by Holly Rayner
“It would explain the delay, though,” she mumbled, just as a tall gentleman came into the room.
“Good evening,” he boomed, in a strong Greek accent. “I apologize for making you wait.”
Kally started at the sound, shaking the proffered hand automatically as she collected herself. “No problem at all,” she replied, hoping she sounded genial.
The gentleman eased into the seat across from her. Kally looked at him properly for the first time, and when she did, her chest tightened like a vise.
The man before her had deep brown eyes, a strong jaw, and chiseled cheekbones. His short dark hair fell in unruly waves, and his full beard was neatly trimmed. He had a forlorn look about him, somewhere in the eyes, that he was hiding behind a boisterous smile. Kally was hiding something too: shock, and revulsion. The man sitting across from her had very nearly ruined her life.
“My name is Alexandros Stratos,” he began warmly. “Um…perhaps you have heard of me?” he faltered, catching sight of her face.
Kally forced her features back into her plastic smile, and politely shook her head to indicate that she hadn’t. “I’ve heard your company mentioned before, but I’ve always been a bit vague about what it actually does,” she lied.
“Ah,” he replied, his smile returning slowly. “I thought…but I must apologize for all the secrecy,” he said abruptly. “It can be annoying, I know that more than anyone, but I find it’s necessary in my line of work. I suppose your agent has told you why we’re here today?”
We’re here because you killed my job, you rat bastard, Kally thought furiously.
“Very little,” she said, “I’m told you would like me to assist you in writing a memoir?”
“Yes, of my youth in Kaminos, and the man I have become.”
A heartless son of a bitch who destroys people’s lives without a second thought.
“Kaminos? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”
“It’s a small town on the island of Lemnos. I hope you will agree to help me make it more famous.”
It seemed as though he meant for this to sound jovial, but what came out was a wistfulness that momentarily broke through Kally’s hatred.
“It’s a beautiful place, Ms. Jones. Before my grandfather died, he used to take me to the River Kalikos, and we’d go fishing. My father never approved,” he said, his tone darkening slightly, “but my grandfather believed I needed to know something of the old ways.” His eyes were full of nostalgia as he spoke, and he barely noticed when the waiter returned with more wine.
This was not the brash arrogance Kally had expected from the man who had taken away her career. Something in his tone tugged at her journalistic instincts, the words “deeper story” flashing in her mind like a neon sign.
Questions lined up in her mind, and Kally had just parted her lips, wanting to probe deeper and satisfy her curiosity, when her mind showed her the teary, blue eyes of Beth Matthews, the woman who had been her closest friend. Beth hadn’t even spoken when she’d heard the news. She’d simply broken into a bout of quiet sobs. She had just come from the break room, where she had been nursing her four-month-old son. The expression on her face had been completely devoid of hope. Kally glared at the creature that sat across from her. Was she really about to allow herself to work for the man who had thrown her best friend and her child out into the cold?
You have no choice, Kally reminded herself testily. You either work for this asshole and pay rent this month, or end up in the street. If she didn’t earn some money soon, Kally would have to go back home to her parents'. She couldn’t allow herself to do that. Not even for Beth. She would never forgive herself if she allowed life to force her to surrender, if she allowed herself to admit that she had been beaten. So she gritted her teeth behind her false smile.
“Let’s have a few particulars,” she said in her most businesslike voice. “What did your grandfather do for a living?”
“When he was young, he was a farmer. Wheat, barley and figs. It was difficult work, but he always managed, somehow. There is no motivation like family, he always said, except trying to keep yours from starving. There was never very much, and most of whatever there was ending up being taken from him. He had seven children, and most of them managed the scarcity, but my father…my father hated him for it. My father left home as soon as he could, and went to work on the oil rigs offshore. He was so young he had to lie about his age, but he was determined to take care of himself.”
“I take it your father was a difficult man?” Kally remarked, noting the slight tightening of her client’s lips and face as he spoke about him.
“More than difficult, he was impossible,” Alexandros replied, allowing all pretense of gaiety to slide from his face. “The rigs are inhospitable, and sometimes deadly. No one can spend their youth there and come out whole. He was a cold and bitter man, with a calculating mind. He was used to being obeyed on the instant. He believed in success, hard work, and nothing else. When he founded the Kerzoil Petroleum Company, it became all he cared about in the world.”
“I’m sure that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Kally remarked.
“It really isn’t. He only met my mother because she was his accountant. He married her knowing she would pass on her intelligence and tenacity to his successors. The only reason I am talking to you right now is because he reasoned that having multiple heirs is a better strategy than relying on just one. I actually wanted to be an athlete when I was very young.”
“Like Dmitri Liourdis?” she interjected, surprised at her sudden level of interest.
