She nodded again.
I shifted on the blanket. My socks were damp from standing in the same place. I chose a drier spot. “So here’s the thing. I could tell from the call—”
“I still can’t believe you heard all that.”
“Oh, I’m certain not all of it,” I reassured her. “But I assume you’re a busy woman, who only has the best of intentions, maybe...” I paused. “Fundraising for the school? Perhaps higher salaries for administrators like you, more perks, more recognition, a bit more prominence, some changes in the—”
“Yes.” She cut me off. “Exactly.”
“And this Shayla... wants your job? And you’re thinking there might be a way to — embarrass? Or—”
“Can we not go into that?” She shook her head, as if shaking off cobwebs of temptation. “You eavesdropped, that’s unacceptable. Shall we just pretend this never happened?”
“Of course.” I agreed instantly. That’s how you reel in a fish, let them think they’re off the hook. I laughed. “My entire business model is ‘this never happened.’”
She nodded. Looked down at the soggy blanket. The hum of the crowd surrounded us, and from time to time a clanging of train doors, or a random night bird. I waited. Public relations, I’d reminded myself, was all about helping whoever needed help. Not about sentimentality or Lifetime movies or damsels in distress. My clients were not always paragons of moral virtue, but they always needed me. Sometimes I had to allow them to realize that.
“It’s like three in the morning,” I said, looking at my Fitbit. “Wow.”
“Her name is Shayla Miller,” Clarissa said. “But you know that.”
I nodded.
“Her phone number is—” She pulled out her phone, saw it was still a brick, put it back. She told me a number. “Can you remember that? And her email is at Rotherwood dot edu. You won’t find her on the website. She’s just moved to Boston.”
“Got it,” I said. And I did.
“I don’t want to know,” Clarissa said. “What’ll happen and when.”
“Goes without saying.”
“You’re not going to hurt her? I mean — physically? I want to be clear about — you’re not going to k—”
“Please.” I put up both palms, stopping her. “This isn’t the movies. This is business. Civilized business.”
“And — if it’s not indelicate...” She glanced around. We were as alone as we could be.
“How will I pay you?”
I shrugged, as if it wasn’t about the money. Which, I realized, it wasn’t. It was about the balance of power. “Invite me to some event at Rotherwood, we’ll talk. After it’s over. And let me reassure you again, this is absolutely confidential. I will never ever say we’d worked together. Never. I’ll never say I’ve talked to you, or know you. No matter what the circumstances.”
“But what if—”
I gestured to our surroundings. “There’s no what-if. There’s no one who can put us together, not it any way. Maybe the pothead kid with the hat,” I dismissed him with a flip of my hand. “Otherwise, you and I never met.”
She laced her fingers together, put them under her chin. “I’m so — relieved. We were going to—”
I smiled, approving, letting her know we were comrades. And that she should continue.
“We were going to send emails from her computer,” she went on. “With certain pretty compromising pictures we were having made, and then it would all get out, and she’d have to resign, and then we’d be back on track. The headmaster, well, he does drink a bit. But that makes our lives so much easier.”
I frowned, emphatically so she could see, even in the gloom, how serious I was. “Can of worms,” I said. “IP addresses, email chains, metadata, back and forths, the forensics people can find absolutely anything anywhere. You cannot send emails, Clarissa, it’s like putting a spotlight on yourself. No, seriously, you leave Shayla alone. Pull way back. Let go. You were — and forgive me — saying something about walking across the stage?”
“Awards ceremony,” Clarissa said. “She getting some national honor for—”
“Let her accept it,” I said. “You join in the celebration. Encourage her, befriend her. Applaud her. The key is, you can’t know when I’m going to do what I’m going to do. You have to be genuinely surprised. In a way, you know, your idea is perfect, subtle but devastating. But it has to be done the right way. I know how to hide the tracks, and no one will ever know, and think of how much easier your life will be.”
“No violence.” She held up a finger.
“Never,” I said. “There are other ways to end people’s lives; professional lives, at least. After we’re back on board? Have a glass of wine, go to sleep, forget about this. It never happened.”
A piercing whistle cut through the night, so surprising I clutched at my bathrobe. Clarissa, startled, grabbed my arm. All the lights in the train flared into brightness, and a rumble sounded from the massive locomotive on the tracks across the blanketed grass.
A blue-uniformed conductor climbed the three metal steps to the now-open doorway where many of us had disembarked more than an hour ago. “Ladies and gentlemen?” He called out again, and once again we all surged forward to hear him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are so sorry, this was a false alarm. We have gone through our checklist, and checked again, and our fire crew has discovered there was apparently someone smoking in the café car restroom, and they failed to extinguish their smoking materials before they were placed in the trash bin. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, smoking on the train is prohibited by law.”
The crowd grumbled, a murmur of disapproval for this flouting of the social contract.
“Idiot,” Clarissa whispered.
“But we certainly appreciate your patience,” the conductor went on from above us, “and your cooperation, so we’ll be offering each passenger a voucher for future travel on the Lake Shore Limited, or any trains in our system. And now, with your continued cooperation, we’ll be underway as soon as the engineer signals.”
As we clambered back aboard, I let Clarissa go first, leaving at least ten people buffering between us, making sure no one ever connected us, or could put us in the same place. Sure, if someone really delved into it, for some reason, they might find we’d been on the same train, but who would get that far?
Her door was already closed by the time I got to my roomette. Without even closing mine, I scurried to the listening spot. She was already on the phone.
“You won’t believe what happened, sweetie,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking. Let’s let it go. We’re bigger than this, are we not? We’ll rise above it, and simply put our conversations down to a few too many glasses of wine. I’m out, sweetie. Let’s let Shayla be. And let the chips fall where they may.”
I got out my own phone, draped my earbuds around my neck, all of a sudden not feeling one bit tired. Now that we were back on the train’s wi-fi, I had three internet bars, but I wasn’t naïve enough to google Clarissa’s name. Or her headshots. Which I would ask Hadley, in due time, to attach to various kinky clothing-free bodies, thereby creating certain gasp-worthy photos that might not make our Clarissa too happy. I mean, it wasn’t my idea. But if it was good enough for Clarissa to do to Shayla, it was good enough for me to do to Clarissa.
But no one would know where the compromising photos came from. As I’d said, I knew what I was doing.
And maybe, if Clarissa Madison kept her part of the leave-Shayla-alone bargain, I wouldn’t have to do anything at all.
I put in one earbud, ready to block out the noises the rest of the night had in store for me. It was time to sleep, peacefully sleep, knowing that starting tomorrow morning, when the Lake Shore Limited arrived in Boston, Shayla Miller’s life would be different. And she’d never know why, never know she had me as her own personal public relations fixer. All of us women, starting in our careers, need all the help we can get.