Driving Me Wild

by Maria Benson

  “Ah yeah,” I said, “we should talk about her, Maxwell. You might not want to move too quickly in that direction.”

  I caught the hesitation in his voice. “Why would that be?”

  The people on each side of me must have wondered why I was grinning from ear to ear. “I’m too much of a gentleman to go into it over the phone. Remind me to fill you in when I get to the office.” I hung up quickly, glad to leave him in suspense.

  The rest of the morning was a blur. Aside from the new skills I was leveraging regularly to bed new girls and retain others, the day required an unprecedented level of acting on my part. The sudden replacement of a CFO can spur fear and loathing in employees across every major function, and my finance colleagues had it the worst. Given the inside track knowledge to which I was privy–Beverly and I hadn’t seen each other since our W New York escapade, but were in ongoing contact via text–I did what I could to assuage the fears of my most unjustly fearful colleagues while nodding in sympathy with those who were probably right to start overhauling their resumes.

  Knowing how close they were, I walked a fine line in comments to Maxwell and Kyle. I liked Kyle too much to let him torment himself needlessly; based primarily on my assurance, Bev knew he was an asset and had no intention of touching him. Her only hesitation about the IR team was with respect to Maxwell; she believed he had been a great talent for Star Studio’s years of prosperity, but wondered if he was up to the challenge of selling a company embarking on a painful turnaround path. “I would get a veteran hired hand in for a couple of years,” she had told me on the night we spent together, “but after that I could see you growing into the role, Michael.”

  Beverly reached me on my cell during my lunch hour, as I wrapped up a smokin’ hot text exchange with Olive from the fitness club. Seated at the back of a nearby Peet’s Coffee, slightly anxious about her expectations, I greeted Beverly with a teasing tone. “Madam CFO.”

  She chuckled, but when she spoke her tone was all business. “No one’s jumping off the building over there, are they?”

  I gave her a high-level run-down of the reactions I had observed. I wasn’t surprised that most of her questions centered around Maxwell; I figured she had moles in other areas of the company. With Maxwell’s and my help, she had built relationships with executives in just about every Star Studio department.

  Hopefully she didn’t know all of them as well as she now knew me.

  “Whatever you do for now,” she said a couple minutes later, “you remain the picture of loyalty to Maxwell. I’m going to wait a couple of weeks before cherry-picking you from his team. I’ll be sitting down with him and my other VPs in the meantime, having them put on the dog-and-pony show to justify their and their teams’ existence.”

  “Got it.”

  “I will see you on Thursday, Michael. Let’s get set to put a rocket under Star Studio’s engine.”

  Relieved that Beverly seemed to be all about business–and not drafting me into service as an ongoing “boy toy”–I cut lunch short and hoofed it back to work. My butt had barely hit my seat when Kyle knocked on my door. “Hey,” he said, sticking only his head across the threshold. “Got a second for a welcome distraction?”

  When I squinted as a sign of interest, he waved me toward the door. “Come on, check this out.”

  I followed him out into the small room housing the cubicles of Kyle and our two administrative assistants. Stepping into Kyle’s cubicle, I exchanged quick fist pops with two of his young friends, Alex from Treasury and Roy from Accounting Policy. “We all needed something to take our minds off the possible hell coming our way,” Kyle said, pointing at the remote monitor amplifying his laptop’s screen. “This is a help.”

  Alex, a former football lineman at Illinois who had narrowly missed being drafted into the NFL, was grinning ear to ear. “You gotta see this, Michael.”

  I took the seat Kyle offered me and slid toward the monitor as the young bucks flanked me on all sides. Onscreen was a feed from Fox Sports. I did a double take at the sight of the two women who sat chatting on a couch in a bright, contemporary studio.

  “Talk about a couple of fine pieces,” Roy said under his breath. I didn’t care for the workplace language, but at least he knew that Carrie and Samantha, our admins, were both away at lunch. “The one on the left, why does she look familiar to me?”

