What a Girl Wants (22 page)
The two older women cackle and watch as Ashley tips her head
back elegantly and Ryan plants a kiss on her neck.
“Oh!” The two women sigh. “To be young again.”
“To ever have been Ashley. Brilliant, darling, and to look good in
that hideous dress her mother selected. She should be royalty, I tell
you.”
“She is royalty in our family. She’s a miracle of the gene pool.”
“It’s such a pity it didn’t work out for her and that cute engineer.”
“She has far too much personality for him anyway. He would just
stand like a bump on a log, while this Ryan Seacrest . . . what a guy.
He’s lucky to have her.”
“To be sure, sister. To be sure.”
“Ashley!”
I shake my head out of my reverie and look up at Kay Harding’s hard scowl. All of Kay’s heart-shaped collectibles are now lying in an ordered row on the shelf next to her television set. “You can put your bag in the guest room. Your dinner is warmed on the table.”
I’m afraid to move. Do I let the dinner get cold? Or do I leave my suitcase looking ominously large in this Ikea-clean living room. I wait a few seconds, hoping for direction. Nothing.
“I’ll eat first, and then put my suitcase away,” I announce. “That way I can get the kitchen cleaned up.”
It’s eleven p.m. and the end to an outrageously long day. I eat like a logger after a day in the woods and then crash in Kay’s perfectly- appointed guest bedroom atop the featherbed and underneath the down comforter. The pillows are fresh and fluffy and the wallpaper floral and girlish. It’s something straight out of
Better
Homes & Gardens
, but without the true homey feel. Kay assumes she possesses excellent hospitality skills, but in truth, staying here is like touching that worthless ceramic angel. Overrated and uncomfortable. Still, I’m grateful I have a place to stay, and I fall into sleep without much thought, not even of dancing with Ryan Seacrest or his soft kiss on my neck.
I’m at work at six a.m. after waking up frantic and calling the company’s limo service at three a.m. on my cell phone. Purvi is already at the office and looks like she has been there all night. Her desk is under a pile of legal files and middle-of-the-night pizza trash. Her deep brown eyes are haggard and she looks up at me, like a film star about to slip over the edge of a cliff but too worn to fight.
“What’s going on?” I try not to sound chipper. Upbeat would be entirely annoying if I’d worked all night.
“Do you have your bags packed?”
“I do.”
“Unpack them. They want the products released from customs. Your first deal held.”
“What?” Fantasies of my spectacular legal defense pop. I’m a grunt. A grunt who makes $150,000 a year with stock options, but a grunt nonetheless. Doesn’t that sound good? $150,000 a year. But the average town home here is $600,000 and that
huge
salary barely covers my Palo Alto rent and lease payment on the Audi, with a small if-I-get-laid-off stipend. No wonder I live in a dream world; it’s so much nicer than my reality.
“They’re going with the original deal you worked out on your last trip. Good job on that, by the way. I guess they were just trying to see if we’d come down on the royalties. I hadn’t set up an appointment for you, so they assumed we weren’t negotiating and released the products over the weekend.” Purvi is downright giddy, even through the veil of fatigue.
The phone in my office is ringing. Who is calling me at six a.m.? I run to find out, praying along the way no one is dead. “Ashley Stockingdale.”
“Ash, it’s Dave. What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mei Ling woke me up an hour ago, crying. You and Mom picked out some awful purple dress for the wedding.”
“Dave, I didn’t pick out anything for the wedding. I set a time up with Mei Ling to go this week, but Mom called me last night and said it was taken care of.”
“Well, it’s not taken care of.”
“Dave,” I say slowly. “Have you ever seen me wear purple in my lifetime? Why would I do that to my sister-in-law?”
“You planned that hideous shower yesterday. Purple and gold, Ash?”
“That was your mother’s doing,” I said. I’m taking no responsibility for my own lineage. Not even my brother can pin this on me. “I haven’t worn it since my last high school pep rally.”
“It’s very painful for Mei Ling not having a mother and father here, or traditional Chinese things at the wedding. You know, they’re big into all that ritual stuff.”
“Mei Ling’s a Christian now,” I say.
“She’s still a woman with a dream and a history. I gotta assume you’re thinking of the white traditional thing for yourself.”
