Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (14 page)

Though I had an almost unbearable urge to
flee further down the corridor I’d been following when I came upon
the lunchroom, commonsense prevailed and I headed back the way I’d
come, towards the things I knew: the little hallway, the smoking
area and the safety of my nondescript car in the next block. I
remember little of this flight beyond seeing a couple of curious
eyes raise from their desks as I headed down the hallway at
breakneck speed. None of the publicly traded companies that I know
of have rules against running in hallways, but you never actually
see anyone doing it. Even when things are super busy, no one is
ever in more of a hurry than what can be accomplished with a
determined trot or a studied lurch or maybe even a casual gambol. I
did none of these more dignified things. I
ran
, as they say,
like I was being pursued by the hounds of hell. Which I guess I
was, if hellhounds ever wear mauve twinsets. I ran headlong,
pellmell and hell bent for leather.

I had the presence of mind to collect myself
just before I erupted out of the hallway into the outside world and
the expected smoke cloud in order to not draw attention to myself.
I needn’t have bothered: there was no one there. A good thing,
because I’m sure I was wild-haired and wild-eyed by now.

With no one to impress, I threw my temporary
quasi-decorum out the window and my bagel on the ground and ran for
my car as quickly as my low-heeled pumps could carry me.

By the time I got to the car I was shaking,
breathing hard and had trouble finding my keys. It was difficult to
keep it together long enough to beep open the doors, fire the
engine and drive away. I kept expecting a band of rent-a-cops (what
would a rent-a-cop even look like, I wondered?) exploding out of
the door behind me and, once they caught up with me, throwing me to
the ground, handcuffing me and driving off with me to points that
were unknown, but completely scary anyway. Or, while I ran, a
platoon of police cars — lights blazing — once again bearing down
and... from there the scenario looked pretty much like the first
one, except this time there was a lot of blue polyester and static
from police communication devices punctuating the air. Scary stuff,
either way.

I drove around aimlessly for a while, trying
to calm my nerves and determine my next move. It still wasn’t time
to meet Emily on La Cienega, so I did the only thing possible under
the circumstances: I looked for the familiar green logo and the
comfort of a well made latté. And, yes: I’d had that coffee with
Steve in the smoking area not long before, but it didn’t count
towards my caffeine total for the day. Not really. It only counts
if you enjoy it: and I’d been too nervous to even taste that
one.

As I parked near a Starbucks on Venice
Boulevard — which I figured was too far out of the range of Langton
to be feasible to find me, even if they bothered following me — I
checked over my shoulder for signs of pursuit. It wasn’t until I
was settled in the cheerily familiar surroundings — mercifully soft
jazz playing in the background and a steaming cup of java clutched
in my still-shaking hands — that I began to relax. I was being
ridiculous, I began to see. After all, I was a stockholder, I
reasoned. While it’s not exactly smiled upon to waltz through an
office back door unannounced, I also, strictly speaking, hadn’t
been doing anything illegal.

Except trespassing,
a little voice
whispered.

I ignored her and went on.

As an — admittedly quite new — shareholder,
I had a right to know what was going on, didn’t I? And if it
involved not showing my driver’s license and brandishing a bagel
and more or less pretending to smoke, what of it? None of those
activities were Federal offenses, even if they were on private
property.

While I knew a lot of this rationalizing was
worth about as much as most rationalizing ever is, it made me feel
better.

By the time I’d talked myself around to
not
having reasons to be afraid, I actually wasn’t and I
stopped looking over my shoulder. Fortunately, once I’d finished
with all of that silliness, I still had enough hot beverage left in
my cup — more than half — to contemplate what all of this
adrenaline-raising had accomplished so far. Not much, I had to
admit. In fact, with all of the running and schmoozing and
pretending I’d done on this day, the handful of facts I had were
the same ones with which I’d left the house, though some were now
more sharply confirmed. They were (in no particular order):

1. The Langton Regional Group was a large
company with many satellite offices.

2. LRG had a new CEO who happened to be my
ex-boyfriend.

3. The new CEO hadn’t shown up today and no
one — at least outsiders and relatively unimportant (i.e. Steve
Rundle) insiders — had any idea why.

