The Scenic Route

by Devan Sipher

  “You’re sounding like a child.”

  “Good!” Lila exclaimed. “I want to be young before I’m old.”

  “You already were young.”

  “Not really,” Lila said. “I want another life.”

  “Well, you can’t have mine.”

  “Why not? I gave you yours. I gave you mine. Let me tell you, your twenties aren’t as fun when you’re nursing and toilet training.”

  “And what’s Daddy going to do?”

  “He can do whatever he likes. I raised his children. I entertained his business associates. I’ve braised enough chickens for a lifetime. I’m done. And it wouldn’t hurt you to be more supportive.”

  “More supportive?” Naomi was about to lose it. “You show up unannounced, thinking I’m some kind of concierge hotel with free cable and Tab on tap. I have a meeting in an hour. A ludicrously important meeting that I’ve worked really hard to get. And instead of focusing on preparing I’m buying you magazines and dealing with your midlife crisis. What more do you want from me?”

  “I want you to stop judging me.”

  “Judging you?”

  “Ever since you were a child,” Lila said, “you would scream if I didn’t hold you just the right way.”

  “Are you talking about when I was an infant?”

  “It never stopped. Nothing I did ever made you happy. The cupcakes were too dry. The macaroni and cheese was too watery. You were always watching me. With those thick eyeglasses. Watching my every move. Disapproving.”

  “Are you kidding me? All you do is disapprove. There hasn’t been a day of my life when you haven’t disapproved and criticized every single thing I say or do.”

  “You always exaggerate everything.”

  “AAAAGGGGHHH!”

  “What? I’m not allowed to respond when you’re attacking me?”

  Naomi stormed into her bedroom to change clothes, slamming her door behind her.

  Lila called out after her, “And you say I’m acting like a child.”

  “I hate the name, love the concept,” said Dov Levin, a twenty-seven-year-old wunderkind with spiky dark hair and penetrating eyes. “Who cares about ‘Steffi’s Stuff’? No one knows Steffi. Beyoncé’s stuff. Yes. Steffi’s stuff. Bleh.”

  “We’re not married to the name,” Steffi said. Naomi nodded.

  “Good.”

  “Maybe we can use the word ‘bazaar’ to emphasize the international aspect,” Naomi said, thinking that angle would appeal to Dov since he was Israeli.

  “Bazaar makes people think of the Middle East. Makes them think of terrorists. Americans don’t like international things. They like American things, like pizza, French fries and hummus.”

  He was funny in a fast-paced, did-you-get-that-too-bad-you-missed-it kind of way.

  “I like the success you’ve had on eBay,” he said. “But it’s a big jump going from a store on eBay to launching a Web site.”

  “We have forty thousand followers on Twitter,” Naomi reminded him.

  “So does CeeLo Green’s cat. When you have forty thousand repeat customers, then you’re talking.”

  “CeeLo Green’s cat doesn’t have a twenty percent market share in a luxury brand sector,” Naomi responded, more assertively than she had intended, but she couldn’t help herself. Steffi shot her an uncharacteristicly nervous glance. But the blue dress was working. Naomi was feeling confident, energized and in the zone.

  “I’m not knocking what you’ve accomplished,” Dov said, “but the two of you are, well, inexperienced, to say the least, and I’m just not convinced this thing’s got legs.”

  He was turning them down.

  Naomi was stunned. It wasn’t that she had any basis for expecting a better outcome, but her gut had told her they were acing the pitch meeting. And she had always trusted her gut. She was appalled she could have miscalculated so completely. She wasn’t in the zone. She wasn’t even in the stadium.

  “Here’s what I can do,” Dov said. “I could throw a small amount of seed money your way. Like twenty thousand dollars. For a significant equity stake, of course.”

  “Of course,” Steffi echoed, sounding relieved to be salvaging something from the meeting.

  “It’s a gamble,” he continued. “But it’s an interesting gamble. And I’m feeling charitable.”

  “Except you’re not known for your philanthropy,” Naomi said. He was bluffing. She was sure of it. Almost sure of it.

  Dov spun his chair toward her, making a clicking sound with his tongue.

  “What Naomi means,” Steffi said, “is we wouldn’t want you making an investment unless you have confidence in us and our product.”

  “And twenty thousand dollars doesn’t seem very confident,” Naomi added. He wanted in. And if he wanted in, he was going to have to up his ante.

  He made the clicking sound again. “Where do you stand on current stakeholders?”

  “Just a few family members,” Steffi said. And one ex–family member, Naomi thought, noticing that Steffi had stopped wearing her wedding ring.

  “Good. But remember, blood is thicker than water. Which is another way of saying that when you mess with family, they go for the jugular.” He loosened his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt. What the hell was he doing?

  “You see that?” he said, pointing to a scar on his neck. “My brother did that when I was five years old because I hid some of the quarters from our lemonade stand. There’s no such thing as family when it comes to business. I’ll put in two hundred and fifty thousand for a majority stake. I’ll have my assistant follow up with the paperwork.” Naomi hoped her face didn’t give away how relieved and grateful she felt. “Any questions?” he asked.

