Mary Kubica - Pretty Baby

My eyes deviate around the room, something Zoe would bark at if she were not asleep: the exposed brick walls that appear at random throughout the condo, the reason, Chris deduced, that Zoe’s room was so cold; the unmade canopy bed with the patchwork quilt; the posters of teen celebs and tropical paradises mounted to the walls with putty. Her backpack is on the floor, spilled open, the granola bar I thrust into her hand before school for an after-school snack lying untouched. Balled up notes from classmates are scattered upon the floor. The cats lie beside Zoe, embezzling the feverish heat for themselves.

I run my hands through her long hair and quietly call her name once, and then twice. When she comes to, she sits up at once, her eyes wide, as if she’s been caught doing something wrong. Something bad. She jumps to her feet, the cats falling to theirs, and tosses the blanket to her bed.

“I was tired,” she reasons, and her eyes dart around the room wondering what, if any, transgressions I found. None. It’s nearly seven o’clock, and outside, somewhere behind the dark, plump clouds, the sun is beginning to set. Chris, in San Francisco, is likely sitting down to an outrageous dinner at some extravagant restaurant, studying Cassidy Knudsen across the table. I push the thought from my mind.

“Then I’m glad you took a nap,” I say, eyeing the creases across her cheek, her exhausted brown eyes. “How was your day?”

“Fine,” she says, snatching the yellow notebook from the floor. She clings to it like a baby lemur clinging to its mother’s fur.

“Was Mrs. Peters there?”

“No.”

“She must really be sick,” I say. The flu, it appears, is peaking late this year. “Same sub? The nag ?”

Zoe nods. Yes. The nag.

“I’ll start dinner,” I tell Zoe but to my surprise she says, “I already ate.”

“Oh?”

“I was hungry. After school. I didn’t know what time you’d be home.”

“That’s fine,” I tell her. “What’d you have?”

“Grilled cheese,” she says and then, for good measure, “and an apple.”

“Okay.”

I realize I still have on my raincoat, my rubber boots, and my bag is still draped across my body. I thrust my hand excitedly into the bag and produce the movie and popcorn.

“You up for a movie night?” I ask. “Just you and me?”

She’s quiet, her face flat, no animated smile like the silly one on my own. I sense the no long before it appears.

“It’s just...” she starts. “I have a test tomorrow. Mean, median and mode.”

I drop the movie into my bag. So much for that idea. “Then I can help you study,” I suggest.

“That’s okay. I made flash cards.” And she shows them as proof.

I try not to be overly sensitive because I know there was a time that I was twelve—or sixteen or seventeen—and would have rather had dental work than hang out with my mom.

I nod. “Okay,” I say and slip from the room. And, as quiet as a mouse, she closes and locks the door behind me.

CHRIS

We’re sitting in a hotel room: Henry, Tom, Cassidy and me. It’s my hotel room. There’s a half-eaten box of pepperoni pizza (meat!) on top of the TV, open cans of soda lying around the room. Henry’s in the bathroom, taking a deuce, I think, because he’s been in there so long. Tom is on the phone, in the corner, with a finger pressed in one ear so he can hear. There are pie charts and bar graphs spread across my bed, dirty paper plates everywhere, on the table, on the floor. Cassidy’s plate is on the end table, the one with the pepperoni plucked off and left in a neat pile beside her can of diet soda. I snag a piece of pepperoni and pop it in my mouth and when she looks at me, I shrug and ask, “What? Heidi’s gone meatless these days. I’m becoming protein deficient.”

“The New York Strip steak didn’t satisfy that craving?” she asks. She’s smiling. A frisky sort of smile. Cassidy Knudsen is somewhere in her twenties, late twenties, right off an MBA. She’s been working with us for about ten months. She’s a freaking genius, but not the awkward, nerdy type. The kind that can use words like fiduciary and hedging and actually sound cool. She’s built like a lamp post, tall and thin, with a sphere at the top that glows.

“If I wanted my wife here, I would have brought her.”

She’s sitting on the edge of my bed. She wears one of those pencil skirts with three-inch heels. A woman of Cassidy’s stature does not need three-inch heels, which makes it all the more risqué. She runs her hands through champagne hair, a sleek bob cut, and says to me, “Touché.”

Outside the window the San Francisco skyline lights up the night. The heavy, hotel curtains are open. From the right angle we can see the Transamerica Pyramid, 555 California Street, and San Francisco Bay. It’s after nine o’clock. In the room next to us, the TV is loud, the sound of preseason baseball drifting through the walls. I pluck another piece of pepperoni from Cassidy’s plate and listen: Giants are up 3 to 2.

Henry emerges from the bathroom and we try hard to ignore the stench that follows. “Chris,” he says, offering his cell phone in an outstretched hand. I wonder if he washed that hand. Wonder if he was on the phone the whole time he was in the bathroom. Henry isn’t the classiest guy in the world. In fact, as he walks from the bathroom I see that the fly of his trousers is down and I would tell him, except that he just stunk up my room. “Aaron Swindler wants to talk to you.” I take the phone from his hand and watch as he gropes for another slice of pizza and quickly lose my appetite.

It’s no coincidence the prospective client’s last name is Swindler. I put on my best salesman voice and saunter to my own corner of the cramped hotel room. “Mr. Swinder,” I say. “How about them Giants?” though from the catcalls in the adjoining room I bet the Giants are no longer winning this game.

I didn’t always want to be an investment banker. When I was six years old I had all sorts of lofty goals: an astronaut, a professional basketball player, a barber (it felt lofty at the time, kind of like a surgeon for hair). As I got older it wasn’t so much about the career itself, but how much it paid. I envisioned a penthouse on the Gold Coast, a fancy sports car, people looking up to me. My mind leaped to lawyers and doctors, pilots, but none of those interested me. By the time college rolled around, I had such a penchant for money that I majored in finance because it felt like the right thing to do. Sit in class with a bunch of other overindulged kids and talk about money . Money, money, money.

That, in retrospect, is probably what enticed me the most about Heidi when we first met. Heidi didn’t obsess with money like everyone else I knew. She obsessed with the lack of money, the have-nots verses the haves, where all I was concerned with was the haves. Who had the most money and how could I get my hands on some?

Aaron Swinder is going on and on about derivatives when I hear my own phone ring from across the room, where it lies on the striped comforter beside Cassidy and now Henry, who, forty and notably single, is staring not so subtly at the sheer pantyhose on her legs. I’m waiting for an important call, one I can’t miss, so I motion to her to answer it, and hear her chant, “Hi there, Heidi,” into the receiver.

I deflate, like a helium balloon after a party. Shit. I hold up a finger to Cassidy— hold on —but since Aaron Swinder won’t stop talking about damn derivatives I’m forced to listen to a protracted conversation between Cassidy and my wife, about the flight to San Francisco, dinner at an expensive steakhouse and the goddamn weather.

Heidi has met Cassidy exactly three times. I know because after each and every one of these meetings I’ve been bombarded with the silent treatment, as if I had anything to do with her recruitment to our team or her good looks for that matter. The first time they met was last summer at a work picnic at the botanical gardens. I’d never mentioned Cassidy to Heidi. She had only been working with us about six weeks. It didn’t feel like the necessary, or prudent, thing to do. But as Cassidy sauntered near us in a long, strapless summer dress—where we hid in the shade of a maple tree on a ninety degree day, sweating and feeling totally gross—I saw Heidi grope awkwardly at a jean skirt and blouse, which she was clearly sweating through. I saw all shreds of self-confidence dissolve.