Fringe Benefits

by Christine Pope

  Those blue eyes were suddenly far too sharp. “Forgive me, but you do look upset.”

  “It’s okay.” To my horror, my voice sounded as shaky as my hands. I choked down the lump in my throat and added, without really knowing why, “Just some bad news.”

  “Not your family, I hope.” His expression seemed to be one of genuine concern.

  “No, nothing like that.” I forced a lopsided smile onto my mouth. “It’s really sort of silly—”

  “Not if it has upset you so much.”

  Maybe it was the unlooked-for sympathy I saw in his face. Maybe it was just that I wanted some way to connect with him as a person, especially after Max’s revelation that Pieter had apparently spent the weekend off somewhere with another woman. Whatever the reason, I found myself spilling the whole story, from Jonah’s persuading me to make the damn recording in the first place to the unsolicited broadcast on KFAB and the lovely fallout that little episode produced.

  “And now they’re threatening to sue me or something, and it’s all this stupid misunderstanding—”

  “This can be fixed,” Pieter said. “I will make a call to my attorney immediately.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask that—”

  “You didn’t ask. I offered. There is a material difference.”

  I felt as if I should make more of a protest. I hadn’t been raised to take handouts, and that’s sort of what Pieter’s offer felt like. However, I also got the feeling that further argument wouldn’t go over very well. He wanted to help me. So maybe I should just shut up and let him. It wasn’t as if I had any legal resources of my own.

  I said simply, “Thank you, Pieter. I don’t know what I would have done—”

  To my surprise, he reached down and patted my shoulder briefly. It was the first time he’d ever touched me, except that brief brush of finger against finger when he handed me the keys to the office. No doubt he’d meant the little off-handed pat to be a gesture of reassurance. God knows what my face must have looked like as I finished up the call from the frightening Ms. Silva.

  But even the feel of his hand—warm, strong, heavier than I had thought it would be—through the thin silk of my shirt was enough to get my heart pounding a staccato beat all over again. It wasn’t just that I’d been going through a dry spell longer than any I’d experienced before. Somehow I knew no other man’s touch would have sent my pulse racing away like a gold-medal sprinter trying to break the world record.

  Maybe I jumped a little. Or maybe my expression betrayed just a little too much of what I’d been thinking. For a second Pieter’s eyes met mine, and again it was as if some spark passed between us. I wanted to hold that gaze, somehow make him see that it was time for him to acknowledge the connection between us.

  He looked away. Almost imperceptibly, his mouth thinned. Then he said, “I’ll make that call for you.”

  Suddenly the distance between us felt like a thousand miles instead of only a foot. I wanted to start crying all over again, only for a completely different reason this time. Somehow I managed to nod. “I really do appreciate it.”

  He made a noncommittal sound and moved away down the hall. I heard his office door close.

  Pieter never shut his office door.

  The choking pressure in my throat increased, but I remained at my desk. It wasn’t even close to lunch, and I couldn’t think of any other logical reason to get away, even though every instinct told me to stand up and get the hell out of there. How could I have ruined things with just a single look?

  Max would be very disappointed in me. It had only taken me about an hour to completely disregard his advice about keeping things professional. Then again, how could I have ever guessed that the situation would turn sour so quickly?

  All I could do was hope I hadn’t permanently damaged my working relationship with Pieter. And that was the only relationship I did have with him, no matter what else I might want.

  It had just become painfully clear to me that a professional one was the only sort of relationship he wanted.

  Thirteen

  Somehow I managed to hold it together until lunchtime. If someone had asked me, I couldn’t have told them the first thing about the contents of the letters I was typing, but at least I managed to maintain a façade of productivity. Pieter didn’t come out of his office, and at one o’clock I was finally able to flee.

