Читать книгу Wish Upon a Star - Olivia Goldsmith - Страница 7

‘He ain’t gonna get away with it. Someone should tell him ta get ovah himself,’ Michelle D’annunzio said.

‘Yeah,’ Marie Two agreed, then laughed. ‘But he thinks he’s so big he’d need to mountain climb to get ovah Mr Michael Wainwright.’

Michelle, Joan and Marie Two giggled. Marie One shook her head.

There were three Maries in the office – four if you counted Marie LaPierre, but nobody counted her – so the Maries were called One, Two and Three to avoid confusion. Two of them, along with Joan, Michelle, Tina and Claire, were having their lunch together. It was interesting to Claire to watch how the secretaries’ status was a reflection of whom they worked for. Marie One worked for Mr Bataglia who was middle management – nothing much – and she didn’t get much attention or respect. Marie Two worked for Mr Crayden, Junior who was one of the Craydens of Crayden Smithers. That meant Marie Two was considered much more important than Marie One or almost anyone else. Tina’s work for Mr Wonderful, the golden boy of the firm for the last few years, made her number two or three with a bullet. Michelle worked for the semi-retired David Smithers who was more a phantom than a physical presence. Everyone, it seemed, was more important than Claire, who only worked for Joan. It was a race Claire didn’t mind losing. She actually enjoyed watching the sudden shifts in power that change at the top wreaked on those at the bottom.

‘I don’t think he’s goin’ to get away with it this time,’ Marie One said. She put down her salami and egg sandwich. Then she picked up her Diet Coke and took a slug right from the can. Why, Claire wondered, did people who ate two thousand calories for lunch bother with diet sodas? Marie was still as large as the day that Claire first entered this lunchroom.

‘No. He ain’t,’ Michelle said, then took a bite of her triple-decker sandwich, followed by a potato chip. She didn’t have a problem with weight – she always had all the carbohydrates she desired and never put on an ounce.

‘Sure he will,’ Tina told them. She pushed some of her dark hair back over one ear and took a bite of her turkey club. ‘Hey, his social life is as busy as Grand Central Station, but I’m a great conductor. I keep all the different trains on separate tracks. They never crash into each other.’

Claire didn’t bother to point out that that wasn’t a conductor’s job. Actually, she thought the conductor analogy was an apt one but she would have used the metaphor of a symphony orchestra, not a commuter station. Michael Wainwright had a complicated and splendid private life that, without his knowledge, was public to all of the clerical women on the thirty-eighth floor.

Marie Two gave Tina a sour look. ‘Hey. Tell Mike Engineer that someday two of those engines will crash. And we’ll all be readin’ about it in the Wall Street Journal.’

Joan, the head of the analysts and – aside from Claire – the only woman at the table who wasn’t either a secretary or Italian-American, shook her head. She was a divorced single mother in her mid-thirties and, in Claire’s opinion, justifiably bitter. ‘From your lips to god’s ears,’ Joan said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’

But Claire didn’t think that was fair. Though Michael Wainwright certainly played fast and loose, he could afford to. It wasn’t just the looks, brains and schooling. He was also socially connected. Claire, via Tina, had an almost daily update on whom he was seeing, whom he was about to drop, whom he was adding to his conquest list, and where he was taking his latest date. Claire’s mental calendar, empty of engagements, was full of Mr Wonderful’s life. She wasn’t sure if Tina’s ongoing conversation was good or bad for her private obsession, but she certainly couldn’t ask Tina to stop talking without raising Tina’s always-acute suspicions when it came to romance. And it wasn’t as if Claire even dreamed of any real connection to Michael Wainwright. She knew he traveled in a world of money, entitlement, and the natural aristocracy of beauty and that she didn’t belong in any of those categories. Michael Wainwright was not a romantic possibility and she had no illusions otherwise. But it didn’t mean that she didn’t have feelings. She just kept them to herself. Her interest, she thought, was a kind of hobby – like bird watching.

Tina put down her sandwich and angrily wiped her mouth with a Subway paper napkin. ‘Why does he deserve it?’ she demanded of Joan. ‘He never promises any of them anything. They’re big girls. They can take care of themselves.’ Claire smiled. In public Tina was loyal to Michael but Claire knew that she sometimes warned him of the dating Armageddon that she so nimbly put off.

