Love Handles (33 page)

“That’s still on?”

“Damn, it better be. We’ll be dead with out it,” Bev said. “What are you doing?”

Rachel put her lunch down on the floor outside Liam’s office and rattled the doorknob. “We better get in there and finish the presentation, don’t you think? Where’s your key?”

“I was just about to do that.” She had been putting it off, loathe to make Liam’s absence official. “Go have your lunch. I’d rather do this by myself.”

Rachel hesitated, her hand still on the knob. “You sure? If it’s as big a deal as you said—”

“Just for now. Let’s meet at five and get it into boxes for tomorrow. That too late?”

“Five? I wish. I haven’t been out of here before six in years.”

“You should work on that.”

“Gee, thanks, boss.” Rachel picked up her lunch, rolled her eyes, and disappeared into her office.

Bev stared after her for a moment wondering why her family’s most annoying characteristics seem to have been institutionalized at Fite. When Kate and her mother had watched her drive away from the Oakland house, their faces had looked exactly like that. The same wounded-but-disgusted expression.

She retrieved the master key from her purse and went back to open Liam’s door, trying not to get emotional about it but getting emotional about it.

“It even smells like you,” she muttered into the dark. Not wanting to deal with Rachel’s moody scrutiny, she closed the door behind her and patted the wall to find the switch. She turned and looked at Liam’s desk just as the delayed overhead lighting illuminated the disaster.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

His office had been torn apart. Tattered clothing sagged off their hangers on the wall, torn sketches covered the chairs, and zigzagging piles of white foam core boards littered the floor. Bev turned around slowly, checked the unforced door latch and locked it. She went over to the desk on quiet feet, listening for any hint of another occupant but deciding she was alone.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to keep it together. In spite of the shocking mess all over the room, most of his desk was untouched. The computer, the cup of pens and pinking shears, the hangtag gun and strands of tape measure—all neat and tidy in the corner of his desk, just like Saturday night.

But the presentation—every garment and board and sketch and swatch—had been ruined.

He wouldn’t do this.

A knock of the door made her heart jump into her throat. She pressed a hand over her chest and tried to breathe.

But who would? Could Ellen have slipped in without being noticed?

Her own mother?

The mere possibility filled her with raw, confused pain. In a daze, Bev walked slowly over to the door but didn’t open it. “Yes?” Her voice sounded calm and far away.

“Bev?” Rachel asked.

Eager to commiserate, she reached to unlock the door—and stopped herself. For some reason she couldn’t articulate to herself, she didn’t want to let Rachel see the destruction. It would be horrible for morale, and the temptation for Rachel to gossip would be too great.

“Yes?” Bev let her hand drop to her side.

Silence. Then, “I’m done with lunch. I could meet now if you want.”

“No. Five is still better for me.”

After another long pause, Rachel said, “All right,” and there was silence again.

Bev took a deep breath, grateful she didn’t have to soothe Rachel as well as herself. She put her palm on the door and closed her eyes.

Think
.

All she’d done since Liam had left was think. Nobody was left to talk to—she’d alienated her aunt, her mother, her sister, and now Liam.

She turned back around and stared at the carnage, jaw clenched. If not Liam or her family, then who would do this?

Who wants me to fail?

Her foot caught on a balled-up sweatshirt on the floor. She picked it up. It was the charcoal hoodie Liam had wanted Annabelle to wear, marked up with the dusty wheel-marks of an office chair.

Her first design, and he’d liked it.

She sank down in Liam’s chair, picked up the plastic hangtag gun on the edge of the desk and pointed it at the door where she’d last seen him.

Unsatisfied with her target, she pointed it at her own head, the small metal needle poking her in the temple, and squeezed the trigger.

“Pow,” she said.

Chapter 22

“L
iam, it’s for you.”

It was late Tuesday afternoon. April stood in the doorway waving the phone while Liam scraped the last stripes of peeling paint off his bedroom dresser. “I’m busy. Who is it?”

“You haven’t slept in days. Take a break already. Lord.”

“Who is it?”

“Not
her
. Unfortunately.”

