Chapter 1 Victoria #2
Victoria set off towards the office kitchen, walking down the hallway, which was decorated with muted but still significant modern art.
When Victoria first traversed this hallway as a summer associate, she’d been wowed by the whole mise-en-scène.
The army of Purple Label suits, the number of zeros on the figures funneled into funds and trusts, the sometimes intricate, sometimes flashy vanity deals brokered to satisfy clients’ whims. Victoria had listened to the easy banter of the other summer interns over take-out salads from La Scala, wondering how they had all learned so much, so quickly, about tennis clubs and Cap d’Antibes and the significance of Teterboro.
A few weeks into the summer, Victoria had realized they hadn’t needed to learn these things; their fluency was innate, whereas Victoria, who’d grown up in landlocked, blue-collar Fresno, where mozzarella sticks and fountain Coke signified the height of fine dining, had to figure out which parts of Florida were acceptable (Palm Beach, Wellington, and Miami—but only during Art Basel) and if “The Brando” was a nickname. It wasn’t.
Now, Victoria smoothed her pencil skirt and silk blouse, about to enter the kitchen, when she heard the chatter. She paused, peering in through the inch-wide crack between the wall and the doorframe.
“I almost bought her whole I-don’t-need-a-man act,” said Ellen, a middle-aged mid-level HR manager.
Deborah, an assistant to one of the partners, predictably agreed. Deborah loved nothing more than feeling included. Except, perhaps, for combing through eBay for rare trolls to add to the sprawling collection that lined her cubicle.
“I heard the wedding cost a million dollars!” Deborah chirped with satisfaction. “A million.”
Annalise, the most junior member of the trio, gasped. “No way.”
Victoria felt a frown forming on her face and tried to tamp it down. Surely, she wasn’t…hurt? This woman collected trolls.
“Do you think it will last?” Annalise tested.
“I give it a year,” Ellen said.
“Six months,” challenged Deborah.
Victoria’s stomach lurched again. She chastised herself—why did she care? She usually deflected spiky, petty remarks without a second thought. Maybe that was the way she was built. Maybe it was a habit born of necessity. Maybe this was just how women were with one another.
Victoria marched into the kitchen. “What’s the over/under on a year?” she asked.
The women’s heads turned in unison. Ellen’s mouth dropped open. Deborah and Annalise froze in place and flushed, not with shame, Victoria suspected, but at the bad fortune of being caught.
Deborah recovered first. “Victoria, hi,” she said.
Annalise joined in. “We were just talking about this girl I know—who recently got married!” she added lamely.
As she stood there looking at the three women—Ellen focusing on the air two feet to the right of Victoria’s head, Deborah staring at the floor, Annalise suddenly consumed by an emergency with a fingernail that required her full attention—Victoria stifled a sigh.
“Ladies, ladies. Are we really going to pretend you weren’t talking about me or are we better than that?” Victoria asked, keeping an upbeat, playful lilt to her voice. Like she was in on the joke. Like it was a joke.
There was a sharp intake of air from Ellen as Victoria went over to a cabinet, opened it, and selected a box of Simple Mills almond-flour crackers.
Deborah’s left eye began twitching in a way that a casual observer might think required medical attention, but it was just her tell—the signature, irksome physical response that acted up when Deborah behaved poorly, like a punitive Tourette’s.
Victoria felt a quick pang of guilt when she noticed Deborah’s eyeball dancing in its socket, but she also knew her point had been made. She tucked the box of almond-flour crackers under the crook of her arm and thought that Simple Mills had just complicated their day.
“It wasn’t anywhere near a million,” Victoria informed them. She was a wealth-management advisor, for God’s sake. Did they really think she’d blow that kind of money on one day?
Victoria flashed the women a thousand-watt smile, then walked out, holding her head high. She knew details of this encounter would be disseminated, deconstructed, and debated until the story no longer bore facsimile to what had occurred, but she had bigger priorities.
Moments later, Victoria was scarfing crackers and completing a post-presentation mental victory lap at her desk when her phone buzzed on her desk with a text notification. She assumed, without having to look, that it was her husband, checking in on her before her meeting.
Victoria picked up her phone. His text read, Checking in…
Victoria called him and Ace picked up immediately.
“A phone call? From the office? Did someone die?” Ace asked.
“No. No deaths. Just crackers,” Victoria answered.
“Crackers? Are we speaking in code?”
“Sure, as long as it’s code for ‘I’m sitting here taking down an entire box of crackers.’ ”
“Careful, you know what they say about crackers. It’s a slippery slope to sourdough.”
Victoria’s mouth curved upwards. Her orchid gleamed in the early-afternoon sunlight spilling in through the window. “I love sourdough.”
