LOVING THE HEAD MAN (13 page)

       “Is it certain that she’s guilty?” Bree asked her.

       “Ricky
say
yeah.”

       Bree closed her eyes then opened them back up again.  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.   “I’ll try to get a couple days leave and come home.  Take a look at the case.”

       This pleased Candice.  She thought she had to bear this burden alone.  But as soon as Bree hung up, she felt as if that burden was actually hers alone.  Because the only person who could help her was the last person she should be asking. 

       She stood there, her phone against her
chin,
her heart growing faint by just the thought of what she had to do.  But she knew she had to do it.  She had no choice.  It was risky, and could potentially end their friendship, if they still had one, forever, but she couldn’t just stand back and let her mother rot in jail.  Francine Hudson was a lot of things. 
A lot of awful things.
  But she was still Bree’s mother. 

       Instead of returning to the boardroom to ask Alan DeFrame’s permission to take a few days off, or even a few minutes’ break, she got on the elevator and headed for the tower, to Robert Colgate.  She knew it could backfire in her face and he could not only tell her no, but declare her a gold-digging hustler who was no different than all the other users he often spoke about.  But her back was against the wall.  This was her mother in trouble, not just anybody.  She stepped off of that elevator without giving it a second thought.

       Robert was seated on the sofa in the sitting area of his office when Bree was allowed in.  There used to be a time when staffers in the tower would look at Bree as if she’d grown fangs if she asked to see Robert Colgate.   But now, because word had gotten around that Robert somehow favored Bree, even Lois Peterson buzzed Robert’s secretary to see if she could see if Robert was available.  Used to be a time when Bree’s request would not have gotten past Lois, let alone Robert’s secretary. 

       “Brianna, come in,” he said jovially as she entered.  He had on a pair of reading glasses, his legs crossed,
a
stack of papers on his lap as he was reading over each one.  He looked up at her over his glasses as she approached him.  He could see a difference in her as she approached.  Gone was that affable, wide-eyed, curious Bree.  A look of anguish was instead on her pretty face.

       “What’s the matter?” he asked her. 

       Bree felt awkward at first as she entered.  The last time they’d been alone, he had taken her to bed in what was a powerfully intense joining. 
At least from her perspective.
  The only problem she had was that she didn’t know his perspective.  Given his sophisticated style and cosmopolitan reach, he probably didn’t find their night together intense at all.  Probably couldn’t count how many females he’d bedded that way.  She therefore decided to ignore the fact that she was, in the end, a Mississippi hick, and focus, instead, on why she had come in the first place. 

       “Hi,” she said as she stood before him, trying her best to seem at ease.

       “Hi yourself,” he said.  Then he patted the space beside him.  “Sit down.”

       She frowned as she sat on the edge of the sofa beside him, the thought of her mother sitting in jail so disturbing to her that she could hardly contain her anxiousness.  She crossed her leg and began shaking the leg she’d crossed, which she usually did when she was nervous.

       Robert looked down at her shaking leg, remembering his rod between those legs, and then he looked into her face.  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked softly.

       She looked at him, at the papers on his lap and the other piles of papers on the table in front of them.  “I hate bothering you like this,” she said.  “I know you’re busy.”

       “Don’t worry about that.  Just tell me what’s happened.”

       Bree let out an anguished exhale.

       “What is it?”

       Bree screwed up her face.  She wished to God there was another way, another person she could ask this favor of.  But there was no other way, and certainly no other person.  She looked at Robert and decided against beating around the bush.  “I know this is crazy, and I could be kicked out of the program for this, but I need a favor. 
A really big favor.”
  She said this and then looked intensely at him, to gauge his reaction. 

       A clouded look did come across his face, maybe even a look of disappointment, she thought, but he rallied quickly and maintained eye contact with her. 
“A favor?”

      
“Yes, sir.”

       “What sort of favor?”

       Bree inhaled, tried her best to control her warring emotions.  “Could you lend me some money?” 

       She asked it with bitterness in her voice, a tone she hadn’t wanted to take, and again she stared at him to gauge his reaction. 

       If there was one, he was adept at hiding it.  “You need money?” he asked her.

      
“Yes, sir.”

       He studied her.  “A personal matter I take it?”

       Bree nodded. 
“Yes, sir.”

       There was a pause in his manners, what seemed like a kind of momentary correction in his mind.  But then he sat his glasses and the papers in his lap onto the table in front of them, and rose and began walking toward his desk.  “How much?” he asked as he walked.

