The place where Dick Davis belonged was in custody, thought Becca, gazing around his office with astonishment.
Gray Nikes and Adidases and soft navy athletic shorts with the Champion logo stitched on them were piled dozens high on the boomerang couch. A rainbow of running gear waved from hangers like a decorative row of windsocks. Running shoes, walking shoes, cross-trainers, and hiking boots were arranged in a little march across his George Jetson chrome-topped desk. The only item of clothing that looked remotely like it might belong to Dick was the soft, fluffy terrycloth robe that hung from the back of his desk chair. The office was buzzing with image consultants.
“So we’re taking the NFL public?” she guessed, pointing at a row of tube socks.
He couldn’t answer her, as the stylist Kenneth Dapper was holding his mouth closed like a beak, peering through a jeweler’s glass to evaluate Dick’s upper lip for mustache potential.
“No way,” Ken concluded, stepping down from his bench. “But your neck hair looks great. Nothing ingrown; will wax perfectly.”
Becca cringed. This was more detail than she wanted to hear.
“I’ll come back, Dick, if you’re busy,” she said.
“No!” Dick clapped his hands to draw the attention of a busy little hive of consultants, several of whom emerged from his closet as if startled.
“People, I need some private time now,” he said to the crowd. “Take a break, take a break! There’s a Starbucks in the lobby.”
The image army grumbled and muttered out the door, leaving Becca and Dick alone in his office.
“Tell me,” she guessed, still baffled by the clothes. “Henry Kravis is running a marathon, and you’ve decided to best him with the triathlon.”
Dick shook his head. “Leslie,” he said, with a sigh that said his wife’s name was enough to explain any intrusion on his dignity. “She’s decided I should take on an image that is similar to our president in his leisure.”
“So you’re exercising now?” she asked him, lifting a gray “Property Of” gym shirt from his desk. This, unlike the other clothing, actually looked worn.
He shook his head no, patting his Buddha-style tummy. “No, Becca—that’s just for Fridays. Haven’t you gotten the e-mail?”
She laughed out loud. “Even if I had, I’d ignore it. What in God’s name is Piloga?”
“A merger of Pilates and yoga.”
“I think you mean merging, not merger.”
“You need a Berlitz course in real-life English instead of business-ese.”
“Your standards are too high,” she retorted. The thrust and parry of their banter was such that her strikes to his vanity were usually met with his jabs at her lovelife. But today Dick trod lightly.
He walked to his desk to get his copy of the “Vows” section of the Sunday Times, which Leslie had her social secretary fax to him with her explicit instructions to get them an invitation. Did she know? He looked at Becca, who stood smiling casually at him, looking bright, vigorous—perfectly normal, for her. Changing his mind, he dropped on his desk the item about the engagement between the chemical heir and the equestrienne. He wasn’t sure how to approach this with Becca. She always had her eyes so wide open; he had never really seen her disappointed. He dreaded what he had to say.
“Tell me how it’s going with your coguardian,” he asked her, as innocently as he could manage. “Kirkland, right? Real Society Joe, from what Leslie tells me. I’ll bet he spends days in front of the mirror.”
“Eddie?” Becca gave a full laugh as she pictured Edward in a mirror of self-absorption. It was hilarious: so unfitting an image for him. Edward was the most natural, unassuming, easygoing person she knew. Come to think of it, the apartment was full of mirrors, and she had never seen him pause at one.
Dick peered at her for her answer. The light of fondness was in her eyes when she talked about Edward. His shoulders grew heavy. He wished he could spare her from what was coming. He hated to be the one who would put that light out of her eyes.
“No way,” she said, “not Eddie. I mean, he’s in a tux half the time, but he doesn’t give a thought to how he looks in it. He couldn’t care less. He lets Emily pick out his bow tie.”
“Smart man,” Dick mused. “I didn’t know that women were supposed to pick my clothes until after I got married. I guess he’ll be good and ready. He’d better be.” He paused, breathed deeply, and said it. “It’s going to happen soon.”
Becca’s smile died on her lips.
“He’s engaged to be married, Becca,” Dick told her gently.
Becca’s loose black hair tossed defiantly behind her as she shook her head no.
“It can’t be true,” she replied. “Not Eddie. He’s not the marrying type.” She laughed.
“I’m afraid he is, Becca,” Dick replied. His voice was kind, but serious; he could see the matter cut straight to Becca’s heart. He approached her with the newspaper in his hand. In a minute she was reading the copy of Edward’s wedding announcement.
Becca could feel her cheeks flush red with humiliation. She swallowed hard and stared ahead of her intensely. She had been betrayed.
She sat down to catch her breath, a fire roaring in her eyes. Her mind raced over the last few days: This had just happened, she realized, and who would have guessed it from Edward’s behavior? He had been so withdrawn, so inaccessible all of a sudden. He was usually so busy at night, but he had been holing up in his room, reading, he said, or answering his mail. He was acting more like a fugitive than a fiancé.
He had told her he had a lot of cancellations. Now she understood why.
Dick broke the silence with a question that went straight to her heart.
“What are you going to do about Emily?”
“Emily!” Becca gasped. Dick was right. This changed everything.
