Second Chance Love (11 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The following Friday, Steve had his Alfred Dunhill satchel open on his desk, packing it up for the weekend. He would pick Elizabeth up from the bookstore and take her to his condo, where they would spend the evening. She was going to try out one of her new recipes in his kitchen, and then they were going to watch the new Blu-ray he had ordered online:
Pennies From Heaven
, with Steve Martin and Christopher Walken. It had been one of his favorite movies as a kid, and they had watched it together on VHS in their high school days.

He was just unplugging his laptop when Suzi’s voice came from his phone and laptop simultaneously. “Steve, priority one breaking news. The Philippines News Agency is reporting a typhoon and resulting tsunami in the South China Sea, directly impacting the Philippines.”

Steve's mind went blank for several seconds.
Why did Suzi think that was Priority One?
Then it snapped into place: the resort in the Philippines was on northern Palawan Island, facing the South China Sea. Without realizing it, he sat back down in his office chair, hard. He picked up his phone and said, “Have they reported what areas were affected?” His heart was hammering in his chest.

Silence for one second, two, three. In the quiet, Steve was thinking of the speed of Suzi’s processor and how many terabytes she was sifting for the answer. Finally, she said, “Nothing definitive yet. I am searching. PNA issued the first report less than two minutes ago.”

“Are there any reports that mention Palawan Island specifically?”

“No. There are no specific reports at all yet. Other news agencies are picking the story up, but their reports contain the same information as the initial report from PNA. I am monitoring all sources–news, social media, bloggers—but have found no new information.”

I guess when billions of tons of salt water are washing over you, blogging about it becomes a lower priority.

“Keep monitoring and let me know as soon as new information becomes available. For now, please send Lizzie a text that says, ‘Business emergency. Stuck at the office. Call you soon.’”

“Sent,” Suzi said. A moment later, she added, “New message from Lizzie: 'Hope everything’s all right. Call me when you can.'”

Everything is as far from all right as it has been in my adult business life. I have the entire business leveraged to make this fly.

Steve turned on the television in the upper corner of his office and began thumbing through the cable news channels. Fox News had two talking heads expounding on the ratio of the National Debt to the Gross National Product. Scrolling along the bottom of the screen, a graphic read: “Is Obama the worst US President in History? New data suggests yes.” He switched to MSNBC, which showed President Obama signing a new bill into law at his desk in the Oval Office. A graphic read, “Obama Presidency hits all-time high approval rating.”

Steve shook his head and muttered, “Lies, damn lies and statistics. You can make them dance any way you want.” He flipped through CNN, Al-Jazeera, and the BBC, but found nothing about a tsunami in the Philippines. Finally on his fourth lap through the channels, CNN had a screen crawl: “BREAKING NEWS… Typhoon hits in the South China Sea, thousands believed to be missing in tsunami. Stand by for details as soon as they become available.”

Does that mean they will spend two months exploring the question of whether climate change was responsible for the tsunami, with elaborate diagrams that convey nothing anyone cares about? Last time, they milked a disappeared plane for a month. Crash News Network
.

Suzi said: “Incoming call, Steve. It’s Lizzie.”

“Answer,” Steve snapped, then took a breath and made an effort to steady himself. “Hi, honey.”

“Are you okay? Max just told me there was a disaster in the Philippines.”

“I don’t know if we’re okay or not. I’m pretty damn sure there’s a bunch of people on one of those islands whose lives are not okay, but it’s too new. I can’t find out yet where it hit. Palawan's almost three hundred miles long, but maybe thirty miles wide.”

“Okay, honey, I’ll get off here. Just…call me for anything you need.”

Steve muttered a distracted, “I love you,” and returned to his news carousel. His partially packed satchel sat forgotten.

Mother. I haven’t even thought about her. Shit and goddamn. She’ll be wiped out, too.

When he had taken over running the company twenty years earlier, Steve had negotiated an ownership position in the company that capped out at 51%, which he had reached ten years ago. His mother still owned the remaining 49%, which had been worth millions that morning. It might now be negative millions.
Nothing I can do about that right now.
Steve did his best to formulate a plan, but found only blind alleys down every mental path he followed.

Suzi’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “Incoming call, Steve. It’s Mr. Hamada.”

Pretty much the last person on Earth I want to speak to at the moment.

“I’ll take the call, Suzi.” He waited a moment, then said, “Hello, Mr. Hamada.”

“I can tell by the gravity of your voice that you have already heard the news.” His voice was calm and unaccented, the product of six years of study in the United States that included a law degree from Duke. “Our mutual investment is not looking wise. Our board of directors held a meeting to discuss it, but we cannot see any path that does not end in financial ruin for all of us.”

“Please tell your father and sister I am sorry I involved you in this.”

“That is our
unmei,
our fate. So be it. Goodbye, Mr. Larson. We will be in touch soon enough.”

The line went dead. Steve stared at the television, still hoping for some concrete detail.

Ninety minutes later, Elizabeth strode into his office. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I just missed the first crosstown bus and had to wait.” Steve showed no indication that he had heard. Thanks to Max, Elizabeth didn't have to ask about news. While she rode the bus, the app had told her the terrible reality: the wave had washed over the eastern side of the island of Palawan. Loss of life and property damage could not yet be estimated, but the somber tone of the early reports suggested that both would be high.

Steve was still sitting behind his desk, flipping channels every few seconds. Elizabeth looked at the television and saw the early footage. Nothing of the wave itself, but a PNA helicopter had taken some horrific video. Palm trees bent, uprooted and askew, long paths of debris stretching hundreds of yards inland. There were no people in sight, just devastation.

He finally noticed her. “Oh, I didn’t know you were coming.”

