"Does that answer your questions?" I asked.
Her bottom lip snared in her teeth, Zelda bobbed her head as she scribbled on the sticky note. "Mmm. Yeah. We need to find a way for you to do the things that fill your bucket, delegate the things that don't, and keep the wheels turning without you having to change any tires."
"I imagine you already have a plan on how you'll accomplish these goals. Perhaps one with fewer mixed metaphors."
She continued bobbing her head as she wrote. "Oh yeah. Give me a few days, Ashville. I'll get you under control."
I pushed to my feet and gestured toward the receptionist's desk outside my office, saying, "I'll leave you to it."
Zelda stared at me as my quietly spoken challenge hung in the air between us. When she stood, she said, "You're not the first man to doubt me and you're not likely to be the last."
"I don't doubt you at all, Miss Besh," I replied. "But I do need you to stay out of arm's reach or I fear I'll break our agreement before lunch."
"Mr. Santillian, please," she said with a huff. "That agreement was broken before I finished my sandwich. Speaking of which, I need another."
* * *
I madeit forty-five minutes before calling Zelda back into my office. That was forty-five minutes of watching her through the damned glass walls and listening to her hum and talk to herself. Forty-five minutes of forcing myself to stare at my computer screen and ignore the heaviness growing between my legs. Forty-five minutes of huffing and scowling every time she dragged the toe of her shoe up the back of her leg or squatted down to collect a file from the bottom drawers. Forty-five minutes of debating whether I could close up shop for the day, the week, the rest of the fucking year if it meant sitting with her, listening to her, keeping her.
"What do I have going on today?" I asked, mostly to myself as I rustled through the papers on my desk. "There's the audit work to wrap up from last week and—"
"You have calls at one, two thirty, and four, an amended proposal to send back to the Shadyside team before close of business, and a dinner meeting at seven thirty at Abe & Louie's with the leadership from Ferryman Brothers."
Fuck, I'd forgotten about that dinner. It was too late to cancel. Considering those guys holed up in Nantucket most of the summer, I'd have to wait until September to get on their calendar again and that was too long.
Zelda noticed me thinking this over. "Don't worry about me. I can entertain myself for a few hours."
"You could come with me," I said but I knew it wasn't a solid idea. The Ferryman guys liked to talk a big game while having their hands held through their annual audits. And they spooked easily too. I couldn't bring my new associate along without plenty of advance assurances I wasn't about to dump their account onto someone else.
"Instead of doing that, let's see what's behind door number two," she replied. "Ah, yes. It's me being fine on my own."
"But, Zelda—"
She held up a hand. "Listen, Ash. There is plenty for me to do here"—she gestured to the mess of folders, mail, and stray paperwork she'd gathered—"and your meeting doesn't require me or my presence. It wouldn't make sense for me to sit through that so let's wrap up that argument. I can't say the subway system makes any sense to me yet but—"
"You'll use my car service account," I interrupted, not that she noticed.
"— I'm a big girl and I'll find my way. I'll feed myself too so don't you worry about anything."
"Give me your phone." I held out my hand. When she responded with nothing more than a tolerant smile, I added, "Please."
"I don't need your car service."
"You might not," I said, my hand still outstretched. "But I'll need to know you made it home without accidentally taking the Red Line to all the way down to Braintree instead of hopping on the Orange and riding it to Haymarket."
"That seems like a worst-case scenario."
"I'll spend the whole evening worrying, you know. I'll ignore my clients because I'm busy checking my phone. They'll drop me as their auditor and I won't even notice because I'm texting you for the four hundredth time. If anything, you'll be doing me a favor."
Taking care to reply with both an eye roll and an impatient sigh, Zelda snatched the phone off her desk and slapped it into my hand. "You have some peculiar theories, Ashville. More peculiar than some of my conspiracy theories."
"As you didn't argue with me on the odds of winding up in Braintree versus Revere Beach, I'll count this peculiarity as a win." I downloaded my preferred car service app and several food delivery apps too. My neighborhood wasn't nearly as lively as the North End or Back Bay come evening and she'd need to order out if she didn't find anything she liked in the fridge.
"Only because I don't know where either of those places are or the relative ease of traveling in the wrong direction on public transportation."
"It's all about knowing inbound and outbound," I said, my focus on the device as I logged into my accounts and switched the system preferences to save my passwords. To the contacts, I added my number, Magnolia's, and—against an entire canyon of better judgment—my mother's. "It doesn't always get you where you think it should." I handed the phone back. "Tell me you'll call a car instead of giving the T a shot."
She took the phone from me, slipped it into a hidden pocket in her skirt. "You're taking this a bit too seriously. We're talking about one evening where I, a capable adult woman, will return myself to your apartment before the late summer sun sets and the cast ofCatstakes back the streets."
