Ricardo #2
She looks at me, then at the cup in her hand. “You’re sitting on the floor in really expensive clothes.”
“So are you.”
“I have an injury as an excuse.”
“I have solidarity.”
“Oh, don’t be noble.”
I laugh again. It occurs to me that I've never laughed so much with another person, especially not a woman.
She laughs as well, then takes a careful sip of the espresso and closes her eyes for half a second. “Damn it. That’s good.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I made coffee for a wounded woman after saving Mario’s rug. I think I’ve earned a little pride.”
I sit next to her as we sip our espresso silently.
The sitting area feels different with the office empty around us.
During the day, this space belongs to Mario—his schedule, his visitors, his routine.
At night, with most of the lights low and Julia sitting barefoot on the floor after slipping off her heels, it feels too private.
For a few minutes, neither of us speaks. She drinks her coffee. I drink mine. The ice melts slowly in the towel against her head. Outside the windows, traffic moves far below us. The office remains quiet.
“Mario left hours ago,” I say.
“I noticed,” she says.
“You are his administrative assistant.”
“That is my job description, yes,” she replies.
“Typically, the administrative assistant goes home when her boss does because there is no one to administratively assist,” I explain. “How hard did you hit your head again?”
She turns her head slowly and gives me a look that would have frightened a weaker man.
“I am choosing to ignore that tone because you brought me ice.”
“How forgiving of you.”
“I can be very forgiving when concussed.”
“You are not concussed.”
“You don’t know that. I could be moments away from forgetting your name.”
“I think we're safe.”
“I think it's too soon to declare.”
“I think you're avoiding the question.”
Her fingers tighten slightly around the espresso cup. It's a small tell, but it's enough.
“I wasn’t avoiding it,” she says, clearly avoiding it. “I was… delaying it.”
“Hmm.”
She looks into her cup. “I just didn’t want to go home yet.”
I keep my voice even. “Why?”
“Because home is quiet.”
“This office is quiet.”
“Yes,” she says. “But here, I have work to do. At home, I just have myself.”
I look down at my espresso because looking at her feels too direct after that.
It is such a simple answer, but there is much beneath the words.
“And yourself is difficult company tonight?” I ask.
Her laugh is soft and without much humor. “Tonight, yes.”
I nod, because I understand that better than she probably expects me to. Even just a couple of days without Dante around, and I understand the feeling all too well. “Then the work was an excuse.”
“The work was real,” she says. “But the urgency was an excuse.”
She shifts the towel against the back of her head, then winces a little. “I had dinner with my parents last night.”
I keep the cup in my hand and my attention on her voice. “I take it dinner did not go well.”
She sighs out a laugh. I feel as if it’s self-deprecating. “Oh no, dinner went very well. Dinner always goes very well. They wouldn't have it any other way.”
She is close enough now that I see the faint freckles across her nose and the exhaustion beneath the makeup. She smells like soap, expensive perfume, and coffee.
“The food was perfect,” she says. “The flowers were perfect. The seating arrangement was perfect. My father was in a good mood, which meant everyone else was expected to be in one, too. I wore my finest pearls and my perfectly appropriate dress with my perfectly matching shoes.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“Oh, no. That's a normal dinner at my parents' house.” She takes another sip, then looks down into the cup. “Even the guests were perfect. Hugh and Bunny Vanderbilt with their prying into my broken engagement, and the implication that I couldn’t possibly have gotten the job here if it weren’t for my connection with Dante, because apparently a degree from Yale is just an expensive piece of paper.”
I blow out a quiet breath. “That must have been a long dinner.”
“Oh, it didn't end there.” She turns the cup slowly in her hand. “After the guests left, that's when the real party started.”
“I take it the good judge had opinions.”
Her laugh is quiet and tired. “The good judge always has opinions.”
“About you?” I ask.
That makes her look over at me.
“About everything,” she says. “About my job, about my life choices. About the company I keep and the company I don't keep anymore.”
She sets the cup carefully on the floor beside her knee. “They think I’m making choices specifically to embarrass them.”
“Are you?”
Her eyes come to mine. “No.”
I nod once. “Then that is their problem.”
“It feels like mine when I’m sitting across from them.”
“I imagine it does.”
