The Suit

by Kathryn Nolan

  Now, he grabbed me by the shoulders in apology. “Sorry, Ms. Dacosta. Couldn’t see you over my righteous indignation. And good morning.”

  “Literally. What the fuck,” I bit back. “Why are you here again?”

  “I’m guessing that during the night you didn’t decide to halt progress on the Bella View hotel and pull the permits?” He was wearing what I now thought of as his uniform: tank top. Board shorts. Sunscreen and a shit-eating grin.

  “Never going to happen,” I replied, moving past him towards my office. Another twenty people had shown up since yesterday, holding various signs. Chanting. Some jam band playing softly in the background, now accented by Marla and Jack’s bongos. A memory threatened to push its way in but I shook it off.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow!” he called after me, and I threw up the middle finger in response. Not my most mature, but the last week had worn on my nerves, like a mosquito bite I couldn’t scratch.

  Also, the two giant windows of my office looked directly out into the courtyard. Meaning the blond, shaggy head of the protester was in my direct line of sight, all damn day. I watched him greeting the new people. Whoever he was, he seemed to be well-liked. Constantly smiling. Every other minute he’d crack a joke, putting people at ease. The sun glinted off his shoulders.

  I just didn’t get it.

  When I sat down at my desk there were a few pieces of paper out of alignment. I straightened them, wiping away a speck of dust. I liked my desk to look like my life—clean. On the wall hung my diploma and MBA—both from UC San Diego. A daily reminder of what I was capable of. A daily reminder of all that I’d given up.

  I turned on my computer and a hundred emails tumbled into my inbox. I sighed, leaning back, my ears picking up the sound of protesters outside.

  Sal knocked on the door and I just about jumped out of my skin. He came in, crashed himself into a chair. He always had this “terrifying Santa” look to him, huge grin and wild white hair. His face was always red with a weird combination of stress and happiness.

  He hooked his thumb at my windows. “Freaks, huh?” He said, before laughing. I laughed too, albeit weakly. Although I was happy he seemed unconcerned.

  “Something like that,” I finally said in response, one eye on the action outside. “And I hate to even ask this, but should I be worried about these guys? Or doing something about it?”

  Sal snorted. “Please. I’ve been in property development my entire life. I’m telling you. You’re doing something good if the hippies are protesting you. Playa Vieja has always been like that. Want to keep that beach to themselves. But that’s not the business you and I are in, Avery.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “We’re in the business of making rich people happy.”

  I nodded. And creating things, I wanted to say, which was the real reason why I loved this job. But I also understood the other side of it. Was pretty comfortable with it, actually, except the protest was making me uneasy.

  “They almost always flame out in a couple weeks,” Sal said.

  “Almost always?”

  “Avery. It’s a bunch of surfers. They’ll get distracted by something soon. Stop worrying about it.”

  “Okay…well good. I mean, I’m not going to say it’s keeping me up at night—” except it was—”but I know how important this is, and I’d do anything not to fuck it up.”

  “You won’t. The Bella View hotel chain has the City Council eating out of its hand. By the time the vote comes up, the members will be begging for you to start building. And these guys—” he pointed outside— “will be sunburned and defeated.”

  I glanced at a framed picture on my desk—of my parents and I on my graduation day from college. My dad was wearing head-to-toe tie dye. My mother’s hair was in dreadlocks. They were both holding their index and middle fingers in a ‘V’—the universal sign for peace. I looked embarrassed and unhappy—even seven years later I remembered how I felt that day. That was the first—and only—time my parents had visited me here.

  “I’m happy I’m not the only one who doesn’t take them seriously,” I said firmly. “Anything else you need for today?”

  “Only some good news, if you want to hear it.” His cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, glancing at the name on the screen. He groaned, then tossed it over his shoulder onto the floor of my office.

  “Um, do you need to get that?”