  Kyle chuckled. “I hate to admit it, but a beauty like that might even turn this married man’s head. You might have crossed paths with her, Alex. News reports say she’s from Chicago.”

  The delayed reaction finally hit me. “Holy–” Sitting there, opposite local sports personality Melanie Miller, was Aimee. My Aimee.

  CHAPTER 28

  Aimee

  My mother sounded like she was out of breath, she was so nervous. “I’m outside your building now,” she said as soon as I answered my cell. “Please hurry. I’m already getting funny looks from people who look like reporters.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I whispered into the phone as I stepped out of the elevator, head down. Wearing an old pair of glasses I had forgotten I even had until last week, a Cubs cap, and a “fat suit” sweat suit Sydney had long since retired, I tried to move fast without looking like I was running.

  In all the calculating I had done about my announcement, I had never completely thought through the possibility of having my condo building staked out by empty-headed journalists. While I knew that outing myself as the mistress of a sports commissioner would put me in multiple cross-hairs, I had still figured most reporters would have better things to do with their days than to physically stalk me. Shouldn’t they be reserving stakeouts for the latest pro caught using performance-enhancing drugs, abusing his girlfriend or otherwise breaking the law?

  I forced myself to raise my head, my gaze as nonchalant as possible, as I passed through the couple of dozen press and cameramen milling just outside. I actually passed behind one tall blonde who stood before a running camera. “That’s right, Stone, I’m here outside the apartment building of Aimee Chase, Ian Wallace’s mistress. Chase has said she had to come forward in order to dispute the abuse allegations against her boyfriend, but personally I have a question if I can catch her this morning. As a former colleague of Nadine Wallace, I’m wondering whether she even considered the feelings of Mr. Wallace’s family . . .”

  No, genius, I answered telepathically. That never even crossed my mind.

  My mother leaned forward and exhaled aggressively as I settled into the passenger seat of her 2002 Toyota Corolla. “It’s about time, honey.” She glanced past me back toward the sidewalk. “I was so sure one of them was going to ask me if I was your mother–”

  “Mom, calm down.” I kept my eyes straight ahead, gave a false smile just in case anyone was watching. “Just drive, please.”

  She gripped the steering wheel, her breath filling the car with the smell of milk and stale coffee. “I’m just so, I just–this–”

  My heart fluttered with guilt, but I placed a hand to one of hers and bit my lower lip. “Driving was your idea.” I would just as soon have walked out in my little costume and taken the train to meet Mom today, but she had insisted on driving me. We both endured my mother’s choppy, jerky driving for several blocks before I punctured the silence. “I am really sorry.”

  Only when she had stopped at a red light did she venture a look in my direction. “What for?”

  I patted her thigh and stared back. “I didn’t foresee the impact this would have on you,” I replied. “I was so focused on trying to help Ian and take control of the situation.” In my interview with Mel Miller, I had come clean about my affair with Ian, and defended him as a complete gentleman. I had resisted my most vengeful motivations, but had been a little less charitable in responding to Mel’s questions about my time working for Todd.

  Driving through the intersection, Mom kept her eyes on the road as she interrupted. “So this was about revenge?”

  “No,” I said. “
It was about empowerment, about refusing to cower in the shadows. I figured, after winding up unemployed, what was I protecting by hiding in a corner and hoping that the media wouldn’t eventually figure out my identity? That just felt weak to me. This course let me reveal myself on my own terms and directly contradict Watkins’ ridiculous accusations about Ian and me.”

  My mother nodded, a bombed-out look in her eyes. “You sure had yourself sold on this. Even if you had bounced things off me, I doubt I could have talked you out of it.”

  “I should have told you first,” I said, crossing my arms in the face of a sudden wave of shame. I didn’t regret my decision, but my mother had deserved to hear everything from me before the rest of the world. I had been on the fence about this point all along, but her wounded aura made me fear that I had permanently damaged our relationship.

