Work for Hire (19 page)

“Let’s grab a table in the back,” suggested Markus, pointing to a dark corner at the far end of the bar.

I noticed his blue shirt was so crisp it practically crackled.

“Sure,” Lauren said. She winked at him and strutted ahead of us, her hips swaying to and fro, the “Juicy” label of her hot pants calling attention to her less-than-impressive backside.

I shook my head. How the girl could give top-notch fashion advice but dress her own self like a tramp was beyond me.

“I think this table has four seats, so it should be appropriate,” Ann chimed in, ever practical. She unbuttoned her blazer—no casual wear for Ann, thank you—adjusted her bun and firmly pushed back her glasses.

“May I get you ladies something to drink?” Markus asked. He pulled back three seats and, always the gentleman, wiped down the table.

We nodded.

Fifteen minutes later and with four beer bottles in his hand, Markus returned to the table. “How about a toast?” He pulled up one last chair. “To law school. And the peace and quiet before finals.”

“Amen to that!” I gulped down half my beer. I didn’t even want to
think
about finals.

“No, no.” Ann put down her malt, untouched. “Let’s toast Professor Johnson. You know, for luck. With the briefs. Aren’t you guys totally excited?” she queried, practically jumping in her seat.

Lauren stared at Ann as if she were daft. “Excited? About more work?” She pulled a compact out of her Louis Vuitton canvas, a smaller version of my own—God, I loved the Lamonts—and applied a fresh coat of coral pink lip-gloss. “You’ve got to be crazy.”

Ann puffed up in her seat.

“Wh-why … ” she stammered, ready to defend Professor Johnson and his writing competition with her dying breath.

“Ladies, ladies,” Markus, the diplomat, chuckled as he interrupted. “No need to argue. Ann, we’ll toast to Professor Johnson, and Lauren, we’ll also toast to the days of summer when none of us has to do any work. Well, except for working at the law firms. How’s that?”

Ann relaxed. Lauren fluttered her lashes and giggled.

I groaned, “Must we really talk about Johnson at all? Tonight is supposed to be about
unwinding
.”

“What’s wrong with Johnson?” Ann rested her elbows on the table.

I sat back in my chair and took another sip of beer. “In theory, nothing.” I returned the bottle to its coaster and watched a drop of sweat run along its neck. It rolled slowly, until another bead blocked its way. Then the two merged, like wrestlers caught in a violent embrace, battling it out for the win. “But I just get this feeling he has it in for me.”

“Oh, please,” Ann rolled her eyes. Somehow, on her, the gesture looked even more obnoxious than on a teenager. “Do you honestly believe he would bother to take the time out of his extremely busy schedule just to pick on poor little Tekla in a class of more than a hundred? Seriously, you’re not that special.”

“I’m not saying I am,” I glared at Ann. The girl made liking her
extremely
difficult. “And I know it doesn’t make any sense for him to single me out. But, still, I get the vibe.”

I glanced around the table. Ann scowled. Lauren yawned. Markus flickered his eyes away from me.

“Like today,” I continued. I had to prove my point. I was
not
paranoid. “Why did he only stop me to say he was ‘looking forward’ to reading my brief? Don’t you think that sounded like a threat?”

“I don’t know.” Markus leaned towards me, his voice gentle, his hand outstretched across the table, reaching for mine. “You have kind of done things to piss him off, don’t you think? Coming in late. The mess with the phone. And, of course, the essay. It couldn’t have gone over too well with Johnson. Not that I think those things were entirely your fault,” Markus soothed. “But still, I can understand why he would be irritated. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but … ”

“It’s that job of yours, you know,” Markus rushed on, seemingly determined to nail his point home. “If you’d only focus on schoolwork, you would have no problems with Johnson. Quit and you’ll see. He’ll love you, like all our other professors, and you’ll be back in top form again.”

“Yes, but … ” I looked to Lauren for help. After all, the job had been
her
suggestion. But she was busy checking her cuticles.

“Tekla,” Markus said warmly, patting my hand. I was grateful it wasn’t my head. “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The job’s not worth it. And if it’s only about the money, you know I’ll be more than happy to spot you whatever, and whenever, you need. Nothing’s worth the risk to your grades.” Topic exhausted, at least as far as he was concerned, Markus reached for his beer. “Now who wants to talk about this year’s competition? Any thoughts about copyrights?”

