Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  "It'll be a pleasure," Jake said softly. He reached down to pull open a drawer and after a moment pulled out a file. He laid it flat on the desk.

  "First," he said, "there's the little matter of the debenture that financed Number 24. If your lawyer had checked the agreement carefully, he might have noticed that the debenture can be called at any time. If the debenture were called, Number 24 would have no choice but to go bankrupt. Bankruptcy of the company is deemed in your management contract to be sufficient cause for the termination of the contract without compensation." He paused. "That's one way.

  "Then there's Gilles Dufour. If Gilles and one or two—or all—of your other salesmen were suddenly to abandon your line in the middle of a season or even show very poor orders in one or two seasons running, you'd have a big deficit to catch up. I don't think you'd recover in this economic climate."

  He smiled. "Then, Vanessa, there's that nice little on-going contract to supply slacks to Fairway. It's just possible that one season the store might say you hadn't made the slacks to their specifications. It might take a costly lawsuit to prove otherwise. Or the unshipped portion of a large order might be suddenly cancelled one day for reasons beyond anyone's control."

  He paused and looked at her as though expecting her to speak, but Vanessa was beyond speech.

  "Still not enough? Well, then, consider this: it won't be long now before you have to go down to the Canadian Consulate in Seattle to renew your temporary visa to allow you to go on working in Canada. At that time you will need a statement from your employer showing good reason for your visa extension. You'll need the same kind of statement if you apply for a permanent visa. Suppose that due to reasons beyond anyone's control that statement wasn't forthcoming?"

  She stared at him, still and unbreathing, her eyes stretched wide and blinded by the afternoon light.

  "Enough? There's more, Vanessa. There's the building lease at Number 24 that allows Concorp to give you immediate notice to vacate under certain conditions that Robert would never have let go by if he didn't know so well that I want your business to be a success.

  "Or there's Robert himself, whom I might suddenly need back at Concorp with only a few hours' notice. Think you could manage losing him without warning?"

  Jake sat back. He smiled. "There are one or two other ways, of course, the best of all—" his hand moved unconsciously on the file folder beneath his hands "—a very unexpected one that you presented me with yourself, a gift. But I think you see the point. You are about as invulnerable at Number 24 as a frangipani on a polar icecap. It might survive the few warm days of summer. But not the winter. And winter is coming, Vanessa. You just won't know when."

  Vanessa stood up, distantly surprised to find that her knees held. She said, "You must be mad if you think that after being told all that I'll continue putting my efforts into something you're going to wreck. I quit, Jake. You'll have my resignation first thing in the morning."

  "Good!" he said. "Just what I wanted you to feel! But you can't get out so easily, Vanessa. In fact, you can't get out at all."

  His hand moved to the edge of the file folder and he opened it. It was moderately thick with documents and papers, and the top one she recognized as a copy of her management contract.

  "You aren't the only one protected by this contract," Jake smiled. He looked down. "Do I need to read you the clause regarding any untimely resignation, or do you remember it?"

  She was silent, and after a moment Jake began. "Seventeen. In the event that the—"

  "Shut up!" she snapped. "I remember it well enough!"

  "Good." Jake's voice was as flat and cool as stone. "Don't make the mistake of thinking I wouldn't take you to court, Vanessa. I would. I'd also take any potential employer to court. It just won't be worth anyone's while to try to hire you as a designer. If you resign tomorrow, or any time before this contract allows—" he tapped it lightly, almost caressingly "—you can say goodbye to any career in fashion design for at least five years."

  She was frozen, staring at him. "What do you want, Jake? What do you want?" she whispered.

  He looked calmly up at her. "I want you to put your heart and soul into something, Vanessa, and then I want to take it away from you, piece by piece, while you fight desperately to hang on to it."

  She laughed. "After this, you expect me to put heart and soul into Number 24? You must be mad! I'll run it into the ground and make sure you lose as much money as possible while I'm doing it!"