“I know you do.”
“Now I want a big stick of sourdough.”
“Is that code?” Ace joked.
Victoria chuckled. “You wish. And you know what? It’s your fault I’m in this carb hole.”
“Moi?” Ace asked.
Victoria could picture the sly half grin, half smirk that Ace was undoubtedly wearing at that exact moment.
“Yes. I’m wondering if I can go back in time, un-meet you, and not be shoving crackers down my throat,” Victoria said.
“String theory! Let’s do it.”
“Actually, I could still meet you,” Victoria mused, looking out her window down onto the tony streets of Beverly Hills. “I’d just have to stick to my guns in the parallel life where I’m not in this situation and never give you the time of day.”
“To be fair, you didn’t. Not at first.”
“Not for a long time.”
“Good thing I was irresistible,” Ace said.
“More like relentless,” Victoria replied. “And now here we are. Here. We. Are.”
“Indeed,” Ace said. “Pumped for your meeting?”
“I am,” Victoria answered. She didn’t believe in beating around the bush, and with her husband, she never felt like she should.
“Go land your white whale,” Ace said.
“And here I was expecting a joke about how I already had.”
Ace laughed his way off the phone while wishing her good luck and simultaneously making it clear that Victoria didn’t need it. She didn’t rise to meet an occasion; she was already there, ready and waiting, prepared to harpoon it.
Victoria walked out of her office and tossed a friendly smile to Harper without breaking her stride so her assistant would know to carry on.
There was no need for Harper to join Victoria on her battle march; she didn’t need to pause her important work adding items to her Shopbop cart, decoding illiterate texts from last week’s one-night stand, and trading memes of the day with friends who were also serving in the ranks of corporate incarceration with only the internet to lighten their sentences.
Victoria passed the smaller conference room—the one reserved for internal meetings and clients who preferred the sensation of intimacy over grandeur—and veered to the right, towards the large conference room.
The big dicks, the major leagues. Most of the principals were already assembled in leather rolling chairs around the long mahogany table.
A large flatscreen displayed the firm’s name, cued up for Victoria to present her deck.
As she entered, Victoria passed an approving eye over the Russ Victoria had collected this kernel of information and squirreled it away until she could transform knowledge into action.
The billionaire’s preferred refreshments now sat waiting: a precipitously tall tower of bagels, plump and doughy; a platter of gleaming smoked salmon; mounds of cream cheese flecked with forest-green chives; a bowl of satiny sablefish; and a vat of caviar so deep it would please an oligarch, the small onyx beads of roe glittering like treasure.
Victoria looked at the suits convened around the table. As usual, Mark avoided her gaze and inspected the infantry of LaCroix cans lining the middle of the table before finally selecting Pamplemousse, then checking his watch like he couldn’t wait for this to be over.
At precisely two o’clock, Victoria’s white whale crested the shores of the conference room wearing custom cowboy boots, faded Levi’s, and a crisp Charvet shirt tucked in to show off a belt with an oversized buckle. His silver mane was slicked back and glinted like mica under the recessed lighting.
“Excuse the boots. I just came from my ranch,” Nash announced, referring to his expansive property in Montana recently featured on the cover of AD. An assistant ferried over a bagel and lox. As Nash sat down, the sharp, pungent smell of the smoked fish wafted over to Victoria.
A wave of queasiness descended like a thick fog rolling in without warning.
Victoria felt a gag rising in her throat and managed to swallow it down, but her stomach roiled uncontrollably.
She tried to prevent evidence of her nauseated state from showing on her face.
She tried to proceed as if her body hadn’t been overtaken by forces beyond her.
She really tried. But goose bumps sprang up amid the sheen of sweat suddenly covering her body, and there was no stopping this.
The morning’s ill-conceived orange juice and half-digested almond-flour crackers forcibly ejected themselves… onto Nash.
Revulsion covered Nash’s face as he recoiled, the viscous, milky-yellow soup of Victoria’s stomach acid seeping down his white shirt. A cracker fractal slid off his chest onto the table.
The room was deathly silent. The sour, acrid stench of sickness permeated the air. One of the assistants dry-heaved, then turned to retch into a nearby wastebasket.
Still in shock, Victoria put her hand up to her mouth. Little driblets of vomit clung to the bottom of her lips.
“Oh my God. I am so sorry,” she said, then vomited again onto the table.
Nash remained motionless—a statue of stunned disgust. Everyone else stared at her, aghast, except for Mark, who didn’t bother to try to conceal the titillated grin splitting his face like a Muppet. For maybe the first time in her adult, professional life, Victoria didn’t know what to do next.
“I’m pregnant,” she blurted. Then, she fled the room.