Solitaire, page 26
“I don't think it's weird,” Jackal said softly.
He opened his eyes. “No one's ever helped me with an aftershock,” he said. “The tourists don't know what to do, and other solos either can't deal with it or it just doesn't occur to them. Usually I just wake up on the floor and hope that people haven't stolen too much beer while I've been out. Oh shit, is the bar still open?”
“It's okay. I took care of orders while you were out, and I put Razorboy in charge until I get back. Turns out I'm good with beer and wine, but you might want to teach me how to make a tequila sunrise sometime.”
This time his smile didn't look quite so sad. “It's a deal.”
More silence. Then he said, “Thanks for taking care of me. But I think I'd like to be alone right now. Jesus, now there's an irony for you.” His face cramped, and she knew there were more tears pushing up behind his eyelids.
“I can stay,” she said, but he was shaking his head no; so she patted his arm gently and said, “Don't worry about the bar, I'll take care of it, okay? You just rest.” She let herself out and made sure that she pulled the door shut firmly, so he would hear the noise and know that he was safe.
Downstairs, she found Razorboy pale but coping.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
“Any trouble?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Want to help some more?”
He thought about it. “Okay.”
“Great. Take this tub and go bus the tables.”
He did; and he stayed until two-ten when she finally shooed the last straggler out the door. She hadn't seen Estar leave: she wondered what Estar would make of Jackal's disappearance and their sundered evening. Nothing, probably, she thought crossly, and realized how tired she was.
Razorboy brought in the signboard. “Where should I put this?”
“Just leave it there inside the door. Scully can put it away tomorrow.”
“You want me to do anything else?”
“No. You go on home. Thanks for helping.”
“Yeah, it was pretty crisp. We kind of worked together, didn't we?”
She suppressed the amusement and just let the gratitude show in her smile. “We sure did. It would have been tough doing all this myself.” And she wondered what kind of headlines she would find on the web site tomorrow:
Segura Up Close! And the coy text. Well, fine. It was a small enough price to buy Scully a little peace of mind tonight.
She was mopping the floor when she heard him come down the stairs.
“How are you feeling?” she said without looking up from her work.
“Okay. My head is killing me.”
“Try some Redhook, it works great for me.”
“Thanks, I might do that. Join me?”
“Sure.” She figured the floor was clean enough; she put the mop away in the small closet by the back stairwell and sat across from him in one of the booths. They each stretched out full length and savored the beer in appreciative silence.
“It was really nice of you to do all this,” he said. “Why did you?”
She put her glass down. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, why did you do all this?”
“Because we're…I mean, I thought…” She was surprised at how vulnerable the question made her. “I want us to be friends.” Now she felt like she was about six years old.
“Oh. Well…me too,” he said, equally nervously, and it was suddenly important to her to be very clear.
“It matters having friends. Maybe we aren't so good at it anymore, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.”
He looked at her. “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
He drew parallel lines in the condensation on the side of his glass. “Don't tell anyone about Bert.”
“I won't. Anyway, I think it was a great strategy. Better than mine.”
He looked up. She knew he wouldn't ask; she would have to give. She was tired from mopping and wiping tables and stacking chairs, but he was her friend and he needed to hear her story. Not the breakthrough: she couldn't afford to talk about that, especially now that she knew how frightening it was for him to be trapped. It would only be cruel to tell him that she'd had a whole world to explore inside VC. But she found that she wanted, she needed, to tell someone about the rest of it, the battles she had fought and the way that solitude had compelled her to dismantle and then reassemble herself.
“Do you want to hear about it?” she said; and instead of the yes she had expected, he answered, “Please. Please.”
17
SHE SHUFFLED HOME ABOUT SIX-THIRTY IN THE Morning, worn out with beer and hours of digging up handfuls of herself. She had told her story of the crocodile, and the different kind of madness that led her to turn herself to stone. And she had finally spoken of Snow and the web and her training with Neill; and the discovery, just before it all ended, that she wanted nothing more fiercely than to do the work Ko wanted. But in spite of the beer and the special buzz that came from revealing herself, she'd had the wit to withhold the information about her false Hope status and the deal she'd struck to protect her family and her web. It was the last job they had given her, and she would do it well. In that way, at least, she still belonged to Ko.
Her desktop cheeped softly at her: mail waiting. She came within a breath of shutting the whole thing down and going to bed: she didn't think she could bear any bad news on top of the emotional rib-spreading she'd done tonight. But she opened the mailbox and found a single message, from an address she did not recognize at first, until she read
Dear R Segura: we are currently seeking a project manager and have reviewed your qualifications with interest in further discussion. Our search is winding up, so I must ask if you are available on short notice for an interview. The gallery: good, her instincts had been on target. She pulled up her calendar program to record the date and time, squinted, checked the e-mail again, squeaked “Oh, sharks!” and ran for the shower: she had two and a half hours to clean up, eat, print some leave-behind copies of her résumé, and try to gather some semblance of brains.
