14

 

THE LAB, CARMEL VALLEY

Gwen headed for the barn, mind racing. What you are? Bodily removals? Disposals? Sounded like Messenger had bought some company or other from the old guy. Clearly they knew him. Had Messenger fired him, slashed and burned through the employees, creating something lean and mean and worth more? Or was that the domain of corporate raiders, not venture capitalists? Disconcerted, but not enough to lose her appetite, Gwen swiped her card, entered her PIN, pushed open the door to the barn and walked into the café.

“Gwen!” called out Peter Weiss. “Come join us.”

Weiss was sitting at a long table alongside the picture-perfect jock who’d preened past Gwen’s office a few times that morning and whom she had affected not to notice. Opposite, seemingly forming a little unit of their own, was a conspicuously attractive young black woman with a medusa-like headful of long braids; a huge, NFL-type with shorn fair hair and an uncertain smile; and a short, wiry, intense looking man with spiky black hair. They all wore identical-looking shirts, save the color, respectively pink, blue, and white. Gwen wanted to ask them if they’d got a three-for-one.

She mosied over.

“Hi, I’m Gwen Boudain,” she said, smiling down. The trio stayed sitting, chorusing out their names and hellos—friendly from the men, Jihoon Lee and Curt Cuchinski, faintly hostile from the woman, Atalanta Washington—but the jock leapt to his feet and stuck out a hand.

“Kevin Barclay,” he announced. “Good to have you on board,” he added, as if he were some kind of skipper. Gwen took in at a glance the immaculate khakis, the crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up as if ready for business, the sporting tan, not too dark, not trying too hard. From his artfully layered brown hair to the tip of his Tod’s loafers, he spoke East Coast Privilege. The ever-so-slightly constipated Boston accent sealed the deal. He was good-looking, as a young Rob Lowe, in the way that would enslave teenage girls, and his cocky eyes said he knew it.

Gwen took his proffered hand, shook it with a smile whilst telling herself A) not to leap to conclusions and B) not to be so judgmental. She was behaving like an animal happening onto a strange pride on the savannah, quietly analyzing everyone: friend or foe, prey or predator, carnivore or veggie. She suppressed a smirk and sat down opposite Peter Weiss.

“We were just taking a bet on which of the grunts would be fired first,” announced Barclay, nodding at the trio opposite. The two men gave an infinitesimal cringe; the woman looked openly furious.

“Good for the digestion,” murmured Gwen.

Barclay laughed. “It’s not personal. Two of the three always get fired. Natural selection.”

Gwen cocked her head. Maybe her savannah analogy was not so far-fetched.

“This some sort of tradition?”

“It’s how Dr. Messenger staffs up his analysts,” explained Peter Weiss, Barclay’s note of pride absent from his voice, clearly not quite so enamored of the dog-eat-dog school of business. “Hire three or four every year, cull all but one at the end of the year. Sometimes cull them all.”

“That’s how Peter and I came up, through the ranks,” intoned Barclay. “Proving ourselves, no cutting in solo,” he added, veiling the barb with his Harvard smile.

Weiss laughed. “Ignore him. He’s just jealous.”

Gwen wondered whom else her rival-less entry had annoyed. She shrugged. Their problem.

“That’s more your vice, Peter,” Barclay replied with the smooth delivery of the truly annoyed. “So, join our bet?” he asked Gwen.

“Real kind. Think I’ll pass.”

“No biggie. I’m putting my money on you, Curt,” he said, nodding at the NFL type. “Atalanta, nobody with a brain would let you go,” he added to the black woman.

Gwen felt her rush of fury, and her impotence as Atalanta literally bit her lip and shook her head.

A young, smiling, and pretty waitress sashayed up, breaking the simmering tension.

“Hello new girl. Welcome to the Cupcake Café. I’m Narissa and that sad sack back there in the kitchen is Luke.”

Gwen glanced at Luke. Longish dark hair, red-and-black bandana round his head, watchful brown eyes. He eyed her back, frowning like a workhouse matron confronted by another starving orphan.

“Lasagna’s on today and it’s real good,” said Narissa.

“Sounds great. I’d love one.”

Narissa balanced a heap of emptied plates, and with a communally contagious glancing at their watches, Barclay and the trio got to their feet and flocked away.

Weiss poured Gwen a glass of water from a jug on the table. “Don’t mind Kevin. He’d bet against the sun rising then paint the windows black,” he said in his almost mesmerically soft voice. “Can’t help himself.”

“That so?” remarked Gwen levelly.

Weiss was silent for a while. He seemed to be gathering himself. He turned to Gwen.

“I’m sorry about your parents.”

Gwen’s eyes flared in alarm.

“Dying in a car crash,” said Weiss, shooting her a quizzical look. “What did you think I meant?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Gwen said quickly. “It was just the way you said it, as if there were something else.”

Weiss nodded slowly. He kept looking down at his empty plate. “There is,” he said quietly.

Gwen felt her heart begin to pound.

Weiss looked up. “We’re more alike than you think,” he said slowly.

“Meaning?” Gwen knitted her fingers in her lap, began to twiddle her ring compulsively.

“I don’t have parents either. Lost them both.”

“My God! How?”

“My mom killed herself,” said Weiss, eyes locked onto Gwen’s as if daring her to look away from his grief. “My father used to beat on us both, for years. Wore her down so much till there was nothing left. She’d left her family, her homeland, everything to marry him, and this is what she got in return. So, when he finally took off, she was left with nothing, in a way. So she killed herself.”

“She had you,” answered Gwen.

“And she left me too.”

“Where’s your father?”

Opposite her, Weiss sat motionless, head bowed, as if trapped in his pain, unable to move under the weight of it.

“I have no idea,” replied Weiss. “Haven’t seen him since I was sixteen. Never want to see him again.”

“I get that,” said Gwen. She reached out, took Weiss’s hand, gripped it hard. “I am sorry, Peter.”

His eyes moistened. He nodded. “Just wanted you to know that you weren’t alone, you know.” He gave an almost helpless shrug. “That shit happens.”