by L. Maleki
Chapter 20
I left the PRCM building, making my way back to my apartment in a fog. My life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and I have to choose which storyline I want to continue. Romance? Family? Career? I felt like whatever option I chose, I was slipping into a nightmare scenario.
Collecting my mail on the way through the lobby, I automatically sifted through the envelopes on the elevator. One address caught my attention. The fog boiled off.
A letter from Capital First, the bank that owned the mortgage on my father’s house. As a matter of courtesy, since my name was listed somewhere in the deed, they were writing to regretfully inform me that, after many attempts to contact Ehsan Tehrani, they were taking possession of the home listed at 174 Kings Road, Newport, California. The foreclosure would be final in fourteen days.
I swooned. No one was there to catch me.
The decision to stay at PRCM was made for me. I threw open my closet, dragged out my suitcase, and tugged clothes from the hangers, tossing dresses and blouses in a pile on my bed as I made phone calls.
“Dad? Dad, would you answer your phone? You’ve been telling me you’re fine and now you’re losing the house? What is going on! Dad, I want to help, but you have to call me.”
Frustrated, I called Gina next.
“Hi, Gina—”
“Yes?”
“It’s Paris—”
“I know who this is. This is Paris. My old friend who’s MIA.”
“Alright, I get it. You’re mad. But I have to leave for the weekend, and something big—”
“Why are you leaving?”
I hesitated. “Frank needs an assistant with him for this trip to Galveston, to woo new investors. But, listen, seriously, I need to talk to you about—”
She cut me off again, her New Jersey accent thick and angry. “I guess you’ve forgotten Lucia’s ultrasound this weekend. You said you’d go with her.”
I groaned, slapped my forehead. I’d forgotten to add it to my calendar. “Oh, jeez, tell her I’m sorry—”
Gina hung up. She’d done that to me a number of times lately. I’m not sure I always deserve it. Of course, I was feeling a little defensive. She hadn’t given me a chance to tell her what was going on with my dad’s house.
I stood next to the bed, my stomach rolling. Finally, I dialed Benji’s number. I wouldn’t be able to handle it if he hung up on me, too.
“Paris? I’m so glad you called. I am sorry if I was a jerk last night.”
Last night seemed like a lifetime ago. “Hi, Benji. Please don’t apologize. You weren’t a jerk.” Well, maybe a little, but so was I. “I think I’ve worked it out with my boss so that won’t happen again.”
“Thank God! That guy treats you like a dog. I mean, seriously, he couldn’t get what he needed from the office himself? Is your time less valuable?” He breathed loudly. “Anyway, glad you’re doing something about it.”
Gah. So much was wrong. I’d ditched him on a date, I was hiding the fact I’d gone to a brothel, and he was about to find out I was leaving with the same boss I’d just said was no longer going to steal my time.
“So, yeah,” I said. “I told him I wouldn’t take that kind of stuff from him anymore or I was going to quit. He actually promised to start teaching me how he works with funds. But …”
“But what?” His melodious voice turned suspicious.
I dropped the shirt I’d been folding and sat down on the edge of the bed, clothes and shoes scattered around me.
“Well, I sort of have to go on this trip. To Galveston, to meet with new investors. But we’ll be back by Sunday! I have to go—”
“Sunday?”
“Yeah, I know … oh, no.”
“You’re going to blow off my boutique clients? For Frank?”
I had trouble catching my breath. After him shutting me down last night, having to visit a whorehouse, and then attempting to quit my job this morning, I’d completely forgotten about the professional photography shoot he’d set up for me. “Do you think they’ll let me reschedule? This is really important.”
“Um, you’re serious right now? You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Paris. You don’t have to take this photo shoot, though that is a huge mistake. You also do not have to go to Galveston. Didn’t you just say you weren’t going to let Frank do this anymore?”
“The company really needs me—”
“They can’t send another assistant? You’re going to make me look stupid if you don’t show up, plus you’re throwing away a huge opportunity you probably won’t get again. What’s important to you, Paris?”