I pressed my lips together—hard.
Only about the money?!
Markus, with his hefty trust fund and prestigious social background, could never understand.

“Not while we’re still sober, we won’t,” I declared as I gulped down the remainder of the beer. “The next round is on me.” I would pay my own way, thank you. “But this time we’re drinking vodka.”

T
HE SCREAMING IN MY HEAD
the next morning reminded me why I should never drink too much and why I should never, ever, mix beer with hard liquor.

I moaned as the screaming got louder. Luckily it only seemed to come in evenly spaced intervals. That refused to go away.

I pressed a pillow over my head.
Make it stop!

Miraculously, it did. And then started up again.

As no hangover headache I’d ever had came with such predictable gaps of relief, I rolled out of bed to investigate and soon realized the sound wasn’t inside my head.

It was the telephone.

Oh, God. My mother. I had completely forgotten to call her.

Except it wasn’t.

“Tekla? Tekla, this is Lisa.”

One of my least favorite people. Calling because Gemma was missing and no one had her new cell phone number. Calling because she hoped I did.

I had a bad feeling my Lamont-free Saturday was coming to a rapid end.

Gemma had never made it to her friend’s birthday party—the party Monique had agreed her daughter could go to as payoff for having ditched her in favor of her husband when it came to the Bradangelina party.

Gemma’s frantic phone call half an hour later confirmed that fact.

“Tekla … ,” she whispered. “Tekla, I think I screwed up … Pam’s parents went to the country for the weekend and she was home alone. We thought it would be nice to have pre-party drinks at her house before we went to Kelly’s … Pam’s parents left the liquor cabinet open. We thought it would be cool to get a taste from all the different bottles. I don’t really remember what happened after the fifth drink … I’m throwing up, a lot. And Pam is passed out. I tried to wake her so I dragged her into the shower … She’s sleeping in the tub. I don’t know what to do … Lisa called me. But I didn’t tell her where I was ‘cause she was just yelling. And she told me
Maman
is coming home. That she had to cancel the
Vanity Fair
shoot all because of me. Tekla, I’m in so much trouble. That shoot was very important. Can you please come and get me and take me home? I swear, Daddy’ll pay you twice as much as normal! Just come and get me so I don’t have to go home alone. Please. No one else will bother listening to
me.
No one else understands.”

I closed my eyes. Fourteen-year-old Gemma drunk. The pounding headache that my own drinking hadn’t prompted was now coming on in magnificent force.

“All right,” I agreed while I massaged my throbbing temples. “But only if you promise to call your father. He should be at Pam’s too.”

CHAPTER 14

P
AM’S HOME
was a Park Avenue penthouse suite in the upper 80s. It had all the trappings—plaster moldings, arched doorways, marble fireplaces—of a top-shelf prewar Manhattan apartment.

The frills, however, did little to conceal the empty liquor bottles strewn over the cherry parquet floor and mahogany dining room table like bowling pins scattered after a strike. Nor did they mask the stench of vomit.

I pinched my nostrils and made my way through what looked to be an empty living room. Gemma and Pam were nowhere in sight.

A doorman had let me in.

“They’re expecting you,” he had said as he ushered—no, practically pulled—me into the elevator, and then the suite, seemingly ecstatic to get the whole mess of Pam, Gemma and their drinking binge off his hands.

Poor man. I could imagine the phone calls that must have preceded my arrival. Clearly, I was the first adult on the scene. But, suddenly, when the door shut behind me and the doorman fled to the sanity of his duties downstairs, I didn’t feel quite so grown up.

“Gemma?” I called out as an empty Jack Daniels bottle rolled to a stop in front of my feet. I stooped to pick it up and returned it to the dining room table, next to a half-finished bottle of Absolut.

“Gemma? Where are you? It’s Tekla.”

No reply. I eyed more bottles, some empty, some half-finished. Beefeater. El Jimador Tequila. Johnny Walker. Bacardi.

It had been some party. No wonder the two had gotten sick. If the quantity alone hadn’t done the trick, the rainbow-colored mix must have worked its magic.

I searched for the nearest bathroom—Gemma had mentioned pulling Pam into a tub—and pushed open a door across from the living room that looked promising.

