Or whatever. I just wanted to succeed. I’m good at fixing things, I do know that. Clients made miserable by snoopy and big-mouthed reporters, youthful indiscretions threatening to be headlines, time-bomb emails, college love affairs hanging like water balloons over a politician’s head. My job is to fend them off, calm the waters, soothe the savage whatevers, and let my clients succeed. All without anyone realizing I’d had a hand in it.
At least two CEOs and an internationally famed art dealer owe me their reputations, although I could never reveal who. One called me his hired gun. But there are never actual guns involved, of course. Power and money and control and reputation — and the potential loss of them — are equally effective weaponry. Anonymity, too, is a successful tool. My anonymity.
I flinched, startled, as another fast-moving train careened past us, whistle screaming, racing west. Our windows seemed so close. And yet, no way to see who was traveling the other way, speeding toward the unknown.
I’d indulged in a late night last-call glass of drinkable-enough cabernet from the café car, read toward the end of my novel, chomped the last of the Doritos, and felt, actually, proud of myself. Content. Safe. Burrowing down in my pillow now, I thought, well, okay. Time to sleep.
And then I heard the voice.
I sat up in bed, so quickly I almost bumped my head on the bunk above. The voice was as clear as if it had been in the next room, and I guess it was. I was in sleeper car “A” and, calculating, I figured the head of my little bunk was adjacent to the head of a similar bunk in sleeper car “B” next door. It had to be, because I was hearing as definitively as if I’d been using my earbuds to listen to a podcast on my iPhone. We might as well have been in the same room.
“Sweetie, sweetie,” the voice — a woman’s — was saying. “That’s cart before the horse. It was a real failure, right? I mean — three people in Sarasota?”
Horses? Sarasota? I admit I had a moment of trying to figure out what she might be talking about in that imperious voice, but it was now pushing 1:30 in the morning, and my get-some-rest efficiency was not being helped by the interruption. It was possible that my neighbor did not know how beautifully her voice carried. But this would be over soon. No one would be so rude as to continue a long conversation at this time of the night. Morning.
Wrong.
“My point is, there are no options,” she was saying now. “He is not a process guy. We need to focus our efforts on hitting goal, and not be distracted with noise.”
Not be distracted with noise? That was actually pretty funny. I leaped up, grabbed the pillow from the top bunk, slid myself back under the thin, pale blue blanket, and put the borrowed pillow over my face. Tried to block out the sound. That succeeded in making me unable to breathe. But not unable to hear.
“It’s gonna be fun,” I heard her say. “I’m telling me as much as I’m telling you. But I’m his right hand person at Rotherwood, so it’s so not a problem. Clear sailing. We’ll keep it clean. She’ll be done.”
Nice, I thought. Charming. And wondered who was on the other end. Whose right hand? Rotherwood, I knew, was a fancy prep school on Beacon Hill, a row of three story brownstones with historically genteel facades. What did they have to “keep clean?” As the CEO, and only O of Cady Armistead Enterprises, I was used to negotiations. Making things right, was how I explained what I did. Spinning my clients’ sides of the story. It was funny to think that I succeeded when someone else had a problem, but that’s how the world works. Checks and balances, all leading to equilibrium. I have to admit, as I listened, because how could I help it, to one end of the discussion-next-door, it sounded like someone indeed had a problem.
Whoever was about to be “done.” Whatever that meant. “Done” didn’t sound good, but it was none of my business.
My cell phone glowed on the floor, since I needed it near me, sadly, in case a client had an emergency. Damn it. Damn my curiosity. I grabbed up the phone, googled Rotherwood, looked up “contact us.” Clicked. Contact at Rotherwood dot edu, so went the address. I clicked on “Our Staff.” An array of women and men, diverse and professional in gray lapels and appropriate jewelry. I picked one at random. The email ended with Rotherwood dot edu.
We’ll keep it clean, she’d said. Keep what clean?
But again, none of my business, and I would never know. I clicked off my phone, trying to quiet my inquisitive brain. The woman’s voice had softened to a murmur, and for a moment I felt a twinge of disappointment. Something was going on in her world, and part of my job — and my passion, I admit — was to be curious. So I kind of wanted to hear the rest. But sleep was more important. I heard the loo flush in her room, had a moment of realization that if I could hear hers, she could hear mine. Then I heard water gushing in her aluminum sink. Mine was aluminum at least.
Mumble mumble, I heard. Time for me to sleep.
Outside the world was impenetrable, a dense July night, and staring, sleepless, out the window into nothingness, I imagined all the invisible dramas underway out there. The overnight hours, the time so many of us spend in suspension, our bodies recharging and our brains at rest. Or busy only in dreams. But there are those who are awake and active during that span of quiet. And some people live in different time zones, I reminded myself, so who even knew who Ms. Chit-chat next door was talking to. Still talking to.
“I’ll shoot off an email to Shay,” the woman was saying. “She’s the one who got the directive. I’ll cc you. But you minimize your contact, and then I’ll swoop in.”
Shay? I thought. Or Shea? Or Shaie? Ms. Shay? Mrs. Shay? Directive? Swoop?
Swoop?
My phone was a tempting rectangular glow on the thin gray carpet. No, I ordered myself. Go to sleep.
It only took me about four seconds to search Rotherwood for Shay. And Shea. And for good measure, Gray. And Bray. But nothing.
“Sweetie... sweetie, sweetie.” The woman was now obviously cajoling someone. I envisioned those cartoons my sister and I used to watch on Saturday mornings, where some animated character would hold a wineglass against the wall to eavesdrop on the animated character next door. Nina and I had tried it, and it didn’t work, we couldn’t hear a thing, and decided it only worked in cartoons. But what I was hearing was as clear as it had been in Looney Tunes. And maybe just as looney.
“The board has no idea, you know that. He’s a lush, a total lush. The wife’s a basket case,” the woman pronounced. “Ellen has disappointed me from the outset, so we can’t rely on her at all. Its two t’s right, in Pattillo? But if someone wants to commit career suicide, sweetie, who are we to stand in the way? Ha, ha, I mean.”
I clutched my phone to my chest. Even in bed I was still wearing my little navy jersey travel bathrobe, and socks. The socks because the floor was iffy, and the robe in case the porter had been lying about the windows. I thought about the people who’d shared the train with me before we all went off to our separate little compartments. You can’t really look at your fellow passengers, even as you stagger down the aisle to the bathroom or the café car and back, balancing your wine or soda against the lurching train. That would be rude. And replaying the faces of my travelling companions only offered me half-memories of newspaper barriers, and earbuds, eyes focused on glowing screens, on a man with his head plastered against the wide glass window, dead asleep. A woman with a — I stared at the bunk above me, as if the video of the train car was replaying. A woman with steely hair, with sunglasses on her head, and earrings. Big earrings. Was she the one plotting something in the room next door?