  My mother didn’t acknowledge me again until she had pulled into the parking lot of my father’s Evanston office building. As we each climbed from the Corolla and exchanged wary gazes over the low-sitting vehicle, she stared with pleading eyes. “Aimee, I almost decided against setting up this meeting with Dustin, but I think it’s the right thing to do. Believe it or not, he’s worried about you.”

  I leaned against the car for a second, fighting back tears at the look in Mom’s eyes. “Really?”

  “I do think you should apologize to him as quickly as possible. Let’s at least get that in before he starts levying his judgment on . . . all this.”

  I straightened up, cleared my throat. “Mom, I’ll keep a positive tone with him but that’s the best I can do.” I had no clue what I was in for once Dustin got going on my newfound notoriety. I had an especially bad feeling that, given the monthly checks he was now writing to help Mom, he would feel more entitled than ever to serve as my judge and jury.

  We held hands and spoke in near-whispers as we entered the building’s lobby, signed in with the guard and took the elevator to the fourth floor. My father’s office, a retro-fitted former conference room, was at the north end of the hallway. Dustin had owned this little office, which he used as a guaranteed “safe space” in which to work on his novels, for at least two decades. Most of the times I had been summoned to receive his selectively doled-out child support, this place had been the destination.

  He answered on my first knock at the door of “Fineman and Associates,” clearly named to lure people into thinking it was an insignificant law firm. As he pulled the door back, his eyes flashed coolly and he welcomed us in with a lazy sweep of one arm. “Good morning.”

  We stepped into the smaller of the two rooms, which was set up as a receptionist’s office. The space was equipped with a small cherry wood desk and two vintage-style mahogany framed sofas decked out in what looked like distressed blue leather. Every time I visited the office furniture was different, usually as a result of the latest gift from Dustin’s longtime literary agent, who was a connoisseur of antique furniture and did upholstery as a hobby.

  Dustin extinguished two sticks of burning incense, then waved us onto the nearest sofa before resting his backside on the desk facing us. “Well,” he said, hands on his knees, “I guess there are two celebrities in this room now.”

  I nodded, a nervous smile on my lips, and elbowed Mom in hopes of lightening her mood. “Dustin, I hope you got my messages. What I did to you at your book signing, it was just wrong.”

  He tapped absent-mindedly at the forearm into which I had sunk my nail file. “Damn right. That cheap shot about Roth was unforgivable.”

  My mother peered up at Dustin. “Will you please be serious?”

  He gave her a blank stare, then swung back to me. “I know, Aimee. You and I, we made real fools of ourselves that day.”

  I blinked at the equanimity of his phrasing, but barreled forward to honor my promise to Mom. “I started it. I had no right to swing on you, no matter how mad I was. Fact is, I instigated the confrontation by showing up at your signing when I could have just called you.”

  Dustin cracked his knuckles, then returned his hands to rest against each knee. “You’re a strong woman. I should have expected nothing less. You have your mother’s work ethic plus my wit and unhealthy self-confidence. Something like this was bound to happen.” He made a show of fondling the injured forearm again, not that I could see anything beneath the sleeve of his silk sport shirt. “Since I’m not an arm model or anything, and the wound was addressable with my driver Jackie’s first aid kit, I saw no reason to hold it over your head.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Hmm, did you think about communicating that by returning any one of my voice mails?”

  Ignoring the question, he crossed his legs. “You don’t love him, do you? That would be the most worrisome aspect of all this.”

  I cocked my head sideways, the question sincere. “How does someone who doesn’t know what a word means, ask someone else if they feel it?”

  Dustin exchanged glances with Mom, a smile in his eyes. “Touché. I will simplify: Do you expect him to leave his family for you?”

  “Oh please.” I expelled a hearty laugh while glancing between the both of them. “After all I’ve seen pass between you two, how could I be stupid enough to look for true love with a married man?”

  My father crossed his arms. “I have to say, based on life experience, my bias is to wonder how Mr. Wallace felt as he saw you light yourself–and him by extension–on fire.”