Warily Liam put down the scraper and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his wrist, studying April’s face for any hint of matchmaking. Since Sunday she’d been the All Bev, All the Time channel, as though she’d never seen him have trouble getting over a woman before and suddenly was obsessed with uniting him with his one true soulmate.

He took off his gloves and snatched the phone out of her hands. “You just want the condo to yourself,” he muttered, then into the phone he asked, “Hello?”

“Hi, Liam,” came a depressed, familiar voice. Kimberly Jaeger, his ex, now at Target. She sounded even unhappier than usual.

“Hey, good thing you called,” he said. “Change of plans—”

“Oh, thank God,” Kimberly sighed. “I was feeling guilty.”

He closed his eyes. “Don’t say it.”

“I can’t do it. If it was just you and me, unofficially chatting, you know, catching up—”

“You can still do that. Just do that with Bev.”

The phone went quiet. “I can’t.”

“There’s no difference. It’s the same product line. Just I won’t be there.”

“Why do you care? You quit.” She paused. “What happened—did she get too serious? I thought that was why you never fooled around at work anymore.”

Liam frowned. “Who told you—?” he cut himself off and stared at the roll of blue masking tape on the floor. “Come to think of it, who told you anything? How did you know I left?”

“I used to work there, big guy. Things get around.”

“Not to Minneapolis.” He paced his room, kicking aside lumpy drop clothes and wishing he had a different way of working through depression than starting major home renovations. “Who, Kimberly?” His heart was starting to pound. “Other shit happened, weird shit. I need to know.”

“It’s nothing like that, I shouldn’t have—”

“Was it Ellen? You know she—”

“I would never talk to that bitch. Are you kidding?”

“Who, then?”

“I won’t tell you. She’s—it’s an old friend.”

“Jennifer.”

“No, I told you, I’m not squealing.”

He took a deep breath. Time to try a new tactic. “You never were much of a squealer,” he said, loading his voice with innuendo.

“Very funny.”

But he could tell she was smiling. “Whoever it is, it’s nobody you liked more than me. Right?”

“I didn’t like anyone more than you. That was the problem.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m cured,” she said. “Now I can cancel meetings with you without any qualms whatsoever.”

“You said you felt guilty.”

“No more than I’d feel for any old friend.”

“Then it wouldn’t have anything to do with jealousy? Like, say, if you were feeling insecure about my feelings for Ed’s granddaughter—who, by the way, you’d love to meet. You always said there wasn’t a woman alive who could resist me when I turned on the charm.”

“Only because you hoard it and then use it all at once. Very unfair.”

“Well,” he said, “Bev Lewis managed to deflect it. And me.”

Kimberly laughed. “No kidding.”

Liam had wanted her to be amused, but he himself wasn’t in the slightest. “Aren’t you curious to meet such a woman?”

“I am, actually,” she said, and Liam felt hopeful, but she added, “but I can’t. Zack would bust my ass. You, an old friend, the gold medal and all that, he’d forgive. Ed Roche’s granddaughter—no.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “We’ve busted our asses for you, Kimberley.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Just one hour. Give her an hour. You might have something strong enough to pass on to Zack.”

“What do you care? You quit.”

He didn’t want to care, but he couldn’t just let Bev go under like this. No guilt could land on his head. “On principle,” he said. “Most of the designs are mine. I like to know they’re put to use.”

“Funny, you never seemed to get too attached to your ideas when we worked together. That was your strength. You never got personal.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Well. People change.”

“Apparently. You really like this girl.”

“Unfortunately.”

“You really, really like her.”

“Everyone does, whether they want to or not. Even George hand-delivers her packages.”

She paused. “No.”

“Really.”

“What a nightmare.” She laughed softly. “Good thing I’m not at Fite anymore. I would probably hate her.”

“You’d want to, but then she’d bring you a Meyer lemon tart from Gerard’s and you’d be her bitch forever.”

“
Oh
,” she moaned. “I
love
those.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. She’d know,” he said. “In fact I’m surprised she hasn’t sent you any yet. Like, Fed Ex or something.”

