“Or maybe pictures of someone special in your life?”
Riley imagined that Juliet meant nothing by this, but it was a punch to the gut. Neil. He was such a go-getter, Riley rued, that he’d probably already secured a new date for Saturday night. She was never going to meet the relatives he’d told her about. She was never going to make scrapbooks about their time together . . . “I’m sure I’ll find something later . . .” she said, as her eyes watered up again.
“Oh, it’s no trouble. Do you need to look to jog your memory?”
Juliet stood there and waited, her attention fully focused on her guest. She didn’t seem unhappy about this moment of stillness. Indeed, she smiled at Riley as if there was nothing she would rather do than share this moment with her.
So Riley did as she was told. She pulled out her phone and tried not to look at the shots of Neil at that beer garden. She seized upon the fall photos she had just taken. They would do. “Just let me know where to send these, and I’ll do that later . . .”
“We’ve got time now. Send them to pictures at JSP dot com and Kylie will print them up.”
Riley looked up, incredulous. “Um, OK . . . I can, I just don’t mean to take so much of your time while I do this and . . .”
“Oh, Riley.” Juliet laughed. “I have all the time in the world.”
Chapter 4
A few hours later, after a mix of work-related meetings and crafting classes, the women of MB gathered to sit at the bar on the second-floor balcony, looking out at the sea. The weather had taken a darker turn. Storm clouds rolled in thick. The waves turned choppy as the last few beach-goers, those brave souls set on visiting the seashore despite the looming October chill, packed their blankets and coolers. The mottled vines on the school’s fence posts fluttered. The red leaves of the black gums and the orange of the shadbush glowed bright against the gray sky and the white lighthouse a few miles down the shore, setting off the darker colors of the pines and cedars.
All afternoon, while stuck with her colleagues, Riley had been feeling strangely claustrophobic. She was more aware than ever of the ticking clock. It was only by looking out at the water that she found relief. There, all seemed open. The wind made the balcony cool, and everyone fetched their jackets as the temperature dropped, but still, the colors, the wildness, made it a magical place.
Finally, Nadia rose to give a toast. “That was amazing. Some of you have talents I had no idea about. Jean, if the consulting thing doesn’t work out, you could start a business making centerpieces. I heard Juliet say they could make you a star.” Everyone laughed, Jean included, but as Riley smiled, the image from that beige conference room flashed into her mind. Soon they would be meeting again. Reviewing everything again. Challenges. “But I’m not surprised. MB consultants have so many talents . . .”
And so on it went. Riley couldn’t focus with her job on the line. So she pulled out her phone—576 emails. She looked at one. Some question about a meeting tomorrow. Sunday? She heard Nadia say her name, but she had no idea what she’d said. So she put her phone in her pocket and smiled a little—a smile that could be appropriate for any occasion. The group laughed. It was a light laugh, a gentle laugh. Or a scolding laugh? She had no idea. She was struggling through the logistics of being at a meeting on Sunday, and getting out of the Jersey Shore. Could she fly to Atlanta for a midday meeting . . . ? She looked again. No, the meeting had happened a week before. Why was she was being copied on this email? She realized someone else had spoken to her. She nodded, distracted. A former client in London wrote about talking. He had been a royal pain. She’d race to Heathrow, only to be kept waiting for hours and strung along on work. She’d vowed not to work with him again. But if she was losing her clients, what choice did she have? She could drive to New York that night, work up a proposal with a team on Sunday, and be in London for an 8 a.m. meeting on Monday.
She was still hunting through her cluttered calendar when she noticed, a minute later, that she and the bartender were the only people left on the balcony. The sun set behind the school, sinking beneath the roofs of the other Victorian houses, the cedars and persimmons. The bartender packed up his bottles. “They went inside to cook dinner. Are you going? Or trying to get out of it?” He laughed. “I get a straggler or two up here every event. People who cook for their families and don’t get the appeal of paying to do it.”
“No, I was looking forward to that part, I guess I just . . .”
