Chapter 20
After bolting from the boardroom, Matthew called William Harrell's secretary at ICP in New York, and she confirmed what he already knew: William was out of town, and was due back into New York this evening. He asked her for the flight number and departure time from San Francisco, then took off for the airport.
He raced down the corridor of the United terminal, checked his watch as he slowed to pass through the metal detectors. He found William's flight on one of the departure screens, and to his great relief, the flight had been delayed fifteen minutes. He collected himself and walked quickly to the correct gate.
He spotted William in the gate waiting area, flipping through some notes, a leather garment bag beside him on the floor.
Matthew walked up to him, and William glanced up from his notebook. "Matthew," he said, surprised. He snapped his notebook closed and stood, shook Matthew's extended hand with a mixture of curiosity and indifference. "Are you on this flight?"
"No. I need to talk to you," Matthew said. He motioned for
William to sit, then sat down beside him.
"I know you met with Peter Jones today," Matthew said, glancing at the binder in William's lap.
"I did," William said.
Matthew hadn't expected William to deny that he had met with Peter, though now, hearing him admit it, he feared that they had already formed some sort of deal, and that he was possibly too late.
"Look, I'll get right to the point. Today I proposed to the executive staff that I contact you with Wallaby's proposition of merging our two companies, as you originally planned."
"Really. And why, may I ask, the sudden change of heart?"
Matthew cleared his throat and tried for an open confiding tone. "Simple. We decided that a merger would be the best thing for Wallaby because of how well the strategic alliance was received, and how well the Joey II is selling already. The orders are phenomenal."
The gate attendant announced that flight was about to begin boarding. Matthew's heart quickened, but William's expression remained cool and unchanged.
"The best thing?" William repeated, barely able to conceal his sarcasm. "I see."
"I want us to go through with the rest of our plan," Matthew said. "With my support, the merger would be smooth and friendly. I guarantee it."
"And the board of directors?"
"I've already put a call in to each, and have spoken with two members on my way here. Both approved the prospect. And with their votes, as well as mine and Hank's, we've already got a majority, in addition to the entire executive staff's full support."
"Hmm. Interesting. Let me think about this, Matthew." William rose to his feet and reached for his garment bag.
"Wait," Matthew said, gripping the other man's arm desperately. "I know the original plan wavered a little, but I fully understand now that you were right all along." Matthew had to get William's assurance, his word, that they would go back to their original plan.
Hoisting his garment bag over his shoulder, William seemed nonplused. The gate attendant announced final boarding.
"I know it's asking a lot," Matthew said, stepping between William and his path to the gate. "But I'd like your word that you'll recommend to your board that ICP reinstate its plan to acquire Wallaby."
William glanced down at the notebook tucked under his arm. Matthew fancied that he was perhaps sizing up the second of two opportunities that had been presented to him today, silently judging which of the two rivals he would choose.
William looked Matthew in the eye, nodded. "Very well," he said,
"I'll make the recommendation, as we had originally planned.
You've got my word."
Matthew let out a sound that was at once a great sigh of relief and a slightly hysterical chuckle. "Thank you," Matthew said, slapping William on the back. "Thank you, thank you." He ambled alongside William to the gate and quickly ran down his immediate course of action.
"Matthew, relax," William said. "I said you have my word. Now, go home. We'll talk in the morning." William handed the flight attendant his boarding pass, and she removed the ticket and handed him the receipt stub.
"Good-bye, Matthew," William said, then turned and proceeded down the jetway.
It was done.
* * *
Peter picked up the phone to call Kate at her studio, but then he remembered the message Grace had given him. He dialed the number.
"Good afternoon, Phillips and Phillips," a receptionist announced.
"Arnold Phillips, please," Peter said.
The man came on the line a moment later.
"This is Peter Jones. You called me?"
"Mr. Jones, thank you for returning my call so promptly. I'm representing Ms. Ivy Green. She has hired our firm to reclaim her rights to Isle, which I believe is currently in your possession."
The room spun. Peter dropped down onto the sofa. "Wait a minute.
I thought she was still in detox? She's not fit to be a mother.
Not yet."
