She deliberately had forgotten to tell Sarah about her picnic with Bruce. About the kiss. She wasn’t ready to withstand bawdy girlfriend teasing. Her feelings were mixed up. Guilt over Jeff, even though she knew he would want her to be happy. Confusion about what she wanted from a relationship and what Bruce wanted.
They had arranged to go to a local park Dorothy had been instrumental in creating many years ago. Dorothy’s name was even on a plaque at the entrance. They’d probably take his dog and walk around. She had no idea how adults courted these days. She and Jeff had met when they were both very young and inexperienced. They had gone on inexpensive dates at first, spending time in parks, and—oh, no. Was she unconsciously trying to duplicate the past?
If she was, so be it. She wasn’t comfortable with what she had heard recently—that men expected sex on the third date. Or sooner. No way would she want to do that. She should ask Linley if it was true. Linley dated, so she would know. No. Linley and she didn’t have that kind of relationship. They didn’t swap girlish confidences. Not at all.
Chapter 13
“American consumers are like sheep,” Linley said, unable to keep the disgust out of her voice. Hot Tracks was on the air again, and the topic was the debt load of the average American.
“Linley, that’s harsh,” Ernie said.
“They’re all about following fashions trends, and spending money they don’t have. Getting rich is the American dream, but nobody knows how to hold onto their money. People are pitiful,” she insisted.
“You’re being tough on them,” Jason said.
“There’s no point sugarcoating the truth. These are the same people we the taxpayers are supposed to bail out from their insane mortgage debt.”
“That’s socialism,” Ralph frowned. He was the one who always worried the most about indications the government was trying to take care of citizens.
“Even if—and let’s suppose you’re right, Ralph and Lin, and the average American consumer is incompetent at managing his or her money—even if it’s true, we’ve still got a desperate situation on a national scale,” Jason said, using one of his patented portmanteau sentences that tried to encompass everything they’d touched on at once.
“True, but Linley here has no sympathy for these people caught in the clutches of the credit card companies and their usurious rates.” That was Ernie again.
“I do sympathize,” Linley insisted, “but a personal finance bailout doesn’t build character. All it does is teach the average citizen that there are no consequences to his or her foolish actions. That kind of federal policy will cripple people.” She shook her head.
“You’re worried about creating a moral hazard?” Jason asked.
“People only want to get debt relief so they can run out and spend some more.”
“Why do you think that is? Ideas?” Jason asked. He turned to Ernie and Ralph.
They offered opinions and argued more. Linley was content to have had her say.
After the Washington disaster, she’d pulled herself together and started ignoring Jason’s sex appeal. She concentrated on building her career, not messing it up. Her degree was not in journalism. She had a hole in her knowledge about her field. Too late, she had Googled all the distinguished women she had seen at the DC press party. Some had hard lives before the feminist movement gave them more opportunities. Others were bona fide media stars. Had Ariana Huffington been there, and Linley hadn’t noticed?
Knowing her core subject, statistics, was not enough. Nor was being young and attractive, although for television how she looked was important. Maybe less than in the past? A lot of the women who had significant television shows were so old they were long past the pretty stage. Barbara Walters was ancient, although she dolled up to pretend otherwise. Of course, there were plenty of ugly guys on television. Not Jason. He was a stunner. She loved the way his curly hair looked as if it was a total wig, it was that perfect. Oh, damn, she was thinking about him again.
She’d allowed her temper to deep six any possible hookup after the press club event. Now she thought of it as a close escape. She had no business doing the horizontal mambo with a man she almost worked for. Sure, Marty was their boss, but Jason ran the show.
She’d avoided trouble, but try telling her body. Her breasts ached for Jason to fondle them. Her thighs wanted to be entangled with his. And that was just for starters.
The mess-up in DC had changed her somehow. She started interrupting the guys and yelling her opinions across the room. She’d learned if she used a low-pitched tone but high volume, she could cut them off successfully. They’d run on long enough about the poor pitiful consumers. She opened her mouth to re-enter the fray with a zinger.
#
With another show over, Linley retreated to her cubicle and sent an email to Beth, the girl she’d met at the DC press club party. She would keep in touch with her, to network.
She knocked on Marty’s open office door a few minutes later.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I’d like your advice about what I should study to make myself more valuable as a journalist,” she said.
“You mean like a course?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever.”
He leaned back in his plush office chair and gave her an appraising look. Something in her face must have convinced him that she was sincere and not merely currying favor. He nodded and stood up. He walked to his stuffed floor-to-ceiling bookcase and hauled out a couple of books.
“Try reading these first,” he said, putting them into her hands. “Until you learn where this business came from, you won’t understand it. These will give you a good start.”
“Thanks. I appreciate this,” she said.
He stared at her, again visibly weighing whether she was in earnest. Then he shrugged as if the answer was up to her. “Happy reading.”
