It was 7:00 Wednesday morning, the hump day, the numbing middle of the workweek, when unstructured time dangled like a carrot an entire Thursday and Friday away. Iris poured a cup of black coffee in the lunchroom of the McKinney Alitzer suite. She leaned into the employee refrigerator, her mug resting on top of it. She pulled off a slice of roast beef from a deli platter brought in the previous day for an employee’s retirement party and shoved it into her mouth. She dipped in again for a piece of Swiss cheese and again for a couple of oily unpitted olives. As she chewed, she unfolded another employee’s neat brown paper lunch bag and had a peek inside.
She never took anything from anyone’s lunch. She just liked looking at them. The bagged lunches didn’t reveal too much, but they revealed something. The sales assistant’s Snickers bar showed she was cheating on her much-publicized diet. The newlywed male underwriter had started to bring in boxed frozen entrees instead of crisp sandwiches and assorted sides packed in Tupperware. Was the honeymoon over?
The lunchroom door opened and Iris sloppily refolded the bag with her oily fingers, guiltily slammed the refrigerator door, grabbed her mug off the top, and casually took a sip of coffee, her mouth full of olive pits.
Kyle Tucker sauntered into the lunchroom with his shoulders dipped back, his hips tilted forward, and one hand dangling at his side. It was his normal mode of movement. In his other hand he held the folded sports section from the newspaper almost against his nose. He lowered the newspaper and smiled as he opened the refrigerator. “Good morning.”
Iris raised her coffee mug toward him and mumbled a greeting. She slipped to the trash can, discreetly spat the olive pits into her hand, and dumped them.
Kyle examined his soiled lunch bag. He angled his expressive, finely outlined lips to one side, revealing small, square white teeth and displayed the bag to Iris. “I don’t get people. Someone was in my lunch and they weren’t even careful about it.”
“That would be me.” Iris didn’t know what compelled her to say it. Maybe it was because Kyle had been so obviously trying to suck up to her since he’d been hired or because his slick veneer seemed so implacable or because she was in a shit-eating mood and was looking to rattle someone’s cage.
Those slender, rubbery lips conveyed surprise, then quickly recovered, telegraphing amused bemusement. “You?”
She figured he didn’t believe her. She theatrically placed her index finger against her forehead like a TV psychic divining the future or what was contained in an audience member’s purse. “Let’s see…apple, orange, two sandwiches, carrot sticks, chips in a Ziploc bag. Did you make that lunch all by yourself or did your mommy make it?”
He angled a look at her in a way that he surely knew made him look very cute. It was unlikely that he’d be unaware of things like that. He ignored her question and asked his own. “You make it a habit to look in people’s lunches?”
She ignored his question and smiled in a way that she knew made her look very unlike an ice princess. “It must be cheaper to bring in chips from the big bag than to buy the individual portions. Are we counting our pennies, Kyle?”
He laughed, his deep-set brown eyes crinkling at the corners. He reached in the bag, pulled out the apple, rubbed it on his shirtsleeve, and took a big bite. “Well, not everyone can be Iris Thorne.”
She answered his first question. “Actually, I’m doing a sociological study. Believe that?”
“If you say so.”
“Actually, I’m nosy.”
“Aww, don’t say that. You’re just curious.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
He took another bite of his apple and offered her the contents of his bag. She declined.
“What’s in your lunch bag?” he asked.
“I eat out.”
He waved the apple up and down in her direction. “Why are you got up like that? Going to a funeral or something?”
They were into it now, that teasing, joshing, pushing-and-shoving guy thing. He’d later tell people that he didn’t think Iris Thorne had a pole up her behind like everyone said. Underneath the facade, she seemed real regular.
She looked down at her gold-and-pearl-button black St. John knit suit, her black Anne Klein pumps, and sheer black stockings. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
He almost choked on the apple. “I’m sorry. I just…”
“That’s okay, Kyle. Make fun of me in my time of grief.” She feigned affront.
“My condolences, really.”
“Thank you.” She fingered her short string of cultured pearls. “I feel like a freaking politician’s wife.”
“I think you look very nice.”
