24 1/2 Kisses (A Bashir Family Romance) (3 page)

T
he next morning I sat up straight, pen and paper in hand, ready and eager to find out what I would be working on for the next several weeks. The rest of the fulltime staff filled the meeting room, our fearless editor, Bill, at the helm, sweat stains under his white button-down and his brows furrowed in thought.

He had a white board with some old lists with story ideas that had been crossed through or circled. He went down the list and started gathering input from the team. I stayed quiet—I knew my place. It would take time before I would build a rapport with my co-workers and I didn’t want to come in guns blazing on my first day. I was one of the youngest writers on staff, barely 23. I caught
Time’s
interest after winning a national award for a feature I did on Haitian adoption.

The business editor, Linda, sat next to me. She was a tired looking woman in her late 40s, with thick salt-n-pepper hair and a no-nonsense aura about her.

I squinted at the white board trying to get a feel for what they were looking for and nearly choked when I saw the name, “Dev Bashir.” I leaned over to Linda and lowered my voice.

“Dev Bashir—why is his name up there?”

She wrinkled her brows and whispered, “You don’t follow business news?” as if accusing me being generally ignorant for a writer. My blank look was answer enough.

“Do you remember the Zambia loan shark scandal with Franklin bank two years ago?” She asked impatiently.

I knew something happened, but I tried avoid any news that could be related to Dev. I had scanned over some headlines; there was a Senate investigation…
what else?

I nodded. “A little. What does Dev have to do with it?”

She looked at me strangely, as if reading my face, my tone.

“Hey, do you
know
him? Dev Bashir?”

I panicked. Should I say? What could it hurt? I decided to go with a half-truth half lie—a “half-n-half” as Annika would say.

“Not really. We grew up in the same town. I was friends with his sister.”

Linda choked on her sip of coffee and stood up suddenly getting the room’s attention.

“Bill, I think we might have a shot at the Bashir story. Your new girl—
Scarlett—
knows him.”

The entire room fell silent and all eyes fell on me. Bill stopped writing on the dry erase board.

“Oh yeah? How well do you know that guy?” he demanded like a drill sergeant.

Only every inch of him…
I thought to myself.

“Just a little,” I answered, hoping that he wouldn’t pursue it further. “But it looks like his name is crossed out,” I added, confused.

Linda explained. “He won’t do interviews. Not one media outlet has gotten so much a word out of that guy and he’s the Wonderboy-slash-Brad Pitt of banking right now.”

“Will he talk to you?” Bill asked.

“Probably not.”
Crap, what was happening?
“We lost touch…he’s probably forgotten my name. I didn’t know him that well.”

Bill shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.” He turned to his mousy administrative assistant with oversized brown-framed glasses slipping down her nose. “Molly, get his people on the phone and use Scarlett’s name.” He faced the room again and continued the meeting as if he hadn’t just shattered my entire world.

My head was spinning when Linda leaned over to me.

“I’ll get you up to speed. After the scandal, Franklin Bank shares plummeted—they lost investors, clients. They were negotiating a bail-out when out of the blue Gerald Franklin stepped down and Dev Bashir was made CEO. He cleansed their image, made some savvy investments, took the bank public and bumped the stock to record highs. He pretty much single-handedly saved them from ruin.”

“Oh. That’s amazing.”

“The scandal hasn’t quite gone away. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions about what happened in Zambia—a few conspiracy theories about corporate loan-sharking. I have a huge file on it. I’ve been dying to get an interview with Bashir, but he’s turned me down at least five times.”

“Sorry. He’s pretty stubborn.” I realized how personal that sounded.
Crap
. “At least he was when I was
younger
. I mean, that’s what his sister would always say.”

She gave me a suspicious look, not sure what to make of my stumbling admission.

“And then there’s
the rumor
,” Linda said, raising her eyebrows like I should know what that meant.

“What rumor?”

“Oh? I thought you might know already. The rumor that Dev Bashir is Gerald Franklin’s illegitimate son.”

Her words slapped me sober.

“You see, Gerald Franklin is married to a Catherine Dexter of the prestigious
Dexter International
Dexters, so, needless to say, the family doesn’t really want to make some love child public and tarnish their pristine image. But the rumor’s been around for years…they say that Dev’s been groomed by Gerald to follow in his footsteps.”

“
They
say?”

“It’s hard to keep secrets in New York, Scarlett. You’ll see.”

I felt my stomach tighten. I couldn’t get involved in this story. It was too much…I needed to say something before it was too late.

After the meeting, I knocked on Bill’s cold, steel door. He grunted for me to come in. I decided to come clean and throw myself at his mercy—if he had any.

“I can’t do the Bashir story. I’m sorry.”

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

“I’m not sure how to say this, but we were…
involved
. And it didn’t end well.”

He grunted again, and I took that as a cue to continue making my case.

“So I was thinking, there’s a story I’ve wanted to do on a unique Cambodian orphanage run by four sisters from Norway. I have an outline if you’d like to see it—

“Stop.” He barked. He came out from behind his desk and stood over me, his arms folded over his chest, the sweat from before now dried leaving behind faint stains.

