Spinning (6 page)

“Yes, thank you.” I tapped a napkin to the corners of my mouth. “If we can continue to train the 12-to-17 demographic, get their allowance, their disposable income, you’ll have consumers for life.”

Waverly filled my wine glass about halfway. “How do you suggest we do that in our industry? It’s been a long time since I had an allowance.”

Mrs. Waverly cut in. “I used to give him an allowance, but he’d squander it on women and drink.”

“Yes, thank you, dear.”

I inserted myself into this exchange. “That s exactly what we want them to do. Spend their money. Not on women and drink, at least not until they hit the next consumer tier. But unless I was employed at Waverly Media, it would be unethical for me to discuss the details.” I took a sip of the Beaujolais and rolled it around my mouth. For unethical wine, it tasted rather sweet.

Waverly sat up a bit in his chair. “We have something opening up in the future in our International Operations division here in New York. We have a gentleman, a family man, who has been with us a long time…”

“Thirty-seven years.” Mrs. Waverly added. “We’ve watched John and Charlotte raise two boys, a girl, and five grandchildren.”

“John’s taking early retirement to spend time with his grandchildren.”

Waverly tipped his head. “We’ll miss him a great deal at the firm, but time marches on. We will, of course, replace him.”

“When does he retire?” I leaned back in my chair to avoid seeming too aggressive or too interested.

“Oh, sometime next spring? Is that right, dear?”

“Spring. Perhaps summer, she said, nodding.

Spring Sommers.
Until that moment, it hadn’t dawned on me that Diane had named her child after two seasons.

“Yes, Dylan, we believe in families…”

“… and we love grandchildren. Are you married?”

She caught me off guard, but I liked the challenge.

“Dear, you shouldn’t get so personal.” Mr. Waverly said, taking another sip of his wine. “Dylan, after your performance this week, we would be interested in talking with you about a vice president position with our company when the time approaches. While we’re on the subject, though,
are
you married?”

“No, not yet.”

Mrs. Waverly waved a hand toward her husband. “We shouldn’t even be talking about this. Ever since the nineties, they get so hostile when we tell people we prefer our employees…”

“Our
senior-level
employees.”

“… to be married. Well, it is our company.”

Waverly shook his head. “How wrong is that? We like stability, Dylan. Many companies don’t agree with us. They think having a family means having commitments and conflicts. They see time with the family as time away from the desk. My wife and I don’t buy into that.”

“That’s right, Dylan.”

“That’s why Mason he’s a good man, your boss is, we’ve known each other for 50 years never remarried. He already had the boy and wanted to spend more time in the office. And that’s why you’re joining us for dinner tonight.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my turn to talk and I went after the wine to delay.

“We’re having dinner tonight because the Mrs. and I like to spend the afternoon with the grandkids. Can’t do it during the week because that’s when we’re busy. We make time for our families. We know what’s important.”

“And we like children.”

Waverly smiled. “Yes, children. Children keep our minds creative. If we cannot perceive our environment like children, we die.”

Mrs. Waverly leaned toward me. “Any prospects?”

“Excuse me?”

“Any serious lady friends?”

I hesitated, but completely unbidden an image of me with Diane and Spring in the park jumped into my head.

“You’re prying, dear,” Waverly said. “Gotta draw the line somewhere.”

For a moment, Mrs. Waverly appeared chastened.

Waverly switched direction. “You’re a director for Mason, Brand, and Partners?”

“Executive Director.”

Mr. Waverly nodded and then stood up, signifying that our dinner was over. “By the way, although you snaked the Crystal Creek deal away from us, we were impressed.” Waverly helped his wife up. “I assume you would like to keep the lines of communication open between us.”

“I’d like that, sir,” I said, shaking their hands. I felt a little off balance, but it had nothing to do with being courted for a bigger position.

As I walked away, I was still wondering why Diane came so easily to mind when Mrs. Waverly mentioned “lady friends.”

Despite the Waverlys’ offer to join them in their limo, I had decided to walk home from the restaurant. They had built their company around a philosophy a bazillion years old. Things had changed in every way imaginable. When I was growing up, my mom had said that someday I’d understand why we waited sometimes an extra hour or two for my dad to get home from work before we ate dinner. I resented everything about this and wouldn’t want anyone to go through that for me. How could I possibly raise a family and have the kind of career that I had?

By the time my old man had been just a little older than me, he had two kids. My brother, Scotty, is ten years older than I am. Ten years was too much of an age gap to bridge, so we were never particularly close. It didn’t help that he always told me I was a mistake. My mom would
watch us while my pop worked his ass off in construction. That’s why I always took school seriously so I wouldn’t have to lose my hearing to a jackhammer. I still work my ass off, but I get paid very well for it and hear just fine.

Somewhere down the road, I always pictured having kids you know, like the generic kids off a TV show with a 21st century wife. She cooks, she cleans, she negotiates huge sports contracts, and she can identify more than a hundred different types of poisonous plants on a camping trip ideal and utterly imaginary. But when you were where I was, what was the point of compromising? If Waverly wanted me, he was just going to have to deal with my standards.

The streets were beginning to hum. Normally, I’d go home, grab a 20-minute nap, swing by Jim’s for a primer scotch, and we’d begin our adventures by 11:00 maybe the Magenta, or that new hotspot over on Grand, or maybe both at least when Jim’s kids weren’t over.