“Thank you again. It’s the mother of a childhood friend. I haven’t seen either of them in years. The family stayed in the old neighborhood. I haven’t been back since college.”
He patted his straight strawberry blond hair, which was held in place by hairspray or something that made it stiff. “Where is the old neighborhood? No one seems to know much about you.”
“Not much to know.” She winked at him.
“I don’t think it’s hard to figure out. Let’s see.” He took another bite of the apple and chewed thoughtfully. “Professional family. Daddy’s a doctor or attorney or something. Mom’s in the Junior League. You went to riding camp in summer. Ski camp in winter…”
“Kyle, you are an astute judge of character.” She wondered why in the world she was flirting with him. She sensed it was a big mistake. He probably thought he was in a position to score.
“One thing I can’t figure out is why you went to UCLA instead of USC.”
“Just a rebel, I guess.” She sashayed toward the lunchroom door, knowing that the knit suit clung to her curves, clung too suggestively for the office but she’d worn it anyway. To hell with protocol. To hell with everything. Dolly DeLacey had hanged herself. Everything else seemed trivial. She opened the door.
“So what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always see yourself moving large sums of money, holding people’s financial future in your hands?”
She considered his question and thought about using him to float some preposterous rumors about herself through the office. That was always entertaining. But instead she answered truthfully. “When I was a kid, all I wanted to be was an adult.”
She walked back to her office, stepping quickly and purposefully to convey the illusion that she had just left one important thing and was rushing to the next. Busy, busy. What was that about Iris? she asked herself. He’s cute. It was fun. Remember fun?
She walked past the investment counselors’ cubicles, past Warren Gray, Amber Ambrose, and Sean Bliss. Sean gave her a more piercing up-and-down than usual. She made sure her extra-sheer stockings whizzed together for his libidinous benefit.
Inside her office, the texture of the carpet changed when she walked across the new piece that the building maintenance had patched in to replace the water-damaged section. She flopped in her desk chair, picked up the telephone receiver, and punched in the series of numbers that would reveal her phone messages. She jotted them down on a yellow pad. Nothing special. A few anxious clients needing to have their hands held. A referral from someone Iris went to college with who worked for a city councilman. The councilman wanted financial guidance. The last message made her gasp and widen her eyes.
“Two thousand dollars,” she exclaimed. “My ass!” She sure as hell wasn’t going to pay that for less than a full day’s work.
She leaped to her feet and angrily paced behind her desk. Then she walked to her floor-to-ceiling southern-facing window and leaned against it, pressing her cheek against the glass. It was a clear day and she could easily see the hills of Northeast Los Angeles. She spotted the one that she always fancied to be Las Mariposas, although she knew she couldn’t really see that far. She directed her comments to Bill DeLacey, whom she imagined sitting at his desk there.
“Two thousand dollars for some crooked gumshoe to find your daughter. Bullshit! And the funeral’s today. Just like you to expect the impossible.”
Iris’s mutterings attracted scant attention from coworkers outside her office. They’d grown used to this eccentricity of hers and had learned to stop asking, “Did you say something?” when she was in this mode.
“You don’t care if Paula goes to Dolly’s funeral. You’re the one who said good riddance to bad rubbish when she left. So what’s this really about, Mr. DeLacey?” She pulled her string of pearls back and forth between her fingers and scowled at the window.
“Hot out today, huh?” Amber stood in Iris’s doorway, startling her.
Iris still wore her animosity toward Bill DeLacey on her face when she turned toward Amber but quickly caught herself. She loosened her rigid jaw and smiled. “Shake and bake.” She returned to her chair. “Earthquake weather.”
“Not according to the Caltech scientists.”
“Everyone who lives here knows that when it’s hot and dry during the day and cold at night, it’s earthquake weather.”
“I think with every earthquake, all the scientists find out is how much they don’t know.” Amber sat in one of the two chairs facing Iris’s desk.
Iris tapped a pencil on her desk, sliding it between her thumb and index finger until she reached the eraser end, then sliding it the other way until she reached the lead. “Comforting thought.” She lost her grasp on the pencil and it skittered off the edge of her desk.
