I call the temp agency that her aunt owns to confirm that Juliet has scheduled herself out.
“Ms. Limons is a college student and will be returning to her university, but we have plenty of qualified candidates to fill her role,” the woman from the agency tells me as if Juliet is replaceable.
“I guarantee you, that you have absolutely zero candidates like her,” I say before I hang up the phone.
After that, I had my driver take me back to the hotel with a burning desire to change direction toward Gran’s, but I had nothing to offer Juliet that I hadn’t already given her. I promised to take her to the doctor and to take her pregnancy one step at a time. I neither committed to being a father nor confirmed that I’d not be a part of the child’s life. I left her in limbo with money hanging in the air between us as if to say I’d throw money at her but not my heart. I didn’t have anything more to offer that she’d believe so I thought over my strategy and game plan. She wouldn’t be returning to California before Christmas, not with Gran in Rhode Island and the two of them certainly didn’t have the money to run anywhere far.
Back at the hotel, since I can’t sleep, I pour myself a drink, then another, but the scotch tastes bitter and makes me feel even more empty. I end up circling the room like a caged animal, every glance pulling me back to her words. Three blocks of derelict housing, relocate the residents, build high-end on that footprint. Reinvent the docks. Cultivate tourism. Infuse capital into Eaton without razing its history. Bolster the community without displacing its soul, and give it life. She’s thought of everything and done my job better than I ever could.
I rub the back of my neck, staring out the window at the snow falling thick and heavy over the town. Eaton is buried in white, clinging to its last heartbeat while I sit here, wondering how the hell I became the kind of man who thinks only of margins, profits, and bottom lines, not of lives, families, and souls. I am exactly that Grinch that Juliet sees when she looks deeply into my heart, three sizes too small. Of course it is, because it doesn’t love anything, including myself.
Juliet sees the people and I see the numbers. Yet the numbers in her report line up, it’s not some sentimental fantasy,it’s viable and profitable. I could be her patron and she my soul. She managed to make a business case for compassion and I hate that it rattles me because she’s not just in my head, she’s under my skin and in my heart. In the hollowed-out place where I thought nothing could touch me after Clara, Juliet has dug her way in. Juliet’s touched me, no not touched, she’s carved me open.
I drop into my chair, elbows on the desk, staring at her letter.
Thank you for initiating me into the Mile High Club, and for the gift of life, but I can’t love a Grinch if he won’t love himself or the world around him. We are just too different. I don’t need your money. I don’t need your name. All I wanted was you.
Merry Christmas and have a beautiful life,
Juliet
PS. Please, no heroic gestures. I’m a grown up, I made a choice, I can face the consequences.
My chest tightens in a way I can’t tolerate. I don’t do this, I don’t lose and I don’t give up. I’m also not a person who grieves other people. This wanting and needing to prove to Juliet that I’m not the enemy she paints me as is all-consuming. If I do pursue her I have to be ready to step up and be the man she deserves. Am I capable of that? In her letter, she said Merry Christmas like a curse and walked out of my life. As if she’s already mourning what I’d destroy.
I’ve read her dream. I’ve seen it, felt it and I’ll be damned if I let her keep thinking I’m blind to who and what she is. If there is a person on this earth I can show up for, it’s her.
Tomorrow I’ll tell her. Tonight, I’ll stew in the silence, because I can’t chase her down half-drunk and half-crazed with need. But tomorrow, she’s going to know exactly what she’s done to me and to this project. Maybe then she’ll see that I’m not the Grinch she thinks I am.
I fall into a dreamless sleep and feel like shit when I wake up with the sun. I take a shower and re-assess my motivation. I think about my life and the choices I have before me, now hungover, but sober.
The suggestion made in our last meeting was to wait for the city to approve our demolition and give a low-ball offer to the residents. For those who fight back, we’d raise the offer in micro-incriments until they accept out of exasperation or when their lawyer fees outweighed their gains. At that point we could still buy the property at a considerable discount. As all the homes are under market value, I assume this strategy will work. We then demolish the derelict area and start our build, ignoring the docks that Juliet has highlighted as a potential gold mine, because they are not currently in our plans. I’d go back to New York, take on another money-making endeavor and move on to make more and more money and do … what?
Travel with the guys and their families? Perhaps travel alone and fuck random women? Maybe I’ll take a mistress who will satisfy my cock and keep her at arm’s length so at least I’ll get sex on the regular? I’ll eat fine food alone, or with a woman who we both know is only in it for the sex and perks. I’ll spend Christmas with my friends and their families watchingtheir loud children run around while I drink too much good Scotch. I’ll be driven home inebriated, thanking God none of the loudmouthed brats were mine. I’ll send an obligatory gift to my own loudmouthed brat and see pictures of them growing up online. Juliet and I will have terse and polite conversations and we’ll live our separate lives.
I unexpectedly rush to the ensuite and barf. I haven’t thrown up after drinking since college. I’m humiliated and disgusted, not so much for the fact that I retched, I actually feel much better for it, but for the disgusting life I’m planning for myself.
Conversely, I can fall in love with Juliet. Have cold winter strolls and warm hot chocolate. I can create an entire wing devoted to Gran, Juliet, and the baby in my mansion, God knows I have the room. I can make love to Juliet and learn every place on her body that makes her scream. Maybe we can put Gran on the first floor to avoid embarrassment regarding the aforementioned screaming.
I can watch my own loudmouthed little rug rat grow up and maybe he or she won’t be a horror, because Becket and Griffin’s kids aren’t, they are just happy, loved children with big voices.
Loved. I think of that word. I could be loved, and I would be so deeply loved. Juliet and I could work together creating a better world and Gran would help raise her great grand child. We’d have cozy Christmases in Rhode Island at Gran’s place and our little one could take over their mother’s old bedroom in the attic where their own dreams could grow.
I stand there thinking do I want a Grinch life or a great one?
I know the answer, it is very clear. I may have been hurt, that may have made me lock my heart away, but Juliet has breathed life into that sad shriveled little thing, giving it a chance to beat again.
I’m determined, blindly so, when I call the car and make my move toward the future. I barely remember the drive. Just snow and silence, my driver glancing back at me like he wants to ask if I’m sure. I just sit there with the report in my lap, Juliet’s neat handwriting staring back at me from the margin notes. Her letter on top haunting me, inspiring my resolve to save what we have.
I shouldn’t be here, I know that; boundaries matter. But after a night like last night, with her words hammering at me until dawn, there’s no other place I want to be. Gran opens the door before I can even knock twice, wrapped in a cardigan, a mug of something steaming in her hand. She eyes me up and down like she knows exactly why I’m here.
“Mr. Dubois.” She says it sharp, but there’s a twinkle behind it. “Didn’t expect the enemy to be on my porch first thing in the morning.”
“I have to be real with you, Gran, I didn’t expect to be here, but I need to see Juliet.”
Gran studies me for a long second, then steps aside. “Kitchen. She’s not awake yet, but I’ll tell you, she’s a fucked-up mess and from the looks of it, so are you.”
“Fucked-up mess is very aptly described,” I say as I follow her into her tiny warm kitchen.