“That’s right,” Stratos replied, and his smile tried to flare back into being. “My father laughed at that idea and said that he would not support an idiot. He told me I had two choices while I lived with him: get a job in oil or get out of his house. I had no choice.”
Kally’s had to admit to herself that Alexandros was showing himself to be more than the one-dimensional villain she had imagined. When he had spoken of his grandfather, a look of longing had crossed his face, as if the man had been the only bright spot of his childhood. Ever since she had mentioned Liourdis, his lips had been struggling to form a smile. Here was a billionaire, sitting in one of New York’s fanciest restaurants, and she couldn’t help thinking that all he really seemed to want was to be fishing by a river in Greece.
She looked at him again, and he seemed to be lost in his thoughts. He was looking in her direction, but it was clear he wasn’t seeing her. His eyes were full of a heavy sadness she had not seen there before, and she noticed, in spite of herself, that her client was extremely handsome.
“And so your father sent you to work on the oil rigs?” she asked, banishing that thought from her mind at once. I have enough problems as it is, she thought bitterly.
Alexandros slowly shook his head. “He needed me to be prepared to run his company in case my older brother couldn’t handle the responsibility. There are things one needs to know in order to run a business that cannot be learned on an oil rig. So he sent me to university on the mainland. The Apolinar Institute of the Petrochemical and Gas Industry. I graduated with honors, and soon after that I found work managing a drilling platform in the Aegean Sea.
“I was twenty-two then, and I figured I knew everything. I was convinced that the hardest part of my life was over. Sure, I now had to worry about drills, flow lines, desalinators, and being responsible for a large crew, but I thought all of that seemed easier than dealing with my father. Of course, that was until the rig exploded.”
“Exploded?” Kally sputtered; he had said it casually, almost as if he'd been ordering wine.
“Yes, Ms. Jones. I had read about things like that happening, but I hadn’t expected to experience it so early in my career. There was a huge spill that lasted more than a week, and three men were killed. The injuries were staggering. When it happened I was blown into the water, and for a few seconds, I had no idea where I was. Nearly drowning fixed that right away.” His smile returned, f
ollowed by mirthful laughter. “I am a strong swimmer, fortunately, thanks to my grandfather, so I managed to pull myself and another worker into one of the rescue boats.”
“That’s one hell of an introduction to your industry,” remarked Kally, impressed despite herself. It’s no wonder you want to write a memoir, with stories like that.”
“Those are not the only stories I want to tell,” returned Alexandros. “I’ve made mistakes and…unfortunate decisions in my time, and I want to make a record of all of them. I want to lay everything I have done before the world. My plan for this project is to have you conduct a series of interviews and compile the material you receive with additional records which I will provide. Then my people will conduct a review and address any legal bother that might arise. But for now, the entire thing is in your hands, Ms. Jones. Will you accept the project?”
Kally fought to keep up her poker face. Hearing the closure of her former employer being described as an “unfortunate decision”, what she really wanted to do was tell him where he could shove his project. On the other hand, though, his story intrigued her, and in his own way, he had been very charming. Though she fought it with all her might, she couldn’t help sympathizing with him just a little.
He had been forced into one career just as she was now being forced into another, and if the rest of his story was anything like those first few weeks on the oil platform, the book was sure to become a bestseller. Kally knew she should have felt eager to turn her fortunes around, to finally make a name for herself as she had planned to. But she just couldn’t forgive what Alexandros had done.
At the same time, she was thinking of everything she had suffered through since her job was taken from her; being rejected over and over again; her home, her identity, the place she had poured her soul into having been snatched away. She’d been uprooted from her hometown, from her friends, and everything she knew. God only knew who was helping Beth and her family while she struggled to pay the rent. Kally was suddenly overcome with a desire to slap the Greek as hard as she could, and march right out of the restaurant’s doors.
“I’d be happy to,” she lied through gritted teeth. “When would you be available for the first interview?”
“I have an opening tomorrow at noon,” Alexandros replied, sounding boisterous once more. “But we have been here all this time; I've asked the management to close to the public and yet we haven't ordered anything to eat. I’ll call in the waiter and we can celebrate the beginning of our new project before I return to…”
“Thank you, but no,” Kally interjected quickly, realizing that The Three Rivers must be yet another of Alexandros' myriad assets. “I’m afraid I must get back right away. I have several matters I must attend to.”
“Well, that is unfortunate, Ms. Jones, but I must thank you for taking on this task. I will see you tomorrow then, at my offices.” He handed her a business card, which bore the address, along with his phone number and email, and Kally left the table.
“You fit into me like a hook into an eye,” she mumbled. “A fish hook. An open eye.” Kally hadn’t heard that Margaret Atwood poem since her literature classes, but it perfectly articulated how she felt about the man she had just abandoned. Fighting to master herself, she quietly slipped down the stairs, and emerged into the open once more. The moon shone valiantly around the skyscrapers, but she felt slightly unclean, as if a thin, slimy, film had settled invisibly on her shoulders.
