Asking for Trouble (27 page)

“Yes,” Alyssa said. “It was a great speech.” She introduced
Joe, and Dr. Marsh shook his hand cordially, then returned to the topic at
hand.

“You couldn’t be learning from a better example,” he told
Alyssa. “The idea she presented to the board a few weeks ago, her Geek Day? Has
she shared that with you yet? Brilliant, just brilliant. That’s exactly the kind
of visionary thinking this organization needs.”

Alyssa felt everything inside her going cold.
“Her
idea?” she managed to get out.

“Yes. You did hear about it, then?”

“Yes,” she said, so frozen she could barely move. “I heard.”

“Well, I’m telling you, if you’re lucky enough to be in this
field for over thirty years the way I have been,” the older man said, “you’ll
realize what a rut we all fall into. Oh, everyone has the best of intentions,
but there’s a tendency to do the same old things, not to think outside the box.
When you find somebody who can do that, especially in Development, that’s a
find indeed.”

“But . . .” Alyssa said. She wasn’t sure how to answer, how
to explain, but she didn’t get the chance, because Dr. Marsh caught an eye and
hustled off with a quick “Excuse me” to chat up a donor.

“Her
idea?” She
was spluttering.
“Her
idea?”

“Talk to her,” Joe said. “Right now. Talk to her.”

She searched Helene out in the crowd, waited impatiently
while she schmoozed another donor, was finally able to approach her when the
man turned away.

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice shaking only a little.

“Yes?” Helene asked. Her eyes flitted to the door. “People
are starting to leave. Shouldn’t you be over there saying goodbye?”

Alyssa ignored that. “I was just speaking to Dr. Marsh,” she
began. “He was congratulating me on Geek Day. On
your
idea for Geek Day.”

Helene’s smile didn’t waver. “Yes,” she said, “I told you
that he and the board were excited. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? It’ll be a lot of
work, but like I always say, with the right attitude, anything is possible.”

“It was my idea,” Alyssa said bluntly. “You didn’t tell them
that. I could tell.”

Helene waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter whose idea it is. The
idea’s only the beginning, not to say it isn’t a good one. What matters is what
we do with it, and we’re going to do something great.”

“It matters that you didn’t give me credit,” Alyssa
persisted, her frustration mounting by the second.

“Alyssa.” The older woman sighed. “This isn’t the time or
the place. And I know it’s a cliché, but it sounds like it’s time to remind you
that there’s no ‘i’
in ‘team.’ We’re
here to make a difference. That’s the only thing that matters. And, just a
gentle reminder,
you’re
here to do a
job. Right now, that job is to go over there by the door and say goodbye, leave
these wonderful people with their very best impression of us. I’d suggest, if
you want to contribute, that you go over there and do it.”

Alyssa was never sure, afterwards, how she’d made it through
the rest of the evening. She’d wanted to walk out then and there. She couldn’t
even have said why she’d stayed to say her goodbyes to the donors, to settle
with the caterers and the museum staff, even as her mind raged. Except that
Helene was right. This
was
her job,
and despite everything, she needed to do it. She’d spent days—no, she’d
spent
weeks
planning this event, and
she couldn’t stand not to see it through.

She didn’t even have a chance to talk about it with Joe
until the last guest left, until he’d retrieved her coat, escorted her down the
museum’s steps and waited with her for the valet.

“What happened?” he asked when he’d put the car in gear, was
headed down the drive. “My place?” he added.

“Yeah,” she said, watching him take the first turn for the
five-minute drive back to his loft. Then she took a breath and told him.

“Damn,” he said.

“Yeah.” She laughed, but it was an angry laugh. “So what do
I do now?”

“Right now? What do you want to do?”

“I want to—” She stopped, nonplussed. “I want to
run.
I want to run away. I want to get
out.”

“Want to ride the bike?” he asked, pulling into his garage.
“That’s what I do,” he added when she looked at him in surprise. “Speed. Wind.
Get away. Want to do that?”

“You’d take me?”

“You bet I would. Tell you the truth, I could use it too.”

He got changed with her, found a heavy jacket for her to
wear, gave her a helmet, and then rolled out of the garage and into Saturday
night. Up and over to Lombard Street first, back and forth on the zigzag course
of it, a little too fast around each sharp curve, seeming to know that she needed
to be on the edge tonight, that she needed the adrenaline.

She held on and felt it and wished they could go faster, and
he turned around and went up the hill again. And then she got her wish, because
he was riding through the darkness of the Presidio, across the Golden Gate, the
big bike splitting the night, the towers and lights flashing by, and she knew
that to her left there was water all the way to Hawaii, all the way to Japan,
and she felt the freedom of it, felt the limits falling away.