  “Just one,” Naomi said, going on a hunch. “How did you really get that scar?”

  “Playing Hacky Sack in my frat house at Cornell, I tripped and fell on a bong,” he said. “It was a really nice bong.”

  He escorted them to the door, and as Naomi followed Steffi out, he asked her, “So, care to chat some more sometime about childhood scars? Perhaps over a drink?”

  The blue dress was definitely working. “Not over a water pipe?”

  “It could be arranged,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. He was one of those men who had a permanent five o’clock shadow and deep olive skin.

  “I have a rule about mixing business and pleasure,” Naomi said. She had no such rule, but she thought she probably should.

  “Does that mean you would find it pleasurable to have a drink with me?”

  “I think I’m a little old for you,” she said.

  “What I lack in years I make up for in money.” He smiled. And it was a fairly irresistible smile.

  He took her hand in his. It was warm and a little rough. And larger than she expected, given that he stood only an inch or so taller than her. His shirt was still unbuttoned, and she could see thick dark hair sprouting from the opening.

  “Let’s stick to business,” she said, “for now.”

  There were so many thoughts going through Naomi’s head as she strode toward the marble elevator bank where Steffi was waiting. But the one that she resented was that she needed to thank her mother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Tell her she can’t go,” Penelope was beseeching Austin.

  “Of course she can’t go,” Austin said.

  They were talking about Mandy like she wasn’t in the room. She wondered if anyone was going to comment on her new hair color. Her guess was no.

  “First you complain about me not having a real job, and then you complain when I get one,” Mandy said. “I kind of thought you’d be proud of me getting a job working for the UN.”

  “If you were working for the UN in New York,” Penelope said. “Not the Congo.”

  “There’s not a lot of goril
la rescue missions in New York,” Mandy pointed out.

  “Is this about a guy?” Austin asked.

  Right. She was going halfway around the planet because she had a spat with a guy. Though she was kind of hoping there would be some strapping primatologist on the team. Preferably with a French accent. She really liked a French accent.

  “Mandy, this is crazy,” Penelope said. “Even if you weren’t my daughter, I would tell you the same thing. I would tell you it’s a dangerous place. It’s a country at war.”

  “We’re living in a country at war,” Mandy said. “We’ve been at war almost ten years.”

  “It’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

  “You’re not going to do this,” Austin said in the dad voice he’d been practicing since he was eleven. “You’re not going. And that’s final.”

  “What are you going to do? Lock me in my room?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  Mandy understood why her decision seemed odd to them, but it made complete sense to her. Everything shifted after her conversation with Dallas. She needed to take action. She needed to “take a step.” As much as she hated to say it, she needed to stop being a red-light person and start being a green-light one. She almost had a desire to call and thank Dallas. Almost.

  “This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life,” Mandy said. “Ever since seeing the movie Gorillas in the Mist with Sigourney Weaver, I wanted to be Dian Fossey. And Dian Fossey worked in the Congo.”

  “Dian Fossey was murdered,” Penelope snapped.

  “Not in the Congo,” Mandy said, though she recognized this was not a major selling point.

  “There are plenty of gorillas other places,” Austin said. “Even places Dian Fossey worked.”

  “How about getting a job at the Detroit Zoo?” Penelope asked. “You used to love zoos.”

  “I’m not working in a zoo. I got hired to rescue gorillas in the Congo, and that’s where I’m going.”

  Her answer further agitated her mother. “Do you think I don’t know what it’s like?” Penelope asked her. “To have your life turned upside down?”

  Yes, her mother knew what it was like to be despondent. What her mother didn’t know was what it was like to have watched her be despondent for almost a decade. She didn’t know that Mandy had vowed never to be like that and that it scared her to realize how close she had come. “Then you should understand why I need to go,” Mandy said.

  “Well, I don’t,” Penelope responded. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand at all why there’s not someplace in the world you can be of use without putting your life at risk. I don’t understand why you have no middle speed. First you’re moping around in a near catatonic state. Then you’re running off to the Congo. Why isn’t there something in between?”

  “I don’t know, Mom.” She wished that she did. She could see that from the outside it could look like borderline clinical behavior. Over the borderline. Like Madonna, but without the sex, religion and bangle bracelets. But going to the Congo was far less risky than staying where she had been.

  “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to survive. I couldn’t go through that. Not again. How can you not know that?”

  “Mom, nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  Penelope stifled a sob as she rushed from the room. Austin looked at Mandy without saying anything. She hated when he did that. She could take it when he argued with her. But the stoic look of disappointment was his secret weapon, and she found it unbearable.

  “I’m not doing this to hurt anyone,” she said.

  “Why are you doing it?”

  “I told you. It’s a way of jump-starting my life.”

  “So is going skydiving. Is that what you’re going to do next?”

  “Maybe,” Mandy said defiantly. “If it’s something I want to do. I’m not going to live my life being afraid.”