She retreated from his office, knowing herself judged and wanting. Evidently, her discovery of her ignorance at the press club party wasn’t news to more senior people at this network. She would read all these books, and take notes, too. She had to become more than a talking head with an empty brain.
She and Jason seemed to have a truce going at the moment. It was not an easy one, at least on her part. He called on her even less during the program, although she’d been fighting back effectively with her increasingly incendiary comments.
He hadn’t asked her out again. She’d tried not to dwell on sexual issues when her mind should be on business. It was hard to keep Jason out of her dreams. She wondered why.
She also wondered what his intentions were. He had been crowding her before the DC trip. On the train down, he had acted extremely confident. Yet he had made no effort to talk her out of her snit that night when she’d yelled at him. He had tried nothing sexual then, either. Of course she had made it clear she blamed him for the whole fiasco, but he hadn’t argued with her or tried to get her to calm down. During their train trip back to New York, he had spent most of his time in the bar car, avoiding her.
She was angry at herself. Although she had lashed out at Jason, she knew her mistake was entirely her own responsibility. Maybe the reason Jason backed off was he’d decided he didn’t want her and her temper after all. She supposed she owed him an apology. They worked together and needed to have a civil relationship.
The next day when she arrived she saw Jason heading toward his office. No time like the present for eating crow.
“Jason!” He turned at her call and gave her an inquiring glance.
“What’s up?” he asked.
No big smile. No attempt to charm. She had an uphill slog ahead of her. She might as well start.
“I wanted to apologize to you. My behavior after the press club dinner was way out of line. I’m sorry it took me a while to say so.”
He searched her face, something she’d never noticed him do before. She had given him evidence of the caustic side of her personality, and he clearly had paid attent
ion. She held her breath as he thought it over.
“Accepted. We all have our off nights.”
“That’s very gracious of you.” In her relief, she couldn’t help confiding, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at myself.”
Jason didn’t seem inclined to linger. He only nodded. “See you later.” He continued on his way.
She had been dismissed. Jason wasn’t interested. Her outrageous behavior had scuttled their personal relationship far more effectively than had all her previous efforts to remain coolly professional.
Why was she upset? It would be dangerous to her ambitions to fall for him. Others would view her as a mere adjunct to Jason, and some managers didn’t want to employ people who were involved with each other. Marty might disapprove. Which meant she’d get fired, not Jason.
Plus, she’d get distracted, and she’d end up like his other girls who swooned over him and who got used up and tossed away when he got bored with them. She didn’t want anyone to think of her as Jason’s discard. She had Googled Jason and read all the talk about his relationships with women. The reports weren’t good. He apparently wasn’t a cheater, but he never stuck around with any woman for long. He was already in his early thirties, a bit old not to have been engaged at least once, or lived with someone long term. No hint of a serious relationship among all the dishy Google remarks.
This was why it was best not to talk to the object of a hookup or a booty call. Do the sex, and leave. Jason had followed the unwritten rules, yet she had felt unsatisfied and angry because he had. Yet there had been times she’d told guys not to talk, just get to the sex. With Jason, she had felt differently but resisted her feelings. She had wanted Jason to stay and talk and even, ohmigod, cuddle. She was messed up for sure.
Forget the sex thing. Who cared about sex, anyway? She had to convince Jason she was a likable human being. She didn’t want him going around telling people she was a stone bitch. It would be bad for her career. How ironic. She thought she was so smart. She hadn’t slept with the boss. Instead, she’d yelled at him. Brilliant.
What had she been thinking? She had presumed a relationship where there had been only a hookup. She could make all kinds of excuses, claim Jason was pressing her too much sexually, both earlier in the week and on the train. She could even blame his aggression as the real reason she had lashed out at him. It didn’t compute. She wasn’t afraid of her sexuality or of his, only of making a wrong move in her career. She had a fierce temper and she blew it. In one single minute, she’d made a total failure of the entire trip.
How to repair the damage? Think, Linley. What else could she do?
Of course. She could bring Jason opportunities to push his own agenda—that of becoming a popular media personality like Stephen Colbert. If she could work her connections to present Jason with a chance to shine on another, more popular television show, maybe he’d revise his low opinion of her.
She would be especially careful from now on. She would research new studies and stats every day. She would be an added value to the show.
She should be more collegial with the panelists. She shouldn’t be waiting like a princess to be called on. She should comment actively on what the men said. Even Jason, though that would be hard. She should become a familiar voice in the background, if nothing else.
She should stop looking like a bimbo when she attended industry social events. Her too-blonde habit of dressing provocatively was the reason she and Jason had hooked up in the first place. She’d been broadcasting that she was available. Nice job, Linley. What a fool she had been. She was lucky Jason had even considered her for this position after that introduction. No matter how much people wanted to say that it was who you screwed that got you ahead, that wasn’t true. Hookups got you nowhere. Having a relationship, living together, even being married, that got you on the inside. Not that she and Jason had a relationship anymore. Okay. She’d start all over again. She would earn his respect as a professional.