He was riding the same roads he’d driven after their beer
with Cheryl, and for the same reason, but he was right, it was better on the
bike. Better to be going fast, to feel the wind and the cold and the noise, to
forget everything and hold on to him and
feel.

By the time they got back to the loft again, she was cold,
and numb, and done. Joe helped her off with the coat, the helmet, took her into
his bedroom and helped her get undressed, took her into his bathroom and turned
on the shower for her, all without any unnecessary words, and she was glad,
because she didn’t want to talk.

She stood in the shower for what felt like an hour, let the
water wash over her, warm her up, and, finally, came out and put on a T-shirt
and underwear and crawled into bed beside him, because he was already there.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem.” He pulled her to him so her head was resting
on his shoulder, his arm around her.

“I don’t . . .” she began, then stopped. “I don’t want to.
Not tonight. I just want to go to sleep.”

“I get it,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his
voice.

“You don’t mind?” She’d been spending more than half of her
time here, and they almost always made love, because they both wanted it. But
tonight, she didn’t. She’d got dressed tonight thinking about him unzipping her
dress, about him seeing her in her prettiest underwear, about what they’d do.
One more thing Helene had taken from her, and the rage rose at the thought, but
she didn’t want to deal with it. She wanted to be done with this day. She
wanted to go to sleep and shut it out.

“Of course I don’t mind,” he said. “You’ve had enough. There’ll
be another night. Go to sleep.”

So she did.

She woke to the gray light of early morning, the previous
evening’s events filling her head. Joe was still sleeping, so she got up and
dressed, moving quietly so as not to wake him, wrote a quick note and left the
loft.

She ran.
 
Across
the empty streets of early Sunday morning, ignoring the red lights, because she
couldn’t stand to stop. Into the green space of the Presidio, because the empty
dark had called to her the night before, and she wanted to be here, away from
people, away from cars. Just running, nobody but the occasional jogger, the odd
dog-walker to see her. Nothing but the air and the movement, her body working
out the tension, and her mind going along with it.

It was two hours before she returned to find Joe working, as
usual.

“Sorry I was gone so long,” she said.

He shrugged. “You left a note. Good run?”

“Yeah. You’re not upset that I didn’t invite you?”

“You needed to be alone. I need to be alone a lot too. I
made oatmeal.”

“Thanks.” She went to the stove and dished it up.

“So I was thinking,” she said when she was sitting at the dining
table, and he’d come to join her.

He looked at her, but didn’t say anything, so she continued.
“Part of me wants to quit, right? Last night, I wanted to quit so bad. Because
I’ll never get ahead. It’ll never happen, not with Helene in charge. Not if
she’s going to take my good ideas and say they’re hers. Not if she’s going to
keep me doing the scut work while she does all the glamour parts. I’ll never
get ahead. I get that.”

“Sure,” he said, then waited.

“But I don’t want to quit,” she said in frustration. “If I
do, what happens? Helene’s still got my idea. Then she’s doing my Geek Day, or
somebody she hires is. And they aren’t going to do it as well as I could. I
know
it, and I can’t stand it. I have
all these ideas for it, and I want to
do
them,
and I could get Alec and Rae to help, too, and this would be
huge,
if I did it. I’d
make
it huge.”

“Sure,” Joe said again. “And me, too. I’d help.”

“And you,” she agreed. “And also—this matters.
Remember how I said I needed to do something that matters? Well, I found it.
This is it. Those kids matter, and I can help. All those things Helene said
last night—I can do it. I can help, and I want to do it.”

She ran down at last, took a sip of her coffee.

“Then,” he said, “that’s what you should do.”

“And I don’t want her to win,” she went on, barely hearing
him. “No, scratch that, I can’t
stand
to
let her win. If I quit, she wins. She’s got my idea, and she wins. But if I
stay and work for her, doesn’t she win then, too? How do
I
win? That’s what I can’t see. And I
want
to win. I want to do the right thing, but I want to
win.”

“How about if you stay and don’t work for her?” he asked.
“Don’t you win then?”

“Well, yeah. That’d be the dream. What do I do, though, kill
her?” She had to laugh at that, even as upset as she was. “Now
there’d
be a permanent solution. Sounds
pretty good to me right now, I’ll tell you that.”
 

“Except that you’d be unlikely to be around to plan your
Geek Day,” he pointed out. “So I think we’d better come up with something
else.”

“I should fight,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You should fight. You know why bad people
win so much? It’s because good people aren’t willing to fight, or they don’t
know how. I know how, and I’m going to help you do it.”

It was a whole week more, though, before she got the chance.
Dr. Marsh had been at a conference, and nobody else would do. And then there’d
been the wait for the appointment, his surprise at the request.

“We like to go through channels here,” he’d said when she’d
asked him for a meeting.

