“And why’s that?” Ari pressed.
Wesley looked around. “Where do kids play?”
“There are plenty of parks,” Dana explained. “And a great big one right in the middle of the city. But your point is well taken—it’s mostly a playground for grown-ups.”
“Harper lives in Roslyn,” Wesley said.
“Is that your best friend?” Dana asked.
“She has red hair and she has a popcorn machine.”
“Is she single?” Ari said.
They continued walking up Fifth Avenue, occasionally swinging Wesley forward by his arms. He cried “More!” every time, but they had to wait for a break in the pedestrian traffic before they could accommodate him.
At last, they reached the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel, and Wesley was intrigued.
“Can I make a wish?” he asked.
Ari dug into his pocket, pulled out a penny and handed it to the boy. Wesley closed his eyes tight, waited a beat and threw his coin overhand into the water.
“What did you wish for?” Dana asked.
“Brownies with frosting.”
“That’s a good wish,” she said.
Ari pressed a penny into Dana’s palm. “Your turn.”
She closed her eyes, and faced the dilemma that always presented itself when she had the opportunity to wish. What were the rules? Could you wish for more than one thing, or was that cheating?
At last, she decided it was probably okay to break the single-wish rule, and came up with a list that included her career and Ari’s, their happily-ever-after, a healthy baby for her sister, and more. She could have gone on, but sensed that Ari and Wesley were anxiously waiting for her to finish, so Dana tossed her penny into the fountain.
“What did you wish for, Aunt Dana?” Wesley asked.
“Brownies with chocolate chips,” she said.
Ari fished another coin from his pocket and threw it so quickly it looked like he was trying to nail a runner at first base.
Dana laughed. “A man who knows what he wants.”
He stared at her so pointedly she knew his wish had been about her. She felt like her heart might melt out of her body and dribble into her shoes. She took his hand.
“Thank you for not making it weird in there when we talked about the apartment,” she said.
“Your father has that market cornered.”
“I’m glad we can talk about it,” she said, “because I’m going to have to get busy soon—buying furniture and hiring movers. If I had to do all that in secret—”
“Why don’t we do it together?” he said.
Dana took a sharp breath, trying to keep a shiver of hope from spreading too far. “What are you saying?” she asked, examining his face.
“I’m saying let’s do this, even if the promotion doesn’t come through.”
“Are you serious?”
“Think of all the chances I’ll get to make you feel guilty for keeping me out of the loop. How can I pass that up?”
“Oh, Ari!” she said, and threw her arms around him.
“What’s going on, you guys?” Wesley asked.
“I just got my wish,” Dana said.
“You said you wished for brownies,” the boy insisted.
Dana assured Wesley they could pick some up on their way back, and the three of them headed downtown, making a brief side trip to a bakery Ari knew on East Fifty-Sixth Street. Wesley was thrilled they had frosted brownies, but chagrined to learn they had no chocolate chips.
“What about your wish?” he said to his aunt.
Ari assured him he would get Aunt Dana all the chocolate chip brownies she wanted.
When they got back to the apartment, Dana was eager to salvage this difficult visit by telling her father that Ari would be moving in with her after all. First, though, she checked in with her sister.
“Everything okay?” she asked, cryptically.
Chelsea rested a hand on her stomach. “Mission accomplished.”
Jennifer cozied up to the sisters and whispered to Dana, “We’re so happy for them...and for us!”
“Guess what?” Wesley announced to the group. “We made wishes and mine came true!”
“Yup,” Dana said, pointing to the box Wesley held. “We got brownies.”
Wesley opened the box and made sure all the grown-ups got to see what was inside. They made appropriately enthusiastic noises over the chocolatey dessert.
“Only Aunt Dana didn’t get her wish yet,” Wesley announced.
“Oh, I got one of them,” she said, and turned to her father. “We talked about it, and Ari’s going to be moving in with me after all.”
She waited expectantly for her father’s reaction. He nodded but didn’t look up at her, as he was still staring into the box of brownies. “No nuts?” he said.
20
That night, before Ari and Dana went to sleep in her tiny, soon-to-be-former apartment, she turned on the small lamp by the bed and spent an hour studying her script. By the time she was done, Ari was locked in the deep breathing of sleep. She set the pages aside, clicked off the lamp and picked up her phone for one last look at her email. A message from Sherry gave her a jolt. The subject line: Urgent. She opened it to see that Charles Honeycutt had been cc-ed. The message read: Meeting tomorrow morning in conference room 3 at 9:15. Your attendance is required.
“Uh-oh,” Dana whispered.
Ari stirred. “What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
He turned toward her. “It’s okay. I was up.”
She leaned over and kissed his forehead. This guy. It was moments like this that made Dana wonder why she had spent so many years falling for selfish men.
“I think I’m in some deep shit at work,” she said.
“Over what?”
