Although at first she had thought about offering a large financial gift, she knew that wouldn’t be the right way. Magda had her pride and needed to keep it. Pam also had her pride, and if she wasn’t careful with her money, she could be in financial trouble, too. The whole economic system had turned scary shaky overnight. Menahl’s collapse had started a domino effect that threatened everything. What had been a hefty retirement account a few days ago had lost half its value.
Maybe a loan of some sort? That was the downside of living in an industrialized nation. If this were Africa, South America, or Asia, Pam could make a micro loan of a hundred dollars, and Magda would buy two sheep and four chickens, or ten pounds of yarn or rattan, and go into business. Soon, Magda’s entire extended family and her village—the women, anyway—would be self-sufficient profit centers.
Why couldn’t Pam seek something similar for Magda? There were Internet micro loan sites. She was sure that she’d read about them in the New York Times. Hadn’t there been that crazy girl who maxed out her credit cards on frivolous junk, and then asked everybody to send her money? And they did?
Maybe she could arrange to broker a micro loan for Magda. Pam herself wasn’t all that Internet savvy, but now she had plenty of time to learn.
Or perhaps she could find venture capital. Why not? Magda’s son was brilliant and a hard worker, set on a profitable professional career. He could repay a loan eventually, from wherever it originated. Not that Pam had the first clue about how to find venture capital, but she wasn’t stupid. She could teach herself what she needed to know.
#
Later that day, Linley’s frustration added to the vehemence of her on-air disagreement with Jason.
“You’re all wrong about the cause of the Wall Street meltdown,” she insisted.
Jason merely raised an eyebrow, even as Ernie asked, “How so?”
“Look at the subprime mortgage home foreclosure rate,” she insisted. She pulled up a chart on her desktop computer, which appeared to the other panelists and the viewers full screen. “See how it rose dramatically in 2002, long before any Wall Street firms were affected? Homeowners precipitated this mess. Not the other way around,” she said.
“I don’t agree, Lin,” Jason said. “Who convinced people to buy houses as investments, instead of as homes? It was the banks and brokers, that’s who.”
“The banks didn’t force individuals to buy houses they couldn’t possibly afford.” She pulled up another visual. “Look at these statistics. Prior to the housing bubble, most people bought modest homes. During the bubble, the number of people who bought huge houses with big price tags was substantial. Most of those people are the ones in trouble now.”
“A family ought to be able to find affordable housing, but speculators kept forcing the prices up,” Jason said.
The other men on the panel stared at them. Linley and Jason seldom argued.
The guys weren’t jumping in, so she kept going. “Many homeowners knew it was a scam. They bought houses they couldn’t afford in collusion with dishonest appraisers and mortgage brokers. Then they either resold the houses immediately for a huge profit, because demand was pushing home prices up, or they refinanced and took out equity from the houses—equity that had supposedly doubled overnight.”
Jason shook his head. “This is worth debating further, but we’re out of time for today. We’ll have to leave it at me thinking the little guy got conned, and you believing he was complicit in his own fleecing.”
Jason did the usual sign off, and the program went to credits. He turned to her as the other men were standing up to leave. “Why are you against the little guy?”
“What makes you think I am?” she replied, trying to keep defensiveness out of her voice.
“Oh, come on.” He threw his pen on his desk in a rare show of disgust. He stood. “Every day you say it’s their fault our entire economy is facing collapse.”
She stood, too, meeting the aggression of his stance. “I refuse to pander to greedy fools by pretending sympathy for them the way you do.”
Jason listened calmly, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ralph looked taken aback by the rancor in her voice. Which reminded her how inappropriately she was acting. Yelling at Jason. She backed off.
“Sorry. We should be able to hold opposing views without me accusing you of hypocrisy.”
Jason waved away her apology, frowning. “You have a low opinion of the average person. Why?”
“Maybe because the more I learn about how people handle their finances, the more I realize how irrational and self-deluding they are,” she said.
“That’s a pretty tough accusation to make.”
By now she’d taken off her microphone clip and closed her laptop. “You forget that personal finance is my specialty. I don’t think much of people who try to con their way into the good life instead of earning the right to it.”
Ernie came around the desk and stood between them. “I like seeing you two duking it out. You make us all sound more interesting.”
Jason looked amused. “What? Yelling about stocks isn’t exciting enough?”
“Sure, Jase, but you two shouting at each other makes it personal,” Ernie replied.
As the two men continued to trade remarks, Linley slipped away to the safety of the hallway outside the studio. She hadn’t done a good job of hiding how riled up she was. It wasn’t only about the average consumer, who could go into bankruptcy for all she cared. She’d simply report the trend.
No, the reason she’d blown up at Jason was the same as always. She needed a break from sitting next to him. She needed an escape from the chemistry bubbling between them that pushed her over the edge into irritability.
There was so much under the surface, so much they weren’t saying. She’d been a fool to take this job.
At the end of her job interview three months ago, Jason had reached his hand across the conference table and shaken hers. A tingle had run up her arm from the contact. It was all she could do to maintain her self-control and smile politely as her new boss, Marty, nodded in approval. Jason hadn’t seemed to notice the electricity. Maybe it was one-sided. Was that even possible? How could he have forgotten?
