“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the seatbelt sign, so you’re free to move about the cabin. However, when you are in your seat, we’d like it if you could keep your seatbelts on. The captain has also indicated that you may use all approved electronic devices, such as laptops...”
Trisha already had her tray table down, her Dell out of its case and booting up before the flight attendant had gotten past the first sentence of her announcement. She called up the file marked MM/ZIPS/H.1 Six months earlier Paisley Shutter had been retained by Mega-Mart, Inc., one of the world’s largest big box retailers, to look into the feasibility of acquiring PriceStar, Inc. PriceStar was an undercapitalized, debt-heavy, second-rung player in retail space, but the one big asset it possessed was its offshore textile plants. Their profit margin on their in-house clothing lines was the envy of the industry. And now that takeover talks had progressed from flirtation to third base, Trisha was going down to Honduras to make sure all the numbers that her team had given her checked out.
She owed due diligence not only to Mega-Mart, but to herself. Partnerships at Paisley Shutter didn’t get handed out like Halloween candy, and especially not to women. In fact, Trisha Tanglewood was the first woman under the age of forty to have even sniffed a partnership. Some of her male colleagues had warned her off making the trip at all. They were full of sage advice and playful chiding, but she understood the old-boy code better than they suspected. Her taking this trip not only made her look good, it made them look bad — worse than bad, lazy. Like her dad used to say, “If the crows’re gonna caw anyhow, you might as well give ’em a reason.” Fuck ’em! was the way they said it on the Street.
“Christ, how do you deal with all those figures?” Pete spoke up, peering at her screen. “Gimme anything more than three digits either side of the decimal point and I’m befuddled.”
Reflexively, Trisha slammed her laptop closed. She did it with such force that passengers from surrounding rows snapped their heads about to see what had happened.
“Whoa — sorry about that,” Pete said. “I didn’t mean to peek.”
“It’s okay,” she lied.
“No, it’s not. It was rude, and my momma schooled me better than that.” He pressed the call button.
Trisha didn’t know what to think but said nothing.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Pete said when the flight attendant arrived, “but is there an empty seat somewhere? The lady wants to do her work and I’m afraid I’m disturbing her.”
“That’s not necessary,” Trisha said. “I’m fine.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” said the flight attendant, “because we’re out of empty seats. Will there be anything else?... No? Enjoy the rest of your flight.”
There was a moment of awkward silence before Pete stood up and moved to the front of the cabin. Trisha’s face burned. She felt like an idiot, but what could you do — paranoia was standard equipment in her line of work, like a cell phone or a BlackBerry. How many deals had been poached by someone shoulder surfing at a Starbucks? How many times had she done it herself? Mistrust came with the territory.
Jesus Christ, Trisha wondered, what had happened to her? Where was the girl who’d won those blue ribbons for her trick riding back home in Wyoming? She stared out at the stars and thought of her father, and of Dancer. They once the two most important things in her world. Dancer was a roan, and to Trisha, the most graceful animal on God’s earth. She had been too young to remember her mother’s death, and Dancer’s was her first encounter with grief. Now everyone who mattered was gone. Suddenly there was little solace in her new title, and little protection in her paranoia.
“I hope you’ll accept this in the spirit of reconciliation,” Pete said, catching her off guard once again. He carried two plastic glasses filled with champagne.
“Where did you—”
“Ssshhhh!” He winked, sitting back down. “It’s a secret.”
“But how?”
“I make this flight twice a month, usually up front. Let’s just say the flight attendants and I have an understanding. Cheers.”
They drank and Trisha found her face forming a smile. It was an unfamiliar feeling.
“I’m sorry for overreacting,” she said. “Paranoia’s an occupational hazard.”
“The fault was mine, but no more apologizing. Deal?”
“Deal.”
They shook on it. Trisha held onto his hand a little longer this time. This silly encounter was the first relief she’d had in months. She even felt a bit of a buzz. This man had that rare quality of both relaxing and exciting her.
“What do you do that you’re down here twice a month?”
“I’m sort of in HR.”
“Human resources? Who with?”
“I’m on my own, really — a consultant.”
“A headhunter?”
“Sort of. It’s a little more complicated.”
“Interesting?”
“Challenging, more like. Now, what about you — you do lot of business travel as part of your mysterious banking business?”
Trisha laughed. “No mystery — just visiting clients. And, yes, I travel a lot, though not to Latin America before.”
“You like it — the travel part, I mean?”
It was a simple question — a throwaway question from one stranger to another, to be answered without thinking — but it brought Trisha up short. New York, Seattle, Toulouse, Tegucigalpa — they were, she now realized, all the same to her. One airport, one Town Car, one conference room, identical to all the rest, and how different really was her apartment from a hotel room? Did she mind the travel? What the hell else was she going to do with her life? What else was there to it? It took her nearly a minute to answer.
“I don’t... It’s... it’s part of the job,” she said finally. Just a few words, but she felt as if she’d said too much. She wanted to look away, but those speckled blue eyes held her
Dutton nodded. “It wears on you after a while, though, doesn’t it? The strange food, the strange smells, the money, the language — everything’s an effort. And there’s always something to look out for. The water, local customs, the neighborhood you’re in — you’re always on your guard, and especially down here. You can never just relax. You can never rest.”
Trisha Tanglewood felt her throat close up and her eyes start to burn, and she managed to wrench her gaze from Dutton’s to the inside of her champagne glass. She took a sip, and then a full swallow. Dutton put a hand on her arm, and she flinched.
“You all right, Trisha?” His voice was a comforting rumble. “I didn’t put my foot in it again, did I? You looked so sad for a minute there — homesick almost.”
His eyes found Trisha’s again, and she felt utterly exposed. Homesick? Didn’t you need a home for that? For Trisha, home was where the money was — Hong Kong, Tokyo, the fifth circle of Hell, wherever — it washed around the world, and she followed in its wake. Suddenly her life in New York seemed so empty and insubstantial — all her acquaintances spectral and hollow and half a step from spinning into space. Certainly the men she saw were no anchors — their main concerns had to do with finding the hippest new proxies for the size of their dicks. She was sick to death of their finest this and most exclusive that, and she swore sometimes, if she heard another word about the hottest new anything, she’d scream.