  I wanted to call Leslie, but I knew I couldn’t tell her what was really bothering me. It wasn’t as if I’d been honest with her about my feelings for Pieter. I hadn’t even been honest with myself until a few days ago. And even if I did work up the nerve to let her know what had really been going through my head, what could she do? Offer words of comfort? Maybe, although Leslie was more the type to tell me I was acting like an idiot and that I should’ve given one of the Orange County guys my number.

  Instead, I grabbed a sandwich on the way home and spent my lunch break in the shabby comfort of my living room. I didn’t want to be around anyone. I needed time to think.

  Unfortunately, thinking hurt. I didn’t want to acknowledge the notion that I might have damaged things irreparably with just one unguarded glance. Was Pieter really that closed off, so unwilling to become a part of anything which wasn’t purely physical?

  If that were true, then maybe I was better off being thwarted now before I’d had a chance to hurt myself with anything more than some random fantasies. Really, why would I even want to be with someone who seemed to relate to women only as bodies he could use for a while?

  I was being harsh with myself on purpose. I wanted to hit myself over the head for being so stupid as to fall for a man who clearly felt nothing for me and with whom I couldn’t possibly have a future. Hadn’t I always sort of secretly despised women who pulled stunts like that? I’d known a few in college, girls who seemed to have a knack for forming attractions to the last guys who would ever be interested in them. At the time, I’d just thought them silly. Why set yourself up for certain failure unless you were a certified masochist? But now I was getting a very real taste of the pain those women must have felt.

  Well, as far as I could tell, I had two choices here. I could either quit, or I could grow up a little and make myself realize that having feelings for a man didn’t mean he had to reciprocate. My twenty-fifth birthday was rapidly approaching; maybe I should try being a real adult instead of just playing at one.

  I knew I didn’t want to quit. Speaking in purely practical terms, how would I ever find another job that paid anything remotely close to what I was earning now? Over time I’d forget about these feelings. Eventually I’d meet someone else. Maybe I’d even have a laugh about the way I’d once mooned over Pieter Van Rijn, a man who hadn’t given me a second glance.

  That seemed to settle it. I got up and threw the wrappers for my sandwich away, then went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Time to get back to work and put on my game face, as my ex-boyfriend Cary referred to it. Maybe if I pretended hard enough that I didn’t feel anything for Pieter, I’d eventually come to believe the lie.

  His car was gone when I got back to the office. Normally I wouldn’t have seen anything suspicious in his absence. After all, Pieter was always running off to various meetings: with clients, with buyers, with estate agents and appraisers and who knows what else. Today, however, I couldn’t help but think he might be avoiding me.

  That was ridiculous. Even if the situation had become a little uncomfortable, I couldn’t quite imagine Pieter indulging in such adolescent behavior. He was a grown man of forty, not some fifteen-year-old hiding out in the boys’ locker room because he didn’t want to face the girl who had just confessed her crush to him. Besides, I had no real idea how much Pieter had even guessed of my feelings. His diffidence could have been nothing more than preoccupation with an entirely different matter.

  These thoughts helped me to calm down enough so I could focus on the remainder of Pieter’s correspondence. Besides, I hoped it might reassure him when he returned to
see me sitting at my desk and working quietly away with no hint of drama or tears shed at lunchtime. I’d come close once or twice during lunch in between bites of sandwich when my thoughts had become particularly maudlin, but I’d managed to stay dry-eyed. Getting worked up enough to look like I’d just watched The Notebook and Titanic back to back wasn’t going to help my cause at all.

  He did return a little after two. I forced myself not to glance up from my Word document.

  Pausing a few feet away from my desk, he asked, “Any calls?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m almost done with these letters. Another fifteen minutes, probably.”

  “Excellent. Bring them in when you’re done.”

  “Sure, Pieter,” I replied, in my steadiest voice. But I still didn’t look away from the computer screen. My fingers continued to move across the keyboard.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him give a brief nod, and then he moved off down the hallway to his office. I held my breath; was he going to close the door again?

  Apparently not. I heard him sit down at his desk and open his laptop, but the office door remained open. Either I had been imagining his negative reaction earlier, or he’d bought my dedicated secretary act. At the moment, I was too relieved to care which.