“Dave, I think Mei Ling is the sweetest thing since pecan pie. I wouldn’t do a thing to harm her or your wedding, so tell me what you want.”
“I want you to find out what makes a Chinese wedding and do it. I know I haven’t been the best brother, but I want Mei Ling to feel welcomed and know that we’d do anything to make this her perfect day.”
A traditional Chinese wedding in Vegas? How exactly does that work? I’m a lawyer, not an event planner. Other than my subscription to
InStyle,
I know nothing on the matter of wedding planning.
“Dave, I’ll do what I can.”
“Ashley!” Purvi is yelling. Never a good sign.
“I have to run. Don’t worry, we’ll make Mei Ling’s day special. I promise.” I hang up.
Purvi is yelling louder.
“Yes?”
“I need you to go pick up my son from my mother-in-law’s. She can’t drive and he has to get to school before eight. You can leave him as early as seven at before-school care.”
Why does any of this concern me?
“I don’t have a car, Purvi. I put it all in storage until I returned from Taiwan. Remember, my apartment is going away?”
She looks at me with furrowed brows. I do confuse her with my petty issues. I should just move in here and be done with it—low rent and a boss that could have me at her disposal anytime she wanted. On second thought, no.
“How did you get here?” she asks.
“The company limo picked me up.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Very well, take my car. The company car won’t get back here fast enough.” She hands over the keys with trepidation. She drives an Accord! It’s not like I’m getting the keys to a Porsche! I would think she’d be more cautious about handing over the kid. Cars, I can handle. Kids? That’s another story.
“What about all these briefs?” I say, looking at the pile she’s left me.
“They don’t matter. You’ll get to them when you get to them. You were planning on being out all this week, right?”
What happened to my non-stressing boss? Has she been swallowed by the Silicon Valley drone who must work 24/7? I went for the J.D. after my name to be a kid’s chauffeur? Explain this to me. I stand up tall.
“Purvi, I don’t really think picking up your son—”
She stares me down, and I clamp my mouth shut. I’m beginning to see why her husband lives a world away. “Never mind,” I say like the true wimp I am. “Give me the directions.”
She hands them over on a Yahoo! map, and I crumple the paper in my pocket like I’m suddenly so defiant.
Yeah, right.
I find her dumpy little Accord in the parking lot and start it up without a problem.
Of all the days to leave my car behind
.
Her mother-in-law’s place is on mansion row in Los Altos. I know Purvi can’t afford this place as well as her own on her salary, so I’m wondering how the family made their fortune. And is it legal?
The house has a grand brick facade. I say
facade
because real brick is not allowed here along the San Andreas Fault line. At the sight of the house, it’s just now occurred to me that I’m here to pick up a living, breathing child. I shiver.
I knock softly on the door and in less than ten seconds the child is presented with his grandmother’s hands upon his shoulder. He’s dark-haired, dark-eyed, and looking at me with the same scowl his mother possesses, as though I have stolen the woman from his life.
“Are you ready to go?” I clap my hands like he’s three and about to take a photo with Santa.
“Where’s my mom?” he deadpans.
“She’s at work and she said to tell you how much she missed you.”
“My mom didn’t say that.” He crosses little spindly arms across his chest. “She’s working on new patents which are critical to the success of Selectech. It’s imperative that she be allowed to pursue her work. Family would, of course, become secondary at this time when her presence at her company is so vital.”
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Nine,” he answers.
Okay, this is why the men here are such geeks and I will be for-ever single. Men are taught at an early age that talking like a dictionary and behaving without common courtesy is a positive personality trait. Remind me to put that in my Man Book next to the chapter on nixing beer commercial lines.
“Do you have your stuff ?” I ask without emotion.
“Yes.”
“Get in the car then.” I smile at the mother-in-law, who by her bows I can only assume does not speak English.
I take out my Yahoo! map and drive toward the school, careful to not start any conversations with Boy Wonder. I want to tell him about Jesus, but judging by the ancestor temple I know Purvi possesses and this kid’s vocabulary, I dare not. He’d probably be ready to debate the differences between religions and it’s too early to go there. Besides, Purvi would have my head when she heard. My unspoken directions are pretty clear—pick up child; do not speak; hightail it back to work.