“I can make you something strong enough to take you through the next hour if you want to stay here and enjoy the view in peace.”
“No, no, I . . .” Riley put her phone back in her pocket, flustered. Should she go to London?
Juliet popped her head out the door. “Well, there you are! Kevin wondered where his apprentice had gone. Were you off in your own little world?”
“Yes,” Riley said. “But it wasn’t a great place to be.”
Juliet didn’t laugh this off like Riley thought she would. “Why wouldn’t it be a good place? What possibilities are you imagining?”
Riley shook her head. She couldn’t talk about it now, though something about the woman made her want to. She sensed that energy again, crackling over the balcony. Juliet’s eyes were gentle. She looked like she had time for anything you might tell her.
“Anyway, you can’t imagine how happy Kevin was to learn at least one person wasn’t going to drift back to the bar after listening to him for thirty seconds.” Riley took one last look at the darkening ocean. The choppy water splashed high against a motorboat rumbling in for the night. She followed Juliet downstairs to the kitchen, where her colleagues were, as promised, all gripping their glasses and watching other people do the work.
But Riley, also as promised, was going all in until she achieved competence. Kevin, whom Juliet introduced as an import from Kyoto, handed Riley the nicest knife she’d ever held. The handle felt smooth and substantial in her grasp. He showed her how to slice, to hold the onion with one palm and rock the knife with the other. Her first cuts were rough, producing cubes the size of dice. They’d suffice for her college braises, but not for now. Kevin pushed those cubes to the side. Her second attempt was better; the third onion was, after furious chopping, reduced to pieces as small as baby teeth. Kevin applauded. Riley grabbed a fourth onion and leaned into this one. The world around her, the colleagues who were going to fire her, her swirling thoughts of Neil sharing a dessert by candlelight with someone else, all disappeared. She threw herself into her chopping. Her arm ached. She didn’t care. Another onion. Another. Kevin called Juliet over to photograph these onions, compared to the “before” pile from her first attempt.
“Wow, Riley,” Juliet said in appreciation. “You know how to work, don’t you?”
“That’s what I do,” Riley said. She looked up. Her colleagues stared at her. Yes, she thought. That’s what I do. No matter what it requires of me, I roll up my sleeves and I work. The women of MB resumed their conversations. The duck and the Brussels sprouts went into the oven first as two staff members poured soup into bowls. Bob ushered the women to their seats. Riley knew she should join everyone, but with Juliet standing there, watching her, she couldn’t pull herself away. Finally, tentatively: “How do you decide what to do?”
Juliet pondered this. “You mean like which projects to do? What to do in any moment? What to do with my life?” She grabbed a glass of sparkling wine off Harold’s tray and handed it to Riley.
“Any of that. All of that. You seem calm despite everything you have going on.”
Juliet nodded. “I think a lot about how I spend my time,” she said. “Twenty-four hours in a day. One hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. It is a lot of time from the perspective of fitting in what matters to me, but it is ultimately a precious resource too. I cannot do everything, so I do what I find most meaningful and enjoyable to myself and the people I care about.”
“
You make it sound simple.”
“It is.”
“But I have six hundred and fifty-seven unread messages in my inbox from people who need me. How would I only do what I wanted?”
“I believe you used the word ‘simple,’ not easy.”
Riley sighed. “I shouldn’t be here. I have so much I need to do. If I don’t land new clients in the next three weeks they’re going to fire me. They seem nice, but MB is brutal about stuff like that.”
“Oh, Riley.” Juliet smiled. “Perhaps you could see other possibilities?” She raised her glass and met Riley’s eyes. That same strange sense of knowing. What could Juliet see? Riley nodded and took her seat, returning, of course, to her ghastly inbox even before the soup course ended. Nadia proposed another toast—826 unread messages. How could this jumble of expectations be swelling so quickly? One from Skip. Can you talk tomorrow for a few minutes? The donor wants to move our meeting to a Sunday afternoon coffee since something came up for Monday. Riley, can you please respond? She meant to. But she had nothing. No ideas. Her brain felt strained.
