Wishful Thinking (40 page)

“All right, then!” the mayor said, standing to shake Alicia’s and Jennifer’s hands. “I will inform Bill when he returns from London and ask him to write his letter of resignation. He shouldn’t get away with this, of course,” he added, “but you’ve convinced me. Tarring and feathering him would punish more people than it would help.” The mayor turned to Jennifer. “I trust you can process the grant from my sister’s foundation?” he asked. She nodded.

Jennifer and Alicia were gathering their things quickly,
wanting to leave before the mayor changed his mind, when the mayor appeared in front of them, having come around from behind his desk to stand between them and the door. “I trust we can all keep what’s been said in this room confidential?” he said sternly. “Including,” he added, letting out a little cough, “that bit about Daddy’s, um, political affiliations?”

“Oh, really, Aldon,” Dr. Sexton said with a hearty laugh. “This is New York. Everybody’s daddy was a communist at one point or another, if he were at all interesting, that is. It was quite the rage amongst the intellectual class.” The mayor reddened. Dr. Sexton leaned in. “Thank you,” she said sincerely, giving him a kiss. She drew back. “You’ve done me a great favor, Aldon. If you ever want to play the ‘my sister is a lesbian and I couldn’t be prouder’ card, I stand ready to oblige.”

And with that, Dr. Diane Sexton, newly minted benefactor of the One Stop community center, made her exit.

I
T WAS FOUR O’CLOCK
by the time they walked out of city hall and into City Hall Park. “This is where I will leave you,” Dr. Sexton said. “It’s time for me to meet Susan at the treatment center. But perhaps we can reconvene at my apartment tonight to celebrate?”

“I’d love to,” Alicia replied, with a warmth that surprised Jennifer. “Thank you,” she added. “For what you’ve done. And for what you are going to do.”

Dr. Sexton smiled at them both. “I’m terribly sorry about the GETS network, by the way,” she said. “I assume that is the difficulty you wanted to alert me to this morning?” Jennifer nodded. “It must have been quite harrowing, standing in Bill’s study, evidence in hand, waiting for reception to kick in!” Then Dr. Sexton laughed, and, despite themselves, Jennifer and Alicia laughed too.

Dr. Sexton headed for the subway, and Alicia and Jennifer headed back to the office. Both of them would have liked nothing better than to leave after the day they’d had, but the
day wasn’t over yet. There was one more thing they had to do—something Jennifer had to admit she was quite looking forward to.

When the moment arrived at 6:01 p.m., Jennifer and Alicia were ready, seated at their respective desks. Jennifer’s phone was the first to ring.

She picked up, smiling brightly. “This is Jennifer,” she said.

For a moment there was silence.

“You’re in the office right now?” Bill asked, his voice cracking slightly.

“Is that you, Bill?” Jennifer asked innocently. “Of course I’m in the office. Where else would I be?” There was another pause, and Jennifer thought she could hear the sound of Bill’s head exploding.

“Transfer me to Alicia,” he barked.
“Now.”

Holding her hand over the receiver, Jennifer waved to Alicia in her office, who nodded and picked up the instant the call was transferred.

“Hello, Bill,” Jennifer could hear her say, as calm as you please. “How was your flight?”

Bill hung up.

T
OGETHER THEY CALLED
T
IM
.

“Did you find anything?” he asked as soon as Jennifer put him on speakerphone. Alicia and Jennifer were sitting in Jennifer’s office now, Alicia’s ankle elevated on Jennifer’s desk.

“We got proof,” Alicia said.

“You did? I knew there was something in that file cabinet! I
knew
it! And I stalled him for a minute on the phone; did you notice that?” Jennifer and Alicia gave Tim a moment to savor his triumph.

“Bill agreed to step down,” Alicia said, rehearsing the story
she and Jennifer had agreed upon. “As long as we agreed not to tell anybody why.”

“
What?
” Tim said. “And you said yes?”

“It’s better for One Stop this way,” Jennifer said. “And for the community.”

“How? Better how? Letting a criminal rip off the residents and get away with it? Letting him walk around being a big fat hypocrite, talking about giving back and how he understands what people in poverty are going through, and after all that he gets some kind of honorable discharge?”

“Jennifer found a foundation today that will make it right with the residents,” Alicia said. “They will be fairly paid.”

“But how about making it
right
right? Like, right in the world?”

Jennifer and Alicia exchanged a look. Alicia muted the phone for a moment. “He’s right,” she said. “It’s like the mayor said. He shouldn’t get away with it.”

