ROMAN
Raven ignored me on Monday. She wore a tweed shirt and jacket with a turtleneck, low brown pumps, and her hair in a tortoiseshell headband. She looked as if she was de-sexing herself for my benefit. It didn’t work. I knew what her underwear looked like and what her pussy tasted like. I knew how filthy her mouth was and how smooth her skin was.
I’d known the weekend deadline wouldn’t stick if I didn’t want it to. I was generally very capable of walking away from flings. I didn’t make attachments I didn’t need to make.
But she was different.
I didn’t need to get attached to her, but I hadn’t had a choice either. She was like an orange with a tough, attractive skin. Once peeled, she was soft, sticky, sweet.
I was in the middle of a fantasy that involved feeding Raven orange wedges when Marie came in without knocking.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.” I snapped out of it. “I’ve never been up to Burke’s new office.”
“It’s a trip,” she said on her way out. I got my things and joined Marie in the hall. As I walked out with her, Raven came down the hall in her sexless pumps. I ignored her, or at least I thought I did. When I looked back toward Marie, I found her watching me suspiciously.
We got into the elevator. I pressed the button to the top floor, Alexander Burke’s office suite. The doors closed before anyone else could join us.
“Burke’s doing a big event the Friday before rollout. If it’s not live on Monday, he’s going to be embarrassed. We don’t embarrass clients.”
“The system will protect Neuronet from some litigation. Performance benchmarks for the sales unit are a little aggressive. They’re working on the—”
“Tell me how invaluable you are.”
“He’s not going to get sued. That’s invaluable.”
The elevator stopped and opened into a vast room surrounded with windows. It had been designed as another stark, angular office for a Silicon Valley tycoon, but Burke had managed to subvert the original intent. There were stacks of papers everywhere. Crowded corkboards leaning against the wet bar and the bottoms of the windows. The conference table had been turned upside down, and colored yarn had been strung between the six legs like an extreme game of cat’s cradle. Post-its with numbers and symbols were clipped to the yarn.
“Captain Kill!” Alexander Burke called in his British accent, coming out from behind a six-foot-tall Lego model of DNA. He had on a black mock-neck tee, a black jacket, and black pants. His socks were Kelly green.
“Bushwhacker!” Calling each other by our gamer names, we gave each other a back-slapping man hug. I hadn’t seen my old friend since he’d hired me two months before. He’d been ballooning around Antarctica.
“Marie, right?” He shook her hand. “Perry set up the terrace; it’s a mess in here.” He walked across the room without looking back at his guests, head bowed as if the world outside his brain was too distracting.
We went out to the terrace overlooking the bay. The inner workings of Burke’s mind hadn’t spilled out, so it was clean and neat. Drinks had been set out.
“Am I getting my system?” he asked, running his fingers through his hair again. “I made it simple.”
“The software infrastructure was easy. We just worked on the methods.”
“My new VP of HR.”
“Yes, I worked with her.”
“She was at QI4, you know. Hard to get. Very smart.”
“Very,” I said, about to launch into Raven’s virtues.
“She worries me.” Marie put her glass down and leaned on the railing. Raven had just left me standing on a street corner the night before, but I still wanted to push her over the edge.
“Really?” Burke asked. “How so?”
“She and Taylor Harden had a thing at her last job.”
I had to turn away before I told her to shut the fuck up.
“I heard rumors.” Burke shrugged and brought his iced tea to his lips. “But what I wanted to talk to you about was some good news.” He put his iced tea on the glass tabletop and picked up an envelope. “Thank you,” he said, handing Marie the envelope. “Your team got this done well and on time.”
Marie paused, glanced at me to see if I knew what was going on, and seeing I had no fucking clue, she opened the envelope. I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but the sun shone through it enough for me to discern both the check and her stunned reaction to it.
“We haven’t billed yet,” she said.
“That’s a bonus on top of billing. To thank you guys for getting it done.”
Burke didn’t know what Marie wanted or how badly she wanted it, so he didn’t sense that her gratitude was genuine and grudging at the same time.
“If you’re hiring new outside counsel for future projects—”
“I’m thinking of keeping it in-house for now.”
She put the check back in the envelope and folded the flap back. She was a wild card.
“It’s been a pleasure, Alex,” I said, hoping to end this and get out, because Marie had had her eyes on a single target from jump, and it was a target I wanted to protect. “Really great. Any time you—”
“Our job is to protect our client from lawsuits,” Marie cut in. “Be the eyes and ears of the world outside Neuronet.”
“Of course.”
“I think you need that.” She glanced at me, then back at Burke. Her gears were turning. “So if you ever feel isolated, or like you need ears on the ground, let us know.”
She picked up her glass. I had the feeling my name wasn’t getting put on the stationery this time around.
* * * *
In the elevator, on the way down, we watched the numbers change.
“You’re having a thing with Raven Crosby.”
Marie stated it as a fact. I swallowed a vigorous denial. The question needed a question.
“What makes you say that?”
“What makes you not deny it?”
I didn’t answer. The elevator slowed and stopped.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said as the doors opened. “But if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there. I’m not going to invent suspicion to look useful.”
“Agreed.”
I walked out of the elevator with the best of intentions, but once I got to my office and saw her across from me, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.