For All the Wrong Reasons (27 page)

He sat on a rickety chair, in his cramped office, mopping up his sweat and trying to concentrate on the words blinking up from his laptop. It felt like a sauna in here, and the hot, heavy scents of the Dunkin' Donuts next door filled the room and threatened to choke him. His jacket had long been surrendered and hung on a peg on the door. He'd downed two large jugs of iced tea and he was going to need to go out for a third one any minute now, because he was thirsty enough in this heat to start licking the condensation off the cracked glass fronting.

Nothing was neat about this place except for the brass plate outside the door.
IMPERIAL CONSULTANTS
, it said, in small, businesslike letters. Michael had it handmade. It cost him seventy bucks he could barely afford, but it was worth it. It felt like the last touch of class he had.

The tiny, hand-affixed bell jangled. Michael sat bolt upright, annoyed to be caught without his jacket on. Finally, a customer. He thanked God. He needed one right now. Maybe a rep from one of the major stores would be looking for a complete re-haul of their stocking policy. Better yet, maybe an agency would ask for his help. He'd managed to make stars of five complete unknowns before he got canned. Who knew who it might be?

The door swung open.

“Hi, Michael,” said Diana Foxton.

He stared at her. She wore a simple cotton dress in an Indian print, flat sandals, and was carrying a tote bag. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail that made her look even younger than usual, and a breath of perfume wafted in with her.

She wore no make-up, and seemed amazingly beautiful.

“Come to gloat?” Michael demanded. “If so, please, enjoy yourself, Mrs. Foxton, and then get out. I'm a busy man.”

“I can see that,” Diana said, looking around the empty office. It was devoid of furniture apart from a fax machine and a phone.

“Charming as ever.” Michael gritted his teeth. “Now that you have your report to take back to your husband, please leave me to get on with my work.”

She stood in the center of his room, hesitantly. The thought crossed his mind that it was the first time he'd ever seen Diana Foxton nervous.

“Can I sit down?”

“If you must.” Cicero was puzzled, but maybe the heat was making her faint, or something. He didn't want the chick crashing to the ground on his property. He indicated the hard chair positioned in front of his desk. “Go ahead.”

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said quietly.

Michael's brow lifted. “Yeah? Amusing. What favor would that be? To provide your husband with more amusing anecdotes of how his little spy kept him updated?”

Her eyes flashed. “I told you, I didn't spy on you. And he's not my husband.”

Cicero shrugged. “If you're not Diana Foxton, you're a dead ringer for her.”

“I am Diana Foxton. For the moment. I'm also separated, in the process of being divorced.” She tossed a folded copy of the
News
across the desk to him. “That's me, and that's my ex-husband. I found out about Green Eggs the same day you did. Ernie had served me with divorce papers the night before. I think it was his idea of a joke.”

He was skeptical. Diana sat across from him, blushing from the embarrassment of being forced to wash her dirty linen in front of him. He was so butch. Ridiculously masculine. A big gorilla, she told herself, with all that silky black hair.

“Yeah? And you're telling me you really worked at that job?”

“My work got done, didn't it?” she asked coldly. “I don't think you need to ask questions about my motivations. I did what you asked me to. And now I need a reference.”

Cicero grinned suddenly. “You came here to ask me for a reference?”

“Yes.” She shifted in front of him; her slim body, with all those curves, moved deliciously. “I—I—” she blushed, and fell silent.

“Go on,” he prompted, mercilessly.

“I can't find a job.” Diana's cheeks flamed. “I had no reference from you, and working for my husband's company didn't seem to count.”

“But you're a rich girl. Why don't you just go back to England?”

“I don't give up that easily,” she said, magnificently cold.

Cicero couldn't help it, he quite admired her. What it must have cost her to come in here and ask him for help. So, the spoiled little brat was getting her first reality check. He looked down at the pictures in front of him. One showed the weary Diana, the other the glittering Felicity, and all he could think was what a moron Ernest Foxton was to pick the second girl.