Elizabeth hurried to him and threw her arms around him. “Honey, I’m so sorry, for you and the poor people that live there.”

Steve nodded his head at the television, then paused the live shot with his remote. “Do you see that? I know it doesn’t look like much right at the moment, but that is—was—Eden's Bay Resort, destined to be the jewel of the Philippines. Now, at best, it's Eden's Bay Rubble, debris heap of the Philippines.”

“Were there workmen onsite when it hit? Did you lose anyone?"

“Too early to know if we lost anyone. I’ve been trying to contact Bayani.”

“Bayani?” Elizabeth asked. "Where or what or who is that?"

“Bayani’s the foreman on the job site there. He’s got a satellite phone, but I haven’t been able to get through to him. Reports are just starting to trickle in. They’re thirteen hours ahead of us, though, so it was early Saturday morning when it hit, and we didn’t have a crew working this weekend. Some of the men and their families stay on site, though, so it could be horrible.”

Steve pushed his chair back and pulled Elizabeth down to him. He rested his cheek against her chest and said, “I think we’re wiped out, Lizzie.”

She lifted her head and looked steadily at him. “No. You might be broke. Those people,” she said, nodding at the frozen picture on the television, “are wiped out. And they need help far more than we do.”

He wouldn’t have thought it could occur to him to love her more than he already did. Yet, here it was. He worked up a small smile.

“You’re right. No matter what happens to us, we’ve got each other and our lives are safe," he said, glancing at the television. “But what can we possibly do for them?”

“We can go to them. We can be there. We can care. We need to find out if any of the people who work for you are hurt and need help. Don’t you think we owe them that?”

Goddamn. She’s right.

Money doesn’t solve every situation. It didn’t have anything to do with winning her heart.

But being a selfish bastard that thinks only of myself might go a long way toward losing her. It looks like I won’t have the money for much longer. I should get some use out of it while I still have it.

Steve nodded and took a deep breath. There was much work ahead, and not much time. 

Chapter Ninteen

When she had come out of her apartment building carrying her one small suitcase, Steve’s eyebrows had shot up. “Is the rest of your stuff upstairs?”

“What do you mean? This is my stuff. You said to pack light, so I fit everything I need in here. I inherited it from my Mom.”

Steve shook his head in wonder. “You inherited the case, or your ability to pack for an international trip in a hatbox? I feel a little guilty about my own suitcase, now.”

"Don't. I just don't need very much."

“Well, I appreciate that you packed so lightly for the trip. That will simplify life once we’re there. Transportation may be a challenge.”

“As long as you don’t mind seeing me in these pants for the next week. I only brought one change with me.”

Steve pulled out a small brown box with a smile drawn on the outside.
And that's the mischief smile. Damn him, what has he done?
“Oh, and I knew you wouldn’t pack any of your books. It’s going to be a long flight, fourteen hours, between LA and Manila. If you’re like me and can’t sleep on a plane, you’ll need this.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, sighed. “Steve, you know I don’t like you buying me expensive gifts.”

“It’s not expensive. Plus, my ability to buy you expensive gifts is about to run out, so we won’t have to worry about it anymore. In the meantime, here.” He broke a seal and pulled a strip of brown cardboard away all around the box. Inside was a flat, black device the size of a paperback book, but less than half an inch thick. It looked like a larger version of the Maxphone, as she had begun calling it.

“What is this, Max's big brother? Maxwell? Maxim?”

“It’s not a phone at all. It's a Kindle. It’s the Paperwhite model, so all you can do on it is read books. You can’t play games, or surf the Internet or anything else—you’ve got your phone for that.”

He handed it to her. She held it delicately, by her fingertips and away from herself, as if it might be contaminated with gangrenous bacteria. The look of revulsion on her face said it all, and elegantly. "This. Is. Not. A. Real. Book."

“I know, I know. You love books. You love the smell of a new book, the smell of an old book, the textile feel of the cover of a hardback, or the pages as you turn them. I get that. So do I, always have. But today, we don’t have room for
a
book, let alone as many as you can read on a long flight. There are over five thousand books already downloaded and available on this. I’ve attached it to my account, so you’ve got access to every book I’ve got on mine and vice versa. While we’re at the airport, you can download any new book you want, or any of your old classics. A lot of them are free.”

Her expression made clear that his sales pitch was getting no traction.

“Look, just do this for me. Give it a try on the trip. On the way home, if you still hate it, we’ll give it to some total stranger at the airport. Deal?”

“I suppose. Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment behind it,” she said, instantly regretting the frosty tone.

“I loaded a few books on there just for you. I downloaded
Jane Eyre
, because I know you can never read that one often enough.”

A different thought occurred to her: “Oh! I just realized tonight is Friday. We’re going to miss
Guest House Gestapo.
What if Gail gets voted out? Or sent to the Isolation Booth?”

Steve smiled, patted her hand and said, “Not too much we can do about that. I’ve got every episode set to record. We can do a Gailathon when we get back.”

Beginning about the time the long transoceanic flight reached cruising altitude, she tried to ignore the Kindle in the seat pocket. After several hours of watching all the other passengers on the flight using electronic devices to pass the time, she gave up and pulled it out.

She tapped the screen. Nothing happened, which perversely pleased her. Steve reached over and touched a recessed button at the bottom, then swiped his hand across the surface. The covers of six of her all-time favorite books appeared.

“Just touch any of them you want to read, and they will open. If you want to come back here, just touch the little house icon in the corner. And, Lizzie, welcome to the 21
^st
century.”

Avoiding an arch look, his eyes hurried back to his own Kindle while Lizzie opened
A Tale of Two Cities.
Turning the pages by touching the screen seemed odd the first few times, but by the end of the first chapter, she was too lost in the world of Dickens to remember how she was reading his work.