“I agree,” Jennifer said. “But what can we do?”

Alicia raised her eyebrows ever so slightly and smiled. She unmuted the phone. “Tim,” she said. “If we told you that Bill was the black Bernie Madoff, would you believe it?”

“Hell, yeah,” Tim said. “Are you kidding me?” There was a pause. “
Are
you kidding me?”

“Bill was embezzling from One Stop because he needed cash to cover a Ponzi scheme he was running—a big one, Madoff-style,” Alicia said. Jennifer reached into her desk drawer and took out the folder marked
BTE Investment Securities: Correspondence
and handed it to Alicia. “If he burns for the embezzlement, we might as well burn down the community center, too … ,” Alicia began.

“But if he burns for the Ponzi scheme … ,” Jennifer added, trailing off.

“He burns,” Tim said, “just like he should.”

“If I gave you a list of names,” Alicia said to Tim, “could you make it happen fast? Because my guess is that the minute he figured out those bank statements were gone, along with the letters from the investors he cheated, Bill Truitt headed for the airport.”

“I can make it happen,” Tim said. “Just give me the names.” His voice seemed to have dropped an octave, and Alicia and Jennifer tried not to giggle at his sudden James Bond seriousness. “After all,” he added, with even more swagger, “I’m not the One Stop social media coordinator for nothing.”

N
OT AN HOUR AND
a half later, Tim not only had Bill busted; he had Bill busted on CNN. As Alicia had predicted, Bill had apparently decided shortly after discovering the two of them in his office—or at least thinking he saw the two of them standing in his office, until they disappeared into a snaking blue tunnel of light—that it was time to go on the lam. Having been tipped off by Tim, however, the powerful men he’d cheated acted faster than Bill could. It was a last-minute phone call from the mayor’s office, in fact (many of Bill’s victims being close chums of Aldon’s, too), that resulted in his apprehension at JFK airport, holding a suitcase full of cash, attempting to board a plane headed for Ecuador.

“Ecuador!” Dr. Sexton snorted. “Who does he think he is, Julian Assange?” Dr. Sexton, Alicia, and Jennifer had just finished watching the clip Tim had sent them on Jennifer’s laptop, having gathered together at last at Dr. Sexton’s apartment at the end of a very long day. As it turned out, however, watching Bill with his hands in front of his face as men in black suits escorted him away from the international terminal was a bit of a buzzkill.

“There won’t be a movie, that’s for sure,” Alicia said, sighing. “It’s all too pathetic.”

Jennifer closed the laptop, feeling weirdly sad too. Just yesterday morning, she and Bill had stood side by side in the One Stop atrium, admiring what they’d built together. One Stop had been a dashed dream before Bill became NYCHA’s chair, and he had resurrected it because he believed in it— Jennifer still believed that. In the end, however, he hadn’t cared about anything as much as he’d cared about saving his own skin. Jack, at four, had a stronger moral compass. At least he cleaned up his own spilled milk.

Dr. Sexton handed Alicia and Jennifer each a generous glass of red wine. “That man got exactly what he deserved,” she said decidedly. She poured herself a glass, too, then raised it. “A toast! To your fearless daring as you stared into the face of time travel under the threat of spotty wireless service!”

“To your generosity,” Alicia said, raising her glass, too, “which has truly saved the day.”

“To Tim,” Jennifer said, smiling. “May he never have to pick up anybody’s dry cleaning but his own again!”

They clinked glasses and drank. The wine was superb, and Jennifer let out a grateful moan.

“Shall we boot up the fire?” Dr. Sexton asked, moving into the living room.

“Definitely,” Jennifer said, looking at her watch. “Vinita will be here with the boys soon. Last time I checked, they were just finishing up watching a movie at her place.” The boys, apparently, had been more than happy to skip swimming lessons. She guessed they weren’t going to mind taking things down a notch now that she no longer had the app—though resuming a schedule where she never picked them up from school at all wasn’t going to go over well. Though perhaps with Bill gone, she thought, that would
change? It was hard to imagine what would happen now.

Alicia and Jennifer had just sat down on the couch when the fire began to blaze. “Wow,” Alicia said, staring. “I want one!”

