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WHEN IT WAS TIME TO leave for the press conference, all of us had had the opportunity to view Alex’s new office and mine, which was located next to his.
Just as Stephen Rowe promised it would be.
“Is it just me,” Blackwell said as she stood with her arms akimbo beside Alex’s desk, “or is anyone else overcome by the distinct scent of urine?”
“I think it might be just you,” I said, looking around Alex’s considerably smaller office, which—like my own—had only one window with no view. “You’re the one with that kind of imagination.”
“Bullshit,” Blackwell said. “I can smell it. My nose is trained for scents. Admittedly, urine isn’t among the top ten, but I’ve certainly changed my share of diapers to know it when I smell it. Ann, would you please have each of these offices cleaned before either of these two go to work in them? Rugs shampooed? Insecticide treatment? Perhaps a flea bomb? That sort of thing? I don’t trust that man.”
“Of course,” Ann said.
Blackwell brightened. “You said that so quickly,” she said. “So, you also can smell it!”
“I smell something,” Ann said.
“Fear?” I asked.
And poor Ann flushed. “We should go,” she said. “We need to be there in ten minutes.”
“Jennifer, come to me,” Blackwell said before we left. “Your mascara has smudged beneath your left eye. And somehow your hair has gotten tangled in the strap of your sling. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought you’d gone three rounds in the ring with Rowe.”
“So long as I won,” I said.
“Oh, you would have won. You would have knocked that punk out.” From her purse, she pulled out a cotton round and slid it just below the rim of my left eye, removing the smudged mascara. Then she took out a compact from my own purse and dusted my face with it. Finally, she applied a bit of lipstick before tending to my hair and saying in a low voice, “How are you feeling? How is your shoulder?”
“It’s fine,” I lied.
Naturally, she called me on it. “I guess when you don’t want to worry your husband before an important event, sometimes white lies are necessary, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes they are.”
“Just not with me.”
“Another time, perhaps?”
She took that one for the team and stepped back to appraise me.
“There,” she said. “I might not be Bernie, but I can tell you this—you’re camera ready now.” She looked over at Alex and straightened his tie before turning to Ann. “We’re good here,” she said. “So, if Alex is ready, I say we do this.”
“Let’s,” Alex said.
And we were off.
* * *
WHEN WE ARRIVED IN the lobby, the press hadn’t yet been allowed inside, but I could see them gathered beyond the long array of windows to my left, eager to get in.
Stephen Rowe was already there, as was the entire board, which surprised me. I was under the impression that it was just going to be Rowe and Alex at this conference, with me, Blackwell, Lisa, and Tank along in case there were any questions for us.
“Why is the board here?” I asked Alex.
“With our stock rebounding, it’s in our best interest to give a big show of solidarity. We need to show the world that Wenn is strong—even if I’m not running it.”
“Especially if you’re not running it.”
“I should say hello to them before this begins,” he said.
I squeezed his hand in agreement and watched him move away from me and start to greet the board, some of whom were like family to him. Hands were shaken, and there also were a few hugs that seemed genuine to me. But Rowe was having none of it. Instead, he stood at the podium, flicking through his notes as if Alex didn’t exist.
“If I had a gun, I’d shoot him in the back,” I said to Blackwell.
“Since you’re clearly no stranger to a pepperbox, I don’t doubt that you would. But why the back when you have a clear shot of his head?”
“Good point.” I bit my lower lip. “Alex is up to something,” I said.
“Clearly.”
“How is he going to undermine Rowe during the conference? It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s counterproductive. I thought he wanted to show the media that Wenn is still strong.”
“Obviously, we’re going to need to wait and see what he has in mind. Knowing your husband, it will be subtle but memorable. We’ll know what he’s up to the moment he goes there.” She looked over at Alex mixing with the board. “You should go over,” she said. “Say hello to them. Let them get a good look at your arm hammock. Let them see for themselves how lucky we are to be alive.”