It was as if Nadia could see this mental clutter. “Here’s to our brilliance!” she said, a few drinks in. “Here’s to MB, where the insights come so fast we can’t catch them all.” Everyone raised their glasses. Riley could barely taste her duck, could barely talk to her tablemates. What would she do if she didn’t make it at MB? What would she tell her parents, who bragged about her success to their neighbors? She had, in idle moments, seen herself leading these toasts someday, just like she had daydreamed about Neil. She wanted to rise as high as she could at MB. She wanted to seek out projects and clients that fascinated her. When she was being interviewed for her job, years before, she remembered talking about bringing MB’s capacity to broader social issues—to the talent development, perhaps, of girls like her from the world’s less-mined quarters. She wanted time to think about such things. She wanted to have enough energy to enjoy the people she loved. She glanced for the first time at the table centerpieces. Little clocks. And this phrase, woven onto the mats under them: Time is finite. What was with this place? The hours, with her inbox, were spinning out of her control.
She grew dizzy, but no one seemed to notice. A woman from the Washington, DC, office prattled on about a recent trip to Napa. The meringue emerged, and was consumed, and the women drifted toward that upholstered parlor. Riley lingered at her table. She kept staring at the clock. She felt Juliet watching her from the doorway. She could not face more hours feigning interest. She wasn’t sure about everyone else’s holidays in wine country, but she didn’t have space amid her finite time for such things. Maybe her colleagues were luckier. Maybe they knew people she didn’t. Maybe—born into privilege, funneled into Ivy League degrees, feeling fully entitled to all good things that came to them—they didn’t know what it was like to be constantly proving yourself.
In any case, as Juliet said, Riley knew how to work. She was not going to be outworked.
So she slipped out of the room. She climbed the narrow stairs to her hallway. She recognized her room at once from the giant starfish on the door. She turned the knob and walked in. Her duffel bag sat on the luggage stand. Bob had done what he could, but her bag looked as beat up as she felt. Riley ran the numbers. That little leather carry-on, chosen over a roll-aboard because it would never need to be gate-checked, and thus she could always be first in the taxi line, had spent the equivalent of four months out of the last four years stuffed into overhead compartments. None of it had led to anything but proving herself below average.
She picked up her phone again—1,074 unread messages. The panic rose. This could not be possible. It was Saturday. What was going on? Was she hallucinating? She could barely breathe. She looked at one randomly. Another. Was she going to London? Or there was that grocery store chain headquartered in Atlanta. She could fly there Monday and walk the halls. She glanced out the window. Storm clouds gathered in the night sky. Far away, she heard a crack of thunder. The sounds downstairs grew fainter. People walked, chatting, down the hall. She heard her own name. A laugh. She listened closer. “Did you see she didn’t even get her head out of her phone when Nadia mentioned her in that toast?” Another laugh.
Doors opened. Then all was silent.
Riley listened to the silence for a few minutes. She looked down—1,136 unread messages. The number rose like seconds on a stop watch. She buried her head in her hands.
Then, after a long time, she heard a knock. “Riley?” said Juliet. “It’s me.”
Chapter 5
Riley put down her phone. She paused. What should she do? It wasn’t every day that a celebrity took an inexplicable interest in one’s life. It would be rude not to open the door and invite her in. She supposed she could always tell Juliet she was too busy to talk, though “busy” was clearly relative. The rational part of her brain knew it was improbable that she had more on her plate than a single mother raising two children and running a sprawling business. And the truth was, other parts of her brain wanted to talk.
Opening the door would itself be a decision. It would be a decision not to spend the next few minutes recruiting a team to meet on Sunday and analyze the needs of the London or Atlanta clients. She felt paralyzed. The clock was ticking. Twenty days. She couldn’t just not deal with all this.
Yet there was the knock again. Calmly persistent. Just like Juliet.
