by Ayo Campbell
“I could get used to this,” she said, as they sat to breakfast on his patio.
Lavender lilacs were in bloom above them, while the lawn was dotted with the delicate snow white of lily-of-the-valley. Geena had served good, wholesome, ham and cheese omelets, and her coffee was divine. Showered and fresh, Vanessa sat wrapped in one of Justin’s purple silk robes. He wore white.
“This could all be yours,” he said.
“You really own this house?”
“I own three,” he said as Geena refreshed their coffee. “One in San Francisco and one in Vanuatu.”
“Where?”
“It’s in the South Pacific, near Fiji. That’s just a getaway. The surfing is phenomenal. I like to surf. You?”
“I never tried.”
“I could teach you.”
“So,” she began, “if I may ask, what do you do?”
“Venture capital,” he said. “Pass the sugar.”
“That stuff’ll kill you, you know.”
“I know. I’m a chemist. I still like my coffee sweet.”
“You were supposed to say,” Vanessa said, raising an eyebrow, “that you like your coffee like you like your women: strong and black.”
They both laughed. And that was another thing that she liked about him, his laughter was always so honest.
“What’s wrong with sweet and black?” he said.
“You think I’m sweet?”
“I do.”
“Well, you’re the chemist,” she said. “So, how does a chemist get into venture capital?”
“Baby diapers,” he said, grinning. “There’s a chemical in baby diapers that absorbs moisture: sodium polyacrylate. It keeps little bottoms dry. And, god knows, there’s a lot of baby bottoms out there. They just keep making ‘em.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You invented the stuff and got a patent.”
“No. I invented the process that makes processing the stuff easier, and I lease out the licenses. But, I couldn’t have done that without some seed money. Somebody took a chance and invested in me. It paid off. So, I had a long chat with that woman, and now she and I try and help other crazy kids with brilliant ideas. We get a forty percent return.”
“Is that good?” Vanessa asked.
“It is,” Justin nodded. “Just look around. Geena gets thirty-five dollars an hour.”
“Holy shit.”
“So,” he said, cocking his head just that much. “Want in?”
“What?”
“Marry me.”
She stared at him. The street in her told her to jump at the chance: no more wet bellies. She could see to it that Roxy’s was well taken care of – she could probably buy the place from Kaitlin. Hell, she could probably buy the block. She’d be set for life.
But she thought back to that twelve-year-old in her who believed in just knowing – and she just didn’t know.
“Why?” she asked. “Are you in love with me?”
“I love being with you.”
“Not the same thing.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t. But love is an emotion; emotions are situational. I’m talking practical.”
“What?”
“Vanessa,” he said, leaning over and taking her hand. “Last night, we had ice cream in the park. I haven’t done that in years, and it was so—so good. But, you see, the thing about me is that I have money. And when you have money there are a thousand, thousand people who either want some of that money, or they want to figure a way to make money off of you. And I’m sick of it.”
“I don’t understand,” Vanessa said.
He left her hand. He stirred his coffee and then sipped, never taking his eyes from hers.
“One way that people make money off of me,” Justin said, “is to take my picture. That girl in the club last night, the one with the camera?”
“Yeah.”
“Talia Lennon. She’s paparazzi. She makes her living selling pics to tabloids.”
“What? Are you also a rock star or a movie star?”
“No. But my face sells tabloids. See, I used to be something of a playboy. I enjoyed my wealth. I flaunted it; fast cars, hot dates. At first I enjoyed the publicity and the attention. But soon enough, with that came a lot of headaches. I couldn’t turn a corner without someone recognizing me, cornering me, and asking for investment money; everybody has an idea. Or trying to take my picture. And you wouldn’t believe the crap those rags would print about me. Honestly, they’d just make stuff up. I got sick of it. So I dropped out.”
“Hence,” Vanessa said, “the beard and the sunglasses.”
“Correct.”
“And so,” she said, pondering out loud, “how would marrying me help with the paparazzi?”
“Well, it would seriously change my image; no more playboy. I’d be a man in a loving and committed relationship, and that would be boring news.”
“So, this would be a marriage of convenience.”
“Really, aren’t all marriages?”
She wondered about that. She thought about her friends who had settled for the best man they could find, and as she thought that way, she began feeling the princess dream vaporizing. She didn’t want to think that way, so she turned the topic.
“But, why hang out at Roxy’s?”
“It gets me out. The coffee is good. I watch the world. But, I am starting to get tired of that too.”
“Sounds like attention deficit,” Vanessa said, grinning. “So, what’s to say that if I married you, you wouldn’t get tired of me?”
“Because,” he began, leaning in a little. “I am from a generation whose parents married mainly out of convenience. That was the post-war generation, and they were just happy to find someone who they could get along with, settle down, have a family, and build the American dream. Falling in love followed. It sort of grew around them. When my father passed away, I couldn’t believe how grief stricken my mother was. She followed him in less than a year.”
“So, you’re saying that, in time, we would grow in love.”
“I believe so,” he said. “Yes. Don’t get me wrong, I do like you. I enjoy your company very much. You make me laugh. And, let’s face it, you rock me in bed.”