They settled in. Alicia and Jennifer took turns doing imitations of the look on Bill’s face when he saw them standing in his office, file folders in hand. Dr. Sexton recounted her brother’s outrage at having been threatened with an audit by the FCC and the lengths she’d had to go to placate him—including doing her best imitation of a “woman of a certain age,” dim-witted and helpless in the face of technology. (“It’s shocking how quickly, if I simply tilt my head a certain way and bat my eyes, my brother forgets I have a doctorate in theoretical physics.”) Alicia wondered what Mrs. Bill’s reaction to her husband’s fall from grace was going to be. Jennifer asked how Susan’s chemo had gone. Before they knew it, half an hour had gone by, and there was a knock at the door.

Dr. Sexton opened it, and the sights, sounds, and decidedly unrelaxing energy of five children under the age of ten rushed into the room, instantly transforming their cozy campfire into an unruly zoo. The children were all being corralled, if somewhat unsuccessfully, by a harried-looking Vinita.

“Sorry to bring my girls over too,” Vinita said to Jennifer apologetically, “but Sandra had to leave.” Lowering her voice so the children couldn’t hear, she added, “And I’m dying to hear what happened with Bill!” Vinita knew that the break-in had been successful, but Jennifer hadn’t updated her since.

“I’m delighted to meet your girls!” Dr. Sexton said, introducing herself to each of them. Jennifer gave Vinita a hug. She had done her a huge favor by picking the boys up that afternoon. Or, more likely, Sandra had, but Jennifer had not been about to look a pickup gift horse in the mouth.

Jennifer then turned to embrace Julien, who headed
straight for her open arms. Or so she thought until he ran straight into Dr. Sexton’s.

“Where have you been?” Julien asked her plaintively. “We’ve been knocking and knocking on Saturdays! I wanted to show you my insect-collecting kit!”

“I’m sorry, Julien,” Dr. Sexton said, bending down to his eye level, as she always did. “I’m back now.”

“Should I take the kids to your place?” Vinita asked Jennifer as Preethi, Vinita’s youngest, began zipping around like a pinball, coming dangerously close to smacking into one of Dr. Sexton’s exhibits at top speed. “Put on a movie? Though they just watched a movie. And it’s a school night.”

“Not necessary,” Dr. Sexton pronounced. “Children!” she said, clapping her hands. “Do you like virtual reality?”

“We do, we do!” cried Julien and Jack. Julien turned to Rani. “It’s supercool. It’s a game she made where you pretend you’re in the Wild West, and you’re cowboys, and you shoot—”

“You better not say Indians,” Vinita said warningly.

“
Aliens
,” Dr. Sexton said. “You shoot aliens. I may be a child of the nineteen fifties, but I’m not as bad as all that.”

“I thought you didn’t like those ‘adolescent Hollywood movies,’” Jennifer teased. Dr. Sexton ignored this.

“And it’s safe, as well as PC?” Vinita asked, directing a meaningful look Jennifer’s way.

“Absolutely safe,” Dr. Sexton said. “Nothing more than bits and bytes, assembled together to create perfectly harmless, perfectly delightful illusions.”

“Fine,” Vinita said, picking up the open bottle on the counter and glancing at the label. “And for me, if you don’t mind, a delightful, if not entirely harmless, glass of this gorgeous red wine.”

* * *

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
, all was remarkably quiet again. Rani and Julien were playing Cowboys and Aliens in Dr. Sexton’s computer room, and Neela, Preethi, and Jack were huddled up in a squirmy kid ball on Dr. Sexton’s four-poster bed, watching
Toy Story
on her big-screen TV. Alicia, Jennifer, and Vinita, who had been fully brought up to speed, were seated comfortably in front of the fire at last. Dr. Sexton was in her office, uninstalling Wishful Thinking on Jennifer’s phone. It was almost seven months to the day, Jennifer calculated, since she’d gotten it.

“What do you think is taking so long?” Jennifer asked, attempting to tuck her legs under her in the elegant way Vinita did so effortlessly. (Another thing Jennifer had never managed to do, even with the superpowers of Wishful Thinking: yoga.)

“One would hope it’s a relatively complex technology,” Vinita said drily.

Jennifer tried not to let Vinita see the regret, tinged with panic, she could feel overtaking her as she waited for Dr. Sexton to return. But it was hard. After seven months of being able to do, be, and accomplish everything she wanted, never having to sacrifice one part of her life for another, she was about to return to the sacrifice and scarcity inevitable to a life in real time. Maybe she should move to Sweden, she thought, land of government-mandated five weeks’ paid vacation and universal child care. Too bad she didn’t like meatballs—and her life was in America, land of two weeks’ paid vacation … if your employer felt like giving it to you.