‘It’s time to get back,’ Joan said primly and looked at Claire. Claire nodded and put her untouched apple back into her bag. Unlike the others, Claire didn’t work for an investment banker. And reporting to Joan didn’t always make life pleasant. She stood up and smiled at Tina, who flipped a bird behind Joan’s back.

Claire’s afternoon was spent doing what seemed like endless revisions to spreadsheets of figures. The worst part about her job was also the best. There were no changes, no surprises, no peaks and valleys. She knew that as soon as she completed an assignment, Joan would hand her another one. Unlike Tina and the three Maries, Claire didn’t get to glimpse the drama going on in and around the windowed offices: she didn’t see the clients arrive, the meetings held in the glass-enclosed conference rooms. She didn’t witness the hirings and firings. But she heard all about them. Sometimes Claire felt her imagination was a better place to view the dramas than in reality. Tina was a kind of human radio – all Tina, all the time – and Claire saw the wins and losses, the corporate coups and the promotions and demotions more vividly in her imagination than if she had seen them in reality.

The problem was that she had time to daydream – too much time – and too many of her daydreams centered around Mr Wonderful. She wondered uncomfortably if it was becoming closer to an obsession than she admitted to herself.

While Claire had the title of ‘analyst’ she wasn’t much more than an educated clerk. Of course none of the secretaries were called secretaries, either. They were ‘Administrative Assistants’ (though they all expected gifts and flowers on Secretaries’ Day). But the two groups had something important in common: there was nowhere for either analysts or administrative assistants to advance to within Crayden Smithers. After a decade of service you weren’t promoted to investment banker. At best, you might get Joan’s job. Not that Claire wanted it. Joan was the sphincter muscle in the bowels of Crayden Smithers.

That evening at five to five she was almost finished compiling a statistical table – she hated typing statistics – and stayed until a quarter after to get it done. It was unusual because, unlike the secretaries, the analysts had scheduled hours and usually left on the dot of five. Only Joan had to stay on to complete paperwork and arrange for temps or overtime work.

Now, as Joan put on her coat, she eyed Claire. ‘Don’t stay past six,’ she warned.

Claire smiled and nodded. The rule at Crayden Smithers was that an hour or more of overtime guaranteed a car service ride home. Of course, a ride to Tottenville meant going through Brooklyn, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and half of Staten Island. It was a two-hundred-and-ten-dollar fare in a chauffeured Mercedes. ‘We don’t have the budget for that,’ Joan told her as she walked out the door.

‘I know,’ Claire called after her. There, alone for the first time in more than eight hours, she took a deep breath. The commute this evening would be less brutal than at peak hours, though the wait would be longer. Getting to Tottenville after rush hour was the slow hour – or maybe two or three. Ferries, trains and buses didn’t run frequently. Everyone in Tottenville called Manhattan ‘The City’ – even though Staten Island was part of New York. Staten Islanders felt forgotten and inferior to the other boroughs. They were always coming up with new resentments and plans to secede. Her father had always said the place was too small to be a city but too large to be an asylum. Despite the four hours a day, lots of people made the long commute because they wanted to live in what seemed like – and what had once been – a small, waterside town within the New York City boundaries. But for Claire it was all tiresome, with nothing much waiting for her at either end.

Now she decided she would stop in a diner near the ferry terminal, have a salad for dinner, and then, she thought guiltily, maybe pie à la mode. Well, with or without dessert she wouldn’t go home until the rush was completely over. She was too tired to fight the crowd, for the long wait to board and perhaps having to stand for the whole ride. If she waited that would also mean she wouldn’t have to eat with Jerry and her mother. Now she’d be able to read while she ate, another guilty pleasure. She looked down into her bag. She had her knitting, and beside it was The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. Claire was almost halfway through, at that delicious place where she felt compelled to go on reading yet didn’t want the book to end. She felt herself looking forward to her modest evening, her little dinner, a special dessert (she would have the pie) and her book as company.

She sighed. She often wanted to read on the ferry but if she was with Tina – and she almost always was – it was impossible without offending her. That was one of the reasons she carried her knitting. Tina teased her, but it was something to do while Tina nattered on.