“Is that Diana Crane?” I asked, nodding toward a severe-looking woman somewhere in her late forties. She was standing next to Alex and had her hand on his forearm while he spoke to her. “I haven’t met her yet, but I have seen her photo, though she didn’t look like that. She looked...different.”
“Facelift. Botox. Juvéderm. It’s the works for that one. At this point, if she keeps lifting and tucking, she’s going to have a goatee.”
I just looked at Blackwell. “You really have no bounds, don’t you?”
“None. And look—it’s not that I blame her for getting some work done. I don’t. It’s tough for women to stay at the top in this town. Unlike men, you’re expected to continue to look like the dew on a lily—youth eternal. So despite the fact that she can be difficult, I will give her points for taking action to that end—even if I do think she’s gone a bit far. Look at her cheeks, for God’s sake. They’re so plumped with filler, her eyes look like slits.”
“How old is she?”
“Early sixties?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I’m not, and you’re stalling. Now, go over there. Make the rounds. Be yourself—and watch your back.”
I took a breath to settle my nerves and let it out slowly as I walked over to where my husband was standing. When he caught my eye, he immediately put his arm around my waist, introduced me to Diana Crane and Mike Fine, who were the two members of the board I hadn’t met, and suddenly my health and the bullet I took became the topic of conversation.
“Will you have a proper recovery?” Diana asked.
“Yes. Just a few weeks of physical therapy and I should be fine. It wasn’t much of anything, really. It could have been worse.”
“Not much of anything?” Diana said, widening her eyes as far as they’d go. “You were shot, for God’s sake. There’s no need to be humble here.”
“I—”
“And by the way, I know every doctor in this city,” she said. “When you’re deciding who to see to repair the surface of that wound, call me and I’ll tell you exactly who to see.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous of you.”
“I can’t imagine acting so quickly,” she said. “Or having the guts to do what you did. Or to live on that island for so long without knowing if you’d be rescued. I’m here to say that I wish I’d met you sooner, Jennifer. Alex is a lucky man.”
“I’d do anything for Alex,” I said. “But I think I’m the lucky one.”
The woman turned swiftly to Alex. “She’s everything you said about her and more. No wonder all of New York is in love with her. Congratulations, my dear.”
“Thank you, Diana.”
“Jennifer is clearly a brave woman,” an older gentleman said.
I turned to the man who’d spoken and faced Jonathan Rubinstein, the man who had been so kind to me when we first met right before I had my dance with Rowe. He was the head of Qualcomm Micro and I remembered that his granddaughter was going to Vassar to study English with the hopes of becoming a novelist. When I recalled that, I seized the information as if it were a battle-ax. “I’m not sure if I was brave or stupid, Jonathan, but either way, we can agree that it got the job done.”
“To say the least,” he said. “The reason all of you made it back is because of you and Alex.”
“Oh, no,” I said, knowing that I needed to correct him. “It’s because of everyone. I can assure you of that. None of us would be here now without the teamwork we forged on that island. Everyone offered something. Everyone had a moment when they were the hero of whatever hell we were facing at any given moment. As we talk more about our time on the island—and I think that Alex will address some of it today and more of it in interviews going forward—the world will see that we each brought with us a specific skill set. Alex, for instance, was a rock. He nearly died in that plane crash. And at the end, when he knew the odds were against him and that he might face death again, he put his life on the line for all of us. And then there is Mitch McCollister, whom most of you know as Tank. He’s a former SEAL, so you can imagine how his survivalist skills helped us. I may have been shot, but that can’t occlude everyone else’s efforts, because those efforts were critical to our survival.”
“Well said,” Rubinstein said. “And noted.”
“By the way,” I said, wanting desperately to turn the attention away from me, “how is your granddaughter? Clarice, isn’t it? She must be on her summer break from Vassar by now. Is she working on her novel?”
“I’m surprised you remember that she’s writing one.”
