Work for Hire (34 page)

Sure, he had dutifully showed me his spacious loft in a converted shoe factory, and I, equally as dutifully, had admired its décor.

Actually, for a guy, the place, with its sparkling floor-to-ceiling windows, dark red living space, calm blue bedroom, sparse but well-worn furniture, black-and-white prints on the walls and miles of salvaged hardwood floor, was surprisingly beautiful—dramatic, but warm and inviting.

“It’s all about color contrast and balance,” Julian had said when I stood there in awe.

Who knew red walls could look good outside a bordello? That they could look rich, like a well-aged Cabernet sauvignon?

“You need that in photography,” he had gone on, “and I guess it works out pretty well at home too.”

Did it ever. I loved his home, and I was glad he had invited me.

But that was where our ideas for the evening diverged.

Julian’s centered around plentiful amounts of wine, dimmed lights, soft music, and us on the sofa.

I wanted to talk. And I did so, now.

“My work,” I said, “is going to be published in a real book under
Xander’s name.
”

“I heard you,” Julian said as he got up to turn on the lights. “And I see you’re upset. But, really, what’s the big deal? It’s just a kid story that, what, will be published in some anthology by a bunch of other high school kids and will be read by maybe a few hundred people? It’s not like we’re talking about the
New Yorker
here.”

I sat on the couch speechlessly.

“Look,” Julian said, sitting back on the sofa and patting my knee, “you need to see this in a different light: as a boon, and not a curse. Think about what Stephen Lamont will do when he learns you got his son,” Julian said as he leaned into me, his voice brimming over with newfound enthusiasm, “his heir apparent, in print before he graduates from high school. Stephen couldn’t have expected that with Xander. That’s as close to a job guarantee as you’ll ever get. Stephen will never get rid of you now.”

“Yeah, well,” I pointed out, my vocal cords strumming to life once again, “that’s not going to happen. As I said
before
,” I emphasized, indicating to Julian I knew he hadn’t been listening, “Xander is going to fess up to his teacher. I told him he
had to
. That it’s the right thing to do.”

The words, “Are you insane?” hurled out of Julian’s mouth. For a guy who hadn’t wanted to talk, he was getting pretty heated by the subject at hand. “
That’s
the surest way to the unemployment line. Even you have to understand that!”

Even
me
?

My nostrils flared.

“You have to be crazy to give up that much money, to give up the Lamonts and all they can offer.” Julian moved off the sofa to pace around the room in front of me. “And over what? A confused sense of
pride
? Look, Tekla,” he said in a gentler tone as he came back to the couch and to me. “Let me do you a favor and give you some free advice. You haven’t really worked much, have you? What, with school, this probably is your first real job. Am I right?”

I stared at him, saying nothing.

The years I had spent doing chores at my parents’ restaurant, as a makeshift busgirl, hostess, business secretary and all-around assistant came to mind, but I doubted a small Polish joint in Brooklyn would be “real” enough for Julian, so I kept the experience to myself.

Julian took my silence as assent.

“See, baby, sometimes in the real world, we have to make compromises for the sake of the bigger picture,” he advised me with a smile.

I couldn’t make myself smile back, although the “baby” had my stomach jittering. It was the first time Julian called me anything besides “Tekla,” and this one was indeed an endearment.

“So what if Xander gets credit for your story? You never would’ve done anything with it anyway. Hell, you wrote it specifically for his class. And it’s not like Xander will really benefit. Sure, he’ll be in a book. But could he ever do that again without you? He
needs
you. The Lamonts
need
you. And that gives you the upper hand.”

Julian ran his fingers through my hair. I had left it loose on purpose, knowing he liked playing with the strands.

“I know how you feel, believe me,” he continued, still smiling. His finger trailed from my hair, down to my neck, and up and down my collarbone. I couldn’t stop the goose bumps. “The first time I saw my picture in a magazine with Monique’s credit, I took it hard too. Who wouldn’t? My dream—under her name.”

What?!
I gaped, stunned at this last news.
Julian took Monique’s photos? How could that be?
That was so awfully … wrong, unethical,
illegal.