4. If, as Sal had suggested, Ernie was
missing, I hadn’t disproved it.

5. LRG’s receptionist probably didn’t like
me.

Oh, and one more:

6. There were people who sleuthed around for
a living. I was not one of them, nor should I consider pursuing it
in future.

In short, nothing. And, really, what had I
expected? That I’d arrive on the scene and the whole place would
collapse around me in an unruly heap of unburdening? “Oh, Madeline!
There you are. Now that you’re here we can get to the business of
straightening the world out about what’s been going on. Have a seat
and we’ll tell you everything.” And so on.

In fact, as the fortifying caffeine seeped
into my bloodstream, I began seeing the venture as more and more
silly. There could be any number of reasons Ernie hadn’t turned up
for work today. Just because Steve hadn’t known about it...

What about the trading halt?

... didn’t mean that everyone higher than
him — a junior sales drone — knew exactly what was going on
and...

And the rent-a-cops?

... even though Steve said he saw the
rent-a-cops, I hadn’t seen them. And it might just have been
ill-dressed business dudes from some other company. That happens.
Ernie might have been inking some new deal...

The day an internal company meeting and an
evening blowout were planned?

... and it pushed everything else out of the
way. Made it more important.

And so on. And here I felt I had to face
facts; stuff I hadn’t thought about before this instant: My life
had changed a lot over the last few months. I’d had an awful,
soul-shattering shock when Jack was killed, followed almost
immediately by many changes in my life so drastic, it was almost
impossible to see where the two worlds joined. After having had
such a high pressure career, was it possible that my body was
craving the adrenaline rushes that had come to me in New York on a
daily basis? Never mind the market: in New York sometimes crossing
a street could be pretty hairy. Was I somehow trying to compensate
for my new, slower pace of life? I groaned inwardly at the thought.
I’d have to get out more. And, I added, I’d have to curb myself
from further adventures like this. Maybe cycling or mountain
climbing would be a better outlet for this type of energy.

While I mentally shopped for climbing shoes,
I closed the door on the little voice that had called me to LRG in
the first place. There might be smoke, but there didn’t seem to be
a fire and, even if there was, who was I to think I could put it
out?

Chapter Eight

I don’t believe there is a culture on Earth
that would be compelled to describe Emily as physically beautiful.
She is neither heavy nor thin, but has a certain physical solidity
about her that is not currently in vogue. Her features are equine,
in a way: large, dark, liquid eyes, a full mouth and lots of big,
white teeth. I think her hair is beautiful, but she says it makes
her crazy. It is dark and abundant and resists all of her
well-intentioned attempts at domination: it springs out of hair
clips and scrunchies and all types of elastic as though intent on
having a life independent of she who grew it.

All of this combines in a way that you’d
think would be entirely unappealing, yet when Emily smiles you just
feel happier. Everyone does. And you can see it in the way they
interact with her. She brightens things. And her world, not
surprisingly, is a bright place. As a result, she has a lot of
friends and there never seems to be any shortage of interested men
in her immediate vicinity. It’s why she’s good at her job, I think.
She can make things happen just with her presence and energy. And
though she’s still a first AD, one day she’ll be a director, just
as she wants. It seems inevitable. She draws people to her and they
are warmed by the proximity of this grace that is Emily.

I could feel that grace when the maitre d'
led me across the restaurant to our table. Emily was seated and
nibbling corn chips and salsa and sipping a fresh-looking glass of
red wine. The maitre d' brought me to the table and announced me to
her as though to a visiting princess: “Your companion has arrived
senorita,” he said seating me. “And have you found everything to
your satisfaction thus far?”

“Perfect, Carlo,” Emily said with a smile.
“Thank you. Everything is perfect. As always.”

That’s the other thing Emily does that I can
never believe: she remembers everyone’s name and seemingly every
bit of information about them that’s been let loose around her. If
she’d ever heard the name of Carlo the maitre d’s cat, she’d
remember that, too.