Just then, my phone beeped. My father was calling in. Worse timing ever.
“Listen, I have to get this. It’s my dad. He’s the reason I’m going on this trip. I’ll explain everything, but let me talk to him. I’ll call you back in a minute.”
“Really, don’t bother.” Indignation dripped from his words. “You seem to like getting pushed around, but I don’t.” He hung up.
No! This is so unfair!
I tried to switch over to my father, but he hung up, too. I threw my phone, hard. But on my bed, because I couldn’t afford to buy a new one.
I was angrily jamming hair products into a Ziploc bag when the phone rang again. I looked at it like it was a snake, about to bite me. It was my dad.
“Dad! What is going on with you!”
He didn’t say anything.
“Dad?”
Nothing.
“Dad? Are you there?”
Then I heard his voice, faintly, in the background, and the rustle of what sounded like cloth over the speaker. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I did hear him laugh, followed by a loud female cackle. Then the woman said something in a foreign language, maybe Russian.
“Dad! Daaa-aaad!” I yelled. He ignores my calls and then he butt-dials me! Goddammit.
“You’re ruining my life!” I screamed into the phone but immediately regretted it. I held my breath, listening, praying he hadn’t heard me.
Instead, I heard him say, “I have been looking for my pants for days now. But they are camouflage.”
A pause, then an unfamiliar woman’s voice said, “Oy, Ehsan, you are so funny!”
Seriously? He’s letting our family house go into foreclosure because what, he’s too busy hooking up with someone?
A surge of rage swept through me. Was I the only one who cared that the earth was crashing down?
Running in high heels and a skirt, my rolling suitcase flipping around behind me, I regretted my decision for the eight hundredth time in a row. Across the runway at the Teterboro Airport, I could see the crew detaching the boarding stairs. I tried yelling but could only wheeze.
Finally, with a deep intake of breath, I burst out, “Hey! Wait for me!” My voice cracked, thanks to an hour of crying, but they must have heard something.
Two mustachioed guys in blue jumpsuits cranked their heads around and stopped. They moved the stairs back into position, smirking and blatantly eyeing the skirt sliding up around my thighs.
The inside of the Wheels Up jet was exactly as I’d seen on dozens of movies, the opulence overwhelming. Cream-colored leather and teak everywhere, with a full bar, a huge media center, gorgeous couches and reclining armchairs. A young female flight attendant, who looked at my blotchy cheeks and swollen eyes with sympathy, stowed my luggage and went off to help the pilot, promising to return with a food and drink menu.
Frank lay limp in one of the loveseats, already asleep, his phone, wallet, pants, and an empty whiskey glass on the floor beside him. The prostitutes must have kept him and his friends up late. Now I had the pleasure of seeing him in tight white underwear and a dress shirt, drooling on the leather. I found a blanket and threw it over him, for my sake, not his.
I studied his face through narrowed eyes. Even as he slept, he was unattractive.
But when I saw his iPhone, I had an idea. I quietly retrieved it and found a seat f
arther forward in the cabin, a cozy armchair with a lap desk. I turned away from him and set to work.
After a two-minute search on Google, I had the directions for how to turn his phone into a homing device. I wasn’t too worried he was going to wake up and catch me—but I was taking my health into my own hands, literally, by holding his bacteria-laden phone. I can’t get syphilis from touching something, right? I dug a bottle of hand sanitizer from my purse, doused my hands, and then his phone.
I activated his global positioning system. Then I downloaded the Find My Friends app and gave authorization for Frank’s phone to allow my phone to track him, providing me with a map of his location within a five-foot radius. I should have felt bothered by the huge, probably illegal, intrusion into his privacy, but I felt only relief that I’d thought of it, tinged with concern that someone else could just as easily be tracking me. But that would mean someone out there cares where I am and took the time to go through my phone.
I didn’t want to think about my friends right now. Or Benji. They’d turned their backs. It hurt they wouldn’t let me explain my reasons for staying with Frank. And then there was my dad, who would die if he knew what was going on with my job and my boss. Yet he was going to lose the house, after already losing the business, if I didn’t do at least one more dance with this devil.