Chapter 14
There went that boy again. The one who looked like Greta. How strange to see her likeness in an older person. He even walked like her, that long, loping stride Greta had even in high heels. That’s what they’d called them then. High heels. Now they called them something very explicit. Times had changed.
Dorothy finished her morning tea and collected a windbreaker. Time for Yappie’s morning training session. They were almost at her door. Last week, she had missed a session. It had slipped her mind. On hearing that, Bruce had offered to come pick her up for each session. To be a kind of human appointment book. She liked that arrangement. The more regular and routine her life was, the easier it was for her to keep track of her responsibilities.
Returning from training Yappie, Dorothy noticed the stacks of papers in the dining room. She should roll up her sleeves and get going on them. First, she needed to sit down for a while. She didn’t have the energy she once had.
A few minutes later, she roused herself from a doze. Darn it. She’d fallen asleep in the middle of the day again. She consulted her wristwatch, a dainty gold one Malcolm had given her on their tenth anniversary. Only fifteen minutes had passed. Not a tremendous long nap. But a nap. Bah. She was getting to be an old woman.
She went to the front door to collect the mail. Bills, ads, nothing interesting. She put them on a table in the dining room. She looked for the newspaper she’d retrieved from the doormat this morning. Oh, of course. It was on a console table in the front hall. She took it out of its plastic bag and went back to the sunroom to sit down and read the paper.
She skimmed the headlines. The president was talking to foreign leaders. When wasn’t he? She looked out at the water. It was more interesting than the headlines. Look at that wave for instance, going up and down, up and down.
#
Linley continued her efforts to make up for her outrageous folly in DC. She’d gone out of her way to gain knowledge of a new but obscure financial study that shed some light on how the ordinary consumer behaved regarding credit card debt. It made more sense if she revealed the data on the earlier shows today where she had her own tiny segments. Instead, she waited to put out the information on Jason’s program while they were debating what the government bailout of a huge credit card company would mean for the consumers.
“Unfortunately, the government isn’t handing them a new usury cap along with the money. This is going to mean huge profits and more consumer debt,” she said.
“That’s good for the company’s health and for people buying the company’s stock,” Ernie said.
“At a certain fixed point, consumers simply stop. They stop spending. They stop paying their bills.” She pulled up a graphic to highlight the new study, and explained the study parameters briefly, including what a large study it was.
“If the government doesn’t affix usury cap conditions to their bailout of Towncorp, customers will bail?” Mike asked.
“Yes, they’ll walk away. The higher delinquency rate would undo all the government efforts to shore up the company,” she replied.
“Behavioral economics hoodoo,” Ralph said. He tended to get grumpy when actual consumers were mentioned instead of stock traders.
“Maybe, but what if it’s correct?” she replied. “The markets operate on confidence and gossip. Why shouldn’t consumers?” she replied. “We have a major crisis of confidence right now that can spread to all financial sectors.”
“A lot to think about. Thanks, Linley,” Jason said and wrapped up to go to commercial.
During the break, they argued some more about her data. All the men seemed interested. She had added value to the show.
The next day, she presented more data about how non-traders behaved.
“This is important why?” Mike questioned.
“Because the stock market’s big highs until recently were buoyed by the vast investor pool contributing to 401(k)s,” she argued. “These people don’t have any idea how their funds are bei
ng managed, or any real control over them. The fund managers are the ones who control the buying and selling of individual stocks.”
“Panic selling is within their power,” Jason pointed out, “as recent weeks have shown.”
He turned to Ernie to ask the obvious. “Given the recent debacle, how is the market going to lure back these investors whose 401(k)s took such a hit? Ideas?”
Ernie answered with his usual air of sarcasm. “They’re not coming back and good riddance. Their naïve panic has undone Wall Street.”
“You don’t think it was Wall Street itself panicking?” Jason asked. “Based on big investment banks failing for instance?”
Ernie bridled. “No. Give me some professionals and we can run this right. The stock market shouldn’t be influenced by amateurs.”
“Then I guess you don’t mind that all the amateurs’ money has left the market?” Jason asked.
“Of course I do.” Ernie was indignant, but not terribly serious. “They should give Wall Street their money and butt out.”
Jason merely said, “It’s their money.”
The silly debate ended. Linley had contributed her bit, but the men had run with it. She wasn’t sure if she was winning any points with Jason. She hoped so, but there had been nothing personal about the exchange. Nothing passionate, if she discounted the passion the men all had for money. Did she? Good question. Her family had always been solidly middle class, comfortable enough but not living in ostentatious style. She didn’t have the typical girl vice of expensive shoe shopping or spending thousands on purses or handbags. Gucci, Prada, Manolo, and Louboutin were familiar names, but not because she bought their wares compulsively. Her girlfriends did, which was why she was solvent and they were all in debt, despite some of them earning much more than her. She didn’t care about getting rich, because what would she do with the money? Buy a bigger condo, sure. Otherwise? Not important. Ironic that she talked about money every workday.
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