8. Cali
CALI
When the epiphany comes, it comes all at once.
I've been chewing on the how for days. There are so many options, and every time I close my eyes, I think of another one.
Like, how much could it possibly cost to rent the giant LCD screen in Times Square?
TODD brADSHAW IS A DIRTY CHEATER would look pretty good in ten-foot-high digital letters, right?
But even though I dream up a thousand and one new ideas, each one perfectly good, they're all wrong in the same way.
They happen to Todd. He's the object. He receives it.
But Todd's whole life is built on being the subject. The guy with the strong handshake and the big swinging dick. The high school football stud, the frat star, the rising young Wall Street hotshot. He's made a life out of strutting into rooms and expecting them to rearrange themselves around him.
So I don't want to simply do something to him.
I want him to walk into a room of his own free will, chest out, ready to be the big hero he thinks he is…
… only to discover that the room was built for the express purpose of destroying him.
And as I slip back into my house late on Saturday night, still buzzing from the martini and the hair-raising conversation with the man at the bar, I realize I know exactly how to make that happen.
But it's gonna require a favor.
The email I send to Emmett Glover is a masterpiece of contrition.
Mr. Glover,
I owe you an apology and an explanation, in that order.
I bailed on our Phoenix coffee for what I called a family emergency.
It was. It still is. But I've spent the last three weeks turning that emergency into the single best demonstration my company has ever produced, and I'd very much like half an hour of your time to show you what real-world stress testing did to our predictive engine.
I think you'll find it was worth the wait.
Best,
Calista Bradshaw
I hit send before I can second-guess it, and then I go upstairs and make the bed. I tuck the hospital corners in savagely, crisp and sharp as a chef's knife, and set the lemon pillow front and center where it belongs.
This is my bed again.
I'm reclaiming my life.
One throw pillow at a time.
Mr. Glover replies in forty minutes.
Ms. Bradshaw—I generally don't reward flakiness. But you've piqued my attention. I'll actually be landing NYC on Tuesday. My assistant will find time for us to get together.
I could cry tears of joy. But I haven't landed this plane yet. I need one more thing from him, and it's going to be a very tricky tightrope to walk down.
Wonderful!
I do have one ask, and bear with me: It's an unusual one.
I'd like to pitch at Whitmore Stearns, in their offices.
I know that's a little forward, but I have reason to believe that they'll be interested.
One of my product's killer use cases is financial fraud, so where better to prove the value of that than at a bank?
I believe Whitmore Stearns has done deals with your firm before, so I'm sure they'd be happy to host us in a room if you were to ask.
I conveniently neglect to mention that my husband is a managing director at Whitmore Stearns or that "their" interest will really be more like "his" interest. I have no reason to believe that Emmett has any idea who Todd is, anyway, so I feel like it's a safe risk to take.
Glover writes back instantly with a single line: You're more interesting than your no-show suggested. I'll make the call. Tuesday, 11 a.m.
Eleven A.M.
Can this really be happening? It's like the universe is giving my plan its blessing. All the stars aligning, a chorus of angels paving the way to my revenge.
Because Tuesday is a therapy day. Well, "therapy," scare quotes very much needed.
And on therapy Tuesdays, between roughly nine and ten-thirty, my husband will be in a leased Murray Hill bolt-hole with my best friend, desecrating our marriage.
Then he'll get dressed in a hurry, splash some water on his face, and head back downtown to the office, smelling like a department store perfume counter and the plasticky stench of condoms. Or so I presume.
When he gets back to Whitmore Stearns, he's going to get blindsided in a way he will never, ever see coming.
I don't feel joy, though. Or thrill, or bloodlust, or schadenfreude, whatever that word even means.
I just feel this restful calm.
Again and again, the same sentence flows through my head.
It's almost time.
Tuesday arrives.
Todd is up before me, which never happens. I lie still and listen to him move through, the rustle of his slacks, the metallic zip of his garment bag. He's humming a little tuneless thing under his breath, the sound of a man who thinks his whole life is about to break wide open in his favor.
He has no idea how right he is.
Just not in the way he imagines.
"You're up early," I murmur, voice rough with fake sleep.
"Ah, just woke up full of pep," he says as he knots his tie in front of the mirror. "I've always loved Tuesdays."
"Mm. I bet you have."
"Huh?"
"Nothing, sweetheart."