"Oh, Mr. Jones, no, no. There seems to be a misunderstanding. I apologize for not making the purpose of my call clear from the start. My client has not retained me to reclaim her child. It's the hardware and software I'm referring to. However, I believe my partner does in fact need to talk to you also, about another case."
Peter listened to what Mr. Phillips had to say, then, a half hour later, he was transferred to another Mr. Phillips, who, for forty-five minutes, discussed the child-custody case he had been hired by Ivy to handle. A hell of a one-two punch.
By the time he hung up the phone he was numb all over. In just over an hour, his whole life, which he had managed to somehow get back on track, however shakily, had once again come undone. He felt like he was at the end of his rope, like he was cracking up. And the only person who could ever help him through the really tough times was Kate. That was who he needed to talk to right now.
But how? How could he call her, when the reason he needed her was the very reason she had left him?
So instead of calling her he sat there alone, wondering if this was it, if this was the last of his punishment for his mistakes, or was there still more to undo?
* * *
"What are you doing?" Matthew said, finding Greta in the den, crouched among a scattering of cardboard boxes.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Packing."
"Bingo."
"Why?"
"Why?" she repeated, taking in his goofy expression. "Why do people usually pack, Matthew? Because I'm moving." She returned to her task of carefully settling a vase into a box.
He placed his hands on the box flaps, holding them down as she stretched a length of tape from a spool. "When?"
"Soon. And I can do this, thank you," she said curtly, holding the strip of tape over the box. He let go and dropped his hands to his sides.
"Greta, I'm sorry about today," he said, watching her work. "It's not what you think, though."
She stopped what she was doing for a moment and shot him a warning look. He had come to understand that look very well in the last few months. She went back to her business, placing the box atop a few others.
He shifted on his feet and then all at once his face brightened.
"Hey, guess what! We're back to our original plan!"
She settled an antique serving dish inside a new box. "Good for you."
"Didn't you hear me?"
She poured foam puffs into the box.
"Greta?" he said, gripping her wrists.
"Get your hands off me," she said calmly, wriggling from his grasp. The box between them trembled dangerously. She quickly righted it.
"Greta, please," he said. "What you saw today was just lunch."
"Horseshit," she said, getting worked up. Then she checked herself. She had no intention of getting into an argument with him after the shit she had been through today. "Matthew, listen to me. I'm only going to spell this out once. I gave you the time you asked for. Now you've pushed me too far. Besides, it doesn't matter."
"It does," he insisted. "What I'm saying is, it's all over. ICP's going to buy Wallaby after all. And I'll become president of the subsidiary, just like we planned. And we can go back to New York if that's what you want. Or we can stay here. Or whatever. Whatever you want."
"Ah, of course. You'll need a wife if you're going to be a big shot at ICP. Might as well stick with the one you've got, save yourself some money that way, and keep the young thing in an apartment." She offered a scornful chuckle. "Christ, Matthew. You still don't want to face it?" She shook her head sadly. "It's too late. We're through. Broken."
"But it's going to be easy from here on in," he pleaded, trailing her to a black lacquer display pedestal. "My job at ICP will be a cake walk."
"Cake? Darling, the only cake walk I see is the one between you and your little girlfriend." Enough of this nonsense. She had work to do. She wanted to have her most prized possessions safely packed, to give her a sense of assurance that she was getting closer to her future with her lover.
Gingerly, she raised her crystal salmon bowl off its pedestal.
"Greta," Matthew cried, gripping the bowl.
She gasped in surprise, then shrieked, "What's gotten into you - let go!" The quartz ceiling lamp accentuated the bowl's precarious plight.
"Wait. Oh, Greta. Don't you remember the day you brought this home?" he said.
Her eyes fixed on his thumbs squashed white, firm and unyielding. The piece was too valuable to risk losing. She gave in, and he carefully settled it back onto the pedestal. She stared at him with a resigned frown, catching her breath. He had nearly ruined it.
Matthew bent over, set his hands on his knees. "Look at it," he said, mesmerized by the engraved salmon fish swimming their final, predestined course.
"All right, Matthew, you've your look. Enough now. Please" She reached for the bowl.
He gripped too. "It's over," he said, his voice cracking. "Don't you understand? The struggle's over, Greta. Do you remember when you came home with this bowl, to celebrate our plans coming together? That was when it started. And now it's over. So you see? It all worked out. Everything is fine now. Fine."