Bingo.

Gemma sat curled in a fetal position on the marble tile floor. She was pale. Her head was against the wall, her mascara was smudged beneath her closed lashes, and her red lipstick was smeared off her lips and onto her chin and cheeks. I couldn’t help but observe bits of food dried in her disheveled hair, and dark stains—of either alcohol, vomit or both; I couldn’t tell—splotched all over her silk camisole and linen mini. She was a Baby Jane in full hangover glory.

“Gemma, thank God!”

I rushed to her. That was when I saw a girl who could only be Pam slumped in the bathtub, her skin shades paler than Gemma’s and definitely greener. But as she was snoring and therefore clearly breathing, she was in no immediate need of emergency medical attention.

“Gemma, can you hear me?” I reached for Gemma’s arm and gently shook her when she made no reply.

Gemma fluttered her eyes open. “Tekla … ,” she croaked. Then she burst into tears and lunged straight at me.

I plopped down on the floor hard, with Gemma in my arms. She laid her head on my shoulder, like an infant seeking comfort from its mother, and continued sobbing.

“Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry,” she wept.

“It’s okay.”

I patted Gemma’s back as she cried, but turned my face from her, barely able to conceal a retch. The girl smelled worse than the apartment.

“How are you feeling?” I asked as I finally pushed her away and propped her back up against the wall at a far safer distance.

Gemma swiped at her tears.

“My head hurts,” she sniffed as she wiped her dripping nose. “Bad. I’m really nauseous. But I think Pam is worse. She still hasn’t woken up.”

I sat on the floor, Indian-style.

“Did you have anything to drink—and I mean water, not alcohol—since your party started?”

Gemma shook her head no.

I pushed myself up and walked towards the sink. A glass stood on its ledge. I filled it with water.

“Here. Drink it.” I watched her gulp down the water, then refilled the glass when she handed it back, empty. “The water should help with the headache. And so will an aspirin,” I counseled as I dug a pill out from my bag.

Gemma swallowed the aspirin and three more glasses of water.

Good. Those should hold her over. Pam, however, was another matter.

I turned towards the tub and the listless body that occupied it. I tapped Pam on her cheeks. Nothing. Just more snoring. I sat on the tub’s ledge and patted some more. Gemma watched my every move, her eyes bigger and darker than an owl’s.

“See,” she whispered, a pitch of hysteria trickling back into her voice. “She won’t answer. She won’t wake up.”

I shushed Gemma and stared at Pam.

In the movies, they always woke the passed-out drunk with a good dowsing of cold water. And Pam
was
already in the shower.

“Hand me that towel,” I demanded as I slid off the tub’s ledge, reached for the cold-water knob and turned it on full force. “And step back. This might get messy.”

Water sprayed into the tub, over Pam, and onto the floor.

“What in the bloody hell is going on here?” boomed a voice from the bathroom’s door.

I jumped away from the running shower, like a burglar caught in the act.

Mr. Lamont.

“And why in hell won’t anyone answer when I call?” he chided.

I simply gaped at him. His presence was so unexpected—although, of course, it shouldn’t have been.

“Daddy!” Gemma wailed, bursting into fresh waves of tears. With a towel clutched to her chest, she sidled her way behind my back, away from her father.

Mr. Lamont scowled.

We must have made some picture. Me, slack-jawed. Gemma, disheveled and crying, and hiding behind me. Pam, unconscious in the bathtub. The water still running.

Shit. The water.
I charged into the shower and screwed the knob to off. Maybe flooding the bathroom wasn’t such a hot idea. Pam was just as unconscious—except now she was soaked. Soon she’d probably be cold, and a perfect candidate for pneumonia. I snatched the towel from Gemma, bent over Pam’s prostrate body, and tried to pat-dry her wet face, hair and shirt front.

“I repeat, what in the bloody hell is going on here? And for God’s sake, Gemma, stop that sniveling!”

Mr. Lamont’s voice stopped my clearly futile efforts. Gemma only sniveled louder.

“Ahh … ” I inched towards Mr. Lamont as Gemma practically molded herself onto my back.

“Gemma,” Mr. Lamont snarled. “Stop hiding behind Miss Reznar.”

Gemma, head low, stepped around and stood next to me. Mr. Lamont glared at his daughter.