Vanessa giggled. Then she thought a moment. Justin gave her her space. She thought again about the people she knew who had settled for what they could find in a marriage partner. And, after all, wasn’t that what the institution really was: a partnership?
“You’re not saying no,” he said, finally.
“No. I am not. But, it’s getting late. I need to get back to the diner.”
Bootsy and Collie said nothing as she strolled in later that morning, still wearing the clothes that she had the night before. Collie just grinned, and Bootsy smiled a warm smile. Vanessa changed into her work clothes.
That Sunday was slow. It was a lovely spring day, and everyone with half a brain would be out picnicking or barbecuing. She closed early. So, it was that evening, after they had cleaned and Bootsy and Collie had left, Josie sat, sweaty and wet, in Vanessa’s office waiting for his pay. They chatted about his school as she worked the books and counted his money. And as she did, Vanessa offhandedly complained about how tight things could get, wondering silently how her mother had needed to deal with the likes of Jake.
“You know,” Josie said, “that safe over there might get you some quick cash. I mean, if you was interested.”
“Say what?”
“That’s an old Rutgers Safe Company safe,” he answered. “Says right there: nineteen-fourteen. People collect those things. You could put it up on EBay.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Bet you could get five, six, maybe seven hundred bucks for that old thing.”
“How would you know?”
“My Uncle Jerry is in the locksmith business,” he said. “He was teaching me. Thought it would be a good trade. But then my grades started slipping, so my mother called a halt to that. But she says that I can go back
in the summer, if my grades are good enough.”
“My problem is,” she said, her head still in the ledger, “that I don’t know the combination. And, I figure that a safe without a combination is a pretty useless item.”
“Any safe can be opened,” Josie said, “as long as you know how.”
“You think that your uncle could open that?”
“Piece of cake. It’s an old tumbler thing. Bet it hasn’t been oiled in years. Bet a deaf man could hear them tumblers fall. Betcha even I could.”
“Bet?” she asked, still not looking up. “How much?”
“Ten bucks.”
Vanessa took two fives and lay them at the edge of the table. She heard him scurry to the safe. She stayed with her books. The figures worried her. Business had been slipping. Looking back, she saw the trend; with the nice weather, people just didn’t eat out much. It wasn’t until the heat and humidity of summer did things pick up again as people sought out air conditioning. She wondered about the state of the diner’s air. She started looking for maintenance payments. The dishwasher had been serviced twice, the garbage disposal once, the soda fountain had regular service, and—
“Piece of cake!” Josie cried.
Vanessa looked up. The boy worked the handle and the door opened. Beaming, Josie stood and snatched up the two fives.
“How…” Vanessa said, flabbergasted.
“I told you, a deaf man could hear that old thing. Quick, give me pen and paper before I forget the numbers.”
He wrote down the combination.
“Josie,” she said. “You are a wonder. Does your mother know that you have that kind of skill?”
The boy just shrugged.
“Well,” she said. “Mother’s Day is coming up soon. You just bring her in here for that day, and whatever she wants is on me. Oh, and you too.”
“Thanks, Ms. Vanessa.”
“Um, Josie, aren’t you curious? About what’s inside, I mean.”
“My uncle says that it’s not polite to snoop. It’s like the man who comes and fixes your refrigerator got no right to see what kind of food you got inside.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Very professional.”
She gave him his day’s wage, and tipped him another five. The boy left floating. As soon as he was gone, she locked up, shut the diner lights, and closed the door to the office. Then she knelt before the safe and opened the door. She found two large manila envelopes. One was marked simply J. It had a long list of dates with dollar amounts beside. It added up to almost ten thousand, and she realized that Ellen had been keeping up with her payments to Jake all the while the man was away.
She almost wept as she felt a flood of relief. She clutched the envelope to her breasts, and she could feel the individual bundles of cash bound neatly with paperclips. She set the thing gingerly aside, and took up the other.
It was addressed to her mother from L.F. Coates from Savannah, Georgia. Inside were two hundred dollars in small bills, and a photocopy of a diploma from the Atlantic Coast Baptist Theological Seminary, conferring on Louis Franklin Coates the degree of Master of Christian Counseling. She puzzled over that. Who was Louis Franklin Coates, and why had he sent her mother a copy of his seminary degree? And, why had her mother saved two hundred dollars in the envelope? Had she been planning on sending the man a gift, or had the man sent her the gift?
Vanessa tucked both envelopes back in the safe, then she had a second thought. She took them out, and shut the safe. She tried Josie’s combination, and when it really did work, she replaced the envelopes and locked them up.
She thought that she would sleep soundly that night, but she tossed a lot. She finally admitted to herself what was on her mind, and so she took up her phone and called Justin.
“Nothing,” she said as he asked what was up. “Just, you know, just wanted to talk…”
Monday afternoon they met in the park for a lunch of hot dogs and ice cream. Justin had on a pair of mirrored, cop-style sunglasses.
“Are you that paranoid?” she asked. “I mean, in the middle of a park on a Monday afternoon?”