Claire finished the statistics, hit the print button and gathered up her belongings while the document rolled into the waiting basket. She was just putting on her new coat – a light green one that she thought complemented her eyes – when Mr Wonderful, Mr Michael Wonderful Wainwright himself, stepped into the room. It was a jolt because no matter how good he looked in her daydreams he was so much better in reality. He was slightly taller than Claire, his posture perfect, his chest broad and taut through his dress shirt. Mr Wonderful’s light blond hair was shiny in the fluorescent light of the office. As he surveyed the room with his hazel-colored eyes he almost looked through her. Claire froze then reminded herself to continue putting her arm into the sleeve of her coat. ‘Where’s Joan?’ he asked.

‘Joan’s left for the day,’ she told him, sounding more calm than she felt. She was afraid she’d begun to blush. She looked away from him, down at her bag. She picked it up and placed it carefully on her chair. Something to do. Keep busy and her eyes to herself. She also had to change into her sneakers but was embarrassed to do it in front of him.

She figured he’d leave then, but was startled by a loud thumping noise. She looked up to see Mr Wonderful had hit Joan’s desk with a thick document. ‘Shit!’ he said. Then he turned back to her and smiled. His smile was devastating, if not sincere. As irresistible as a frozen Mars bar in July and probably just as bad for her. ‘You don’t know where the Worthington numbers are, do you, Karen?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She went to the printer bin and held out the still-warm pages. ‘They’re here. And it’s Claire.’

‘Claire?’ he asked and looked down at the report in her hands as if she was talking about the document.

‘My name,’ she said. ‘Not Karen. It’s Claire.’

He reached for the print-out then looked into her face as he took the pages from her. ‘Of course. Claire,’ he said. ‘I was so panicked over this damn thing that I forgot. Excuse me.’ The closest Michael Wainwright had come to panic, Claire thought, was probably the day he feared he wouldn’t get into the right eating club at Yale. She just nodded and went back to her desk expecting him to go.

She picked up her tote bag, took out her sneakers and was about to sit down to put them on when she realized Mr Wonderful was still there. He was paging through the stats, then he looked right up at her. One of the shoes slipped out of Claire’s hand and bounced on the floor.

‘Look, Ka – uh, Claire,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘I already know I’ve made a couple of mistakes in this thing. We’re meeting on it tomorrow morning and I’ll look like a total fuck-up if I don’t have it right.’ He paused. She was afraid to reach for her dropped shoe so she just stood there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Michael Wainwright walked over to her, bent gracefully to the floor and, with the report in one hand and her sneaker in the other, offered her the shoe with a princely flourish. She reached for it and he, as if in return for the favor, raised his eyebrows in a faux pleading look. ‘Do you think you could stay just a little while longer and make a couple of corrections for me?’

Of course. Some prince. But her hand actually tingled, holding the old sneaker that his hand had touched. She told herself she was a very foolish girl, then nodded her head because her neck seemed to work, though her tongue didn’t.

‘You will?’ he said in a voice that sounded less than surprised. ‘That’s great.’ He turned and shuffled a few pages, scribbling with a red pen. Claire struggled out of her coat and stowed her purse – along with the errant shoe – under her desk. She glanced up at the clock. It was already five-forty and she doubted she’d be out by six but she wouldn’t forget Joan’s directive about the car service. Claire wondered if it had gotten a lot colder, and how often the buses from the ferry ran after seven.

‘Hey,’ Michael Wainwright said. ‘Take a look.’ She stood beside him and looked at the papers spread in front of her. ‘Here are my corrections,’ he said, pointing to more than a dozen pages slashed with red. ‘And could you check my tabulations and change this to a bar chart?’ To her concern the changes looked like the kind of statistical work which was painstakingly slow to correct. And if she changed the layout of the chart, it would need reformatting. And that would probably alter the pagination of the rest of the report. Then she’d have to page preview the entire thing before she printed it out, just to be sure there were no widows or orphans.

‘Can you do it?’ he asked, and it was, of course, impossible to say no. Unfortunately it was equally impossible to say yes, since she couldn’t speak. She was close enough to him to smell his scent – some kind of soap and perhaps just a hint of a clean cologne as well as something that smelled like … like fresh starch. How, she wondered, could he still smell fresh at six o’clock? He was pointing to one of the changes and she noticed that his cuff was whiter even than the printer paper. Yeah. And her sneakers smelled. ‘Will it take long?’ he asked, interrupting her self-loathing.

Claire shook her head and then managed to find her tongue. ‘About two hours, I think,’ she told him.

‘Great!’ he said. ‘You’re a lifesaver.’ He gathered up the pile of papers and handed them to her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in my office. And let me buy you dinner.’