We arrive at a private school for the gifted and without a word the Boy hops out, slamming the door behind him. A teacher comes out the door and waves me away but I just sit there in the parking lot.
“I’ve got to get out of the Valley.” It’s like Stepford here—and one day I won’t even notice I’m different. My arms will just stay straight at my sides while I pursue such harrowing choices as an IMAX movie at the Tech Museum or shooting my way through a rousing night at Laserquest.
I slam my head on the steering wheel. And then look up to the sky. “What do You want from me, God? What?”
I
t’s 7:03 a.m. I’m stopping for a coffee. Not my typical skinny latte where I imagine I’m a size two and should drink accordingly, but a realistic doubleiced mocha with whipped cream where I’m at peace with my size and my grunt job . . . where I acknowledge that the average Silicon Valley nine-year-old has a higher IQ than myself, that I would be more attractive to engineers if I had buttons like a game controller.
That
kind of coffee.
Stanford Roasting Company is still empty. A testimony to the fact that I’m up entirely too early. You’d think this was a regular party town with all the people who start work at 9:30 a.m., but the fact is that with China and Taiwan so tightly interwoven, work often goes late into the evening, and the office is a ghost town in the morning.
“Tall non-fat latte?” the regular barrista, Nick, asks as I saunter up to the counter. “No,” I slap my hand on the counter. “Make it a doubleiced mocha with whip,” I say, like I’m ordering a scotch whiskey in a western.
Nick lifts an eyebrow, but fills a cup with ice and hastens on to the next customer. He’s afraid I might pour out my guts. Tell him why I must have sugar—and lots of it. I cross my arms and wait in the corner for my drink to be called. Looking around the place, I see Kevin slumped over a book with a straight espresso cup set before him. The cup is empty. At least I think it’s Kevin.
“Kevin?”
He looks up, his eyes red and his brown hair in disarray. Still, he’s gorgeous. So unfair. Of course, I’m thinking about my make-up being fresh and am overly excited about this fact.
“Ashley, what are you doing here? I thought you were leaving for Taiwan.”
I shrug. “The trip was canceled. I’ve got a million drawings to go over today anyway, so I suppose it’s just as well.”
“Drawings?”
“To see if our patent ideas conflict with anything already out there. There’s a national database I have to scan. It takes forever. Tedious work.” I sound more exciting by the moment.
Nick calls my doubleiced mocha with whip and I stand here looking at it. Do I reach for it and admit to Kevin that I have hips for a reason? Or let it sit on the counter? He’s a doctor, after all, and clearly a purist judging by the empty espresso cup. I wonder if he’ll learn liposuction as part of his training. That might be a good quality in a future husband.
“Ashley.” Nick stares at me. “Your mocha’s up.”
“Yeah.” I smile and nod, but I roll my eyes before taking it. “Oh, you added whip,” I say innocently. Nick merely shakes his head.
Kevin stares at the frothy, fattening concoction, but says nothing. He must have sisters. “I’m glad you’re staying home. I have a night off tomorrow. Are you up for that proper dinner I promised you?”
I can feel my face flaming. This is the man I kissed in San Francisco, the most romantic city on earth. So why do I feel like I’m talking to my high-school English teacher? What’s his motivation here? He’s one of those out-of-reach sort of guys that make you want to suck in your tummy full-time. Could I live with that kind of pressure? Not to mention his folks. Could I live with them?
“Right. A proper dinner.” I sit down at his table behind my mammoth chocolate explosion. “What is that exactly? A proper dinner?”
He laughs and winks at me. It’s a single move that clearly wasn’t practiced. It’s just natural. He owns way too much charm. “A proper dinner is at a restaurant with a maitre d’ and sans my parents.”
“Do they have those restaurants here in Silicon Valley?” I wink back at him, but my mascara catches the lashes and I don’t open my eye right away. Great. Now he thinks I have a tic. So much for the perfect makeup scenario.
“They have excellent restaurants here. Nearly as good as San Francisco itself. I’m surprised you don’t eat at them more often with your position.”
My position. Right. I’m a lawyer. Sounds so impressive until you find out I’m going to be poring over documents on the computer today, and I’ve just dropped my boss’s son off at before-school care.