The rushing around gave her less time to be nervous, and she made it to the gallery as much past on-time as she could get without being officially late. She was grateful for the ten-minute obligatory let-the-candidate-stew holding pattern to steady her breathing and let some of the sweat under her arms dry in the cool, faintly coffee-scented air. It was strange to be wearing formal business clothes after so many months of Neill-style loose dressing, and there was nothing she could do about her too-short hair, but she'd caught the right overall tone, judging by the people she saw in the hallways: including the one who stepped through the glass doors off the lobby area and came purposefully toward her. She straightened and then stood.
“Ms. Segura? Thank you for coming in. I'm Mark Levinson, Ms. Oronodo's assistant. If you'll come with me, the interview team is ready.”
“Certainly,” she said, took a deep breath, and followed him in.
She arrived back at her apartment tired and hungry, her bladder full to bursting with all the sparkling water she'd been politely offered, and had politely accepted, during the three hours of various group and individual conversations. She wished she had someone to talk to; then she thought about Scully's friend Bert and marched into her bedroom, where Frankenbear sat on the dresser, his crooked-sewn eyes steady and reassuring. She knelt down so that she could look straight at him.
“I was great,” she said. “You should have seen it. They loved me.” She carried him with her while she peed and ran a bath, and she told him all about it: the behavior-based group interview approach, a screening process she approved of and knew how to manage well from both sides of the table; the project stories she'd told to illustrate her ability to keep people focused and motivated; and the subsequent tour of the office that was really a thinly disguised series of one-on-one meetings with key staff, to determine her connection-building techniques and assess her communication style in action. At the end, Jennifer Oronodo had shaken her hand and said, “It's been a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Segura. We'll be in touch by the end of the week. I assume that your availability will hold until then?” Jackal had solemnly assured her that she would juggle her schedule to keep herself open, and restrained her grin until she was more than a block away from the building.
The only tricky point had been the gallery's insistence on references. “It's part of our standard contract with clients that we complete reference checks on anyone working on their projects. It's a necessary formality,” Oronodo had said. “If you'll give Mark three local business contacts, that should be sufficient.”
“That's a problem,” Jackal said candidly. “I'm new to this area and am only now lining up business for myself. Is there another way to meet your needs?”
She hoped that Oronodo would follow a typical corporate pattern and dismiss the check on the basis of ‘my seasoned executive gut tells me that a person who fits my needs so well must be a fine individual.’ Unfortunately, Oronodo was a better manager than that. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I do need some kind of verification. Tell you what, how about a reference from one of your projects with Ko? If you can give Mark a director-level or above contact, I can justify the lack of local experience. But I will need two local personal references to confirm that you are you, and that you haven't mugged any old ladies lately.” Oronodo smiled to show that she was sure Jackal understood. Jackal smiled back as best she could.
Oronodo said good-bye and disappeared into the core of the office complex: it was a compliment to Jackal that she'd come all the way to the lobby. Levinson waited. Jackal chewed her lip. The local references took no thought: she only knew four people in town, and it would be professional suicide to name Estar or Gordineau, although it was tempting in a macabre way. She provided Crichton's and Scully's e-mail addresses: Scully could represent himself as an established business owner, and Crichton—well, Crichton would think of something unexpected and utterly convincing, if she was in the right mood. Then, with outward assurance and a huge inward flutter, she told Levinson, “The best contact at Ko is Gavin Neill at Ko Prime. He's the Executive Vice President of Planning for Ko Worldwide.”
Levinson raised an eyebrow and then broke his corporate demeanor long enough to grin. “I guess we'd be happy with his recommendation,” he said with a chuckle.
“Do me a favor, will you? Give me the afternoon to let the local people know that I've provided their names.” There was no point asking for time to contact Neill; either he would support her or he wouldn't, she told herself. Begging wouldn't work with him, and what other reason was there to call?
But now, after the bath to slough off some of the stress, she said to Frankenbear, “The thing is, I'd be scared to call him anyway.”
Frank regarded her solemnly from his perch on the cold water faucet of the sink.
“Because if he's going to say no, I'd rather find out from Oronodo.”
Frankenbear waited.
“Because it matters to me what he thinks.” She hugged her knees in the tub. “I do not want to cry anymore, Frank. I've cried enough about this stuff. And it would make me cry to have Neill cut me off.”
How come? Frank seemed to ask.
