Any Minute (10 page)

Leo didn’t dial right away. “Guess who’s been asking for you ever since the floor closed.”

“Oh no. Really?” She pointed to the stack of files on Leo’s desk. “Are those Tom’s
notes
?”

“Afraid so. I’ll let him know you’ll be right up.”

“Thanks.”

But Leo kept looking at her like he wanted to warn her of something. “Tread lightly.”

“Why?”

“Lauren Davis just got canned.”

Sarah’s hand froze on the file folder. “What?”

“Not kidding you.”

She felt the color drain from her face. She just stood there in shock. So this was the reason everyone kept tiptoeing around like they might step on a land mine, meeting each other’s eyes with grim, knowing glances.

“Why?”

He shook his head, at a loss. “He told her to clean out her office. She left with everything packed in a cardboard box.”

Sarah couldn’t explain the jolt of terror she felt, the sudden, improbable grief she felt for Lauren, who, just this morning, had been comfortably sipping coffee and making comments about Mitchell’s trading jacket and hadn’t any idea that, like a plunging stock price, she would be worth nothing by the end of the day.

“Rumor has it that Lauren wouldn’t deal with an account because she didn’t want to do it his way.”

“Oh.” Sarah forgot everyone around her. She forgot Leo, who had asked if he could leave on time tonight because he had something planned with his sister. She forgot Joe, who didn’t approve of her anymore, who’d said, “
I don’t know how much longer I can stand by and watch you disappoint him,”
and who didn’t see how hard she was trying. She forgot Mitchell, whom she’d just scolded for being friendly with a good-for-nothing stranger in the street and for whom she’d planned a day that she’d hoped would rival a major-league all-star game.

All she could think of was the pounding panic in her heart and the possibility that with one slip of her tongue, one wrong word or one misplaced idea, the same thing could happen to her.

She could get fired too. And then where would she be?

Ashamed.

Afraid.

Worth nothing.

I don’t care how hard I have to work—Tom Roscoe will never have a reason to fire me.

I don’t care how tired and confused I feel—I’m going to do whatever I have to do to protect my position.

One by one, Leo began crumpling the pink message slips and making arcing free-throw shots into the trash can, returning Sarah’s attention to the matter at hand. “Leo?”

“Yes?”

Sarah glimpsed a reflection of herself across the way in the mirror on the wall, and the woman she saw was someone she didn’t recognize. Yes, even though she was one of the lucky few to keep her job in the financial market, she looked older than her years—and frantic. The more stressful the choices she had to make on the trading floor, the more she worked to prove her worth to people around her, the more it seemed these people expected more and more. Everyone was in control but her, she thought. Yet it was more than just the job or her relationship with her husband or the things Mitchell and Kate needed from her. Sarah felt this deep dissatisfaction but couldn’t quite put her finger on the cause.

She felt alone even though she was surrounded by people all the time.

“Keep Mitchell entertained as long as you have to, would you?”

Sarah’s weariness went way beyond the hours of work and the challenge of managing a family and of being a good wife. It went way beyond the guilt she felt for missing Mitchell’s classroom parties even though she always sent snacks, way beyond worrying about getting the schnauzer to the dog park or managing a drive schedule so Mitchell got to the field house for his Scout meeting, way beyond the nuisance of people trying to ply her for trading tips whenever they wanted.

Even now, her life seemed to be dangling on a thin string, and she feared it could break at any moment. Sarah didn’t know how to make herself or the people around her happy anymore. And wasn’t that what being alive was all about, about being
happy
?

She opened her office door a crack and called to Mitchell.

“I’m headed upstairs, kiddo. I’ll be back any minute.”

Then, to Leo, “Text Tom again for me, would you? Let him know I’m on my way?”

Leo raised his chin as if to say,
Go ahead. I got you.
Then he nodded broadly. “You don’t even have to ask.”

Chapter Seven

T
he red convertible stood angled in the middle of Joe’s repair shop with its hood yawning open. From beneath the hood came a series of thuds and grunts. After a bit, a wrench fell to the ground with a resounding clatter.

“Hey. Anybody in here?” Joe’s best friend, Pete, knocked on the doorjamb with the same solid strokes he would use to pound a post into the ground. “You working hard or hardly working?”

Joe muttered something unintelligible, untangled his excessive height from under the hinged cover, and swabbed his forehead with the greasy chamois from his rear pocket. “A little of both.”

Which was all the invitation Pete needed. He joined his friend beside the front fender and examined the workings of the car.

“Need help with that?” Pete surveyed the gleaming pistons and the polished valve covers with reverent awe. “How could a blockhead like you make a performance engine fit into this heap?”

With a satisfied humph, Joe slid beneath the car’s chassis, fished for the wrench he’d lost, and located it beside the front tire. “Just wait until you hear this thing start up. Then you call me a blockhead.” He handed Pete the wrench, making it clear that his best buddy could definitely make himself useful.