“But that was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Julian admitted, completely oblivious to my shock. “My pictures, my expertise, my style. Monique can’t exist professionally without me. And she’s willing to pay to make sure I don’t go away. All this,” he said, removing his hand from my skin only long enough to encompass our surroundings, “is thanks to her and the Lamont cash. And you can have the same—if you play it right.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” I coughed out. I was having trouble focusing. Julian’s fingers were magic; they knew just the right spots to touch, tease and skim over. “I mean,” I said, trying to concentrate, because, somewhere in the fog of Julian’s caresses, I knew we were talking about something important, something vital even to our understanding of each other. But Julian’s fingers found the boundary where bare skin disappeared beneath the cotton of my shirt, and they hovered over this edge, right above my breasts—and I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or thrilled. “For all the money, you’re still the assistant, not the photographer,” was what I finally got out.

Julian’s hand paused. His smile dropped. His eyes bore into mine. I simply could not look away from the intense brown of his irises, from his sharply sculpted nose, cheeks and jaw line. God, he was beautiful, like Michelangelo’s David.

“No,” he denied. “Because I don’t fancy the lifestyle of the starving artist. And believe me, people like us—working class parents, public school students, anyone with no connections—we starve before we make it big,
if
we ever do.

“I like where I am,” he went on, his expression not softening. “I like not having to make ends meet, not pounding the pavement, not praying or hoping someone will give me a break. I could do all that, sacrifice everything for my art, and still
never
see my pictures, my name, in print. That’s cold reality. Given the choice to do it over again, I would still make this one. And you should too. The Lamont billions can take you far in life. So what if you write an essay here and there, bend the rules sometimes? Think about the money, the advantages.”

Julian’s fingers on my shirt suddenly felt like a weight pulling me under, one I had to get away from before I drowned in the sea of his cynicism. I shook my head a bit in an effort to focus. Certainly, Julian was partly right. People like us did have it harder—and that’s why I resented Xander. But with hard work, talent and brains, they
did
persevere. They had to, otherwise why bother?

That was why I was in law school. And that was why Julian should do more than just “assist” Monique.

Because money wasn’t everything.
The words reverberated in my head. Money
wasn’t
everything. I would rather, I realized, move back to Brooklyn and bury myself in debt before I sold out as much as Julian had. I didn’t want to be him, complete with designer clothes and fancy home but no way to take pride in, and credit for, my own work. Sometimes the ultimate price for a good wage was too much to pay—and Julian had to know that. Why else did he resent Gemma and Xander? Why did he get so mad when I stuck up for them?

So I asked him.

Julian removed his hand from my shirt, and sat back on the couch.

“Those two don’t deserve your pity, or your mothering,” he answered. “Use them, but don’t ever think you’re more to them than just an employee. Don’t make Lisa’s mistake of becoming emotionally involved, of thinking you’re one of them.”

He reached for his glass of wine on the coffee table and sipped.

“So promise me,” he asked, his smile finally back on his face, “you’ll call Xander and tell him to forget the teacher thing.” He reached for my glass and handed it to me. “Let’s drink to the two of us together, and our bright future with the Lamonts and beyond. Because, Tekla, the two of us can go far,
if
we’re on the same page.”

I took the glass, but didn’t sip, too intent on the “if.” Was Julian giving me an ultimatum:
do as I do, or else
? The possibility made me uncomfortable because I sure as hell wasn’t going to call Xander. And, well, a Julian that cold and calculating was someone I didn’t really know or necessarily like.

I stood up and walked away, over to the windows with their impressive view of Manhattan. I stood there, considering:
was I reading too much into his comments?

Still, the mood—my mood—was broken and I needed to get away—from Julian, from his home—to think.

But there was no graceful way to exit without looking like a paranoid fool, so I walked back to the couch, to bide the time with idle talk until the moment was right to leave.

“Speaking of Lisa,” I re-directed on purpose, “what exactly happened?”

Now Julian chuckled.

“She got fired,” he said as he took a loud gulp of the red liquid, “for breaking in and destroying the backs. She was stupid enough to get herself caught on tape.”

