Chapter 10 #2
He’s perfectly dressed, and so is my cup of tea. There’s a moment where we look at each other and it’s obvious in the way Luke stiffens that he is waiting for me to bring up his company’s incriminating behavior .
“Have you—do you have a—” Plan? That feels impertinent to ask. “…productive day planned?” I ask instead.
“There will be intensive de-cluttering, so yes.”
Part of our conversation from yesterday comes back to me. He’d said: as a leader you can’t just pull it all apart otherwise things explode. People explode. But I’m going to handle it. All of it.
He is going to handle it.
Do I trust what that means?
Needing to put my hands to work, I start changing into my apron. Bags are shuffled. A fridge is opened and closed. Biscuits are toyed with. I don’t turn around, but I need to ask. “Were you telling the truth at your press conference?”
“I was.”
“Promise?”
“You have my word. But do you trust that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. Time will prove me right.”
An alert on my phone will ping me if any other news breaks about Abbot Industries.
I won’t stay uninformed, but for now, what more is there to say?
I could demand proof, to see evidence of interviews being done, internal investigations being launched, perpetrators being fired, and equity practices implemented in their hiring process…
but Abbot Industries has already released news bulletins with all that information.
Their crisis team is a sharp knife hacking away dissent.
The true question is whether I believe all that is promised to be happening.
Maybe he’s brainwashing me, one tea serving at a time, because I want to believe him. Believe that he is not as terrible as his family legacy. As the type of business his corporation appears to run. Is that pathetic? Does that make me a bad judge of character?
Or am I choosing to be blindly optimistic because I need his employment to keep paying my bills? Until…maybe…I win this meal kit competition and all my problems go away. Until…I finally get another job… Until someone calls me back with a wage that keeps my dad in rehab…
Simply put, am I okay sitting next to a bad man? Is he a bad man?
When I finally drink my tea, he’s settled back into his routine of Sudoku and browsing data reports.
I tell him he should use a pencil instead of a pen until he gets his puzzle-solving confidence back.
Luke pointedly finishes it in front of me without making a single mistake.
He tells me the chicken I meal prepped last week was adequate and to make more of that. I call his tastes geriatric.
After that day, it’s as if something has shifted.
It’s as if we’ve accepted the presence of each other in our lives as something a bit more tangible and long-term.
Our basic morning questions morph into chats that become less about inoffensive data-sharing, and more about real dialogue.
For example, there are details . How appalling.
Not about our own lives, of course, because that would be wildly nonsensical, but about other topics that foster opinions.
Over the next few days we discuss current news (“Did you hear about the revamped space program?”), tech stuff (“Apparently, there is another master computer trying to replicate human creativity”), pop culture (“Is it wrong to want a disaster shark movie where the sharks win?”), philosophy (“The afterlife better have Internet”), and paramountly, whether hot dogs are categorically tacos or sandwiches…
The conversations are unexpectedly rich, like meals you are surprised by when you sit for a blind tasting menu.
You never know what is going to be served, but you look forward to it anyway, knowing you’ll taste it, regardless.
Even when the flavors are argumentative.
Challenging. And in the heat of the moment, reveal more than you thought would be shared.
“For a purist of nutrition,” I drawl on, “you must know the bananas I put in your smoothies never naturally existed in the world as they are now.”
“I’m not anti-science,” he balks as if I’ve suggested he’s a cave-dwelling cretin who blindly prays the ball of light in the sky will return on the morrow. “Obviously, genetic advancements have allowed us to create food that can survive drought and disease to feed more people and for longer.”
“So the reason you don’t like sugary food has nothing to do with being afraid of artificial sweetener?”
“While I prefer not to consume an ingredient list that requires a Doctorate in Linguistics to pronounce, that isn’t the entire reason for my particular diet.”
“What is it then? ”
Luke moves a spoon around in his tea, though nothing in it requires dissolving. “We ate too much of that kind of food when I was younger.”
“Your parents let you have sweets? As a kid?”
“Not sweets,” says Luke. “But each meal was decadent, for lack of a better word. Overly so. It’s what got served to us by our chef, and what we had to eat whenever we were dressed up and taken out.
I had caviar at five and hated it.” His nose wrinkles as if the bad taste coats his tongue through memory.
“My dad loved it,” continues Luke. “Not the taste, but the status of being able to smear expensive ingredients over any dish. Caviar, duck fat, truffles, raw Kobe beef.”
“He made you eat all those?”
“On fortunate days, Henry, the chef, snuck me a sandwich, but only when my parents were preoccupied. It wasn’t often enough.”
A mysterious pang echoes through me. One might call it sympathy.
“I’m surprised you don’t keep a live-in chef now,” I say softly.
He can obviously afford it. And loads more live-in staff.
The only person I see around the apartment is sweet, kind Valeria, who leisurely tidies between her multiple breaks.
“I’ve got no need for a chef like Henry, because I have you,” admits Luke. “What you make is good for me.”
Unexpectedly, I blush. “Was that—did you—compliment me?”
“I did not.”
“Don’t back down. It shows weakness of character.”
“We can’t have that.”
“Quick, compliment me again to recover.”
He glances up, eyes roving. “Your hands are less scaly than normal.”
“Tss. That was bad. My turn. How about—you’ve got some opinions I don’t entirely hate.”
Luke draws back as if legitimately surprised. “That’s a proper compliment.”
“Unlike you, I’m a saint who’s only got goodness in her heart.”
“Well then,” he says. “It seems like I owe you a proper one, too.”
“Go on, but speak slowly so I can replay this moment later.”
“Do you do that? Think about me later?”
Yes.
I’m grappling with the shock of being asked that, so I resort to a miffed offensive. “Don’t turn this around. That’s not the point. Compliment me so my ego can blow up.”
“But then, who will make the smoothies?”
I wave him on, rather uncaring about such a catastrophe.
“I find myself not hating—enjoying even—” He clears his throat and looks down at his morning data report. It must be dense. Why didn’t he finish his sentence? Does he really have nothing good to say about me other than a comment on the condition of my hand itches?
“What?” I ask, rather impatiently. “What do you enjoy?”
“This.”
“This?”
“Yes. This.”
It takes a good few more seconds, but finally, I get it. He means this , the whole thing happening between us. Luke has admitted our battle—if it can still be called that—to be friends isn’t altogether unpleasant.
To this confession, I’ve no idea how to react.
Actually, that’s a lie. I’m reacting by continually reminding myself how worlds apart Luke and I are, and that we meet at this morning’s intersection of conversation out of necessity and random fate—nothing else.
And that I should remember we are both using each other, even if it is unequally.
He is playing nice, so I agreed to join him at a conference because Mr. Duncan said it was a good idea and he trusts Mr. Duncan.
And I am using Luke to pay my bills and to have access to his kitchen…
if…when…if… when I make it to the next round of the CUM competition.
Regardless, I gather awkwardness in my expression. “I don’t know—what—um?—”
“I’m leaving, Rita,” he says, tersely enough to indicate the moment is over.
He gathers his tablet and goes.
And I am left sitting in the quiet kitchen, alone with my pounding heart.
The air still smells of his expensive cologne.
Despite having a full day of work left, I stay still, longer than any other morning before.
He likes this. This.