Do the ends justify the means? I have no fucking idea.
“We’ll be landing in about ten minutes. Can I get you another drink before I buckle in?”
The attendant was so fresh-faced and happy, I wanted to punch her. But not nearly as much as I wanted to punch Frank, who’d woken up about an hour before, put on a pair of sweatpants, and turned on the TV, ratcheting up the volume on a basketball game. I thought the speakers were going to blow, but no such luck. I’d put in my earbuds and listened to soothing music, staring at the white clouds below us, picturing myself as a bird, floating, at peace, free …
“No, thank you, I’m fine.” I’d limited my drink intake to one glass of chardonnay, since I had no idea what kind of energy the next few days were going to take. Frank, on the other hand, had no such compunction. After his third drink, I’d quietly asked the attendant to mix the whiskey with water and bitters. He didn’t seem to notice. His palate was expensive but not developed.
When we arrived at Hotel Galvez, he stepped out of the limo and stretched loudly. I followed suit, minus the soundtrack, trying to loosen the muscles in my calves and between my shoulder blades, taught with stress and travel. And grief.
“Hey, Paris, catch!” I turned and gasped as his wallet thwacked me in the chest and fell to the driveway.
“Oh, sorry. I thought you were looking,” said Frank, distracted. “Use the American Express to check us in. I’ll be by the pool.” With that, he kicked off his sandals and pushed down his sweatpants, leaving them in a puddle on the cement. Oh my lord, I thought, covering my eyes. I took a second to steel my resolve, and then I slowly removed my hand. He strode into the lobby, shoeless but not in his tighty-whities. I gushed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, at some point, he’d put on swim trunks. I wasn’t about to ask him about it; who knew where that conversation would lead.
Nor did I want to have another conversation about him throwing things at me, but it appeared he was already nudging at the line I’d drawn in the sand earlier that same day.
The driver was unloading luggage from the trunk.
“This one is mine,” I said to the porters swarming the car, “but these two will go to the penthouse.”
Frank was in the biggest, most expensive suite, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. I was in what was supposed to be Andrew’s suite across the hall. I gratefully realized this meant I could hear his door open when he tried to escape, but we didn’t share a wall. I did not want to hear any noises he might make, for any reason.
My rooms faced inward, with French doors and a long, wide balcony looking over the pools. Below, Frank was easy to pick out in his lime green dress shirt and swim trunks, sitting on the edge of a lounge chair next to a gaggle of sorority girls in bikinis. I couldn’t hear them, but the girls had their backs to him, and one wrapped a towel around herself and scooted her chair further away, clearly not excited to have a middle-aged weirdo crashing their conversation.
I sighed and went back inside.
After a shower, I unpacked slowly, enjoying the large, beautiful suite, with the sound of the ocean and the smell of clean salt air making me feel like I was back home in California. Then there was a knock on my door.
“Hey, why are you over here?” Frank’s doughy face was pink. Sunburnt. I didn’t know the devil could burn.
“What do you mean? Am I supposed to be somewhere?” I looked at my watch. “Your first meeting is at the French restaurant. It’s not for another hour.”
“No, I mean why are you sleeping over here? My suite has three bedrooms.”
“Oh. Well. We already had this room for Andrew. Besides, it’s company policy employees can’t share hotel rooms.” That was a total lie. There was no such policy, but he’d never know that.
“That’s a stupid rule. I’m sure Todd came up with it. God, he’s so paranoid.” He crossed back to his door. “I hate staying by myself,” he muttered, childlike, fumbling with his room key.
I let my door close. There was no way in hell I was going to sleep anywhere close to that guy.
As a matter of fact … I dialed the front desk manager. “I need to ask a favor, and please, please keep this to yourself, but please don’t give anyone else a key to my room. Especially Frank Coyle.”
“Of course, Ms. Tehrani. Our policy precludes us from giving out room keys anyway, but I will make a note.” His voice was smooth, pleasant. If he thought it odd I’d make a specific request to keep my boss out of my room, he did not react noticeably. “May I assist you with anything else?”