“Habit,” he answered. “But yes.”
“So, how much do you think I could get if I told my story to the tabloids?”
“You’d need some kind of proof. Pics would do. Depending on how juicy you made it, you could probably count on five large.”
“Stop talking like the kids. It doesn’t work on you.”
“Five thousand,” he said. “But, if I were you, I’d claim I was pregnant. That would be worth another five.”
“Wouldn’t I have to prove that?”
“Naw, they got docs who’d say anything.”
“I don’t know,” she said as they fed their buns to the ducks. “You got to be worth more than that – oh, I know. I could say that you kept me as a sex slave. That you have a dungeon in your house in Chelsea, and that after you found out that I was preggers, you kicked me out, ordering me to get an abortion or you’d have me kidnapped and sold into a brothel in Mexico.”
“Make it Russia,” he said. “They’re in the news a lot these days.”
“Okay. So, listen, I know this little electronics shop that sells spy cameras. Why don’t you buy me one, then we can go back to your place and–”
“Why don’t we just go back to my place,” he said. “Save all that creativity for more worthy endeavors.”
“Okay.”
Wednesday morning, the breakfast rush was good. Despite the lovely weather, people still worked and they still liked their eggs and bacon. It was after ten before things got quiet enough for her to slip away and call Kaitlin. The woman was as bubbly as ever.
“Of course, Vanessa, darling,” she said so brightly. “I absolutely remember, and I just knew that you would call. So, what do you say that we have lunch here?”
“Lunch?” Vanessa said, thinking about the dish-room.
“This fellow I met at the Vanguard turned me onto the most excellent smoked salmon, real Kosher. Shall we say two?”
“Two,” Vanessa repeated, relieved.
“The doorman will be looking for you. Ciao, sugar.”
“Ciao.”
Her heart was in a flutter. She grabbed a cup of coffee, and found Collie and Bootsy sitting at their table with their own breakfasts.
“I’ll make you some eggs,” Bootsy said.
“I can’t eat,” Vanessa said. “I’m having lunch with Kaitlin Durkin.”
“Score!” Collie cried. “Finally. What are you going to wear?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. I’m more concerned with what I’m going to say.”
“You don’t have to say. You just have to be ready.”
“Huh?”
“Listen to your consigliore,” Bootsy said. “Sure you don’t want some eggs?”
“I’m sure. But, I have to approach the woman with—”
“No,” Collie said. “She will approach you. She’s had four days to figure out who you are, and trust me, a woman like her can figure out who you are. She will know what you want, and she will want something in return.”
“How will she know what I want?”
“Well, duh! She’s a player. She has lawyers. She has private dicks. She’s got you sessed out six sides to Sunday. She probably even knows about your gig in Seattle.”
“Of course she does,” Vanessa said. “I told her.”
“You play poker?”
“What? No.”
“It shows,” Collie said, sopping her yolk with her toast. “Anyway, like Bootsy said, listen to your consigliore. Ms. Durkin knows what you want, and she is going to want something in return.”
“Like what?”
“Dunno. She may want to make you a sex slave in her cat-house, or she may want a piece of the action here at Roxy’s. Whatever she wants, you are, in no way, to agree to anything without taking some time to think it through.”
“Look,” Vanessa said, “it may be probable that she�
�d want a piece of this place. But there is no way in hell that she’s going to—ow!”
“Language,” Bootsy said, slapping Vanessa upside the head. “Listen to Collie. It’s us at stake here too.”
“You do that,” Collie said, “because the worst offer she can make is to give you what you want, and say, ‘You just owe me one.’ That is death and disaster because you will never know what that favor will be, or when it will be.”
“This isn’t The Godfather,” Vanessa said, fuming.
Collie sat back, her boobs stretching her tee-shirt. Bootsy sipped her coffee, one eyebrow raised. Vanessa shook her head, looked away, and then looked back to Collie.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “What should I wear?”
“Black,” Collie said.
“You are in mourning,” Bootsy added.
Vanessa wore the skirt suit that she had worn to her mother’s funeral, with a white silk shell under the jacket. Kaitlin wore a business-style pant-suit – in pink.
Her office was on the top floor of the building and had windows with a view of the city skyline, the river glinting in the sun from one corner. The salmon was paper thin, and smoked to perfection. They sipped a bold Chablis as they chatted about Kelly Fadden and how the girl stormed the Vanguard.
“It’s funny,” Vanessa said as they chatted. “We think of places like the Vanguard almost with respect, thinking of all the names that came out of that place. And yet, here is another name; a rising star who people might someday look on with respect and awe, and then look at the Vanguard.”
“You have a mind that has perspective,” Kaitlin said. “You think about the big picture.”
“Politicians think about the big picture.”
“Or not,” Kaitlin said, chuckling.
“I knew that I liked you.”
Kaitlin wiped her hands and shoved away her plate. She sat back in her chair.
“So,” she said. “You spoke of mutual business. What might that be?”
Vanessa thought about Collie’s words.
“I think that you know,” she said.