“Not because he would be mean. He wouldn't have to. But we were…I was…” She flopped a washcloth into the water and trailed it around her like a fish. “Okay, because I was special.” It sounded almost defiant. Frankenbear didn't seem to mind. “And I'm probably not special to him anymore and I hate that, you know?” She crunched the washcloth into a tight ball in her fist and scrubbed her face with it. Then she climbed out of the tub to dry herself, coming down now from the interview high, trying not to feel sad. Frank looked at her with button-eyed staunchness; you are special, she imagined she heard him say. She kissed him on the nose and kept it in her mind—I am special, I am special—while she called Crichton.
Her phone didn't have a view option—one of those budget trade-offs. She clutched Frankenbear against her chest, and heard Crichton say, “Hello.”
“It's Jackal Segura.”
“What?”
It was reassuring that Crichton on the phone was so consistent with the in-person experience. “I applied for a job today and gave you as a reference.”
Silence.
“Someone from Calabrese Galleries will probably e-mail you in the next couple of days. I've applied for a contract position as a project manager. I had to give a couple of local references.”
“I see.” Fleetingly, Jackal wondered what color Crichton's eyes were today, and whether the lenses made her see the world in the same color. “Are they aware of the nature of our professional relationship?”
“If you mean, do they know that I'm a carefree killer in the triple digits, then no, I left that out of the conversation.”
This silence was different. Jackal could almost see Crichton's mind working. “When did you last eat?”
“What? I don't know. Dinner.”
“And when did you last sleep?”
“I don't know. Night before last.”
“You go fix yourself something to eat and then take a nap. We'll talk about this later.”
“Why? What difference does it make if I'm tired and in complete insulin cycle mayhem? Seems like a perfect time for you to hold me up for that nonexistent information you think I've got.” She felt a long way from herself; it was interesting to hear all that anger bubbling up.
“Oh, I'm thinking about it,” Crichton said evenly. “But you're in no shape to negotiate with me right now. Go to sleep.” There was a click and then nothing: Jackal listened to the
bzzz of the open line for almost five seconds before she realized that Crichton was no longer there.
She'd known in her head that she was tired, but telling Crichton had made her body realize it too. She weighed too much, and it seemed like a very long way from her brain to her legs. She chivvied herself into the kitchen with the promise of a sandwich, but she could only muster the energy to gum down a slice of turkey. Then she climbed into bed and nestled Frankenbear on the pillow next to her, where she might see his loyal lopsided face when she woke up. She would sleep, and then she would go to Solitaire and have some food and tell Scully all about her interview. Perhaps Estar would be there. They could make plans for another dinner. Jackal wanted to see all the walls in Estar's house, all the beautiful and frightening and unfathomable corners of Estar's brain. She wanted to stride into Solitaire beside Estar and drink a bit too much wine, be just a little dangerous. Maybe that was wrong to want; or maybe it would simply be nice to have some fun for a change.
She dreamed of the investiture at Al Iskandariyah: Stang Karlsson introduced her as the leader of projects that would shape the future, and voices across the earth roared their approval; she was the star of the show, the favorite daughter of the world, and everyone loved her again.
She was more tired than she thought: she slept well into the predawn hours, and then had to get up and eat right
now, her hunger so sharp that she fell on whatever came to hand in the kitchen—three slices of turkey, a fistful of pickles, a quarter cup of leftover white rice—until she felt able to think a bit more clearly. Then she made a cup of tea. Solitaire would be closed, and she was too wound up to go back to sleep, so she watched three hours of an overnight marathon video series she'd never heard of, about a dysfunctional family running a boarding house along the Yangtze River. Possibly because of her fatigue and the late hour, she found the program almost unbearably funny. When she finally crawled into bed, the sun was coming up: she dropped into sleep like a lead sinker into still water.
She spent the morning and afternoon weaving back and forth between deep sleep and an almost-waking state that never loosened its grip enough for her to become fully conscious. By the time she surfaced, it was late afternoon and she felt wrung out and apathetic. She sent Scully an e-mail about the reference and told him she would see him tomorrow.
She checked the web sites before she went to the club, and indeed, there was a long article by Razorboy:
Segura Steps IN at Solitaire. He'd done a fairly objective job of describing Scully's aftershock, and he made Jackal's response sound positively heroic as opposed to the simple stopgap measures she'd actually taken.
He'd also posted a picture of her and Estar on their way up the stairs to the solo level, captioned only with
Estar Borja and Jackal Segura at Solitaire. It had been copied over to other sites with less flattering descriptions: Lady Butcher Trades Tips With Killer Hope! was undoubtedly her least favorite. She should start having a word with some of these people.