“If she promised to bring me—” she stopped herself. “No, damn it, no. I called you because I had some weird old guilt, but I’m over it. If you’re ever in the frozen north, give me a ring. Hey, you looking for a job? Because—”

“No.” But he wondered. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. And getting thousands of miles away from Bev had its appeal. “At least, not yet. I’m taking a little time off.”

“Don’t wait too long. People will forget about you.”

Liam had the sick feeling one of the people forgetting him might be Bev. He dropped the phone on his unmade bed, went over to the window and stared out at the Bay Bridge, over the monochromatic grays of water and steel and fog, towards Oakland.

Not now, she wouldn’t. Not if Fite went under because of him.

He scowled at his face reflected back at him in the glass, noticing the streak of paint in his hair. He touched it, trying to wipe it off, and his fingers came away sticky and red.

Not my problem.
He turned away from the window and walked across the room to find a clean rag and finish what he’d started.

T
o Bev’s surprise, Rachel didn’t show for their five o’clock meeting Tuesday evening.

“Nasty UTI,” Rachel said when she called at six, just as Bev was giving up on her. “Sorry I couldn’t call, but it was a bitch. I will totally be there first thing in the morning. The antibiotics should kick in by then.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bev said. “You need your rest.”

But Bev wasn’t happy about Rachel’s defection. She had spent all day trying to resurrect the Target presentation, printing sketches off the design database and mocking up miniature boards out of new, compact foam core, using new swatches she pasted up herself, imitating as best she could. But it didn’t look nearly as good.

They could only do their best, but hers might not be good enough.

Once the building had emptied out, she dragged her cat and her laptop and a stack of financial records upstairs with her, jogging up the stairwell so any stragglers didn’t see her get off the elevator on her grandfather’s old floor.

Locked up in her suite, she settled Ball next to her on the sofa, wrapped both of them up in the thick purple fleece she’d lifted from the sample yardage room and lost herself in the last two year’s financial documents she’d printed out from the databases. Back at UCLA, to satisfy her father, she’d taken a series of business classes. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for but kept turning pages, eventually catching on to Richard’s accounting style.

Being in the Fite building after hours, pouring over sell-through numbers and fluctuating profits and enjoying it, Bev decided she wasn’t angry at Hilda anymore. If she hadn’t been so impossible, Bev would be there instead of here—and as crazy as Fite was, with its dysfunction and gossip, its unpredictable schedules and unreliable profitability and temperamental employees, she had to admit that she rather, sort of, kind of, totally
loved it.

Or could have. She missed Liam. Fite wasn’t the same without him.

I could have loved him.

She was an idiot. She already loved him. He’d wanted her and she’d chosen Fite and now she’d have neither.

Ball rose up in a stretch and padded up into her lap, a gesture of affection that had Bev fighting tears.

You’re just tired.
She hadn’t slept well in weeks. Exhausted and lonely, of course she would start doubting herself, getting emotional, wanting the impossible.

She would never, ever let Liam have the chance to come and work at Fite again because he had given up and run.

Maybe you’ll apply for a job when I’m gone, my ass,
she thought, falling asleep where she lay with Ball in her arms, purple fleece between them and the cold night.

Just as the sun was coming up through the haze of fog Wednesday morning, her cell phone chirped and vibrated under the couch cushion, waking her from a fitful dream about dancing clothes—like
Fantasia
with supermodels. Ball meowed and resettled herself facing the other direction, tail under Bev’s nose.

Bev wriggled to a sitting position, unearthed her phone, squinted at the unfamiliar area code before answering with a yawn, “This is Bev.”

“Oh, shoot—I woke you,” a woman said. “I swore I’d never do that when I moved back east, but I didn’t get a chance to call you yesterday and didn’t want to put it off any longer.”

Something about the woman’s voice cut through Bev’s sleep-dulled brain. She sat up straighter. “Who is this?”

The woman sighed. “I’m Kimberly Jaeger, from Target. I’m afraid I have to cancel the little meeting Liam may have mentioned.”

Bev’s throat went dry. “What?”

“It was never an official thing anyway, but as a courtesy I wanted to inform you and your staff of the changes needed due to the circumstances. I’m sure you understand.”