  "Maybe," agreed Jake. "Maybe you will, in spite of the clause in your contract that allows me to sue you personally for recovery of funds if wanton disregard for the good of the business can be proved. You could do it in a way that would make that hard to prove; you're more than intelligent enough for that. You'd have a chance to show how intelligent in a court of law.

  "But I don't think you'll do that, Vanessa. I think you'll work twice as hard at Number 24 after this. I think your soul is invested in Number 24, and I think you'll spend your energy trying to make it such a profitable undertaking that you could refinance it with a bank, for example, when I tried to pull the plug on you. I think you'll work like a demon trying to plug every leak I've told you about and trying to find the ones I haven't. And with every day's work, I think you'll get more and more committed to Number 24, more and more convinced you can save it.

  "You might even try to convince me that it's so profitable and prestigious a company for me to own that I'd be a fool to pull the plug. And it might work. You see, I haven't decided how much revenge I want. Maybe it'll be enough seeing you constantly insecure. Maybe I'll never pull the plug, Vanessa," he said softly, insinuatingly. "Maybe you can convince me, when the time comes, not to do it. There may be a way out. There are lots of possibilities. Maybe you can beat me at my own game. You'll never know unless you try."

  It seemed as though she were looking down at him from a great height, as though she were floating up near the ceiling. She couldn't feel her body.

  "This is evil," she thought, and heard the words being said aloud, as though her mouth had somehow produced the sounds of its own accord. "You're worse than Machiavelli, Jake, you're in a class by yourself. I think what you told me the other day is right, even if you don't know it. You aren't Jace, not the Jace I knew. Jace is dead; your soul is dead. Jake is just a distant cousin, an empty shell pretending to be a human being.

  "I was wrong when I thought I loved you. There's nobody in there to love."

  Somehow she turned and was moving to the door, so her legs must be carrying her. She opened the door and walked out without another word, without a backward glance, as though she were leaving an empty room.

  Chapter 14

  "Hello, darling," said the voice over the phone at nine o'clock the next morning. "How is life in the backwoods treating you?"

  "Colin!" Vanessa exclaimed. "How are you?"

  "I'm fine, of course," he said blithely. "I'm here in New York, where the action is. You're the one who's consigned herself to the frozen wastes of Canada. How is the weather, by the way?"

  "A bit rainy, right at the moment. As it happens, however, Vancouver has a milder climate than New Yo—"

  "Oh, please, no gushing travelogue, darling," he interrupted. "As long as you aren't stuck in a snow-bank, I'm happy."

  "You can be happy, Colin: no snowbank," she said with an irritated laugh. "How is business?"

  "Isn't it funny you should mention," Colin said. "That's what this call is about: business. I want to drum some up."

  "From me?"

  "No one else. Now listen: I've designed you a signature fabric and some Number 24 motifs in my spare time. It's a summer design, very cool and light, Vanessa, and I've sent off the sketch by courier. If you like it and order immediately I can deliver by Christmas."

  If I'm still here by Christmas, Vanessa thought involuntarily, feeling a sharp pang at the thought that her future might not include Number 24.

  But as long as her present did, she was going to
run it the best way she knew how. As far as she knew, no ready-to-wear manufacturer in Canada had anything like a signature fabric, and although a few might have monograms, they were mostly done in imitation of the designer ready-to-wear fashions like Pierre Cardin's.

  A thing like this could succeed wildly or fail wildly, and what did she have to lose? Nothing that she wouldn't be losing in the end, anyway.

  "Colin," she laughed, "that's the best idea I've heard all month!"

  When she had put the phone down on Colin she went next door to Robert's office. "T-shirt manufacturers, Robert," she announced. "Anybody around who'd supply T-shirts to our design and with our label?"

  "I can have a look," said Robert. "What's in the works?"

  She kept her explanation brief, not mentioning Colin at all, not letting him see the scope of what she was considering. Robert looked as though he were both dubious and willing to be convinced but trying hard to look more willing than dubious.