“I want to help you,” Dick said, sitting down next to her. “Becca, since Emily’s been in your life, you’ve seemed to me to be better balanced—more fulfilled.”
Becca sunk her head into her hands. “Yeah, I know,” she remembered. “You told me all about it. The zeitgeist.”
Dick nodded. “More creative too. Kid, it’s been all good for you. You’ve been great here, you know, even a day a week. Less demanding, better with the analysts. You’re a better manager. They are responding great to your new approach.”
Becca looked up without understanding. “I have a new approach?”
He smiled. “I wish I could tell you how much better you are at your job, but I don’t want you to get mad at me. You were a sort of freak of nature; a star. You don’t know it, but you’ve changed.”
She nodded, but his kindness did not penetrate—she was a slow fire growing frantic. “Dick,” she began, and faltered. “I’m not sure what to do.”
“Becca, I’m telling you this for a reason. I want you to know my motives. I want to help you keep that kid, and I want you to understand why. I think Emily’s been good for you personally, but you’re the best judge of that. Anyway I know your last month has been good for Davis Capital. The best long-term thing I ever did for this place is make sure you took a little time off with that kid. You’re a leader now, Becca.”
She nodded, slowly, but her mind was not on analysts. It was on Emily.
“Dick,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his, “he’ll get custody.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Becca. I know a thing or two about custody,” he said, making the rare reference to his first wife, who had taken their son after the divorce and immediately remarried the club’s golf pro. “His marriage will give him a solid claim for sole custody, no visitation.”
Becca was silent, rubbing her head with her hands as her mind raced over what he was saying. Dick was right. Edward would take Emily, and she’d be—an ex-guardian? What was that? She would have no rights, no chance. Forget visitation—she had no blood relationship with Emily. She breathed quickly, realizing that once Edward married, it was possible she would never see Emily again. Not that Edward would ever be that cruel—but that woman…
“What can I do?” she asked him.
He smiled. “There’s only one thing, Becca. You need to get married.”
She laughed out loud.
“You’re crazy!” But the joke, so familiar between them, suddenly took on a new light.
He nodded, holding his ground.
She raised her hands like a shield, but her eyes were lit again and dancing. “Not your nephew again!” she pleaded. But her mind had picked up on this possibility. She began to pace, thinking.
Dick grinned, noticing that her whole demeanor had changed. She was circling around the office, thinking as she walked, putting things together, connecting the dots. Becca was confident. She had a job to do.
“Married,” she said, pausing to look out Dick’s plate glass window at the bustling street below. “All right. That makes sense.” She wheeled around with a victorious smile. “So how hard can it be?”
Dick was so glad to see Becca come back to herself that he almost hugged her. But she was staring ahead, tapping her hands against her thighs, thinking of a plan.
“Well, kid,” he said, delivering the blow of blows to a control freak: “It takes two.”
She shrugged, uninterrupted in her plotting.
“What doesn’t?” She was thinking out loud, and grabbed a pen and pad of note paper from Dick’s desk to capture her thoughts.
“Getting the Go-Forward Agreement—that’s the hurdle, you’re right. Not insurmountable,” she said, scribbling a bullet point. Her glance at Dick was thoughtful as she paused to think it through. Then she made another note with enthusiasm.
“We’ve solicited bids for acquisitions plenty of times,” she said to him. “I’ve just got to get an offering circular out there. Dick, get up on the block. I’ll bring in the bids, I know I will,” she announced, tossing her hair with a confident smile. She dropped her pen to the notebook with a flourish. “So that’s it. I merge, consolidate, and move forward.”
Dick laughed out loud. “People don’t release an offering circular, Becca.”
But she was already rushing out of his office.
She called Edward, before Emily was asleep, when she knew he would not be busy carrying on a background conversation with the irrepressible four-year-old. She told him simply that she was “buried” and would have to work all night. Some matters needed personal attention, she added, some things she couldn’t delegate.
He expressed his understanding, knowing that she had found out.
She needed to stop by her apartment, she mentioned, to check on some things. Would he be able to manage Emily alone for a day or so?
He would, he assured her, reminding her of all his sudden cancellations.
Becca paused, gathering the words to congratulate Edward on his wonderful news. There was an etiquette to that, she thought to herself. Congratulations was outdated, she remembered, offensive to the modern ear. Best wishes was what you said to the groom, wasn’t that right? Or to the bride?
Letting her mind become occupied by this little formality, Becca waited, and waited, until Edward finally ended the pause.
“Don’t be a stranger, Becca,” he said to her.
She caught her breath.
The other line rang, and she said good-bye to Edward. He hung up before her. She listened to the quiet for a minute, with the uncanny feeling that her mind had gone empty.
Philippe was working late for her. He had paged through the archives of While You Were Out notepads that Davis used for phone messages before the system went digital. He had pulled all the messages from Becca’s personal calls. He brought them in for her to review.
She was surprised at how scant the pile of messages was. He had checked two years of time: She had thousands of incoming calls, but the calls marked “personal” were few, and when she paged through them she found that they were dominated by calls from her mother. The electronic messages were easy to search, but this exploration yielded only a scarce few marriage prospects. Becca knew she had to try another way.
Her next call was to the Jewish matchmaker.