  “Ian hated the idea at first,” I said, removing my old glasses and the Cubs cap. “By the time I got him to admit that the abuse allegations were days away from costing him his job, he got on board.”

  My father frowned. “Mrs. Wallace apparently has a higher threshold for humiliation than the women in my life.”

  I shrugged. “Nadine has pretty much seen it all when it comes to examining others’ lives. She already knew about me and Ian. She was initially the other woman, okay? She just married him first. I can assure you, her only concern with all this is making sure Ian keeps his job.”

  My mother shook her head, sighed. “These people live in a different world.”

  “Pretty much. My coming out extinguished all of the abuse talk. The roaches that spread those lies aren’t coming back.” By taking myself off the table as a weapon for his use, I had exposed Ray Watkins, Ian’s accuser, as an emperor with no clothes. It turned out he had no corroborating witnesses who had ever seen or heard Ian engage in emotionally or physically abusive behavior. When the loser called Ian’s general counsel offering to go away for ten percent of his initial asking price, he was told to expect a subpoena for the charges the league had in store for him.

  When I confirmed Dustin’s suspicion that Ian’s job was safe now that his was a simple adultery scandal, he began a slow clap. ”Bravo,” he said, standing. “You have saved the job of one of the most powerful CEOs in private enterprise.” He peered down, his expression somewhere between amusement and pity. “What do you get out of it, exactly?”

  Mom stood as I chewed over my response. “Dustin,” she said, catching him off guard by taking both of his hands in her much smaller ones, “Aimee has actually thought this entire set of actions through. It’s not what I would have counseled, mind you, but she didn’t make her decisions lightly.” She patted his hands, then released them as she looked between the two of us. “Let’s all show one another mutual respect, okay?”

  Dustin took a step back, hands in the air. “Pardon me if I’m just a little confused,” he said. “I know she doesn’t want advice from me, but where does she think this leads?” He looked over at me. “Have you read up on Monica Lewinsky lately? V. Stiviano? I mean, Jesus, it’s hard to even name most of these ‘mistresses.’ They wind up as footnotes or pariahs.”

  I kept my calm, vacuuming emotion from my voice as I explained modern-day social media morals to my father. Aside from having committed my indiscretions with a famous, powerful man, I hadn’t confessed to anything not featured in millions of social media feeds and sexts. “Am I going to be
in demand as a full-time employee of a Fortune 500 company?” I shrugged. “No, but that was already the case once Todd Terry fired me. I’ve got to figure out how to make money as a self-employed person, and while I didn’t really see it coming, what I’ve done may be opening some new doors. I’m kind of stunned, but most honest women out there seem to relate to getting caught up in a regrettable relationship, to falling for the wrong guy over and over.”

  Mom smiled despite herself. “Don’t I know about that.”

  My father grunted. “So these women are going to, what, look up to you?”

  “There’s a lot of pain, a lot of shame, out there,” I said. I sat up straight, leaned forward. “The emails and texts just keep coming; I’ve received hundreds since arriving here. I may not have inherited your fiction writing skills, Dustin, but I’ve always had a knack for interpersonal communication. It helped propel my career at ESPN, it helped me win the confidence of major personalities like Todd, and it helped me ghostwrite books for him that hit bestsellers lists.” Against my better judgment, I told my parents about Sarah Lott and the way she had previously encouraged me to use my communication skills to help women with relationship and self-esteem problems.

  Dustin gave a wry smile. “So it looks like your newfound infamy can actually help you monetize your skills, eh?”

  “That sounds a little crass, but a girl does have to eat. I don’t imagine you want to cut into your real daughters’ inheritance to support me?”

  That earned me a blank stare. “How exactly will you convert your infamy into dollars? You making a pilgrimage to meet with those Kardashian whores?”

  I ignored his insinuation, explaining instead for my mother’s benefit that I already had unsolicited calls coming in from speakers bureaus and literary agents. “While I figure out how to best share what I’ve done to get better insight into my own behavior,” I explained, “I’ll probably go ahead and do a few blogger interviews. They really throw the cash around–”