“Nope, that’s great. Thanks.”
It was going to be a long weekend. I didn’t want the hotel staff to burn out early.
Chapter 21
An hour later, I was ready, but Frank wasn’t responding to my texts.
Driver will be here in twenty minutes. You’ll find a navy striped shirt and turquoise tie packed for tonight. It will contrast nicely with the restaurant’s decor. I know you like to stand out:)
Power dressing had been Michelle’s idea, but she wasn’t in Galveston so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let him think I had something to do with it. My assistant had researched every location of every meeting and, before she found out I was going, purchased clothes in power colors suitable for the different aesthetics. Psychological warfare at the smallest level. It was genius, the kind of thing Frank would love.
I’d explain the origin to him someday. And that Michelle had created the Book of Frank, not me. Just not this weekend. I needed to seem like I was in control.
Great, he’s going to be late. On the first night.
I knocked on his door. Twice. Three times. Goddammit. I went back to my room and retrieved the extra key for his room I’d gotten from the front desk at check-in—hypocritical, sure, but obviously necessary.
“Frank?” I said from the door.
Heavy moaning.
Sweet Jesus. Please, Lord, let him be dying.
Walking through the entryway, past the coat closet, I held my breath and peeked around the corner. I could see the back of his head as he sat on the couch, intent on the TV. The moaning came from the TV, but maybe not all of it. A circle of naked white dudes, holding their man-parts, knelt around a frizzy-haired woman writhing around on the floor in ecstasy—or possibly having an epileptic seizure. It was hard to tell.
Is he watching that on purpose?
I backed up slowly, quietly, wishing I could return to my room, lie down on the table, and perform a lobotomy on myself. Instead, I wrenched Frank’s hotel door open, slammed it shut, and shouted from the entryway, “Frank? Are you here? Should I come in?”
He groaned in a way I hoped signaled frustration. “Yea
h, hold on, I’m coming.”
The double entendre made me gag.
“I’ll be outside, at the car!” I cried around the corner and scurried out. I didn’t want to see if he was zipping up his pants.
I would not be using his room key again.
When he crawled into the back of the car with me a few minutes later, I was relieved to see he wore slacks, dress shoes, and the blue shirt and tie. He had to know, in his heart, that he had to do everything right with these oil guys or he’d be putting his company in jeopardy. Hopefully he was smoother at manipulating them than he had been with me. I’d stayed because I needed the raise, not because I believed any of his words. And for damn sure not because I respected him.
The preliminary meet-and-great went smoothly. Frank and two of the oil magnates sat around a table going over the next day’s agenda and eating lavish French dishes, thick pools of butter on each plate.
After a round of introductions and the tipping of large cowboy hats, Frank had tried to get me to sit next to him at the table, his soggy hand on my waist as if I were his date. But it was not meant to be. On many levels.
“Little lady, this is just going to bore you,” one of the men said, adjusting his belt buckle over his gut and openly running his eyes up and down my dress, finally settling on my face with a puzzled expression. Probably he was assessing my brown skin in order to place me on his social strata totem pole. “Why don’t we meet you in the bar when we’re done here?”
I froze, my ass hovering over the chair. Awkwardly standing, I peered over my shoulder to be sure the guy from What Would You Do? wasn’t behind me with a camera, filming a segment on sexist pigs. Nope. I cemented my features into a small smile, restraining the inner female warrior who wanted to come out and smash this Neanderthal in the face with a crowbar. It was a look I had perfected in my time with Frank, patient zero of the caveman epidemic.
“Uh, sure.” Bellying up to the exquisite marble bar lined with expensive cowboy hats, I avoided eye contact. The majority of bar stools were occupied by the upper echelon of Texas, men riding high on the North American gas and oil boom—but a sixty-year-old man in a Lamborghini is still a sixty-year-old man, and I did not want anyone to think I was on the prowl for a sugar daddy or a hot night with a sweaty old guy.