“I know you do,” she said, trying to curb her frustration.
“But it’s important, or I wouldn’t ask you. Please. Fifteen minutes of your
time, that’s all.”

Now, she stood outside the door of his office and knocked.

“Come in,” she heard.

“Here we go.” She took a deep breath, wiped a sweaty palm
over the leg of her slacks, and opened the door, her laptop and a file folder clutched
tightly in her other hand.

Dr. Marsh looked up. “I didn’t realize you were bringing
somebody else to the meeting. Jim, wasn’t it?”

“Joe.” He took a seat beside Alyssa in one of the two
visitor’s chairs across the desk from the Director.

“So,” Dr. Marsh said. His face was still pink, but it wasn’t
as pleasant as it had been at the party. “What’s this all about?”

“I requested this meeting,” Alyssa said, “because I thought
you should know that Helene appropriated my fundraising idea, the one we spoke
about at the party last week. The idea of the field day for the tech industry,
what I called Geek Day. I can’t find any evidence that she gave me any credit,
did she?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I still don’t understand. You’re here
to talk to me because you had the original idea for her plan? Shouldn’t you
take that up with her?”

“No. I didn’t have the original idea for her plan. I had the
whole plan.” She opened her laptop, swiveled it around to face him, and showed
him, as Joe had instructed her, the information from her file’s “Properties”
menu showing the date she’d created it, then handed him a stapled printout of
all her slides.

“This was my presentation to Helene a month ago,” she said.
“Please tell me if it was the presentation she gave to you.”

He reached for a case on his desk, opened it and removed his
reading glasses, used both hands to put them on, then adjusted the printout so
it sat perfectly aligned on his wooden desk, and she wanted to scream. She
waited, tense and expectant, as he flipped through page after page, until he
finally looked up at her, his face serious.

“Yes,” he said, “this is what she presented.”

“I can verify,” Joe said, “that Alyssa has been working on
this idea for a good couple months. I saw her produce this presentation. I
listened to her rehearse it. This was her idea, and hers alone.”

“I’m still not sure,” Dr. Marsh said after removing his
glasses and going through the whole process in reverse, “why you’re here, uh .
. . Joe. We prefer to keep our internal affairs internal, and surely Alyssa
doesn’t need moral support to bring this matter to my attention.”

“That’s not why I’m here.” Joe reached into the folder that
Alyssa had laid on the desk and pulled out another stapled collection of
papers. “I’m here to give you some additional information.”

The glasses, again. “What is this, exactly?” Dr. Marsh
asked.

“That,” Joe said, “is the transcript of a conversation
Alyssa had on the telephone with Helene’s—Helen’s, I should say, because
that’s her name—parents. The parents she has. The parents who raised her,
because it turns out that she’s quite a bit less than Cinderella. She was never
in foster care. She was never abused or abandoned. Her mother’s a homemaker,
and her father’s an engineer with the Highway Department. They go to church.
Her mother was her Girl Scout leader. And there was no CASA program in Tennessee
thirty-five years ago, by the way. Everything she said in that speech of hers
was a lie, and an insult to kids who actually live the life she talked about.”

The Director was looking rattled now. “The second document,”
Joe went on, “is her record from the University of Tennessee. You might want to
keep that one a bit quiet, because I didn’t exactly go through channels to get
it, but that’s her record. As you can see, she took courses there for a couple
years, but she didn’t do well, and she sure didn’t graduate. She didn’t
graduate from any university at all, from what I can find out. Can I ask if you
did a background check before you hired her?”

“No,” Dr. Marsh said. “But I take it you did.”

“I did,” Joe said. “I also spoke to a few people at the
Carolyn G. Haskill Foundation. She had a reputation over there, maybe not with
the people you talked to, but with the people who worked for her, for sure. A
reputation for going through staff, for promoting herself first and foremost.
It got her ahead, but at a cost. The cost being quite a few good people who are
now working someplace else.”

“I’m glad for the information,” the Director said, “but I
still don’t understand how all this concerns you.”

“Ah. Why do I care how Second Chance does, besides my
interest in Alyssa? Fair question, and I have an answer.”

He sat there, looking big and tough and solid, and said it.
“You see, that would be because I’m Alec Kincaid’s business partner. As in
Alyssa’s brother. As in the guy you probably think of as your second-biggest
donor.”

And then he reached over and pulled out the last thing in
the folder, three pages of photocopied documents stapled together, and placed
them in front of Dr. Marsh. “And one other reason, too. The reason I care what
happens here? That would also be because I’m your first-biggest donor.”

A long silence followed as the Director flipped pages, took
in the amounts on the photocopied checks, then looked up at Joe. “You’re
Anonymous. You’re the Six-Million-Dollar Man.”

“That would be me,” Joe said. “But there’s a time to be
anonymous, and there’s a time to speak up. And I’d say this is my time.”