe six-one or so, Chris was fit in the manner of a man who worked out for strength, rather than bulk. At a distance though he might appear almost slender, up close, like they were now, Robyn could see the definition in his chest and arms and the trimness of his waist. He was built like a sprinter, unobtrusively strong and lean, his physical power evident only if you paid attention.
Afterwards Page 4