“How long’ll it take to get her going?”

Joe shrugged. “We’ll find out, I guess.” He ducked inside the open maw of the sports car again, found the bolt he’d been tightening, and extended his palm so Pete could hand him the wrench.

“Actually”—Pete placed the tool in Joe’s hand—“I stopped by to invite you and Sarah over for Gail’s birthday.”

Joe wiped the wrench against his thigh, then went after the bolt with Herculean effort. If it occurred to him that he’d surely pay for this later, that somewhere along the way he’d certainly have to remove these bolts and mounts and clamps again, he didn’t care.

“You want to think about it?”

Joe shook his head. “You may have to count us out.”

“You kidding me?”

Joe whaled into another bolt, then another, not wanting to discuss his wife. “You know. Sarah’s got this awful schedule.”

“Isn’t there time to rearrange it? Gail’s birthday’s still a couple of days away.”

Joe set the wrench in Pete’s outstretched hand and felt around for the pliers. He knew better than to be honest.
She never puts anything but work on her schedule.

You just get disappointed if you depend on her to be someplace she says she’ll be.

Something will come up, and I’m not making excuses for her anymore.

“Well, don’t you even want to talk to her about it?”

“No.”

Pete shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Well, that puts me in a tough place. You’re the only folks Gail wanted for the big day.”

“Sorry.”

“What’ll I tell her? You know how a woman gets when her feelings are hurt.”

With one rotation of his knuckles, Joe crushed the metal clamp and smashed the hose into place. “Guess I do.” He hefted the new air-intake duct, grabbed the gasket, and jammed it into place, as if everything he did to this car might clear his mind of his wife. “I could invite you two over to our place that night, Pete, but I couldn’t promise Sarah would be there either.”

Joe ducked out from under the innards of the old car and smeared what he could of the grease from his hands. He couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that the cold shoulder Sarah gave him was somehow his fault, that he’d made some mistake, that he’d done something to make her pull away. She had a way of making him feel guilty even when he knew darn well he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Is everything all right between you two?” Pete shot him a troubled frown.

Joe swigged from his giant water bottle and backhanded his mouth dry. “Sure,” he lied.

Pete stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, rocking from his heels to his toes and back again, studying the spotless crankshaft.

Joe shoved back his dusty cap, scratched his forehead, and studied the new bazooka tailpipe from five different angles.

Pete started to whistle.

Joe offered Pete a stick of Juicy Fruit. He unwrapped his own piece, shoved it inside his jaw, and absently folded the empty foil into smaller and smaller squares. “Tell me something,” he said with false nonchalance. “Does Gail fight straight when she’s mad? Does she cry and slam doors and carry on, things like that?”

Pete looked at his friend like he’d just asked if the sun came up at his house every morning.

“Does she bang the cabinets and stalk around the house with bird-stiff legs and tell you you’re not being fair?”

“Sarah’s doing that?”

“No. Sarah’s
not
doing that. Sarah
used
to do that. Now I can hardly get her to look at me.”

Pete chewed his gum slower and slower.

“Or when she does look at me, she stands there like she’d just as soon be having a conversation with the Chicago Water Tower.”

“Well, Gail doesn’t throw any left hooks or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.”

“Of course she doesn’t. She’s a woman.”

“Don’t know what to tell you. You asking me to understand a woman?”

“Nope. Just asking you to try to explain one.”

“Well, isn’t that the same thing?”

Joe couldn’t decide which reaction of Sarah’s alarmed him the most, her hotheaded accusations when he tried to make her see what she was doing to Mitchell and Kate or her cold detachment when he tried to get her to tell him what was wrong. Just last night he’d found her sequestered at the computer desk after supper, her bedraggled curls captured in the vise grip of a hair claw, her neck about as stiff and out of joint as a worn-out axle shaft.

“Sarah. I’ve thought about it a little bit. Well, actually, I’ve thought about it a lot.” He was trying to get her to talk, and he hated himself for struggling with the words. Foolishly he toyed with one of her curls, winding it around a finger. Then his knuckle brushed the hollow of her scalp, and she jerked away from him. He felt her go as prickly as a pincushion.

“Stop, Joe.”

“What? You don’t want me to touch you?”

An alarm sounded on the phone by her elbow. She dropped everything to read the text message.

“No,” Joe said as she flipped open the Nokia. “Will you stop and look at me? Do you see that I’m in the room? Can’t you show me a little respect?”

He waved his hands between her face and the computer screen. “I’m here, not online. I’m here, not on an instant message or a text or a cell phone.” He waved his arms in the air. “I’m right in front of you.”

Her dark emotionless eyes reflected the rows of data on the screen. Her cell phone vibrated again. She reached, but he beat her to it. He stuffed it inside his shirt pocket.