“Riley!” she called. “Riley, my dear, I’m pretty sure you’re in there.” Her light was on; she couldn’t pretend to be asleep. She sighed and opened the door.
Juliet stood there, covered from head to toe in rain gear. She held a second raincoat in her arms.
“Hey,” Riley said, confused. She had somewhat assumed there would be another mug of mulled wine involved in this visitation. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes,” she said. “We are going somewhere. I think we have an hour before the rain really starts. The storm is coming in. Have you seen the beach in a storm?”
“I’m not sure I . . .”
“I love wild nights like this. Nights like this are full of possibilities.”
“Or emails,” said Riley. “I’ve got over a thousand unread messages. Probably up to twelve hundred now that I’ve looked away for a minute.”
“Or twelve thousand!” Juliet said. “I think I have twenty-four thousand unread emails in my inbox. Here’s the funny thing: They’ll still be there later.” She held out the second raincoat. “Come walk with me.”
“We’re going out in the storm?”
“I have something I want to show you. I have something you need to see.” Juliet looked Riley straight in the eyes. She smiled. There was no escaping that gaze. Riley shoved her phone in her pocket, but Juliet motioned to her charger on the desk. “Leave it—I wouldn’t want it to get wet if I’m wrong on the rain.”
Reluctantly, Riley put it down. She slid into the coat. She felt oddly swaddled in it, like everything extraneous was being muffled out.
The halls of Juliet’s school were quiet. A few conversations drifted out of a few doors, but for the most part the consultants were all working alone. Juliet and Riley walked down the stairs and passed Harold and Bob cleaning up from the evening. Harold pulled two plates at a time out of the dishwasher, stacking them in the cupboard. Bob set the table for breakfast. Juliet whispered something to them. They looked at Riley in her borrowed raincoat and nodded knowingly. Riley had a feeling that this was not the first time Juliet had taken a customer out on a stormy night. Bob gave her a salute.
“Ready?” Juliet opened the door with the shellacked wreath. The night guard glanced up from the guardhouse, but she motioned him to stay put. He nodded. It was late enough. The beach was deserted. She didn’t have her highly recognized children with her. She could go unaccompanied.
As they stepped outside, the blustery wind took Riley’s breath away. From the porch she could see the dar
k choppy water reflecting a light from the pier. Waves broke against the pier’s wooden posts. Angry plumes of spray hissed into the air. Two people on the boardwalk wrapped their coats tighter and hurried off.
“Come on!” Juliet called. Now she was laughing as a flash of lightning blazed on the horizon. Thirty seconds later, a rumble like a train growled through the hunkered-down town. The storm was still a few miles off. “We have time! We have all the time in the world.”
It was the second time she had said that phrase to Riley. She pulled her down the steps, over the road, and up the path to the boardwalk. The wind picked up the closer they came to the beach. Up on the boardwalk it seemed to roar around them. Another flash of lightning illuminated the lighthouse in the distance and made Juliet’s green eyes glow. The beach grass bent back. Sand scratched past them. Juliet took Riley’s arm to steady her.
It seemed improbable that one could hear anything in that din, yet when Juliet leaned close, her voice was oddly clear. She spoke low. Somehow Riley’s ears could absorb it. They walked forward, past the shuttered beach tag hut, and out to the fishing dock. The wild night seemed to pull her into something different, something strange. Riley had a sudden thought. She really shouldn’t be able to hear Juliet this well. Something odd was going on. On the horizon, the sky brightened with an otherworldly, orangish gleam.
Juliet smiled. It was a bewitching sort of grin. “Despite your achievements with the onions, I couldn’t help but see how sad you seemed at dinner.”
“Well, you know. I just lost my biggest client. Counting down the days until you’re fired puts a damper on your mood.”
“Would MB really wish to part with you?”
“You’d be surprised. According to my evaluator, I have to show progress in the next thirty days, or I will be rated the dreaded ‘Resignation Suggested.’”
Juliet's School of Possibilities Page 3