Once the wild playboy, at the age of twenty-four Jacques had been attacked by his drug-addled lover. She slit his throat and carved up his face before turning the knife on herself. It was said that Jacques Alain Taureau wasn’t fit for the position of CEO. The torch should have been passed on to Jacques’s father, Dominic, who had earned himself a Senate seat after twenty years in politics, and was the polished type you would expect to excel in business.
And yet Taureau had done well in the decade since his grandfather’s death, in spite of the Howard Hughes mythology surrounding him. Since Grace had begun working for Taureau-Werner seven years ago, he’d acquired three smaller airlines and absorbed a chain of luxury hotels.
Breton-Craig didn’t own luxury hotels. They owned roadside motels across the Midwestern United States. The idea behind this merger was to revamp the brand and add a restaurant to each property. Breton-Craig would do the work while Taureau-Werner put in the capital and reaped the rewards.
She knew Caroway wasn’t entirely on board with this deal. He liked the shine of Taureau-Werner. He thought adding motor inns would tarnish the company’s reputation. Grace suspected that he had either kept his mouth shut about that or been put in his place by Taureau, and that once the money started coming in he’d shut his mouth for good.
Though Grace had put on a good front for the man from Breton-Craig, she had been left exhausted by their bout of fucking. It had burned off the tension that kept her alert, and the thought of having to stick around until after dark made her want to slip back into Caroway’s office and take a nap.
She settled for a half-hour coffee run and sent the phone to voicemail. One large coffee and something sugary would keep her going until she was able to head home.
* * *
‘It’s crazy,’ her mother said, and Grace leaned over the speaker and mouthed along to the next words. ‘Worse than crazy.’
With every call to her mother, Grace heard that expression at least four times. She couldn’t remember that phrase ever passing over Edwina’s lips when these conversations were face to face.
In fact, she didn’t recall, when her mother lived in town, talking this much about the weather, her cousin Martha’s hospital visits, her stepfather’s diabetes or people she’d never met. Before the move to Florida, they’d meet for tea and sandwiches on Sunday, or Grace would pop out for a long lunch so they could browse for nail polish at the mall. The conversation was light and Grace enjoyed the company.
Now the weekly conversation was just another obligation, and Grace spent the entire call looking for those cues that it was coming to an end. She called from her desk these days, knowing that Edwina wouldn’t delay her if she knew Grace hadn’t eaten or was at the end of a thirteen-hour day. When she hung up, the guilt would be heavy in her gut and she’d commit herself to showing more enthusiasm the next time she talked to Edwina. But she would still be glad it was over.
‘The next time you come down, I’ll get you to bring me some of those caramel cakes I used to get,’ Edwina said, and Grace closed her eyes to suppress a moan. She knew what was coming next.
‘I can mail them to you,’ she replied, and pushed her shoulders into the back of her seat. ‘They’ll be there in a week.’
‘No, I don’t want you to waste your money on postage.’
‘It’s fine. I’ll pick them up the next time I get groceries.’
‘I didn’t think you went grocery shopping anymore. The last time we were up your fridge was bare.’
‘Mom, stop.’
Grace didn’t need the reminder. Her fridge was bare most of the time. Her diet consisted of whatever could be found on the worn takeout menus from the break room and her fruit intake came entirely from the waxy pickings that collected dust at the café in the lobby. Every so often she’d get ambitious enough to have a cooking day, but whatever she made would be forgotten until she discovered some frost-caked plastic container in her fridge freezer.
‘You’re not drinking too much, are you?’
‘Mom, stop talking like I’m an alcoholic.’ She’d never be allowed to forget the presence of that quart of raspberry vodka in a fridge without milk or bread. ‘I don’t have time to be a drunk.’
‘Life isn’t all work, Gracie. You should get yourself a slow cooker –’
‘And I’d have to get up an hour early to cook.’
‘I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’ Edwina sounded defeated, and Grace got to her feet, trying to banish the thought that she was a horrible daughter.
‘I know you are, but I’m fine.’
‘Fine is what you tell people when you feel like shit.’
‘Mom –’
‘You should at least try and meet someone. It makes a huge difference when you have a warm body waiting for you when you get home.’
‘I really don’t want to discuss warm bodies with you,’ Grace said, and thought about shutting her mother up with details of the warm body she’d enjoyed earlier that day. ‘When did you develop such an interest in my social life, anyway? When you lived here you used to growl at me about having too big a social life.’
‘There’s a difference between being twenty years old and partying every night, and being thirty and spending all hours of the day at your desk. Have you tried that online dating?’
‘All right, I’m hanging up now.’ She couldn’t help laughing at her mother. It was like she was reading for the part of meddling mother in a romantic comedy. Maybe that’s what you became as you got older: a stock character.
‘I’ll give you a call next week?’ Grace asked. ‘I’ll mail you the caramel cakes next week, and I don’t want to hear anything about the postage.’
She disconnected but stayed sitting at her desk, turning her can of diet soda back and forth, until the guilt passed. Then she headed towards the boardroom.
If it hadn’t been Friday, Grace would have left the boardroom mess until the morning and been on the road with drive-thru and sleep on the agenda. Because the hard work was over for now, and because she was alone on the thirteenth floor, she took a moment to herself.
The acquisition was successful. Breton-Craig was now a part of Taureau-Werner.
She slipped off her shoes and wriggled her toes into the expensive carpet, popped the top two buttons of her blouse, then sank back into the leather chair at the head of the conference table. All that was missing was a bottle of wine.
No doubt there were a few stragglers somewhere in the building trying to make a deadline, but aside from the cleaning crew and security she was alone. Especially on the thirteenth floor, the executive floor, where there was no one.
The view of the city skyline was ethereal, bringing to mind Zeus and his kin looking down on earth from Olympus. It was easy to imagine that the small world below could be so easily manipulated by a whim from above, that she could reach out and nudge a building out of the way to enhance her view.
She remained there overlooking creation for what seemed like hours, until something as common as the water cooler gurgling brought her back. It was a hateful intrusion, a reminder that she was no goddess and there was no real peace to be found in the Taureau-Werner building.
Grace didn’t dwell on it. She’d heard enough whining from the rest of the staff during the day; she didn’t want to hear it in her head when she had all this before her at the end of the day.
You’re tired. You’re cranky. You need sleep. Tomorrow, everything will