  "It's pretty ambitious for your second season," he said. "But I'll look into the cost and possibilities if you want."

  Vanessa thanked him and turned to go."Oh, by the way," she said as an afterthought. "Do we have a copy of our lease around anywhere? I'd like to have a look at it."

  "Sure," he said. "I'll ask Roberta to run off a copy for you today."

  She had thought it just possible that Jake had been lying in order to frighten her, but when she examined the copy that Roberta dropped on her desk later that day, there it was, in clause thirteen. "If, in the best estimate of the lessor, the said premises are being used by the lessee in a manner or for a purpose other than that defined in the lease, and if, in the best estimate of the lessor, the said uses are deemed to be detrimental to the property or to the best interests of the lessor or of the other tenants of the building, together or severally... or if the lessee is convicted in a court of law of violating any federal, provincial or municipal statute on the said premises, whether in the course of the business being carried on on the said premises as defined in the lease or otherwise... then the lessee may be given thirty days' notice to quit the premises...."

  Vanessa leaned back and rubbed her eyes, wondering how many of the myriad laws of the land Jake could be certain of their breaking one way or another in the course of a business day, and which function of the business had inadvertently not been defined in the lease.

  Her eyes dropped back to the document.

  "Fourteen. If the business of the lessee should suffer a labour dispute...." Vanessa wrinkled her forehead. What was this? Then she sat forward with a snap. "That the said premises should be picketed... to the detriment of the reasonable function of the business of the lessor or of the other tenants together or severally... for more than thirty days, then the lessee may be given notice of the termination of the lease...."

  Vanessa felt an insane desire to laugh. Jake Conrad was right: he had her coming and going. A strike! She couldn't believe it: all he had to do was engineer a strike and he could put her out of business!

  Suddenly she thought about Ted Loomis and how quickly he had found the labour force she needed. To whom would all those people feel they owed their loyalty? To the man who'd hired them, who controlled their working conditions, or to herself and the company that paid their wages? And to whom did Ted owe his loyalty—to her or to Jake Conrad?

  Vanessa breathed slowly as a new thought assailed her: how had Robert ever let a clause like this slip by him? Or did Robert, too, feel more of a loyalty for Jake than he did for Number 24? Was Robert, in fact, here only to serve Jake's purpose, to set up the methods for him to destroy her?

  Vanessa shook her head. She was getting paranoid, which was just what Jake wanted. If she kept this up, soon she would be examining Ilona's friendship and wondering if Roberta sent Jake a photocopy of all the mail every day....

  Vanessa opened a drawer and blindly threw in the lease. She would look at it later. Jake wasn't likely to call a strike today, and right now she had work to do.

  She also had a dinner date this evening, with a man she had met at the tennis club she had joined. With any luck he would take her mind off her troubles and Jake Conrad.

  But it wasn't to be. "This is the best place to eat on English Bay, if not in the whole of Vancouver," David said as he parked the car, and with a sense of impending doom she looked through the windshield and saw Skookum Chuck's.

  She could hardly cry, "Not here, anywhere but here!" without having him think her a lunatic, and she could think of no reasonable excuse for asking him to take her elsewhere. But she was absolutely convinced that Jake was going to walk in with Marigold on his arm and spoil her evening, and she couldn't keep her eyes off the door all evening.

  Her obvious jitters and preoccupation made conversation strained, though David did his best. Eventually he began to talk about his ex-wife, who had divorced him unexpectedly a year ago, and Vanessa encouraged him because it meant she could listen with half an ear.

  But Jake did not come to Skookum Chuck's that night, and by the time David pulled up in front of her house again she felt she owed him some explanation for her distracted behaviour.

  "David, I'm awfully sorry I've been such lousy company. I've got too much on my mind at the moment."

  "That's okay," he said. "Problems?"

  She nodded.

  "Legal or emotional?"