That wasn’t the plan tonight, though. I had company.

I crossed the street to my apartment and three beautiful women walked in front of me. Completely on instinct, I did the brushing eye contact thing, making sure to touch each of them just for a fraction of a second. This kind of move actually got me some attention in bars, though it had never worked on the street.

When I made it home, I waved to the security guard. I’d said hello to him this morning for the first time in two years. I nodded to him now and he did the same. Things were different with Spring around. When the elevator opened, a few women stepped out. I could detect the scent of Red Door on my left and Boucheron on my right. I could identify at least 20 different perfumes from the inexpensive to the obscene and I was always adding new
ones to my memory banks. Diane wore Boucheron, proving that she had considerably better taste in perfume than she did in luggage. I pressed the button for my floor, the scent making me just a little more anxious to get home.

Do family men notice perfume? I guessed that they did. Perfume and legs and cleavage. How could you ever be so caught up in the mundane that you didn’t notice these things?

When I walked off the elevator and the doors began to close, I poked my hand inside and hit all the buttons. I laughed ridiculously at my little stunt and began to wonder if I’d drunk more wine than I thought I did.

It was after 10:00 and Diane had already put Spring to bed.

“Good meeting?” she said, as we sat in the living room.

“Yeah, really good, I think. We’ll see if and when we start talking about money.”

She smiled, but didn’t say anything. I settled back on the couch.

“Spring seems like a good kid,” I said.

“She is a good kid. And she likes you.”

I laughed. “From what I can see, Spring likes everyone.”

“She doesn’t. Sometimes, she only quacks. I was really worried about bringing her to New York. She doesn’t adjust well to change, but I promised her this would be our home from now on. We’d find a place and a nice daycare and this would be it. But she doesn’t believe me yet.
The trip to the park helped a little, I think. I think it made her feel good to do something we always did in Chicago.”

Diane looked content, knowing that she had gone this far toward finding a home for her daughter. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable until I had a job or a place to crash.

“Sometimes, she just goes into her own world. When it’s quiet at night, I can hear her talking. I talk to myself, too, of course, but there’s something about the way she does it that seems different. It’s like she’s having a real conversation. So much of what she does reminds me of when I was little, but in some ways, we’re so different. When I was her age, I wanted a magic wand for Christmas. Do you know what she told me she wanted for Christmas the other day? For me to be happy. I don’t even know if she understands what being happy means.”

Diane chuckled softly. “Ever since she realized most kids have two parents, she’s created a place in the dark where she goes to pass the time. I’ve heard her cry when she’s doing this sometimes, Dylan. She’s talked about me to her grandmother and cried. My parents died before she was born. She
made up
a grandmother.

“I know all kids do it. But I worry that she’s keeping all kinds of things to herself… that she isn’t dealing with the world because too much is missing from her life.”

“This is the same girl who made friends with Mr. Barnes, the taxi driver, and the guy who pushes the hot dog cart at the park?’

“That’s how I know she likes you. She feels comfortable around you, so she loosens up and lets others in.”

“She’s quacked a few times…”

“She doesn’t understand things sometimes. That’s her way of filling an awkward empty silence.”

“Interesting strategy. Maybe we should all quack a little more and talk a little less.”

For a reason that wasn’t entirely clear to me, Diane’s eyes misted over and she turned away. Maybe I should have quacked. The whole thing that Diane was talking about the endless confusion that seemed to go along with being a parent was difficult for me to associate with. At the park, Spring sat next to us on the bench and put her hand, quite unintentionally, on my knee while she asked Diane a question. I didn’t talk or move until she took her hand away and returned to the fountain. Although I didn’t want to appear weird by pushing her hand away, I probably appeared worse by sitting so still.

“Spring is the only thing I want in the world, Diane said softly, “but I’m the only thing she knows. I make all these decisions for her and I’m wondering if she’s going to resent me for them when she gets older. It’s the fall and some of the older children were leaving daycare for school. We came to New York because now was as good a time as any. We needed a change. Well,
I
needed a change and brought her along. We had no reason to stay in Chicago. Besides, I couldn’t stand to watch the lake freeze over one more winter.”

She stared off for a few moments. I thought maybe I should say something here, but absolutely nothing came to mind.

Finally, she continued. “Spring is a little girl. She wants two books, a song, a glass of water, and for us to pretend we’re animals for a few minutes before she falls asleep. Is that too much to demand in this world? It isn’t too much for me to give her. If we could, we’d stay up
all night every night playing whatever she wants. God, I wish I never had to sleep, so we could spend as much time as possible together.”

Diane shifted her weight from one side to the other. I didn’t notice it right away, but I shifted with her.

“I never told her biological father that I was pregnant. He never knew he had a daughter.” She swallowed. “After we split up, I never saw him again even when I got the news. Now I wonder if I did the right thing. It’s funny; I convinced myself for a short while that I was in love with him, but we really weren’t that close. I think I was just ready to be in love. The pregnancy was a total accident; a glorious accident, and in my mind her father had next to nothing to do with it. Is that stupid? Now that he hasn’t been a part of Spring’s life after all this time, I don’t know if it would do any good to tell him he’s a father, or tell Spring about her dad. Someday, I’ll have to. When she’s older. I just hope she won’t be incredibly upset with me when this plays out.”