“Of course I remember, and I haven’t forgotten my offer. If she wants, she still can meet with Iris at Wenn Publishing. She’s our best editor. Iris has turned countless books into best-sellers. I’m sure she’d be happy to take a look at Clarice’s novel and offer some tips if she’d like. But only if she’d like—my best friend, Lisa, is a writer, and I know that writing can be a personal journey one wants to keep to themselves until the time is right to show it to others. Just know that the offer stands.”
“I appreciate that,” he said.
“And don’t forget what I said that night about Qualcomm Micro—the new processor your company is producing could be a game changer for the next edition of the SlimPhone. I hope you’ll keep that in mind as you continue to engineer it.”
“Actually, I have,” he said.
“Jesus, Jonathan, are you going to hog her all to yourself?” a man said.
I turned to the man who’d said that, and checked my memory for his name. It was Tom Brown, another member of the old guard hired by Alex’s father, and one of Alex’s main supporters.
“Mr. Brown,” I said, shaking his hand. “It’s good to see you.”
“I think I can speak for all of us when I say that it’s even better to see you and Alex. We were beyond worried when you were gone. We thought of you every day. I hope you know that. I also hope you know that any decisions made while you were missing were not made lightly.”
And there it was—right out in the open. This man, at least, wanted Alex back as CEO and chairman of the board—I could feel it. When Jonathan said “hear, hear,” my heart swelled even though Diana Crane and Mike Fine remained silent on the subject. At least I now knew that these two men realized that the board had jumped the gun when they voted in favor of Rowe taking the reins from Alex. And how could I blame them for doing so? They had no choice but to cave in to public pressure and go to a vote when the authorities had pronounced us dead. “Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts, Mr. Brown.”
“It’s Tom.”
“We all appreciate it, Tom. Not just Alex and me, but everyone else who was on that island with us. We felt all of you rooting for us when we were gone. It kept us going knowing that we had your support.”
“And yet here we are,” Tom said.
“Meaning?” Diana said.
“You know what I mean. We’ve talked about it.”
“Decisions had to be made,” she said.
“That’s still out for debate.”
Before she could respond, the doors to Wenn opened, the media pressed inside, and Stephen Rowe looked away from the podium to address us. He looked perfectly cool and collected when he spoke.
“Shall we?” he said.
* * *
THE PRESS CONFERENCE was not at all what I had expected.
Instead of speaking for any significant length of time, as I’d expected him to, Rowe merely addressed the crowd with a few words, proving to me that he was smarter than I thought he was. The tactic took the spotlight off him—and thus reduced the media’s opportunity to ask him hard questions about his new roles at Wenn with Alex now back in the picture.
“Good afternoon,” he said to the press.
The moment he spoke, camera flashes started to pop. I looked out at the crowd of reporters standing before us and saw familiar and unfamiliar faces, people with digital recorders raised high above their heads and at the ready, and people with video cameras jostling for the best position as the crowd shifted in anticipation for what was to come.
“As you know, today is a day of celebration for all of us at Wenn. A major celebration. Just this morning, Alexander Wenn, his wife Jennifer, and others associated with Wenn in some form or another, finally arrived back in New York from Singapore against odds that we thought were lost to us. But they weren’t. And for that, the board and I hope you will join us in a round of heartfelt applause for their return.”
As if on cue, everyone applauded, but unlike most times I’d seen a crowd asked to respond to such a request, I could tell that their enthusiastic response was genuine. They were happy that Alex was back. It felt real to me.
“By now, all of you know at least part of what happened during those two weeks, when we were thinking the worst,” Rowe continued. “We also know that you have questions about everything you don’t know. For instance, how did they survive for two weeks on that island without readily available food or water? How did they find shelter? Moreover, and perhaps of even greater interest, how did they manage to escape from a group of people that wanted to suppress them to the point that it ended in a gunfight? Those are the details that have not yet been released to the public because Alex, the board, and I thought it was best for Alex himself to answer those questions for you. That’s what today is about. Hearing the details from the man himself about what happened on that island, and how they managed to escape so they could be with us now. Today isn’t about underscoring that Wenn is on the upswing—you’ve heard enough of that from us, because it is. At this point, with concrete sales figures in just this morning, few will be able to deny that the SlimPhone, though quickly maligned by many, is now an unmitigated success. Instead, today is about Alex answering your questions. I know you have many. So, please, allow me the great honor of asking Alexander Wenn to step up to the podium and take those questions now. Alex?”