The restaurant we’d chosen is about old
world decorum more than nachos. I imagine it to be the kind of
Mexican restaurant Spencer Tracey would have taken Katherine
Hepburn back in the olden, olden, olden days. In fact, he probably
did: I think it’s been here that long. But it’s big and dark and
grand and opulent in an old Hollywood sort of way, which is to say
quite opulent, indeed. The kind of place where the tablecloths are
crisp and linen and the serving staff all talk quietly and wear
very soft shoes. I let Carlo seat me and returned Emily’s smile.
“You were right,” I said, looking around. “This is an incredible
place.”

“What’s up?” She replied, reminding me of
something that I’d noted about her almost from the first: in
addition to being upbeat and fun to be around, she’s also sometimes
eerily attuned to the moods of others. Another part of the
aforementioned grace and perhaps the budding director’s intuition.
Only right this second I wasn’t in the mood for attunement or even
unburdening.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start. It’s
been a pretty odd day.”

She nodded, “I can see
that
on your
face.” A waiter appeared and she ordered a glass of wine for me
without any consultation. “Now tell me,” she said when he’d gone
away. And, much to my surprise, I did.

I told her all of it, and every time a
waiter would stop by to take our order, she’d shoo him away with a
polite and graceful hand movement, not wanting to interrupt my
narrative. I began the story at the beginning with bumping into
Ernie and showers and sandwiches, to my conversation with Sal, the
debacle with my mom, through to the pull that had brought me to
Langton, my run in with the receptionist, my chat with Steve Rundle
and rechristening myself as Madison, right up to my flight from the
area, sure for a while that I would be hunted down and
apprehended.

After I’d finished, Emily didn’t say
anything for a minute. Just sat quietly as though thinking it all
through and contemplating an appropriate response. Finally she said
softly, “You’ve had a busy day.”

I grinned at that, maybe somewhat
gratefully. Because, with a single line, she’d broken it all down
into something digestible. She commiserated with me about my mother
(since she has one too, she understood), got me to give her more
details about Ernie, asked for a description of Steve and said
she’d love to have been there for my run-in with the receptionist.
And all of her questions seemed at least partly designed to make me
feel less freaked out by the silliness I’d been getting up to this
day, more comfortable with all of it as part of the past: recent,
but still behind me. All of it, I’d discovered quickly, warmly and
typically Emily. She followed this, though, with something that
surprised me.

“So what about this Hyatt thing?”

At first I didn’t even understand what she
was talking about. Hyatt. Thing. Hyatt thing. The words together
didn’t hold meaning. By the time I’d forced them to, she’d gone to
another level. I could see it on her face. I don’t know why I was
so surprised. Already knowing her proclivity for crashing, I guess
I should have seen it coming.

“Oh, Em. No. No, no, no.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’? It’s too perfect,
don’t you see?”

“But weren’t you listening? Didn’t you hear?
I told you: the killer-receptionist-from-hell
saw
me, Em.
She wanted to see my
driver’s license...
” Even as I said it,
it sounded lame.

“And how stupid is that? Anyway, she’s not
going to be there.”

“She’s not? You consulted the oracle?”

Emily didn’t even bother looking miffed. “No
oracle needed. You’re just being theatrical and you know it,” she
made an airy motion with her hand. And she was calling
me
theatrical.

“I know it?”

“Of course you do. I know you’ve been doing
this stock thing forever. And
you
know that I don’t know the
first thing about it,” I nodded, she had me there. “OK then,” she
went on, “since when do receptionists go to Hyatt-dos? They don’t.
Even
I
know that.”

That was true. It was possible she might go,
but not very likely. Nonetheless, I still didn’t think showing up
uninvited for a corporate bash was such a great idea. After all,
I’d just spent most of a venti latté persuading myself that I’d
been silly in pursuing any of this in the first place. I’d told
Emily that. I told her again. That’s when it got me: never mind
what I wanted,
she
wanted to go. From her perspective, I’d
had a fun afternoon playing Nancy Drew and she wanted in. She is,
after all, a Hollywood animal. And nothing makes her rise to a
challenge like not being invited to a party that holds even the
slightest promise. And, all right then: viewed in that light, and
with Emily in heavy persuasion mode, it actually might be fun.