He grunts and folds down his flipped-up collar. "Don't wait on me for dinner. Could be a late one."
"Mm. Okay." I roll over and pull the duvet up to my chin like the very picture of a wife with nothing on her mind but a snooze button.
He grabs his keys, his coffee, his sense of cosmic entitlement, and heads for the stairs. I let him get three steps down before I call out, light and easy, "Oh—I've got therapy this morning. Won't be home 'til after lunch."
His footsteps pause. Then, from the stairwell, warm and pleased: "Oh, good. That's good. That's… that's great."
I almost laugh into my pillow. The front door slams shut. I count to thirty.
Then I get up.
I shower and blow-dry my hair, then I get dressed. First, I put on the black lace. It's the same frilly little set I wore to the convention in Phoenix, the one I ripped off myself the night it all went wrong.
Then the dress I bought at the boutique over the weekend. It looks even more dangerous in the morning light.
Over it goes a sharp charcoal blazer, because I am, after all, a serious businesswoman pitching to serious money in a serious bank. It's best to look the part.
I wear sensible gold jewelry and two-inch heels, with a light nude lip stain to complete the look and a dark, thick mascara to encourage the men in the room to look at my eyes instead of my cleavage—although, knowing Todd's coworkers, that's probably a losing battle.
When I'm fully assembled, I check myself in the mirror one last time. The woman looking back at me is calm, gleaming, and absolutely lethal.
It's almost time.
I take the subway downtown. I'd normally just drive, but right now, I want my hands free and my head clear.
Whitmore Stearns occupies floors thirty through forty-four of a glass tower that looks like a knife somebody stood on its end.
I've been here before plenty of times—holiday parties, happy hours, Todd's various promotion ceremonies.
But I'm not the same old me walking through these doors.
I've shed that old Cali like a snakeskin.
Glover meets me at the elevator bank on thirty-eight.
He's smaller than I remember, compact and silver-templed, with the restless eyes of a man who's already three meetings ahead of the one he's in. He shakes my hand and grins.
"Whitmore Stearns rolled out the carpet," he says, jumping right into the business. "They love the idea of running fraud detection in-house. They're sending their tech people and a couple MDs."
"How many MDs?" I ask, as casually as I can.
"Couple. Whoever was free." He frowns. "Why?"
"No real reason. The more eyes, the better."
He gives me a look I can't decipher, then shrugs and gestures down the hall toward a glass-walled conference room. Whitmore Stearns is etched into the doors in frosted serif. Through the glass, I can see a long table, screens on the walls, the back of a few heads in expensive suits.
None of them are Todd's head.
Not yet.
My stomach does the elevator-cable thing, the same drop I felt at the lounge, except this time it isn't a man causing it.
And I'm not the one who's about to fall.
With a deep breath, I enter the room ahead of Emmett. He introduces me to the men in the room, none of whom I've met before, thank God, because that would've thrown off this whole plan.
It's one eventful hello-and-handshake after another, though.
Once I've made the rounds, a junior banker steps up and offers to help me get my laptop connected to the big screen so I can play my slides while I present.
I follow him and stand off to the side while he fishes out an HDMI cable and jimmies it into the port on my computer.
Watching him gives me an excuse to keep my head down, my hair falling forward like a curtain that hides my face.
That's when I hear it.
"You tell Todd you were in town, Emmett?" one of the suits asks. "He'd want to be in on this. Fraud's right up his alley."
I keep my eyes on the screen. My cursor finds the file. I open it with the steadiest hand in Manhattan.
"No," Emmett says, distracted, scrolling something on his phone. "Didn't realize you two ran in the same verticals."
"Eh, you know how it is. Small world." The speaker turns in his squeaky chair and orders someone, "Hey, Jack—go grab Todd Bradshaw off the floor. Tell him to get up here."
"On it, sir."
Footsteps thump away. The door swings open, swings closed.
I press my lips together hard, because if I don't, I'll smile, and a smile right now would ruin everything.
It's happening.
It's actually happening.
Just like I planned.
It's.
Almost.
Time.
At 11:03, the glass door opens.
He comes in mid-sentence, already smiling that big, unbothered, It's My World and You're All Just Living In It smile.
"Emmett, you old dog, nobody told me you were—"
And then he sees me.
I've imagined this face for weeks. I have lain awake in the guest room sketching it in my mind. And despite all those many hours of picturing how it might go, the lived reality is better than anything my imagination could draft.