ON THE JET from London back to New York there were two pilots, two flight attendants, superb food, cashmere blankets. There were no rules about not using electronics. Poppy surfed fashion sites for a while until Patrizia got up from her generous leather seat next to Steve, and Poppy assumed her place in it. She wrapped her thin self up in a thick blanket. Steve ignored her for some time and then removed his reading glasses and fell into conversing with her. He spoke warmly to her and with a studied expansiveness of spirit. From time to time Roman and Felix looked up from their devices and noticed, expressionless, Steve speaking to Poppy in a way that he rarely spoke to them. It wasn’t merely because of the difference in age that he used an unusual tone with her; it was because she aroused an intensity in everyone.
Why does she always get what she wants? said Roman under his breath.
Felix shot him a look. She doesn’t, he said, and kept reading.
Steve was already leaning in and lowering his voice to Poppy.
He studied her face with a deep understanding that wetted his eyes. He sketched for her the problematic nature of her desire to work for him instead of going to college, his hands holding his glasses and sculpting in the air with an architectural clarity invisible diagrams of the obstacles before her. He presented for her consideration the complexities of land-use transactions, references to obscure tax codes, the psychological difficulties of people in their twenties who lose their way, certain passages from Shakespeare that related to her ambition and impatience, speculations on what might become of her future if she were to isolate herself from her peers in a way that constituted practically an anthropological experiment. Poppy listened to him with great attention and before he was done she had started crying.
Patrizia returned from the restroom and her fifteen minutes of moving her legs. She looked down at Steve.
What did you say to her?
I was just talking to her about her plans.
Why is she crying?
Steve’s face was blank. A blinding blankness like an overcast sky on a March day in the Northeast when there is no sun and no birds and a dead stillness that crushes all hope. Poppy was still crying.
What did you say to her, Steve?
I don’t know what upset her. I have no idea.
What did you say to her that is making her cry?
Steve smiled. It is disappointing, he said, when something you wish for and convince yourself is possible is not possible. These are the lessons of youth. I had assumed Poppy knew that I was in some sense humoring her when I suggested I would think about her coming to work for me directly after high school. But it is consistent with my thinking that that course of action would not make sense. I think she must understand that it is her turn to humor me and to consider going to college. At the very least, she has to accept that she cannot work for my company until she is older. Words are words. Poppy, I’m sorry if you misunderstood what I said the other day.
She was still crying. Her nose was cherry red and the whites of her eyes were a pale rose against the strong azure of her irises. She had listened to Steve in silence. Roman chuckled softly as he tortured insurgents on the screen. Poppy stood up and walked with her head down to the restroom. Then Steve rose up and spoke quietly to Patrizia, holding his glasses in his hand and listening to her with his head bent forward, exhibiting great concentration and patience. Felix turned in his seat to look at Poppy as she walked back to her seat, her face washed and an impassive look in her eyes. In the car on the way home Steve gave Poppy several thousand dollars in cash and hugged her tightly on the sidewalk before she and the twins and Neva went upstairs.
Poppy feels hollow taking the money. She feels like the white-and-pink ceramic piggy bank that lived on her dresser when she was little, the coins clinking against the inside when they fell. She knows the money means something but she doesn’t know what, cannot decode those clinks. Does it mean that she works for Steve or that he is taking care of her as he should? Does it mean that she is independent or that she is a slave to these bills? Does it make her different from anyone else or the same or better or worse or does it not mean anything at all? These questions about money are never talked about with her, around her. Is the money something natural like food or sex or is it manufactured, a construct, another thing among this crowded universe of things? Poppy pushes the money into the bottom of her bag and throws her bag on the linen-upholstered chair in the corner of her room. At her desk she watches one of her favorite music videos on YouTube, the one about the couple where he enlists in the war and she gets mad and then they show her sitting alone on some bleachers at the end. Poppy watches it over and over and over.
After that Steve and Patrizia got back into the car and rode downtown each of them silent in the leathery dark and they met friends in Tribeca for dinner.