“I'm not going to ask your reasons,” he said, “because I don't care about them. But I guess I misjudged you. I suppose I owe you a favor. First, a reference from me would be worthless, because Blakely's discredited me. Second, you need one to get hired. It's Catch-twenty-two. You gotta have a job to get a job.”

Diana lowered her blue eyes. “That's just great. How the hell can I swing that? I only worked eight months in my whole life, and that was a year ago on another continent.”

“You can come and work for me,” Michael said.

Surprise made her rude. “Work for you? I don't think so.”

“It's the best offer you'll get.” Cicero shrugged. “Look, lady, I don't like you either, but this is an office. You don't need to like me, you just need to do what I tell you and turn up on time. I can only hire you for maybe a month. It's real short-term, too, but at the end of it you get a reference. I can pay you eight hundred dollars, no benefits.”

Diana looked across at him.

“I'll take it,” she said.

TWENTY-FIVE

The days crept by, and the temperature crept up.

Diana learned things she'd never thought herself capable of learning, and it stung her. She learned how to get up twenty minutes earlier to avoid the worst of the subway crush. She comparison-shopped at the delis and supermarkets for the cheapest detergents, and bought last-day discounted meat and fish. To keep the bugs out of her apartment, she learned to clean twice a day. She bought a small portable fan she couldn't afford, and learned how to sleep in her bra and panties lying uncovered on top of the bed. The heat in Manhattan seeped up from the sidewalk, cooked a little more between the close-set concrete valleys, and thickened through the dirty windows of her apartment. It was a full-time job to keep her skin cool and her make-up on her face.

Meanwhile, there was Michael Cicero.

She disliked him, but she had to respect him. Each day he was out there, hustling. Sometimes he left at nine and pounded the pavement until four forty-five. Diana sat in his cramped office, watching a phone that never rang. She did what she could. She tidied the place and swept it, made minor repairs, and even repainted one cracked wall. She fetched coffee and magazines, and pretended she was interested. She talked to a bargain-basement accountant about maximizing Michael's tax write-off.

Diana knew she'd have quit long before if she were Michael. There was stubbornness, and there was stupidity. Cicero had a degree and an employment history; he could get work elsewhere. An English teacher, something like that.

But Michael wasn't interested in some other job. He came in each day, wrote up whatever tiny project he was working on—if there was any work—went to knock on all the doors that stayed closed to him, and then left.

And she sat at her desk in the stifling heat and read magazines.

Time was running out for them both.

*   *   *

The doorbell jangled, and Michael came in, his white shirt crisp, his pants pressed. He didn't look like someone about to go under.

“How did it go?”

He shrugged. “Same as usual, I guess. How about you?”

“I reorganized the office,” Diana lied. She got the office straight two weeks ago, but she figured it would make him feel better.

“I bet.” He gave her a slow, knowing grin, and she blushed. Cicero had a disturbing habit of making Diana feel undressed when he looked at her. Nobody could be more formal, more reserved, but still, it was as though her dress was being peeled from her shoulders, her bra cups tugged down from her breasts. Annoyed with herself, she felt her nipples harden.

Desire was a trick. It never got satisfied.

He came across to where she was sitting and loomed over her, and Diana shrank from him, like she always did.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

Diana handed over the magazine. “There was an article on the Internet about how computing is making kids dumber. Concerned Parents of America, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah.” Michael flipped through it. “I can see why, too.”

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

Cicero was surprised. He looked down, which was a mistake. Diana was leaning forward eagerly, and her large, lightly freckled breasts were pushed together right under his nose. He caught a glimpse of the caramel lace of her bra. Damn. What a body she had.

“Sure,” Michael said, trying to keep his mind out of the gutter. He hadn't had a girl since Iris had left. An automatic hard-on was already starting in his groin. Shit. He moved out of the line of sight of her cleavage.