  “It’s just the wife,” he said, grin on his face. “I’ve been staying at work too late. Wants me home more.” In the four years I’d worked here, this was a long-running joke. Sal thought I was a hard-worker, but I was pretty sure he had missed every one of his kids’ birthdays.

  “And anyway, last night I had a long conversation with some of the higher-ups in the company.” The Bella View was an international hotel chain, and quarterly the head developers checked in. “And you came up.”

  “Me? Why?” I asked, hopeful.

  “Because you’re doing a bang-up job, Avery. I know you’re young, and usually we don’t give projects like this to people unless they’ve had a lot more experience, but they see something in you, like I did. I think if this City Council vote goes well—” he stopped, laughed again— “aw, who am I kidding? What I mean is after the City Council approves the permits, let’s talk about your future here.”

  “Yes, that would be…well, that would be great.”

  “And when I say future, to be clear, I mean a promotion. Moving up. Potentially to our East Coast offices in New York,” he said.

  Butterflies exploded in my stomach and I fought a smile. Play it cool.

  One time, selling produce in town as a teenager, I’d found a magazine that had pictures of New York City in it, and I’d dreamed of living there ever since. I wanted suits and briefcases and martinis and crisp, fall weather. I wanted a bunch of Type A lawyers to flirt with me at a mahogany bar.

  “New York City would be a wonderful place to live.” Cool as ice.

  If my ambition could live somewhere, anywhere, in the world I knew...I just knew a city like that would be the place for me.

  Or, let’s be honest: any city that wasn’t San Diego.

  “Good. Let’s talk more about it later but, for now, keep it up. We’ve been very impressed so far. I can see how eager you are to climb that ladder.”

  I nodded, but hopefully not too eagerly. “I’d like to be in more of a leadership position,” I shared. “And to do more for the company.”

  He stood, clapping me on the back forcefully. I almost fell out of my chair. “That’s what I like to hear from my employees. At a certain point, Avery, you will live and breathe this company. Become one with it. Like me. And then you can have a beautiful family you never see just like me.” He laughed, throwing his head back, before giving me one more pat.

  “Thanks for the pep talk, Sal,” I said, an interesting mix of anxiety and excitement thrumming through my veins. He walked out of my office, leaving me with my thoughts. I looked at my hanging diplomas. My parents and their tie-dye. I thought about that career ladder, how the rungs would feel under my fingers. The accomplishment. The triumph.

  Outside, the shaggy protester was laughing uproariously, a baby perched on his hip. A baby that was delighted by him. A baby that was wearing a tiny onesie that said “Stop the Bella View Hotel. Save the Earth.”

  “Goddammit,” I said, before stalking over and yanking the blinds closed.

  Finn

  When you spend three entire weeks of your life protesting a woman’s workplace every day, you feel like you get to know her a little bit.

  This is what I knew about Avery Dacosta.

  She showed up to work at exactly 7:45 am, on the dot, Monday through Friday. On Saturdays she came in at 9. Sunday was her day of rest, although I suspected she worked from home.

  She favored dark business suits that covered up every inch of her skin. She carried a brown leather briefcase like a weapon. She was poised. Smart. Take-no-prisoners. She had the mouth of a sailo
r, and wasn’t afraid to use it (even in front of children).

  The bongos were my idea, although Marla and Jack would have done it eventually. And I just called my mom and invited her commune members out to our radical resistance—clothing optional, of course. I wanted to push Avery.

  The other thing I knew about Avery was that she pissed me the fuck off. Which took a lot, considering that in my almost thirty years on this earth I’d very rarely gotten angry. Stoned? Yes. Sunburned? All the time. Slapped around by a giant wave? Of course.

  Angry? The kind that makes you want to stand up and fight for what you believe in? Well, that honor went to her and her only.

  This morning she’d stalked through the protesters like a cheetah through the plains of Africa. I’d come to expect this, these past twenty-one days. No matter where I was in the crowd, no matter what I’m doing…she found me. And I’m not even sure she knew my name.