       Bree exhaled.  This was the crazy part.  “Ten thousand dollars,” she said with great pain in her voice, angry with her mother for forcing her into this kind of position and potentially ruining her future in the process.  And she kept her eyes on Robert’s reaction.

       His walk slowed as soon as she announced the amount, and he glanced back at her, but he kept on walking.  He went behind his desk, unlocked a drawer, and pulled out a large checkbook.  There was another hesitation, as if he was wavering, Bree thought, but then he began writing the check. 

       Bree, feeling relieved and awful at the same time, stood and walked toward his desk.  She could hardly believe he didn’t interrogate her, didn’t demand to know why. 

       “You aren’t in court today?” she asked him, leaning against his desk, attempting to normalize an anything-but-normal situation.  The idea that she’d ask for and receive ten thousand dollars from this man, from
any
man, without him forcing her to tell the full reason and thereby indict her own mother, astonished her.  She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. 

       He tore the check out of the book, walked around his desk, and handed it to her.  She looked at the check, a check written on his personal bank account, not Colgate’s, and looked back up at him.  Love, gratitude, and anguish were mixed up together in her troubled eyes.

       “Thank-you,” she said, heartfelt.

       “You’re welcome.”

       “You don’t know how much this means to me.” 

       This pronouncement of hers seemed to make Robert uncomfortable. He crossed his arms and leaned against the edge of his desk.  “No problem,” he said.

       “I’ll pay you back every single dime.”

       “Sure,” he said almost snappishly, as if she was overdoing it and it was beginning to annoy him.  Bree had at first thought he was taking it very well.  Now she knew better.

       “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t really need it.”

       Robert nodded, as if conceding the point.  “I know you wouldn’t have,” he said tenderly this time and Bree didn’t know what to make of him.  He seemed annoyed with her on the one hand, and powerfully concerned about her on the other.  This was tough. 

       “Don’t you want to know why I need it?” she decided to ask him.  He was entitled to an explanation.  She had fully expected to give one.

       Robert thought about this.  “I’m sure it’s for a good reason or, as you said, you wouldn’t have asked.”

       Bree smiled.  He was still on her side, after all. 
“Thank-you, sir.
 
Thank-you so much.”
  As she turned to leave, however, she remembered her additional request.  “Oh, and sir,” she said, “I’m sorry to ask it, but do you think I could get a couple days off?  I need to go home to take care of some business.”  She said this to help make clear that the money was indeed personal and necessary, but she also meant it.  She really needed to get back to Mississippi.  Ricky getting arrested was one thing.  Ricky was always getting arrested.  Her mother’s arrest, however, could completely collapse their already fragile family.

       Robert, however, wasn’t as quick to intervene.  “That’s Alan’s call,” he replied.  “You’ll have to get with him on that.”

       It wasn’t quite the answer she had wanted, but she knew not to push her luck. 
“Yes, sir.
  And thanks again.  You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

       When he didn’t respond, she took the check and began leaving, her heart faint.  Why good fortune could never come her way without strings, she wondered.  She had a chance to make it to the top of her profession, to get a position with Colgate, and what happens?  She had to ask the firm’s head for money to bail her mother out of jail.  If it wasn’t for bad luck, she almost wanted to say, she’d have no luck at all. 
Until she heard his voice.

       “Brianna?” he said, and she quickly turned back around.

      
“Sir?”

       “If Alan denies your request, come and see me.”

       This warmed Bree’s heart.  She smiled.  “Thank-you, sir,” she said, and left.

SEVEN

The trip to Nodash, Mississippi was as painful as she expected it to be.  And it wasn’t just because of her mother’s arrest.  Thanks to Robert’s much-appreciated generosity, she was able to get her out on bail.  And although the evidence was overwhelming and her mother did indeed attempt to sell crack to an undercover cop, Malcolm, Bree’s ex-boyfriend and the attorney she phoned as soon as she hit town, spoke with her public defender and he believes they might be able to get her off if she’d agree to snitch on her supplier. 
So all wasn’t hopeless.
  Until they were all seated around in the living room of their small, family
home,
and Malcolm asked about the auction.

       “What auction?” Bree asked, puzzled.  She was seated beside Malcolm on the sofa, with her fourteen-year-old sister, Titianna, seated beside her.  Candace was seated on the floor, and Ricky, her older brother, and her mother, were seated in the two flanking chairs.  The rest of her siblings were outside playing.  The house was already small, but with all of them in that tiny living room, it almost made Bree feel cloister phobic.