“And?” Rox asked.
“Top line revenue is just awful. Even considering we budgeted under. It’s bad.”
“That bad?”
“Bad.”
“How bad?”
“Rox, you know I can’t tell you.”
“Nondisclosure.”
This was Nichole’s excuse for everything. I signed a nondisclosure. Sorry, Rox, it’s not you, it’s the nondisclosure. I’d tell you who I went home with last night after the Khyber, but you know … nondisclosure. And it wasn’t just Nichole. It was the whole office. The whole city, for that matter.
Roxanne kept her focus on the road. Tried to keep her left wheels the exact same distance from the median marker. Tried not to lose it.
“But I can tell you,” Nichole said. “Without getting into numbers.”
“And?”
“We’re at least 850,000 below projections.”
Roxanne’s Chevy HHR glided down the Schuylkill Expressway. Couldn’t do that any other day of the week, save Sunday. She looked out on the hills of Manayunk, and it looked like the neighborhood was roasting alive in its own haze.
Frustrated as she was, Roxanne was glad to be in one air-conditioned environment and headed to another. Her apartment in Bryn Mawr didn’t have air. After a night of drinking with Amy, Nichole, and Ethan, she gladly took Nichole up on the offer of her couch. She showered and changed at Nichole’s, and was thankful for the AC. Roxanne had grown up in Vermont, where the humidity wasn’t often a factor.
How did Philadelphians live like this all summer long? Maybe that was their problem.
Her name was Nichole Wise …
… and she hated lying to Roxanne, feeding her that crap about “top line revenue.” If Roxanne had paid closer attention to things around the office, she might have seen through it.
But Nichole couldn’t let that bother her. If this morning went as expected, she could be looking at a promotion.
Something big was going down.
Murphy wouldn’t have called this Saturday-morning meeting otherwise.
She wondered if she’d have the chance to deliver a verbal coup de grâce and relish the expression on his stupid face.
You? he’d say, all shocked.
Yeah, she’d say. Me.
Maybe—just maybe—her long nightmare assignment would be over.
And if that were to happen, she’d bring Roxanne back with her.
The United States of America needed bright young women like Roxanne Kurtwood.
Her name was Amy Felton …
… and she wished she didn’t need this job so bad.
But she did, and would continue to do so, especially if she kept making stupid moves like last night—grabbing the check at the Continental, saying it was no problem, she had it covered. Nice one, Felton. Another $119 on the AmEx that didn’t need to be there. Wasn’t even as if she drank very much. Two Cosmos, nursed over a four-hour stretch.
But Nichole and Roxanne and Ethan … oh God, Ethan. He’d knocked back enough booze to curl a human liver.
Damn it, why did she pick up the check? Was she that eager to please people she didn’t particularly like?
Ethan not included.
Thing was, Amy knew she was screwed, because this was part of her job.
David had once told her: “You’ve got to be my public face. It’s not good for the boss to be palling around with his employees. But you can. You’re their upper management confidante. The one who has access to me, yet remains their friend. So keep them happy. Take them out for drinks.”
Sure, take them out for drinks. Pick up the check while you’re at it.
She wanted to ask: Why doesn’t the government pick up the check every now and again?
And this stuff about Amy being the “upper management confidante” was just an easy out for David. He didn’t like socializing with anyone below his rank. Amy was his second in command, and she hardly had any face time with him. It didn’t help that he’d been gone for sixteen days straight and didn’t tell her where. Covert government stuff. Blah, blah, blah. What David didn’t realize was that his impromptu vacations dealt serious blows to office morale. He’d returned this week, but the wisecracks and bitterness hadn’t gone away. Nobody liked the boss being away that long.
Especially in an office like this. Considering what they did.
And now this morning’s “managers’ meeting.” People were going to freak. Especially the people who hadn’t been invited.
David wouldn’t even tell her what it was about, other than it was a “new operation.”
As if what they did on a daily basis wasn’t important enough?
Just get through it, Felton.
On weekends—on scorching summer weekends, it seemed—the Market–Frankford El only ran every fifteen minutes. She made it to the platform to watch the air-conditioned cars of the 8:21 train pull away from the station. The sun was like a photographer’s flashbulb set on “stun.” No breeze to cool her down. Not even up here. Philadelphia was in the clutches of still another heat wave—seven straight days of hundred-plus temperatures. Such temperature spikes used to be unusual in the mid-Atlantic, but for the past four years, they’d become the norm.
At least she wasn’t hungover, which would have been intolerable in this heat.
She’d been afraid to drink too much.
Run the tab up too high.
His name was Ethan Goins …
… and his hangover wasn’t just a condition; it was a living creature, nestled within the meat of his brain, gnawing at the fat gray noodles, savoring them, and, as a cocktail, absorbing all available moisture from the rest of his body. The skin on his hands was so dry, you could fling him against a concrete wall, and—if Ethan’s palms happened to be facing out—he’d stick. His eyes needed to be plucked out of his sockets, dropped into a glass pitcher of ice water. Might hurt some, but he’d enjoy the soothing hissssss of hot versus cold.
Oh, Ethan knew better. Knew he had to report to David Murphy’s Big Bad Saturday-Morning Managers’ Meeting.
It was why he’d stayed up way too late last night, drinking those orange martinis with Amy.
Rebel Ethan Goins.
Stickin’ it to the Man, one French martini at a time.
They’d tasted like Tang. That was the problem. Sweet as a child’s breakfast drink. Now, as Ethan stuffed his throbbing, desiccated, burning, aching body inside an aluminum coffin manufactured by Honda, he knew he had only one chance.
McDonald’s drive-through.
Large Coke, plenty of ice, red-and-yellow pin-striped straw plunged down into the cup.
Egg McMuffin. With a slice of Canadian bacon wedged between the soft marble slab of egg and flour-flecked sides of a gently warmed English muffin.
Hash browns.
Three of them. In the little greasy paper bags. Spread across the passenger seat.
Where Amy Felton sat whenever they met to talk, unwind, stare at each other awkwardly … before he drove her home. Which was like returning a nun to her convent.
Sister Amy had been the architect of his misery this morning—Ms. “Oooh, let’s go out drinking after work.” Ethan never even heard of French martinis until Amy had pointed it out on the menu.
Yeah, she could deal with a greasy butt next time she sat in the car.
Come to think of it, maybe he’d buy four hash browns. Have one on hand, just in case. It was probably going to be a four–hash brown morning, all told.