“Curtains,” he translated. “This window lacks something.”
It lacked a good view, because he was looking at the back of a fence. But maybe he was aware that moving to an upper floor, where the team leadership had offices, was beyond his reach.“I’m not very good at decorating,” I admitted. I knew this was true, not because of the home décor videos that put me to shame, but because of hanging out with Ronan. He actually had curtains, or drapes, or whatever you wanted to call them. I had been thinking of adding them to the windows in my apartment.
“It lacks a certain gravitas,” Mr. Gowan went on.
“Curtains would give it gravitas?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “This whole space is lacking. I would like it to be more akin to my house.”
“Sure,” I said absently. I was fighting the urge to put my papers behind my back to hide them. There was no need to act suspicious just because I’d done something wrong.
“All right. Let’s go.” He stood up. “We’ll take my car so I don’t have to sign another fuel reimbursement.” He actually pointed to the sheets in my hand and I had to physically stop myself from shoving them under my sweater like a shoplifter. And was he implying that it was hard to write his name? He hadn’t done one other thing all day…
Wait a minute. “What did you say?” I asked. “You want to go somewhere with me?”
This was very unusual. Besides my first day at Woodsmen Stadium, when he’d wanted us to sit in a conference room to discuss my responsibilities, we’d never left this office together. Even when we’d met in that conference room, it hadn’t lasted very long. It wasn’t only because he couldn’t think of any responsibilities to talk about—he had also forgotten to book theroom so other people came in for their scheduled meeting and we’d had to leave.
But now, we were walking out to the parking lot together, a different one from the employee lot that I used. This was for managers only. Mr. Gowan had started talking (again) about his golf handicap, and although it was strange that he wanted us to go somewhere together, his focus on topics other than work was totally normal. It allowed me to breathe out a sigh of relief because he hadn’t noticed that he had approved other things along with my fuel reimbursement. Besides the new fridge to keep their food safe, I was also going to purchase new fitness equipment for the Junior Woodsmen weight room, commercial grade stuff that was going to last and wasn’t rusty and covered in rat crap. Ed, Ronan, and the players who had been regularly working out with us had compiled a wish list of machines and I had researched and chosen various models.
The Office of Special Projects was finally working on a project, even if the guy in charge of it wasn’t aware. I had figured that it was better to go around him rather than run the risk of him saying no, or more likely, ignoring me. He’d been overwhelmed by the idea of the comprehensive survey that I’d done, and he’d refused to discuss any of the issues I’d found and presented. It was easier to accomplish this in my own way, which was how I was used to solving life’s problems. I liked to do things without interference and exactly how I chose.
“This is a nice car,” I said when he stopped next to a model I recognized. Before, I had never cared about vehicles except that they needed to work ok but lately, I’d started to notice moreabout makes and models. That was due to hanging out with someone who put a lot of thought into cars. If we rode out to the practice facility together, he could name all the ones we saw and the years that they came out. It was kind of a fun game, which I could have described to the girls over lunch.
This car was nice but looked slightly…well, disheveled. It was dirty and had some dings, and it wasn’t what I would have pictured for my boss, who was always put together. He looked at his vehicle and seemed surprised by my comment. “It used to belong to a friend, but he doesn’t care for it,” he said. “Mine was returned.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer and wherever his other vehicle had gone, he’d already made himself at home in this one. There was a pile of stuff in the passenger seat, including two ties and a briefcase (I’d seen him carry that into the office once, but I figured it was empty). It didn’t seem as if anyone else was ever riding in there with him.
It made me realize that I didn’t know very much about him, except what I’d found when I’d briefly looked him up and saw who he was married to. That had been enough to explain why he’d gotten the job that paid him for doing nothing so I’d halted my research, but now I wondered. There were no car seats but he was in his late twenties, so it was possible that he had kids and they had grown out of them. But the back was filled with other stuff, like various bags and what looked like several of his suits.
He cleared the front seat by dumping everything into the trunk, but I still wouldn’t be getting in. “If you pull to the side and wait for me next to the guard shack at the exit, I’ll follow you in my car,” I told him.
“You can come with me,” he said, but I shook my head.
“I’ll follow. That way, you won’t have to drive me back here,” I explained. If he really wanted to go to his house, I doubted he would be leaving it again to return to “work.” “I won’t ask you to sign a fuel reimbursement form for this trip,” I added. I didn’t want to talk about signing forms anymore.
That seemed to make sense to him and to my shock, he remembered to wait for me at the guard shack. He hadn’t pulled to the side, though, so he was blocking the lane of traffic. Luckily, no one was behind him and he did look up briefly from his phone to notice me. He pulled away but I saw him typing on it again as we went, and he had to swerve back onto the road a few times.
Mr. Gowan didn’t live close to the stadium. We drove for quite a while and ended up on a quiet street with giant, new homes on it, all behind high walls. There wasn’t much crime in our area but maybe they were concerned about being bothered by trick-or-treaters or girls selling cookies. His gate opened and I followed close behind so it didn’t shut on me. Then he pulled into a garage, one that could have held several cars but was empty, and the door swung down behind him.
I stood in the driveway and waited for a few minutes, and then I called him on his phone.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Gowan, I’m outside,” I reminded him. He hung up but after a while, the front door opened. He acted surprised that I was there.
“Cate?” he questioned. “Come.”He walked away but left the door ajar, so I went in.
The house was just as large as the other ones we’d passed on this street, but it was different outside, with a lot of sticks and dead leaves left over from last fall. Inside, it wasn’t like my apartment or like Ronan’s house, because it was so much bigger and fancier. I obviously wasn’t great at décor but even I could see that the floor was marble and that you could have held a parade down the stairs because they were so wide.
“Maybe these would work,” I heard Mr. Gowan say from another room. I followed the sound of his voice and found him standing next to a window where there were very impressive curtains. Or drapes, or whatever you wanted to call them. The thing that was strange, though, was that there wasn’t anything else in here. I figured that it might have been a dining room, or maybe an office? But there was no table to eat at or a desk to do work (not that he would have used it for that chore).
“Do you have a ladder?”
I turned around to look at him. “Like, on me?”
“There might be one in the garage,” he mused, and I wondered if he expected me to get it. I didn’t plan to, and neither of us moved. “These might be too long,” he went on.