It had happened a year ago. She’d met Jason at a media party when he was still writing news copy and hadn’t yet penetrated the cable talk shows. He’d been trying. Linley had known he was interested in her initially because she worked for CNN at the time. Jason was more impressed with her job than her looks or personality. Although they had clicked on that level, too.
They’d gone to the hotel bar after the media event. At that point, it still could have been considered a business thing. They worked for competing media outlets and were networking, getting a feel for the lay of the land about a potential employer of the future. Jason was honest about his curiosity. Linley answered his questions about her employer only after she made Jason answer hers, though. For every one he’d lobbed at her, she’d smashed back with one or two of her own. After a half-hour of give and take, Jason had gazed at her with admiration.
“You’re a tough one, Linley.” He’d smiled. Something inside her had melted at that smile, a smile that had seemed to encompass who she was under her professionally groomed presentation and her cagey banter.
“I aim to get what I want,” she’d acknowledged. Then she’d allowed herself to smile her first real smile with him.
An hour later, they were upstairs in a hotel room having sex. No single Manhattan guy would bring a woman to his own apartment unless he wanted a relationship. Renting a hotel room was a declaration of lack of intention. Linley knew and didn’t care. Sex with Jason was just for a giggle. They’d been having fun at the bar. Why not continue the fun in private? They had laughed their way to the room he’d gotten and smiled as they’d tossed off their clothes. There had been shrieks and chuckles as they had thrown themselves on the bed.
Then everything had changed. With a touch, the casual hookup had turned in
to lovemaking. Sighs and groans had replaced the laughter. What was supposed to be mere pleasure became more. She’d felt as if this sex was different.
Jason obviously had not felt the same. As she was drifting off afterwards, he literally sprang out of the bed. He quickly dressed, then leaned down to give her a light kiss and a lame excuse.
“Sorry, but I’ve got an early call.” As the glib words passed his lips, his eyes looked into hers. Was he searching for something from her? By now, any feelings she might have had for him had been shut behind her self-controlled façade. She gazed at him silently. He found nothing, nothing except her cynical acceptance that their hookup was over.
She had secretly been angry at Jason ever since. Marty’s offer to be on the panel show had been too good to turn down, but it was accompanied by the constant danger Jason was to her equilibrium. Over the months, her unrequited ire over how he had left her that first night came out over and over again in her adamant opposition to whatever position he took on a topic. If he said the market was up, she’d find a way to say it was down. Probably if he’d said the sun was shining, she would have claimed it wasn’t.
She knew her attitude was irrational. It had just been a hookup. She’d done enough of them in college it shouldn’t have bothered her. This time, her emotions got involved despite herself. She’d tried to be philosophical about it. Nothing much came of hookups with strangers, although she had consoled enough girlfriends to know sometimes people hoped. Especially women. She had no intention of being so foolish herself, yet emotions she could not tamp down told her she had been exactly that dumb over Jason.
For a few minutes, she had felt something between her and Jason. She knew he’d felt it, too, but he had denied it and run from it. She could do no less herself. Fronting, laughing at being emo, while hiding how drawn she was to him.
Here they were, a year later, working on the same news talk program. Jason had come up with the idea for the show and sold it to the cable management, becoming the moderator but not the ultimate boss. That was Marty. When one of their original panelists had moved on, they’d done a search and found her, also searching. Since Jason said nothing at their first interview about knowing her from before, she had never referred to it herself.
It ate at her constantly. She kept wishing for something more between them and at the same time dreading it. The more she knew Jason, the more attracted to him she was. That hair, his broad shoulders, his eyes. She remembered how he tasted. She wanted him.
She needed to calm down. She had more shows to do with Jason, and she intended to handle them with consummate professionalism. She was strong. Enough of this endless girlish yearning.
#
Dorothy was sitting on her patio. She had not taken her morning walk today. She would wait until later, when she went with Yappie and the new neighbor. Bruce, that was his name. Nice young fellow. About the right age for Pam, and no sign of a wife or a girlfriend. Maybe she should invite Pam for visit, since the poor girl had lost her job. Seeing how Pam took to Bruce would be entertaining. That girl needed to re-start her life. Why not with a new man?
As the sun swung around, it was very pleasant to be protected by the umbrella. She watched the waves and wondered how much longer she had to live. A curious thing to wonder, some might say. Eventually, when you got old, you did think of it directly instead of pretending death would never happen. She was already eighty-seven, not a great age compared to some people, but her family only lived into their eighties. Her elder brother and sister were already dead. She probably had only a few years left, if that. Just as well. Life wasn’t as interesting now as it used to be. She simply did not have the stamina, let alone the razor-sharp memory, for the crusades she’d led in the past. Oh, she knew dimming memory wasn’t unusual as one got older. But it was damned annoying.
At least she could still drive her car, although lately she hadn’t felt comfortable doing it much. More and more, she simply called the local shops and ordered what she needed, and paid for delivery.
