The Frog Prince

Chapter Eighteen

C hapter E ighteen

I get home. Let the door swing shut. Allow my coat and keys to fall onto the couch while I slide down in my dark charcoal pants, onto the carpet next to the couch, until my head leans against the cushions.

I’m boneless, nerveless, gone .

How did this happen? Correction: I know how this happened; I feel it in my gut, hard and heavy as a rock—but how? How , as in, how can anyone be so malicious? So selfish? So frightened? So insecure? So cruel?

I want to cry; it’d be such a relief, but I can’t. The sick feeling in me is so strong, too strong, and it threatens to swallow me whole.

How could I have screwed up anything this bad? How could something good—an event for kids, troubled kids—be the right vehicle for getting back at me?

Why should the kids be hurt in all this?

How could whoever did this—Olivia, or Sara, or both of them—think anything has been achieved?

And will David believe me when I tell him this fiasco isn’t my fault? Will he listen when I point a finger in someone else’s direction?

I doubt it. I’m low man on the totem pole. Olivia represents power, success, clout. I’m… nothing.

I roll off the couch, grab my cell phone from my purse, and call Josh again. He answers this time.

“I was just about to call you,” he says. “What happened?”

I tell him in as few words as possible, and he’s silent a moment before exhaling in a low whoosh , “This is bad.”

“I know.”

“This is Kid Fest.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go to the office,” he says. “Check out your computer and files—”

“I don’t have access.”

“I do. I’ll come by and pick you up in thirty minutes.”

Inside the dark, cavernous loft of City Events, my cubicle looks very small, and Josh and I stand over my desk with just its individual desk light on, poring over my file fat with notes, contracts, and event details.

I rummage through the papers, and everything in the first contract looks fine—right date, right numbers, right event description—until I check the location for delivery. It’s been changed.

I look up at Josh, hand the paper to him. He takes it, scans it, hands it back to me, but I’m already on to another contract, and this one is altered, too, but the event date is different, postponed to June.

Another contract reads. “Canceled.”

Another one, for the caterer, is simply missing.

“Josh…” I open my mouth, close it. I don’t know what to say, and I glance down at the contract in my hand, read through the changes again. “I’m screwed.”

He’s silent a moment before he clicks off the light on my desk. “Just hope those photos the Chronicle took this morning don’t land on the front page.”

*

I don’t sleep at all that night, tossing and turning, praying and then fearing my cell phone will ring. If Olivia should call me back…

But she doesn’t call, even though I leave both phones on the nightstand next to my bed, and finally at four thirty I give up on sleep and climb out of bed, go for a very early morning run, and on the way back to my apartment I buy the Monday San Francisco Chronicle , leafing through the pages as I enter my front door.

And there it is. A photo and an article: “Kid Fest Travesty.” The story and picture isn’t on the front page.

But it does land on page three.

*

I’m in the office at ten after six, and Olivia is the first person I see. She’s tall, slim, still and watchful, and I’m reminded of a cobra before it strikes.

She’s going to strike. And it’s going to hurt. Worse than it’s already hurt.

I approach her. I have to force, the issue; I can’t wait anymore.

She watches me walk toward her, her gray-green eyes intense, speculative, dangerous.

But she preempts me by speaking first. “I wondered if you’d come today, Holly. After your fiasco yesterday.”

God, she’s good.

“I’ve had about fifty calls already,” she continues in the same brutal tone, words clipped, disgust dripping in the silences between. “You’ve screwed up bad, girl. I don’t think there’s any way I can save your skin this time.”

I burn on the inside, angry, so angry. I’m outraged that people like Olivia can behave the way. they do. “Of course you can’t save my skin if you’re too busy hacking it off.”

Her chin lifts. “What does that mean?”

“You know what it means. You’ve been out to get me ever since you discovered that I worked on the ball behind your back.”

“You admit it.”

“I admit it. And I don’t regret it, either.” I look her hard in the eye, unflinching now that it’s come to this. “I’d do it again if I could.”

“You sabotaged your own success. You could have been good—”

“No, I am good. Maybe in your eyes I may never be great, but I’ll leave greatness to those who need their egos stroked.”

“This isn’t about ego—”

“It’s only about ego.” I take a quick breath. “I just wish I’d understood this earlier. Might have saved us both a lot of wasted energy and time.”

“I did my part.”

“To destroy me.”

“You worked for me, Holly.”

“Wrong. I worked for City Events—”

“I hired you.”