“The day Ernie had us fired. What were you going to ask me to do?”

His lips curled upward. “You got pretty mad. Actually, I was somewhat impressed with your ability to judge book covers. I was thinking about giving you a shot at working with our illustrators, picking out frames and other in-book graphics.”

Diana's mouth opened slightly. Cicero envisaged shutting it with his. Her lips were plump and red, vulnerably soft. His teeth would tear at them, biting them gently, forcing them apart with his tongue while she pressed those glorious tits up into his hands.…

“You really thought I could do that?”

Stop. Stop. “Yes, you had real talent, visually.”

“I liked what I saw,” Diana said thoughtfully. “I never could draw, but I could pick stuff out. Look at that, for example.” She pointed to a large color spot detailing the graphics on CD-ROM Encyclopedia. “Boring, banal. Why would a child be interested in that? I know I wouldn't.”

Cicero looked closer at the magazine in his hand. She was right. There was nothing there to interest a kid.…

He clapped the magazine shut and grasped Diana's hand.

“What? What did I say?” she asked, alarmed.

“Nothing. Everything.” Michael stood up straight, all thoughts of sex vanished from his mind. “You little beauty. You found it. You did it. We're back!”

He made her put up a closed sign and switch on the answer machine.

“We take the afternoon off?” Diana said.

“Don't be inane. I never take afternoons off. We're going to take a meeting.”

Michael led her westwards, back into the Village at Sixth and Twelfth, and ducked into French Roast. In the chic coffeehouse, among the louche beat poets and lazy students sipping their frappes, he sensed the old adrenaline bubble up in him like a Louisiana swamp on overdrive. He picked a table, and the lithe young waitresses swarmed around to serve him. Diana had been here alone, and it had taken her thirty minutes to get a menu. She watched the girls play for his attention. Really. They could barely be more obvious if they had just unbuttoned their tops, right there.

“You know I'm banned from publishing,” he said when her vanilla hazelnut arrived with his espresso.

“I had picked that up, yes.”

Michael made an impatient gesture. “The point is, my expertise has been going to waste.”

“True. I've been in livelier cemeteries than our office.”

“The whole Green Eggs thing was about a new look on old stories. To give children something visual, something worth reading.”

Diana sipped her coffee. “I understand; they were good books.”

“Today what do kids do? Play computer games.” He rifled through her magazine. “And the article says most computer games are mind-sapping garbage.”

“Of course they are.”

“But they needn't be. I proved I can sell high-quality, smart books. American parents are crying out for something valuable to teach their kids. What if we just went into computing?”

An unfamiliar sensation started to churn in Diana's flat stomach. A second later she recognized it. Butterflies. She had butterflies of excitement.

“That's … a pretty good idea,” she said slowly.

“No kidding it's a good idea.” He looked at her, but she had the impression he didn't see her. His mind was picturing a vast empire, she thought, limos, stock offerings, the cover of
Forbes.
Modesty had never been Michael's strong point. “I still have contacts in publishing who call me up every day, and most of them have CD-ROM divisions.”

“But that's still publishing, isn't it?”

His face darkened. “Yeah. Fuck.”

“Language,” Diana said absently.

“Whatever. OK, so I have to go to a computer-games manufacturer, and get them to start educational software.”

“But they don't know you.”

“Nothing good is ever easy, babe. I'll need help. Your job will change. You'll be scouting out hackers and code-writers, and guys who can draw pictures. You'll write my letters and come with me to the banks.”

“What use would I be at the banks?”

“You look classy,” he said, as though pointing out the obvious.

“But … but Michael…”

“I'm not interested in buts. You were going to say the month was almost done, and how will I pay your salary?”

She blushed. “Something like that, I'm afraid.”

“Don't worry about it. You let me take care of it,” Michael said intently. “If your check isn't there, you have my permission to walk.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

“It's going to be hard and thankless at first. No more nine to five. No more reading magazines and filing your nails all day. Are you in?”