“I don’t know,” Dana said, and she meant it, though she suspected it had something to do with the after-hours visit to Ivan’s office. She just couldn’t understand how they had found out. Still, this wasn’t something she could discuss with Ari, so she told him to go back to sleep. Then she sent a text to Megan to explain what had happened, and they arranged to meet up at the office so that her friend and manager could help get her out of whatever trouble she was in.
Dana put down her phone and went to sleep. Or tried to. After tossing and turning for an hour, going back and forth on whether she should do something to mellow her—like pour a glass of wine or take a hit off a joint—she finally opted for the latter. She went into the living room area so she wouldn’t wake Ari again. But about a minute after she lit the joint, he was standing in the doorway, shirtless in the doggy print pajama pants she had bought him.
“You alright?” he asked, because he knew she wouldn’t be sitting up at the tiny bistro table where she ate her meals, holding a lungful of smoke deep in her chest, if she wasn’t in dire need of chilling out.
She exhaled. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Nasty habit,” he said, walking toward her.
It was an inside joke. As a cop, he gave lip service to the notion that it was still an illegal substance, while reminding Dana that he was murder police, not a narc.
She caught his drift and passed him the joint. He took two quick tokes and handed it back. As she was snuffing it out in the ashtray, he ran his hand down her shoulder and she understood that signal, too. He had an idea that would help both of them relax.
* * *
The next morning, Dana met Megan in her dressing room, where they had a hushed discussion before going upstairs. They needed to decide what they would say if confronted with evidence about sneaking into Ivan’s office.
“I think we should go with Jamie’s suggestion,” Megan said, as she sipped a Starbucks coffee. She had brought one for Dana, too. “We’ll just insist he was deep i
n grief and wanted a certain memento from his father’s office.”
“Might be more believable if we bring his mom into it,” Dana said. “Maybe we can say he needed something to help with her grief.”
Megan nodded as she thought about it. “That’s closer to the truth.”
Dana studied her friend’s face. She looked uneasy, and Dana wondered if she was troubled that Jamie wasn’t wracked with grief. After all, their relationship was moving forward at the warp speed of a summer camp romance, and Megan could be second-guessing herself.
“I get the sense his father’s death hasn’t really hit him,” Dana said. It was meant to be comforting, and also provide an opening in case Megan wanted to talk about it.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever shed a tear for that man,” she said. “He’s so angry with him.”
“It’s still his father,” Dana said. “Sooner or later, he’s going to feel it.”
Megan shrugged. “I don’t think he can forgive him for cheating on Blair. He’s very protective of her.”
Dana thought back to when her mother’s sister died in a car accident. It was a terrible shock. And yes, her mother cried, but all her sorrow was directed toward Aunt Joan’s sons. Those poor children, she kept saying. My heart. And even though Dana was only thirteen at the time, she understood that her mother needed to focus on the children’s grief because her own was too much to bear.
“Maybe,” Dana said. “But I think sometimes it’s just easier to focus on someone else’s pain than your own, you know?”
“He doesn’t often vent,” Megan said. “I think he’s holding it all in and will let loose once he knows who murdered his father.” She put her coffee down, finished with the discussion. “I think it’s time to go upstairs. You all set on our story?”
Dana hesitated. “What if they ask why Jamie’s request was such an emergency that it couldn’t wait until normal business hours?”
Megan swept away the concern, indicating she had already thought of that. “We’ll attribute it to your soft heart. You can say Jamie was beside himself with grief and you couldn’t disappoint him.”
“You think they’ll buy that?”
“Got any better ideas?” Megan said.
Dana thought about it for a minute, and realized it was their best option. She hoped it would work, because telling the truth would be a disaster—professionally and personally. She closed her eyes and took several cleansing breaths as she tried to concentrate.
“What are you doing?” Megan asked.
“Getting into character.”
Megan didn’t scoff. She had been an actor, too, and understood that everyone had their process. She gave Dana a few quiet minutes, and by the time they got to the elevator, Dana had practically convinced herself the story was true.
Conference room 3 was like a smaller version of the space where Dana had performed for the board of directors. And walking in, she got the same foreboding vibe—only instead of a group of powerful strangers prepared to decide the fate of the whole company, there was one underweight woman prepared to decide of fate of Dana Barry.
Sherry Zidel was in one of the black leather swivel chairs, legs tightly crossed, arms folded over her print blouse. She looked down at her watch as if they were late, and Dana glanced at the large wall clock. They were five minutes early.
“Have a seat,” Sherry said.
“Will Charles Honeycutt be joining us?” Megan asked, as she and Dana pulled out chairs and sat, their backs to the door.
“Soon.”
Megan got right to business. “What is this meeting about?”
Sherry cleared her throat self-consciously. “I didn’t know Dana was bringing representation.”
It wasn’t like Sherry to be uncomfortable, and that set off alarm bells. Why was the prickly supervising producer so unnerved?
Whatever it is, Dana coached herself, you can deal with it. Besides, you have a contract. And Megan. She slowed her breathing. She knew she could sell the lie if she wasn’t nervous or defensive. She had to own it.
“You said it was urgent,” Megan said, “so here I am. Tell us what’s going on.”