“David owns the company, Olivia. Not you.”

“Then I guess it’s going to be David who fires you, isn’t it?”

*

David doesn’t arrive at the office until nine, and the mood at the office is deadly, the tension thick. Mondays are never cheerful days, but today is especially grim.

For nearly three hours I sit in my cubicle, ignoring the e-mails pouring into my in-box, e-mails from Josh, Tessa, other City Events staff. I can’t talk to anyone. I have to see David. I have to explain, and yet I know it’s going to be bad.

I close my Outlook Express and focus on gathering whatever evidence I can. I put all the Kid Fest contracts and documents into a folder, then remember my e-mails in my Sent box in Outlook that would prove I’d spoken with vendors, including my Friday noon e-mail from the Birch, which confirmed the Sunday morning details. I open Outlook again, click on my Sent folder, but it’s virtually empty. There are some e-mails in the folder, but nothing about Kid Fest.

I check my trash folder. Nothing there, either.

Olivia was damn thorough.

*

David finally arrives, and Olivia disappears straightaway into his office. I see her go in, watch his door close, and the moment the door is closed, Tessa marches from her office, storming toward me.

“I will kill her,” Tessa explodes, slapping her palm on my desk. Tessa’s tiny, but she’s wound tight, reminding me of a bomb about to detonate. “I’ll kill her .”

My eyes burn. “You don’t want to go to prison. You’re so cute. You’d be everybody’s girlfriend.”

Tessa, punk in hideous puke green and black, scowls at me. “She fucked you over, Holly.”

I glance up, see Sara standing not far from us. She looks like a hunted rabbit, all fear and trembling in her wide blue eyes.

And I know then that whatever happened here with my Kid Fest account, Sara was part of it.

Maybe Sara was my “assistant,” the one who made the calls.

My throat squeezes; my head’s throbbing. I turn my back on her. I’ve no proof, no facts, just a hunch. A suspicion.

I’m in trouble.

But I don’t tell Tessa that. Tessa’s too much of a hothead. “It’s going to be okay,” I say to Tessa instead. “Everything will be okay.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

Tessa returns to her desk.

*

Moments later David calls me into his office. Olivia’s still in there, too.

My stomach does a free fall as I enter David’s office. He gestures for me to close the door. I do. And then he asks me to sit, and I take the chair opposite Olivia’s, but I don’t look at her.

“You saw this,” he says, sliding the newspaper across his desk toward me. It’s today’s paper, open to page three and the big color photo of the crying little girl staring out.

“I did,” I say.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks—the same question everyone’s been asking, but in his voice there is weariness and resignation.

I hear rather than see Olivia shift. She’s waiting to attack, I think, waiting for me to show a chink in my armor and she’ll go in for the kill.

But there’s no point in blaming her. I’ve no hard proof that Olivia was behind this, and I’m not about to turn this office into some kind of turf war, even though I know Tessa would love to make this bigger, something personal, even political. It’s tempting, but it’s also emotional and irresponsible, and I can’t do that.

As Olivia said months ago, City Events isn’t a sorority. It’s a business. And I’m a professional, and professional enough to know that City Events’ success is built on Olivia’s talent and back. David may like me, but he needs Olivia.

“There was miscommunication,” I say at last.

“One hundred disadvantaged children were disappointed,” he answers.

“I’m sorry.”

“This landed on page three.”

I nod.

“We can’t get the media out for anything we do right, and the second there’s a fuckup, its front-page news.”

Yeah. With a nice big color photo, too.

“Holly, tell me how this could have happened.”

He’s pleading with me now, and I’ve never liked David Burkheimer more. He’s a good man—kind, fair, and his heart is in the right place. I like the fact that he loved his Tony so much, and yet I’m glad he’s got someone new. And I feel bad for David because I like him, and I know he liked me, and this whole thing is just shit.

“What did Olivia tell you?” I ask stiffly, shooting her a cold, hard glance.

“She said you were disorganized. That your files were missing contracts and many of your contracts were incomplete.”

What a piece of work she is , I think. “It’s not true,” I say.

“She made copies of your files.” David lifts a stack of papers. “They’re here. I’ve seen them, Holly.”

“I’ve seen them, too, and they weren’t like that when I left here Friday with Josh and Tessa.”

“Then how did this happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Serious mistakes were made,” he adds.

“I know. But they weren’t mine.”

“Then whose are they?”