She looks away first. “That’s the part I hate. I know they’re wrong, and somehow I still leave feeling like I’m the one who’s doing something wrong, like I should be apologizing.”
I look at her profile, at the tight set of her mouth and the way she keeps her eyes on the floor instead of on me.
“Apologizing for what?” I ask.
She lets out a small, humorless breath. “Existing incorrectly, apparently.”
The answer is dry, but her voice is too quiet for it to be only a joke.
I set my espresso down beside me. “You came back to Chicago. You took a job. You ended something that wasn’t right for you. None of those things requires an apology.”
For a brief moment, there is something raw in her expression before she manages to smooth it away.
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple from where I am sitting.”
“Because you’re not the one sitting at their table.”
“No,” I say. “I am sitting on the floor with you after an espresso machine tried to kill you.”
That gets the smallest breath of a laugh from her, but it does not last.
“I know what I’m good at,” she says quietly. “I know I’m good at what I was doing before. The events, the donors, the schedules, the politics, the people who say one thing and mean six others. I know how to manage all of it.”
“So why not continue doing that, but doing it here instead?”
She looks at me for a moment.
“Being good at something doesn't mean you love it,” she says. “I thought I did. Maybe I do, I don't know. I know I love the cause, but I didn't love the rest of it.”
“What was the rest of it?” I ask, wanting to hear it in her words.
“The rest was convincing rich people to care long enough to be seen caring.” She looks down at her cup. “I was good at that too, but it started to feel like I was spending more time managing egos than helping anyone.”
“That would wear on anyone,” I say.
“It wore on me more after a while. Especially once I realized half the people in those rooms cared more about where their names went on the program than whether the money actually reached anyone.”
She shifts the damp towel in her lap, her expression tightening for a second before she settles.
“And then I became the fiancée of the future congressman,” she says, quieter now. “Things changed even more. He loved that world. Not the cause. The room. The cameras. The people watching him shake hands and look generous.”
I keep quiet. She has not said anything about him before now, and I do not want to interrupt the first time she does.
“He used to tell me I was good for him,” she continues. “At first, I thought he meant I helped. Later, I understood he meant I made him look better.”
I set my cup down because my grip has tightened around it.
“That is an ugly thing to realize after you have already promised to marry someone.”
She looks at me.
“Yes,” she says. “It was.”
“And your parents liked him.”
“My parents liked what he represented.”
“Ambition. Status.”
“And the right photographs,” she says, with a tired little smile that does not reach her eyes. “He was very good in photographs.”
I look at her, at the careful way she says it, and I hear everything she is choosing not to say.
“I imagine you were too,” I say.
Her smile fades.
“Yes,” she says. “That was part of the problem.”
I do not like the sound of that.
I also know better than to comment on it.
She looks down at the towel in her lap and smooths one damp corner with her thumb. “People like a pretty couple. They like a perfect story they can tell over dinner.”
“But you became part of his story.”
“Exactly. I became one of his assets.” Her voice stays even, but her fingers press harder into the towel.
She laughs once, quietly.
“I thought I was helping build something. Then one day, I realized I was mostly helping build him.”
I look at her hands, then back at her face. “That is a hard thing to admit.”
“It is harder to admit how long it took me.”
“You left.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
I keep my voice quiet. “Maybe it took time. You still left.”
For a moment, she says nothing. Then she lets out a slow breath and looks away, toward the dark windows and the city beyond them.
“Yes,” she says. “I did.”
After a moment, she adds, “Dante helped me.”
I keep my expression carefully blank. I did not know that.
I knew Dante had recommended her for the job. I knew they were close once and close again now. I knew my son watched her with more care than he gave most people.
But I did not know he had been there at the moment she left.
“Oh?” I say.
She swallows, still looking toward the windows. “I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of years. Not really. After I got with Harrison, my friendships just kind of faded away. It's like it just became part of his life, and my own life faded.”
Her mouth tightens like she hates the taste of the words.
“Harrison hated my friends. Especially Dante.”
I say nothing, though several feelings move through me at once.
Disgust for a man like Harrison Winthrop. Of course he did not like Dante. A man like Harrison Winthrop would not like a friend he could not charm, impress, or intimidate.
Anger at her parents because if she was going to Dante for help, it means she didn't have anyone else to go to, including them.