  As promised, I finished the paperwork a few minutes later and brought it in to him. He was on the phone when I entered his office. I would have just laid the letters on the desk and hurried away, but he gestured for me to stay. So I hovered uncertainly at the edge of his desk while he said, “Very good, Rafe. Three-thirty, then? I’ll let her know.”

  That last sentence sounded a little ominous.

  He set the phone back in its cradle and then reached out for the letters. I handed them to him. I didn’t want to remember what his fingers had felt like as they brushed against mine, or the warmth of his hand on my shoulder. Unfortunately, the harder I tried not to think about those sensations, the more they seemed to stick in my brain.

  “That was Rafael Santiago, my attorney. I’ve made an appointment for you to speak with him at three-thirty this afternoon.”

  “So soon?” I blurted.

  Pieter looked a little puzzled. “Wouldn’t you rather the matter were cleared up as quickly as possible? It shouldn’t take long; Rafe just wants to take your statement. And then you can go home from there. His offices are in Burbank.” He jotted down an address on the notepad next to the phone, then tore off the top sheet and gave it to me.

  I glanced down at the address, but I didn’t recognize the street. Not that strange—I didn’t know Burbank very well. But how convenient for Pieter to set up this meeting so I’d be out of the office for the rest of the afternoon.

  As soon as that thought crossed my mind, however, I felt a stab of shame. Regardless of how Pieter might feel toward me at the moment, he was doing me a big favor by setting up this appointment. I knew that anyone he retained as his private counsel wasn’t exactly a slacker. How much did high-powered attorneys charge per hour? Three hundred dollars? Four hundred? I had no idea. My parents used a lawyer to help set up their wills, but that was about it. There were no attorneys in my family, unlike my college roommate Jess, whose own family was so lousy with them you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a lawyer

  Anyway, I had to acknowledge the fact that Pieter was doing me a huge favor. “Thank you,” I said. “This is really—well, I do appreciate the help.”

  “It’s no problem.” He didn’t exactly smile, but his mouth looked a little less tense. “I am curious, though. This song was apparently good enough that they would play it on the radio, and yet you didn’t come out here to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music?”

  “God, no,” I responded. I didn’t have to feign the note of horror in my voice. “I hate performing. Why does everyone think that's so strange?”

  For a few seconds Pieter didn’t reply. He sat there and gazed at me, a thoughtful expression on his face. Normally I wouldn’t have enjoyed such scrutiny, except at that moment he seemed to be looking at me as a person, not a silly girl who had developed an alarming and unwanted attraction to him.

  “Not strange, precisely,” he said. “I can understand the fear of performing in public. It is a very common one, after all.” The fair eyebrows drew together. “However, I suppose there is always puzzlement from those who can’t understand how someone could be so talented and yet not want to share that talent with others.”

  Put that way, it almost sounded as if he thought I was selfish for not wanting to be a singer. And that strayed just a little too close for comfort to what Jonah had said about my singing. “Maybe,” I said, the syllables coming slowly as I tried to articulate how I felt. “It’s just that singing is personal for me. About all I can manage is a karaoke bar, just because everyone’s there to be silly and have fun. There isn’t any pressure. But when I have to get up and really perform, give it my all, it just feels so…exposed. Like I’m standing up there—” I broke off. I’d meant to say, Like I’m standing up there naked, and then realized maybe that wasn’t the best thing to tell a man who was my boss, a man I wouldn’t mind seeing me naked. Or vice versa.

  Pieter appeared not to notice the awkward way I’d ended my little speech. “Some people crave the spotlight. Others do not. You should be glad to have learned this about yourself early in life.” Again I saw that slight compression of his lips, as if his words had made him recall a not entirely pleasant memory. “Too many people chase things that don’t suit them simply because they’ve made themselves think it’s what they want. I know that I—” And he broke off there. I guessed that he’d stopped himself before he could reveal anything further.