  “Then how about going snorkeling? How about scuba diving?” Now he was just being mean. “How about going sailing, Mandy? Or just going for a swim. You want to go for a swim? We can go over to my health club and—”

  “Stop it! You’ve made your point.”

  “I don’t think so. Not unless you’re changing your plans.”

  “I’m not changing my plans,” she said. “Don’t you get it? If I stay, I will turn into her. And I won’t even have two screwed-up kids to show for it.”

  “Hey!” he yelped. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Sure, compared to herself, he was a paragon of psychological stability, but that wasn’t setting the bar very high. “Last time I checked, you were still lamenting the woman who jilted you and working for a company you despised.”

  “I don’t despise them,” he said, his jaw tightening. “It’s just a difficult adjustment working for a company when you’re not used to it. And you’re not going to turn into Mom. You didn’t lose a husband.”

  “That’s what makes it so much worse,” Mandy said. Her mother at least had an excuse for losing it. What excuse did she have? “What if I hadn’t come out of my funk? What if it had taken me as long as it took her? And don’t say you hadn’t thought about the possibility. Because I know you have.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve thought or haven’t thought.”

  She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. “Are you saying that I’m wrong?”

  “Jesus, Mandy.” He squirmed in discomfort. “I was worried about you. You were ill. But this could just be part of the same illness.”

  “This isn’t an illness. This is an opportunity. We’re talking about the UN, Austin. I’ll be working with extraordinary people. I’ll be observing animals in person. Not on video. In landscapes I’ve dreamed about seeing. And I’ll be doing something important. Not to mention getting a great credit on my résumé. There’s only one reason not to go to the Congo. Only one. And that’s fear. Fear that something could go wrong. But something could go wrong any day. I could get run down crossing the street. Or get shot at while at a movie theater. We have no control over these things. You have no control over these things. No matter how you try to believe otherwise. The things that happen to us are the things that happen to us. My hair is my hair.”

  “What the hell does that mean? And what did you do to your hair?”

  “You mean you noticed?”

  “Of course I noticed. It’s nearly fluorescent. Whoever’s manning the Space Station probably noticed.”

  “It’s called Flaming Red, though it does seem more fluorescent than flaming. So much for truth in advertising.”

  “Mandy, what are you doing?”

  “I’m living. Messily. Imperfectly. But I’m almost thirty-four years old, and the only thing I should be afraid of is dying without daring to be bold.”

  Mandy wasn’t a hundred percent sure she believed that, but she was willing to give it a try.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “What are you doing here?” Steffi shouted, trying to be heard over the booming beat of the boffo drummer in the aptly named Boom Boom Room.

  “What?” Austin responded, leaning in closer, which was hard to do given how close they were already standing in the crowded nightclub.

  “What are you doing in New York?” she shouted in his ear.

  “It turns out I’m not a very good employee,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m looking for a job!” It wasn’t really the kind of thing he wanted to scream out in public. Though it was doubtful anyone could hear him. It also wasn’t the real reason he was there.

  “Is Naomi around?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Have you seen Naomi!”

  Steffi grabbed him by the arm and led him down a dark, congested hallway, where the sound of the live band was replaced with hip-hop music thumping from o
verhead speakers. They continued up a flight of stairs and through a fire door, emerging on an Astroturf deck with circular Day-Glo–colored waterbeds. A red one made him think of Mandy’s hair.

  “How did you hear about the launch party?” Steffi asked. It was chilly outside in the spring night air, but it was a lot easier to be heard.

  “Stu invited me,” Austin said a little too quickly. He added, “When he heard I was going to be in the city.”

  “Of course,” Steffi said. “My happiest investor. Is he here?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” Austin said, looking out over the Hudson River from their nineteen-story perch. “I think he’s in San Jose.”

  “Good,” she said. Her glossy lips spread into a thin smile. “A continent between us works best.”

  “Have you seen Naomi?” he asked again.

  “She’s somewhere around. You know I got the idea for the name of Splurge.com from Stu.”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “He doesn’t know,” she said, draining her pink drink. “Or maybe he does. Maybe he figured it out. He used to always complain about me ‘splurging’ on things. It was a constant ‘thing’ between us. He’d say, ‘Don’t you think that dress is a bit of a “splurge”?’ ‘Do you really need to “splurge” on another pair of shoes?’ And that’s how I came up with the name.”

  “I like the name.” Austin looked around the dimly lit terrace to see if he spied Naomi. It was hard to see faces. A lot of shadowy figures intertwined. “And Stu likes the name. He’s really proud of you, Steffi. He keeps saying how proud he is of what you’ve accomplished with this thing and how proud he is to be part of it.”

  “Well,” she said, “he at least got something out of the marriage.” There was a grimness in the way she said it. She had changed since the last time Austin had seen her. She was less bubbly. Less curvy too. She seemed to have been hitting the gym, given the flattering way her black cocktail dress clung to her. She looked good, but there was something hard about her and the way her upswept dark hair was shellacked in place.

  “You were the only one who guessed right about Stu and me,” she said. “Or the only one honest enough to say something.”