  And he really was a kindly person, and she laughed and said, "Are those the only choices I get?"

  He laughed with her. "I find that most people's most worrisome problems usually fall into one or the other, or both."

  He seemed to be speaking from a professional point of view, and she suddenly remembered. "Of course. You're a lawyer."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "You need a lawyer?"

  "I might, David," she said thoughtfully. It couldn't hurt to have a Canadian lawyer go over the contract and the debenture agreement and even the lease. "I just might."

  David pulled open a wallet. "Here's my business card. I'll write my home phone on it for you," he said as he did so. "Give me a call, Vanessa."

  She let herself into the house feeling more secure than she had all day. She wasn't just going to sit around waiting for the axe to fall, as though it were inevitable. Jake Conrad wasn't infallible, he wasn't God. He must have made a mistake, left a loophole. If he had she would find it and use it. If he hadn't—well, she would have to try something else. But she was going to fight Jake Conrad—every way she knew how.

  * * *

  On Saturday she did something she had been promising herself she would do for a long time: she walked the sea-wall promenade the whole distance around Stanley Park. It was a walk of several miles, and the sky and the sea were grey with the light continuous drizzle that was Vancouver's trademark.

  But Vanessa wore her new bright yellow sailor's mac and hat over a thick sweater, breathed in the fresh damp air and let the soft wind carry off her worries, and the sight of mountains and the threatening sea soothe her.

  That night she slept soundly, and she dreamed of Jake Conrad and knew in the dream that she had dreamed of him often without remembering. He was holding a letter, and he opened it and a snake curled up out of the letter, a beautiful snake that fascinated her. When she put her hand out to it, it sank its fangs into her arm, and its body writhed suddenly and grew large and immensely powerful; she could feel its terrifying power all around her. It was wrapping its body around her waist, and Vanessa knew there were words she could say to stop the snake from hurting her, but she couldn't remember them. They were in the letter, and she looked at Jake and saw a look of helpless surprise in his face. He set the letter down on a desk and it was a file folder, thick with documents, the words "PACKAGE DEAL" written across it. "It's in there," she said urgently to Jake.

  She awoke with the words on her lips and terror in her heart and sat up in the grey light of another wet day.

  The file folder. There was something in the file Jake hadn't told her about. "The best one of all," he
had called it, and Vanessa knew that Jake would not have told her about all those vulnerable areas if he had intended to attack her there. If she plugged those leaks it wouldn't matter. The real danger lay somewhere else.

  Jake wouldn't tell her about that one. There would be only one way to find out what it was: get her hands on that file in his desk, and do it soon.

  * * *

  The envelope from Colin arrived by courier and was waiting on her desk Monday afternoon when she returned from lunch. Resolutely pushing aside all thought of Jake and the file in his desk, which, up to now, had been consuming her, Vanessa turned to the envelope gratefully, hoping the contents would absorb her.

  The fabric sketch was in watercolour: a pale soft green with a textured-weave pattern of swirls. After a moment she realized that the swirls read "number twenty-four" over and over. "It will look a bit like watered silk," read the note in Colin's handwriting that was attached to the sketch. "The pattern comes out when it catches the light—otherwise it looks absolutely plain. Other colours, of course, but green should be your trademark."

  That was an interesting idea. Vanessa laid down the board and picked up the one beneath, flicking back the protective onionskin to examine Colin's design for a logo.

  He offered several. A green cat lying on its back, playing with a ball that was inscribed with the number 24; a house with a lighted window and 24 on the door; "number twenty-four" written in words, both in a straight line and in a horseshoe; and several others; always in green, picked out with white and red.

  She liked them all, for different reasons. The horseshoe shape would go on the back pocket of casual pants, and for skirts and blouses... not in the traditional breast-pocket position, perhaps, but... on the cuff? Yes, maybe, on the left sleeve cuff—the cat, the house? She had liked the house best at first, but somehow the horseshoe began to look better and better....