I do not sip tea with the enemy! she thought bitterly. She might have to work for the man, but there was no way she was socializing with him. Between his looks and his story, she could already feel an attraction building, and she was determined to strangle it as thoroughly as if it had been a venomous snake.
THREE
Kally headed towards the subway, resolving to keep her focus, and marshaling her thoughts away from the Greek billionaire. She weaved through several pockets of subway riders, keeping alert. The suit she was wearing had cost close to six hundred dollars and she didn’t want to attract any attention to herself. She still didn’t feel comfortable navigating New York’s subway system, but in her city, a car was about as useful as a canoe in the Gobi desert. Kally hopped on a train, tried to ignore her apprehension, and leaped off twenty minutes later, relieved to be home.
She placed her hand on the handle to her building’s front door, already imagining a shower, dinner, and bed. The second her fingers made contact, however, her phone began to ring.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she groaned. Kally gave her pocketbook an evil look. Only one person would call her at this hour. She ignored the ringing until it finally stopped, but just a few seconds later, it started up again. She’s not gonna stop till I answer her, Kally thought.
She dug her phone out of her purse and, sure enough, it was Layla calling. “This had better be good,” Kally mumbled to herself before answering the phone with a voice of mock cheer.
“You’re not going to believe this, Kally,” Layla began excitedly, not even stopping to say acknowledge Kally's greeting. “I’ve got another potential client for you. He wants to meet with you right away.”
“Right away? You have to be kid…I appreciate you letting me know, Layla, but it’s nearly midnight,” she sighed. She had regularly worked past midnight back at the Republic, but that had been because news can happen at any moment, and when it does, it waits for no one. This, on the other hand, was a writing assignment. What on earth did someone want her to do that couldn’t wait for a more reasonable hour? “See if you can schedule him for sometime tomor…”
“He says tomorrow will be too late for his purposes. He’s offering good money for it, and it would really be to everyone’s advantage if you at least heard him out.”
“How much is he offering?” Kally asked, sighing, and Layla went on to name a sum that made her eyes water.
“Okay, so you've piqued my interest. What’s his name?”
“I’m not permitted to tell you that. Or anything else except the location. It’s Big Tony’s.”
“In Manhattan?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes, Kally. In Manhattan,” Layla replied, sounding nettled.
“You’re asking me to go to Manhattan at midnight to meet a stranger in a diner? Again? When the hell did my life become Mission: Impossible?”
“I don’t know, but this client has a great deal of influence in government and the private sector. It’s inconvenient, I know, but it's perfectly safe. This is not an opportunity I would pass up, Kally. Connections like these could springboard your writing career…”
“Alright, alright. You can stop selling it. I’m going. This is the weirdest day I’ve ever had,” she muttered, more to herself than Layla. She very reluctantly marched back to the subway, hanging up with her agent as she did so.
The train was emptier than usual, and Kally was counting down the seconds until she got home. A short, grizzled old man, clearly drunk, was very loudly holding court at the end of her car. His scraggly, white beard and diminutive size made it look like his last employer was Thorin and Company. Kally was doing her best to ignore him, as well as the guy who was carrying a dollar store in his trench coat. Two women her age were talking animatedly about nothing, while a guy two rows away was making a valiant effort to flirt with her. She stared at this last murderously, and he deflated visibly, keeping his seat. Right then, Alexandros was the furthest thing from her mind. Kally only wanted to get to Manhattan and deal with her unknown summoner as quickly as possible.
***
Half an hour later Kally arrived outside of Big Tony’s, a place about as different from The Three Rivers as it was possible to be.
The diner was a small building with a simple welcome mat and glass doors that bore steel handles. It had no vestibule to speak of, but it did have many elegantly-decorated, round tables. A soft jazz instrumental wafted through the intimately-lighted space, and pictures of famous places in New York brightened the walls.
In the center of the
room, there was a bar, and standing behind it, Kally saw a well-built man whom she recognized instantly. He looked like a tall football player in a coal-black suit. He had a strong, square jaw and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. The dark auburn hair on his head was slicked back. When he saw Kally, he flashed a pearly white, movie star smile.
“Care for a drink, ma’am?” he asked casually, with a Texan twang, waving the glass of bourbon he’d been nursing.
“I’m guessing you’re the client I'm here to see, Mr. Lewis,” Kally replied, taking a seat at the bar and ordering a rum and coke. “Still no comment on the insider trading scandal?” she asked with a touch of sarcasm.
“Still no comment on the insider trading scandal,” Don replied with an easy laugh. “Sorry to call ya out here so late,” he continued, handing over her drink, “but what I wanna propose really can’t wait till morning. Sure I had to lie to get you out here, but I think you’ll agree it was worth the trouble.”