He clucked in mock displeasure.

“Yes, I know. But don’t you think that’s strange? I mean, why would Lisa want to destroy the backs? What would be her incentive?”

“Who knows?” Julian said, waving a hand before patting the empty space on the couch next to him.
Come, come
, the gesture said.

So I went.

He placed his arm around my shoulder, half in a hug and half in a fake headlock. A few minutes before, I would have thought the move sweet and playful, but now it was just stifling.

“Maybe she wanted to get back at Monique. Maybe she was after me. It wouldn’t be the first time. But, again, she didn’t succeed. Good riddance,” he declared in a mocking tone.

I pulled away from Julian by pretending to drink. “Still, just because you got her on tape entering the house doesn’t mean she actually went down to the office.”

“You would be right, Ms. Lawyer,” Julian agreed. “Hence, no arrest. But the circumstantial evidence was enough for a pink slip. Why else would she be at the house when she wasn’t supposed to be?”

I had wondered the same—for about a second—because the answer was obvious to anyone familiar with Lisa and her role in the Lamont household.

“Most likely she came to snoop on Xander and Gemma and the party,” I answered. “She always had her hands in their business, and after the fiasco with Gemma and the drinking, she probably wanted to know exactly what was happening.”

“Maybe,” Julian conceded. “But the point is moot. She’s gone. End of story … for her. Do you want more wine?”

I looked down my still full glass, then back up at Julian. He had walked to the open kitchen and was holding a bottle of red.

“No, thanks, I’m fine.” I watched him stroll back to us, bottle in hand. He tipped it over to fill his glass. “It’s just … there’s one thing that bothers me.”

And it had, ever since the scene at the Lamont townhouse. As I watched Lisa cry and pack, it had nagged at me.

“I mean, Lisa has no photography experience, right? She’s never worked for Monique?”

Julian stopped pouring. “Right.”

His glass stood more than half empty, the neck of the bottle resting against its rim.

“Well, then, how did she know
how to
destroy the backs? I mean, that day, you said whoever did it had to have photography experience because they knew exactly what to do to cause the most damage with the least effort; that someone without the experience wouldn’t have known to spray-paint the sensors. So how could Lisa know?”

Julian’s hand wavered, and a bit of wine sloshed out of the bottle, past the glass, to rest in a puddle on the wooden planks next to his feet.

“Shit!” He reached for a napkin and bent down to wipe the puddle dry, but in the process overturned his drink. More red liquid trickled to the floor. “Shit, shit, shit,” he exclaimed, swiping at the wine like it was blood gushing from an open wound. As he grabbed for another napkin, he called over, “Maybe she got lucky.”

“I doubt it. You said yourself the vandalism was very organized. How could
luck
have anything to do with it?”

Julian very quietly cleaned up the mess.

“I don’t know,” he finally said as he came to resume his seat, this time not too close to me. “By the way, did you manage to get your brief in on time?”

The change in conversation didn’t fool me, especially since Julian refused to meet my gaze. More, his words jarred another memory loose.

“I think you do know,” I spoke slowly, trying to wrap my brain around the implications of what Julian said, of what he did. “Oh my God, you
do
!” Mentally, I pointed an accusatory finger straight at him. “That’s why you were acting so strange on the train when I asked about the security tape. You know there was no way she could’ve done it. Oh my God, you framed her on purpose even though
you know she didn’t do anything
!”

I expected Julian to react, to deny my words, to yell, to do something. Instead, he stayed where he was and shrugged.

“Okay, fine, I knew. So what?”

“So what?” I exploded and jumped from my seat. “You lied! You got her fired for no reason!”

Julian snorted. “No reason? Need I remind you of
all
the reasons? Her vindictiveness, her manipulations, just to name a couple. Should I go on? Hell, you should be grateful.”

“Grateful?” The word knocked me back a step. “Can you really not see how wrong you are?” I gasped. “You accused someone of a crime you knew she couldn’t have committed. You got her fired. You destroyed her relationship with Stephen.”