Not getting out in the car did leave her feeling a bit cut off sometimes. She had a regular card game on Wednesdays, and there was a luncheon out at the club on Fridays, but during the rest of the week, there wasn’t any reason to leave the house. Since giving up her committee leadership positions, she’d somehow lost interest in their doings, too. Although she studied and signed petitions that came around, of course. She didn’t attend the meetings she used to run herself. She didn’t interfere. She had retired.
Was she waiting to die? Perhaps.
That boy next door reminded her of someone. She didn’t know whom it was, but she’d remember eventually. During a long life, she had seen many faces. She supposed there were some characteristics that repeated. No, he reminded her of a particular person. Was it someone she had liked? Or disliked? It might be easier to remember who it was if she divided her mental list into people she’d liked and those whom she had wished the earth would swallow up.
Occasionally, her wishes had been granted. Pamela would be scandalized to know how satisfied her mother was when an enemy fell. Pamela was always a goody two-shoes. A sweet-hearted girl, far too sensitive and easily hurt. It was a blessing she'd married Jeff. He wasn’t the hurting kind; the boy hadn’t had a cruel bone in his body. Dorothy had known cruel men, but she had been smart enough to avoid or get around them. She’d known how to spike their guns if they got in the way of her campaigns. Many men had been bullies in the old days, but she’d refused to tolerate them. In fact, she had made it a point to bring them down when she could. She wasn’t the type to wait for the Lord’s vengeance the Bible promised.
Ah, well, but that was a long time ago.
#
That afternoon, Pam called Magda. “How are you, dear?”
“I am well, Pamma.” Magda said. She had never quite gotten her mind around the nuances of American nicknames.
“Did you by any chance see me on television this morning?”
“No…it was important?”
Pam explained she had been told there was a chance that viewers would send checks.
“This is—what you say—amazing,” Magda sputtered. When she got excited, she lost some of her English.
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself and give you false hope,” Pam stressed. “It might only be a few hundred dollars.”
“Oh.”
She was lying, of course. She planned to ensure Magda would have enough cash to make several tuition payments, even if she had to donate it herself under a false name via a U.S. Postal Money Order. There ought to be some system to help people like Magda, people who were in a temporary jam and needed a short-term hand. “I have thought of another possibility. Would you like to hear what it is?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She explained her fledgling idea of securing a loan through an online micro-credit lender.
“I would be grateful. You are my blessed friend,” Magda declared, sounding very excited.
Perhaps she should have researched the micro-loan idea before suggesting it to Magda. She tried to back off a little.
“Anyway, that’s a possibility. I will go on the Internet and find out everything I can, right away,” she promised.
Oh, Pam, what have you done? she thought as she hung up. She wasn’t the expert on helping people. She should call her mother and ask if she was doing the right thing. Although she already knew that her mother would say Pam was doing it all wrong. As she always did.
#
Jason surprised Linley by coming to her cubicle between segments of the other shows they both contributed to.
“Did you take your mom to lunch after the Today Show?”
Linley stared at him. Why on earth did he want to know? On the other hand, it was actual conversation unrelated to the job, a first for Jason.
“I had work to do. She went home,” she said. Why did it suddenly sound selfish of her? She could have spared the time to be nicer to her mother. Pam had come all the way i
nto the city at such an early hour on Linley’s behalf, not her own. Her mother hadn’t asked for public sympathy for herself. Linley had used her mother’s bad luck to further her career.
Jason said, “She’s a classy lady. If she comes into town again, we should take her out and invite Marty. He’s single, too.”
He couldn’t be serious. Wanting to fix up her mother with a new man? He had to be jerking her chain.
“Was there something you wanted, Jason, or are you just trying to annoy me?”
“Go out with me Friday night. We should get to know each other,” he said, in an offhand manner.
She searched his eyes, not seeing the irony she expected. Had he forgotten the night they’d ended up in bed? Was it possible? No, his eyes showed he remembered.
“Been there, done that.” She didn’t make any attempt to soften the refusal. She kept her voice too low for others nearby to hear.
“I don’t recall us talking much,” he countered, leaning closer, his voice challenging. “It’s only dinner. Hands on the table at all times.” He spread his hands out palms up, indicating his pure intentions. Then he spoiled the innocent gesture by smiling at her and dazzling her with his raw animal appeal. She wanted to melt.
Was he serious? Was he pretending he didn’t feel the chemistry that still sizzled between them? Day after day, she could barely restrain herself from staring at him inappropriately. Drinking in his features, laughing like a fool at his witticisms, lusting after his powerful, well-shaped body she’d memorized that one night last year. Professional protocol forbade any random touching because of sexual harassment issues, which was all that saved her. That one handshake when she got the job had been electric. If they ever touched again, she would go up in flames.
She refused to take the risk.
“Thanks for the invitation. Some other year.” If only she felt as coolly indifferent as she sounded. He was very tempting. He could hardly look any more handsome. His dark tailored suit was a perfect foil for the shocking pink shirt and tie he wore, and both emphasized his regular features, skillfully trimmed hair, and piercing dark eyes. He was an attractive, virile man and he was smiling at her and wanted to spend time with her. She wanted to make love to him. She wanted to have time to explore his face, kiss every indentation and crease. His body. She wanted to press the skin of his naked chest with her own, and feel the heat of their flesh mingling.
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