  I didn’t see any way of urging him to say more without being far too intrusive. Besides, his comment had hit a little too close to home. Was this his way of telling me that my attraction to him was futile? Did he think I was going after him just because I’d taken it into my head that I wanted a relationship, even if it might not be the best choice for me?

  It would have been nice if I could have gotten angry at him for saying such a thing. Instead, I just felt tired. Too many ups and downs, I supposed. And there was still the interview with the lawyer to get through. “I don’t know,” I said carefully. “Maybe sometimes we try to tell ourselves we don’t know what we want, even if the truth is staring us right in the face.” I made a point of looking at my watch. “I should probably get going.”

  I couldn’t tell if my comment had hit its mark or not. Pieter only nodded and said, “Yes, I suppose you should.”

  Rafael Santiago’s office was located in a high-rise in the studio district, close to both the Warner Brothers and Disney studios. I found the place intimidating. It was all glossy travertine and steel, with a water sculpture in the lobby and a bank of elevators that looked as if they should be on the Death Star. At least working at Pyramid Imports had made me step up my fashion, so I didn’t appear quite as grossly out of place as I felt.

  The receptionist took my name and asked me to sit down. I perched on the gunmetal-leather couch and picked up a copy of Variety. Of course it was today’s issue; no out-of-date copies of Sports Illustrated or Good Housekeeping in this office.

  “Katherine Wheeler?”

  I glanced up.

  A handsome dark-haired man smiled down at me. “I’m Rafael Santiago. If you would come on back to my office?”

  Variety went back on the coffee table. I stood and followed him down the hallway to an oversized office that offered a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley. The Verdugo Mountains looked hazy and gold-washed, resembling a Maxfield Parrish print that hung in my parents’ hallway back home.

  “Coffee?” inquired Rafael, who had paused by an impressive setup that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Starbucks.

  I shook my head. “No, thank you. I try to avoid it after about three o’clock.”

  “Wise of you. If I did the same I wouldn’t be up until two most nights. Take a seat?” He indicated
the chair that faced his desk.

  I sat down while he did the same. He picked up a yellow legal pad and a pen, then said, “Pieter says you’re in a bit of difficulty with a record company.”

  “Chrysalis Music Group,” I supplied.

  He wrote it down. “The name of the company representative who contacted you?”

  “Anita Silva.”

  The information was noted on the pad. Then he said, “Tell me what happened. Start to finish. No embellishments.”

  I found that comment vaguely insulting. Did he really think I would try to misrepresent the situation? But then I realized lawyers probably had to deal with that sort of thing all the time. After all, no one likes admitting they might have been in the wrong.

  So I launched into the whole sad story, only pausing here and there to stop and recollect exact dates and times. I certainly hadn’t made that recording with the intention of ripping off Chrysalis Music Group. About the worst I could be accused of was extreme naïveté in my dealings with Jonah Freeman.

  After I had finished the narrative, Rafael laid down his pen. “I’m not an entertainment attorney, but two of the partners here are. In fact, one of them is Howard Freeman’s attorney. Or rather, one of his attorneys. The man keeps a stable of them.”

  Despite the casual way Rafe had mentioned Mr. Freeman, I felt a ripple of unease pass over me. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “Frank is Howard Freeman’s counsel, not his son’s. Besides, you’re the only one involved in this suit with Chrysalis. Jonah has nothing to do with it.” As he made this disclaimer, though, I saw a faint frown crease his forehead before it smoothed away.

  I asked, “I take it you’re not a big fan of Jonah?”

  A shrug. “I’ve only met him once or twice, but Frank gets an earful from time to time. Jonah’s just your typical spoiled Hollywood brat.” Rafe laughed then. “Okay, strike that. I’m editorializing, and I shouldn’t be. I suppose it can’t be all that fun to have Howard Freeman as your father, or to know that the only reason you get jobs is because your dad’s a big-time producer.”