Sherry cleared her throat again. Recrossed her legs. Dana felt like she was looking at a seat full of sharp angles. Bony shoulders, bony elbows, bony knees. It was as if any part of her could impale her opponent.
“I was forced to tell Charles that Ivan had relieved me of the responsibility of approving any extracurricular opportunities for Dana,” she announced.
Dana’s face flushed hot. This wasn’t what she had expected—it was worse. It meant Sherry had spilled the beans on Kayla Bean, Dana’s Sweat City alter ego. How could she! Dana felt sick. She closed her eyes and could practically smell the dusty stage of her precious theater, feel the electricity of opening night. She thought of her friends in the group, and how much she loved each one. And now Sherry would be telling her she had to abandon them. To abandon all of it.
“What do you mean you were ‘forced to’?” she seethed.
“Goddamn it, Sherry,” Megan said. “We discussed this. What, exactly, did you tell him?”
“What did you expect me to do?” Sherry said, standing. “Put my fucking job on the line? Charles and I had a meeting about all the loose odds and ends Ivan left behind, and I had to tell him. Otherwise, I would have been the one in deep shit.”
“Would it have killed you to keep your mouth shut?” Dana asked. This wasn’t just anger, it was righteous indignation.
Sherry pointed at Dana’s face. “It was a hell of a position you put me in!”
“Okay, everybody calm down,” Megan said. “Explain what happened. Did you tell him everything?”
“I had to.”
“So he knows we came to you asking permission for Dana to perform in a play?”
Sherry sat back down. “He does.”
“Fuck,” Dana said, covering her face. She couldn’t see a way out of this.
Megan’s voice got preternaturally calm. “Tell me what he said. Was he angry?”
Sherry shook her head, and Dana thought she detected a hint of remorse. But that didn’t mean Sherry was actually sorry for what she had done, just vexed to admit it.
“It wasn’t like that. I told him that since I no longer had the authority to make the determination, it fell to him.”
“And how did he respond?”
“He told me he’d think about it and get back to me.”
“And that’s the purpose of this meeting?” Megan asked. “He’s going to tell us his decision?”
“No.” Sherry sat back and exhaled, as if relieved to have unburdened herself. “He reached out later in the afternoon and said he was returning the authority to me.”
Megan and Dana went quiet as they took this in. Dana was new to the corporate world, and hadn’t really seen this kind of passing-the-buck in person. She stared at Sherry, wondering how it felt to have the authority taken away and then given back. But mostly, she was comforted, because she knew Sherry wouldn’t withhold her permission. There was simply too much history for her to take that chance.
Dana sat back, too. “So we’re cool, then,” she said, wondering why Sherry hadn’t led the meeting with this news instead of putting her through such torture.
“Sure,” Sherry said, “as long as you don’t do that play.”
Dana’s mouth opened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Goddamn it, Sherry,” Megan said, “we had an agreement!”
“That was then, this is now,” Sherry said. “You want to rat me out for what I did last year, have at it. No one’s going to give a shit at this point. And it won’t get Dana any closer to what she wants.”
“But why would you do this?” Megan demanded. “Why would you deny her this opportunity?”
“Because I have a business to run here!
And Dana is fucking important to its success. I can’t have her focus divided between the Shopping Channel and her little theater group. I need her one hundred percent in the game.”
“Oh, c’mon, Sherry,” Dana said. “You know I can do both. You saw me in action.”
“The stakes are higher now.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dana mumbled. “I’m not giving up my play.”
“You really want to risk being in breach of contract?” Sherry said. “I wouldn’t suggest it. The board might have been impressed with you, but one dip in the numbers is all it takes for them to turn.”
“I see what’s going on here,” Megan said. “You’re covering your ass. If Dana has a bad day and you’ve given her permission to do her play, you’ll have to answer for it.”
“Damn straight I’ll have to answer for it!” Sherry said. “Because that’s my job. You know how many people would be unemployed if it weren’t for me?”
“Oh, please,” Dana said. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
Sherry pounded the table. “I care about everyone in this company!”
“Yeah?” Dana said. “Well, half of them think you pushed Ivan off the roof! How do you like that?”
“What?” Sherry seethed, her eyes dark and furious.
“Everyone knows about your temper, and everyone knows Ivan came on to Anna right in front of you. So when they tell me they think you could be the murderer, I can’t even argue with them!” Of course, she didn’t actually believe Sherry was a murderer, but she was in such a rage she wanted to thrust the knife as deep as it would go.
“At least I didn’t have a shouting match with him just minutes before he died,” Sherry said.
“What are you talking about?” Dana demanded.
“You!” Sherry said. “I’m talking about you.”
Dana searched her memory. Surely she would remember something like that...wouldn’t she?
“I didn’t have a shouting match with Ivan,” she insisted.
“You sure as hell did.”
“You’re making this up.”
Sherry folded her arms again. “Anna heard it, too. You told him to get his fucking hands off you or he’d regret it.”
The Rooftop Party Page 14