“Something wrong?”
Iris nodded pensively. “Yeah. I’m going to a funeral today of a woman who hanged herself. The mother of a family who lived next door to where I grew up.”
“How awful. Had she been depressed?”
Iris laughed wistfully. “I think there was always something wrong with her up here.” She tapped her temple. “It baffled me as a kid. Sometimes she’d go on these crying jags. Other times she’d be manic, scrubbing floors in the middle of the night. Other times, she was just fine.”
“Sounds scary.”
“She had a nervous breakdown when I was fourteen. Her husband had her committed to a mental hospital where they gave her shock treatments.”
“Shock treatments?”
“Calmed her right down. Boy oh boy, did it ever.” Iris shook her head with dismay. “I guess they finally wore off or something.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “It’s sad. She had plenty of her own problems, but she always had time for me when I was a kid. It meant a lot.”
“Really? Why?”
Iris casually lifted and dropped one shoulder. She didn’t like talking about her private life in the office. “I don’t know. You know how things get out of proportion when you’re a kid.”
“What happened?” Amber probed, revealing a little too much enthusiasm, as if she had sniffed blood.
Iris had come to consider Amber a friend, but she still held something back from her, even though Amber hadn’t given her any indication that there was any reason to. Also, Iris didn’t like revisiting her past. And she found it hard to trust people completely. “Nothing to write home about.”
Amber changed the subject, appearing to respect Iris’s desire not to dwell on it further. “I’m having lunch with some of my old friends from Pierce Fenner Smith today.” She stood and walked to the door. “Want to come? Might cheer you up.”
“Thanks, but I have to bail out of here early to pick up my mom and sister.”
Amber quickly stuck her head back inside Iris’s office and loudly whispered, “It’s Garland Hughes with Oz. Hughes must have flown in from New York last night.”
Iris jumped to the window that overlooked the suite.
Herbert Dexter, the manager of the Los Angeles office, looked even taller and lankier than usual next to Hughes, his shorter, more solidly built boss. They were chuckling amiably. Hughes exchanged a few words with the temporary secretary and the three of them chuckled some more. Hughes chummily rested his hand against Dexter’s back as they went through Dexter’s office doorway. When Hughes turned to close the door behind them, he spotted Iris standing behind the open miniblinds and Amber in the doorway of Iris’s office on the opposite side of the suite.
“Oops!” Iris quickly busied herself at the filing cabinet in the corner. Amber feigned interest in what Iris was doing.
Hughes waved.
They offhandedly waved back, as if they’d just noticed him.
“I think he’s charming, don’t you?” Amber asked.
“Definitely. He’s strong and boyish at the same time—a potent combination for me.”
Amber regarded Iris. “He’s available, you know. He just got divorced.”
“A recently divorced man. How delightful.”
“I always thought he had an eye for you.”
“Nah. He’s just nice to everyone.”
“He’s probably here to talk about Oz’s replacement. Everyone’s wondering who it’s going to be.”
“I’ve been wondering that myself. I would kill for that job.”
Amber looked at Iris incredulously.
Iris smiled cagily. What Amber didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Iris had lunch plans with Garland Hughes.
“You don’t think you’re a candidate, do you?” Amber asked sarcastically.
Iris was surprised by Amber’s tone. “Sure. Why not?”
“Iris, you’ve really got to let go of this fantasy. They’re not going to make you manager of this office. I’m not saying they’d never promote you, but you’d go to another office. I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but I don’t want you to get your feelings hurt.”
“Amber, I didn’t get where I am by being negative.”
Amber looked aghast. “You got the corner office. You got the title. You got the raise. You got the good accounts. I think you’ve squeezed all you’re going to from their feeling sorry for you.”
“Sorry for me?”
“Sure. Because of the murders a few years ago.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“You can’t always get everything you want, Iris.” Amber walked down the corridor and sat down in her cubicle with her back to Iris.
Iris stood in her doorway, stunned. “What the hell got into her?” She returned to her desk. “Iris Thorne gets everything she wants? Huh. Maybe I could if I knew what it was I wanted.”