Alex approached the podium, and shook hands with Rowe. But when Rowe leaned in for a bro-hug, Alex bypassed it—something I’m certain wasn’t lost on this group of reporters, many of whom were among the best in the industry.
Initially, the questions hurled at Alex were just as Rowe wanted—how did we survive on that island? What made the plane crash? Did he see the lightning strike the plane?
“I didn’t, but my wife did,” Alex said. “She saw it all.”
Five people died in that crash—did Alex care to respond to that?
“I’ll never forget them,” he said. “And I can tell you this—I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the memory of what happened to them out of my head. My heart goes out to their families and friends. But most of all, what the world needs to know is that they were heroes,” he said, deepening the moment. “If you’d witnessed how they responded when lightning struck our plane, you would have seen absolute professionals working to make sure that everyone was safe right up until the inevitable happened. As upset as I still am that my friends are gone, I hope that you will honor them in your reporting because they deserve it. Their families deserve it.”
The onslaught of questions continued—how did we find shelter? How did we find food and water? What was Cutter’s current condition? At what moment were we aware that there were others on the island? When did we know that they were against us? Could he describe the moment when his wife took a bullet for him? What exactly happened—moment by moment—that could have possibly led to the confrontation that occurred outside the bank?
“Were you surprised by what Jennifer did?” one reporter called out.
“Why would I be?” he said. “It’s not the first time Jennifer has taken a bullet for me, as many of you know. Do I wish that she hadn’t? Of course I do. But at this point, many of you have met Jennifer yourselves, and I think you know by now that when she decides to act upon something—such as putting her life on the line for me—there is no stopping her. She loves me that much.” He turned back to look at me. “And I love her more.”
More questions came, and Alex answered every one of them to the best of his ability. But as the press conference began to wind down, other questions arose—and the tone changed.
“Where do you stand now with Wenn?” a reporter called out. “Will you be reinstated as CEO and chairman of the board, or have those positions gone permanently to Stephen Rowe?”
“As we speak, I have controlling shares of the company my father founded, and I have a seat on the board—but that’s where it ends. I am no longer CEO of Wenn Enterprises, nor am I chairman of the board. Those positions have indeed gone to Mr. Rowe.”
“Do you approve of that decision?” another reporter asked.
“Would I prefer to be running my own company? Of course I would. Wenn runs deep in my blood. It always will. But things happened and the board felt pressured into a vote when the authorities told them that we were dead. And so here we are. In the end, here’s where I stand on this: Stephen has told me himself that he is confidant that he can keep moving Wenn forward with new ideas of his own. I believe him.”
“Do you?” someone asked.
“I have no reason not to,” Alex said. “I brought Stephen onto Wenn’s board myself, and for good reason. He’s an excellent businessman. He’s also a visionary. But beyond that, what also mattered to me when I asked him to join the board is this—Stephen Rowe is an excellent family man. He’s deeply in love with his wife, Meredith, whom all of you know through her family, who has done so many great things for our city, and also through her own private, successful business ventures. Stephen also has two little girls, whom I know he adores. At this moment, I know in my heart that he is the right person to lead Wenn for those reasons and more. For those who are on the sidelines of this issue, please know that I will still be involved in day-to-day operations, and in decisions that reach the board for approval. What I know about Stephen Rowe is critical—he is most defined by his honesty and his morality. Unless I’ve somehow had the wool pulled over my eyes—” and at that, Alex looked over his shoulder and laughed heartily with Rowe, though with steel in his eyes that the reporters could not see, “—I’m certain that Stephen is the right person for the job. If anyone can prove otherwise, be my guest. As far as I’m concerned—and from what I know about Stephen Rowe—his character will be revealed over time, and all of you will be writing about it.”