  Every morning, I tried to start our interactions off friendly.

  “Mornin’ Ms. Dacosta,” I said, as I always did. I was holding two hand-made signs and my shoulders were starting to ache. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that morning I’d ended up swimming and paddling in the ocean for longer than usual.

  “You’re still here?” she asked, rolling her eyes. This. This is why we always start in on each other: Avery’s incessant irritation at our very existence.

  “Every. Fucking. Day,” I said, with the biggest smile I could muster. “Until you halt construction on the hotel that will destroy our community.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. They were brown, and seemed to grow darker every time we spoke. “Can I ask kind of a silly question?”

  “Sure,” I shrugged. “I’m an open book.”

  Avery waved her hands around, indicating the audience. “None of you have jobs, correct? You just spend your days, fucking up other people’s jobs, and attempting to stop vital economic development? Wasting away on the beach, getting high on sunscreen? Or…” she looked around, “probably other things as well.” She crossed her arms in front of her, so prim and proper I wanted to shake her. Crack her open. See what was behind the curtain.

  “No,” I said, quietly. She leaned in a little to hear me. I caught her scent—some kind of lavender. “You’re wrong and you know that. Every person here has a full-time job. Children. Family to care for. Lives to lead. They choose, every day, to come here because Playa Vieja is our home. They’re selfless.”

  She opened her mouth to reply but I cut her off. “And just to be clear, Ms. Dacosta, their jobs might not look like yours but they still have value. They might not be corporate robots whose only motivation is greed—but that doesn’t mean they’re any less of a hard-worker than you are.”

  Avery stepped even closer to me, dark eyes flashing. “Selfless?” She tipped her head over to a couple of my friends—smoking a joint and kicking a hacky sack around. “I’m not sure what kind of sacrifice your community is making. Every day out here is basically a Phish concert on steroids. Plus, you use up all of our free parking. And secondly I resent the idea that my only motivation is greed. You don’t know a damn thing about me.”

  Her hands were on her hips, haughty. A wisp of hair from the tight bun on top of her head broke free. She snagged it, tucking it behind her ear.

  The door of the office opened and a large terrifying-looking man popped his head out. “Avery? Our meeting?” She turned, smiled at him and nodded. She hauled her giant briefcase onto her shoulder—for the first time I noticed how packed it was. Did she really bring that much work home every night?

  “Seems we’re in a bit of a stand-off again,” I said, grabbing a joint that Rico passed my way. I took a long, hard pull on it, then exhaled the smoke through my nostrils. She almost looked impressed. “Guess I’ll just get back to my Phish concert and meaningless existence.”

  “And I guess I’ll get to work with my corporate-robot colleagues, destroying this beautiful planet.”

  I almost smiled at her in return, before I realized who I was talking to.

  “Fine,” I said instead, starting to turn away.

  “Fine,” she said back, before huffing past towards the front door. I watched her walk away, the smoke from the weed burning in my chest.

  “That woman drives me goddamn insane,” I said to Rico, handing him the joint. He only looked at me, a small, secretive smile on his face. “What?” I said.

  “Nothin’, man,” he replied back. “Oh, I came up with some new chants last night. You ready to get this thing started?”

  “Always,” I replied, lifting the bullhorn to my mouth.

  ****

  Want to read more of Finn and Avery’s story?

  ABOUT KATHRYN

  Kathryn Nolan is an erotic romance author. She’s a morning writer, a yogi, and the world’s biggest X-Files fan. She enjoys feminism, foreplay, adventure and being constantly outdoors.

  If you want to hang out with Kathryn in a positive, empowering space, join her Facebook group, Kathryn Nolan’s Hippie Chicks.

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  And, as always, help an Indie out by leaving an honest review on Amazon. Thank you!

  Other titles by Kathryn:

  BOHEMIAN

  RIPTIDE

  CUFFED