“Here’s the deal, Scarlett. If he hears your name and says no, then we’ll put you on another story. If he says yes, I want you to write the hell out of whatever you can scrounge from that guy and then I’ll send you to Vietnam.”

“It’s Cambodia.”

“Cambodia, I mean.”

I had to know what all my options were at this point.

“And if I
refuse
to do the story?” I asked carefully, trying not to sound defiant.

“I’ll send you back to Seattle.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “Let me give you a little advice. You’re in New York now. If you’re going to get anywhere in this city, you better get tough and put your personal feelings aside—and just get the damn story.”

As I left the office, I held out one last hope: He could always
refuse
the interview.

Please say no, please say no, please say no.

I hadn’t made it two steps down the hall before Bill’s assistant, Molly, ran up to me, her glasses nearly falling of her face.

“Looks like your name did the trick. It took all of five minutes to get a call back from his staff.”

What the hell?

I wanted to grab her and tie her up in a closet so Bill would never find out he said yes, but she was too quick and scampered past me into his office.

I was at the other end of the hall when I heard his deep voice echo behind me.

“I’ll want first draft on my desk in three weeks, Sommerfield!”

At my cubicle, Eric was waiting for me, bright and cheery—and
nice
.

“Hey, you look like you saw ghost.”

“Oh?”

More like I’m about to see a ghost.

“Just got my first writing assignment.”

“Not something you like?”

“Nope.”

“Sorry about that, Scarlett. But at least you’ll have me.” He winked at me.

“
Have
you?”

He let it hang for a moment.

“To take pictures.”

He walked away leaving a smile on my face. Maybe I could get through this.

I would have to.

I found sleep elusive that night. As I tossed and turned, I couldn’t shake how much it bothered me that there was so much I didn’t know about Dev, and I had no clue what he had been through over the past few years.

More than anything, I was haunted by the idea that Gerald Franklin could be his father.

What else did you hide from me, Dev?

I finally gave into my insomnia and got out of bed. I decided to read through the file Linda had given to me to prep for the interview, so I clicked on my laptop and plugged in the flashdrive. In the computer file, she had compiled every article, press release and headline relating to Franklin Bank, the Zambia loan scandal, Dev’s rise to control and the eventual turn-around of this $2 trillion institution.

It had all the makings of several made-for-TV movies and then some.

From what I could gather, Gerald Franklin had been smack-dab in the middle of lending out millions to Zambia farms and smalls businesses, and then foreclosing on the mineral and oil-rich land when the high interest rates couldn’t be paid—
only to sell it off to oil and gold companies for a huge profit.
Hundreds of proud Zambia farmers and landowners had committed suicide when their crops failed or their businesses didn’t make enough money to feed their families.

One article by the
New York Times
featured a horrifying picture of an orphaned family reduced to living on the streets after losing everything to Franklin Bank. I blinked back tears touched by their plight.

When public outcry got loud enough, the government stepped in—but barely. There were accusations of paying off government officials and judges. The U.S. Senate finally had a hearing and fined the bank millions. Many well-known customers pulled their accounts and it was on the verge of collapse when Dev stepped in and became CEO.

As I read, I realized my heart was pounding.

How did I miss all this during college…when he was buried under it? Why didn’t he tell me?

I remembered how we would read the paper together on Sundays during his trips to see me. He always grabbed the business section and I would read all the human-interest features to his amusement. He would tease me that “business
was
human-interest,” and that if I really wanted to know how the world would be shaped in the future, I should pay attention to business and the markets because, as Voltaire wrote, “
the comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”

And when his lecture was over I would pretend to snore and he would put his paper down and kiss me awake…

I shook off the memory and forced myself to think like a journalist.

What part did he have in this scandal, I wondered? What did he know?

And why was he going to allow
me
to interview him when he had declined every newspaper and magazine in the country already?
What was the point?

I remembered Annika’s words years ago when she warned me about him.

“He always has an angle, Scarlett.”

I guess I would soon find out.

When I arrived at work the next morning, Linda met me with the list of “ground-rules” Dev’s lawyers had sent over.

“Anything interesting in there?” I asked, as we walked together to Bill’s office.

She gave me a strange look and said cryptically, “You’ll see.”

In his office, Bill read from the document out loud.

“The usual stuff…he wants final approval of all photos before publication…yada yada yada…no questions relating to the Franklin daddy rumor…and—wait, that’s odd.”

Linda nodded knowingly.

“What it is?” I asked.

“He’s limiting the interview to—and I quote—exactly twenty-four and
one half
questions. What the hell does that mean?”

Linda laughed. “Rich elitists just can’t do a normal interview like regular human beings. Reminds me of that quote, ‘The poor are crazy, the rich just eccentric.’”

“Well, he has enough money to qualify for eccentric, that’s for certain,” Bill added.

Meanwhile, I sat there turning red.

I knew exactly what Dev was referring to.

Please don’t ask…

“You know him a little, Scarlett—does that number mean anything to you?” Linda asked.

What was I going to say?
Yes, that’s the number of kisses he would give me up my thigh before…

I shrugged my shoulders for effect. “Nope. What an odd request.”