She glared at him. "Let go of my bowl."
"Greta, please. It means so much to me. To us," he urged, tugging forcefully.
"No, damn you. It's mine and I'm taking it with me."
"Where?" he shouted at the top of his lungs. "Just where the hell do you think you're going?" His neck was straining, and his knuckles were white around the bowl's rim.
"To France!" she cried. Her eyes glistened in the bright white light. "With Jean-Pierre."
He burst with laughter, and shot his face closer to hers, over the bowl. "The horse trainer? Oh, that's good, Greta. That's real good! The horse trainer! So I'm not the only one sleeping with the staff, am I?"
Her fingers hurt, and she could barely hold on any longer.
"Matthew, please," she begged, afraid. She was painfully close to letting go, and with this awareness came another, deeper understanding. That were it not for her missing finger, she would have possessed the strength to hold on tighter and harder and longer - No, that was not it, she realized with a cry, her understanding now complete. The truth was, was were it not for her missing finger, none of this would have ever happened. Tears streamed down her face and she begged him to please let her have her bowl.
"Oh Greta," Matthew said with disgust, "you're so pathetic."
He released his grip on the bowl…and the misfortune that directly followed his letting go lasted only seconds.
With great force the bowl crashed into Greta's chest and propelled her backward.
Instantly seeing what his letting go would cause, Matthew dove forward with outstretched hands. His fingers grazed the bowl's surface.
Flying backward, Greta let go of the bowl and thrust her hands behind her to try and break her fall. However, it was her not her bottom that crashed first, but her head, into the wall behind her.
Her body dropped to the floor in a lifeless heap, legs splayed at an awkward angle.
Matthew, in midair, felt the bowl's cool underside brush his fingertips and he squeezed his hands together. But it was too late.
The base of the object struck the hardwood floor. It shattered with a resonant ring, and shards of glass blasted in every direction.
He closed his eyes as he sailed to the ground and landed in a pile of glass between his wife's unmoving legs.
Then, perfect silence.
He lay there for a moment before opening his eyes, grateful at once that his vision had escaped the shrapnel. The first thing he saw was blood. He panicked, and glass crunched beneath his arms as he raised himself up on his elbows. He was aware of many stabs along the undersides of his arms and blood started gushing from his palms.
Then he saw her. He quickly brushed the largest broken pieces away with a folded box. He leaned close to her face, squeezed her cheeks between his bloody fingers. "Greta," he shouted. "Wake up!" He looked from her face to her chest for evidence of life, pressed her stomach, tried to make her breathe. He squeezed her lips between her fingers and put his lips on hers and blew, felt nothing in return. Had he killed her? He let out an agonized groan, how could this be happening when everything was back to the way they had planned?
He crawled up between her legs. He pulled her head to his chest, and with his other hand he searched for her pulse.
"Oh Greta," he moaned, gazing with disbelief at the fragments.
Where was her pulse?
"I'll fix it," he whispered, probing for her heartbeat with his bloody fingertips, all the while staring with bedazzled eyes at the brilliant shards twinkling in the light, searching in vain for one that might contain the etchings of the salmon fish.
But he found none, for their arduous journey had come to its fated end, lost forever in the frozen crystal bits.
* * *
Once the plane reached cruising altitude, William reclined his seat and closed his eyes, musing over an idea that had flashed in his mind the instant Matthew had asked for his promise.
Now, after dozing on and off through half the flight, half-consciously dreaming up the specifics of his new plan, he was ready to put down the particulars. He opened his notebook on the tray table and went to work. He drew various boxes and connected them together. He penciled his name in the uppermost box, and filled in the others.
A flight attendant appeared at his seat. "Sir, you slept through the meal. Can I bring you a snack or a beverage?"
He looked up from the chart. This was cause for celebration.
"How about a Sassy Screw?" he said, a little embarrassed saying the cocktail's name, but in want of one just the same. He continued drawing, completely filling the page with little squares and lines.
The flight attendant returned and placed the drink on a napkin beside his notebook. As he put the finishing touches on his work, a few bubbles fizzed from his drink and settled on the page, staining it with tiny dots.
As he stared at the little dots speckling his work, an awfully funny thought entered his mind. A short laugh burst from his lips, and a few passengers in nearby seats glanced curiously his way.
There, on the page, was the cause for William's amusement. The little orange dots, speckling the paper. Matthew's one-time soda pop success, now a mere stain on William's organization chart.
Pop, pop, fizzle, he mused, and sipped his cocktail.
* * *
Peter stood beneath Hoover Tower on the Stanford Campus, not far from the very place where he had first met Ivy. He had agreed to meet her here, to discuss the terms of her cases against him.
In the time he had to wait for her, he considered his life as it was at this moment. He had long ago gotten over the hurt and anger he had felt from being ousted from Wallaby. He missed Kate, but the work he was doing with Byron went a long way to keeping his mind off his loss of her. Not all the way, but enough to help. Isle was healthy, and Ivy's lawyers had said that she was deemed stable enough to mother her baby. But it was his baby, too. And had he not felt something for her, that night they were together? To be honest, he was not sure. That night was long past now, lost in mixed up events and complicated circumstances. All that remained of it was the unusual feeling he still carried in his heart, about everything that had been affected by his actions that evening. He knew he was not in love with Ivy. But he loved his baby, their baby, and the three of them formed a kind of family, didn't they? He had never been part of a real family, and the thought of his daughter going through life without two parents deeply disturbed him. Would Ivy consider marriage?
"No lawyers?"
He spun around…and was stunned by her transformation.
She looked as youthful and vibrant as when they had first met. Her bright white-blond hair was pulled up into a smart bun, and her delicate face was tanned. Her blue eyes sparkled with the iridescence of tropical water.
He wanted to touch her, her belly, the place where Isle had come from. She smiled, and he experienced a stirring for her that was unlike any he had felt before, a connection of some kind, between her and himself and their child. It was all light and strangely uplifting, and he let out a breath and wet his lips and formed in his head the words he would say to her, for at this instant he knew, yes, that he could love her and that they belonged together. That they were a family.
But her smile was changing, right before his eyes. It became a smile that betrayed not her happiness to see him, but her happiness to see him looking at her this way. Looking at her with real attraction. Desire. Her smile was the smile of pure self-satisfaction.
"Amazing, isn't it," she said. "What a little time can do?"
"Oh, Ivy," he said, turning his hands helplessly. "I'm sorry.
About all of it."
"Ha," she said. "Please. I've been in the desert learning how to stop apologizing. Take my advice, save it."
"But we don't have to be like this. Can't we try to be, I don't know, nice?"
"Um, no. Not now, anyway. This is business, Peter. Maybe in a while, after we close our agreement."
"But I don't want you to be angry forever."
"Sit down," she said, and he did. She remained standing however, looking down at him. "Poor Peter. Just a lost little boy. Look, I'm not pissed off anymore. Well, not too angry. I'm not sorry, either. What's done is done. I am definitely not having an easy time of it, coming off the drugs and all. But I will get there. All I want is to see my Isle, and my Isle, and how they've grown in your care." She seated herself on the concrete beside him. "I thought for sure you'd have ten lawyers here with you," she said.
"Nope," he said. "Where are yours?"
"Don't need them for this. They told you what I want." She withdrew a single folded sheet document from inside her light jacket. "It's all here. Plain and simple."
He accepted her pen and the contract, spread the page down on the concrete.
But he didn't sign it.
Instead he put the pen down, looked her in the eye. "What do you feel?"
"Feel? About this? Excellent."
"No. I mean about me."
"You?" She looked away for a second. He could see her expression soften. "I'm not sure." She met his eyes. "But it's not anger anymore. Really it isn't."
"No, I don't mean that."
"Guilt? Nah, I'm done with that."
"No," he said. "No, not that." He looked at her forehead.
Unwrinkled and smooth, pure. Eyes so sharp, intense, curious.
Cautious. He remembered what it had been like to touch her neck,
her breasts. Back to her eyes.
"Is there anything else?" he said. "I don't know. I mean - love?"
She blinked her eyes closed for a few moments, and when she opened them again they were glistening. But from what emotion he could not tell.
"Peter, just sign it."