I can practically feel Olivia’s smile. She’s sitting with one leg crossed above the other, an arm casually flung over the back of her chair. She’s a queen, and I’m just some palace flunky.

I count to five, trying to keep my cool. “I don’t know.”

“It was your event.”

“Yes.”

“Our donors and sponsors lost thousands and thousands of dollars.”

I nod.

“They want answers.”

I nod again.

“I have to take action,” he concludes.

I knew we’d get to this part, but it hurts anyway. I hold my breath, waiting a moment for the stab of regret to fade.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m going and Olivia remains, sitting pretty. I’ve worked hard here in the past year, but I did cross party lines. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been warned, either. Plenty of people cautioned me—Sara, Josh, Tessa, Brian, and Olivia herself all told me to be careful, to be smart, to think things through. Why didn’t I listen?

Because I wasn’t afraid.

Because I believe in doing what is fair, even if it isn’t always “right.”

“I have to take action,” David repeats, and his dark gaze holds mine. “Olivia and I’ve discussed this.”

He stops talking, and it’s now quiet in his office, and the three of us sit there, but I look only at David. And David’s expression has grown increasingly grave.

I know what’s coming. He’s going to fire me. And I’m angry, but I also understand. He’s doing what he has to do. I’m just one of seventeen employees. He has the whole company to think about. City Events’ reputation. The staff salaries. The company morale.

David clears his voice, and when he speaks again, his voice is gruff. “Holly, I regret that I must terminate your employment with City Events. Due to the nature of your termination, I must ask you to clear out your desk and hand over your accounts and files to Olivia today.”

The stiff formality of his words belies the sympathy in his eyes.

For a moment I do nothing but nod my head, and then, as silence stretches, I force myself to my feet, everything in slow, awkward motion, and I extend my hand.

He takes it, fingers closing around mine. “Good luck, Holly.”

I can’t speak for a moment. My chest is hot. It burns. I blink. “Thank you, David.”

*

I look at no one as I pack up my desk. It doesn’t take long, since I’ve very few personal things at work. Olivia never permitted personal clutter, and it’s really just a matter of taking the Certs and keys, change and odd business cards I’ve collected, and stuffing them into my purse.

I refuse to make eye contact with Josh as I walk out. I nod to the receptionist, take the elevator down, and head toward Market.

This morning I took a cab to work, but I take a bus home. There’s no reason to hurry now. Nothing to do.

It’s the middle of the morning, not yet ten thirty, and the bus isn’t even a quarter full. The bus stops, and no one gets on or off, and I watch the city pass by, beautiful in the crisp yellow morning light, the sky overhead an endless French blue.

The snorts and squeals of the bus are a strange melody as I head toward my part of town, the little city within the city that’s become home.

I’m going to miss City Events. I really liked working there, and even though there were games and stresses, I learned a lot. I made new, true friends. I discovered I can handle pressure and juggle multiple accounts. I realized that Jean-Marc wasn’t the be-all and end-all, that life continues even after heartbreak and failure, and it’ll continue now. I might feel horrible (and I do; I’m about as low as I could imagine being… rejected and cast out), but I’m not alone or lonely.

I forget who said it to me, but all things end. Yet endings are also beginnings, and someday I’ll look back and see this as the beginning of something new. Something good.

I don’t feel good, and as I climb off the bus, I feel as if a thousand pounds rested on my chest. I breathe in little gasps, because if I breathe too deep, it hurts far worse.

Don’t think about feelings, I tell myself, turning the corner to my street. Think about goals, action, plans. Think about what needs to be accomplished, not what’s happened. The past is the past. I can only go forward.

Again.

Change is inevitable. Change is essential. Change—

“What are you doing home, Holly?”

Cindy.

She’s in the driveway, loading some kind of athletic gear into her trunk, and even in her cropped khakis and fitted white Gap T-shirt and her baby blue Skechers she looks taut, polished, honed. Maybe it’s her smooth, glossy hair, her pale olive complexion, or the snapping glints in her eyes, but she’s always on the money. Tough. Incisive.

And I know I will never be this way. Ever. It’s not bad. It’s just not me.

I know this. I will always give others the benefit of the doubt. Approach with high hopes and expectations. Trust because trust is better than mistrust. And maybe it’s naive, but I learned to be open and kind and friendly in my small town in Central California, where the Marshes and the Parkers and the Bothofs treated everyone well. Visalia was where you could buy seventy-five-cent hot dogs and twenty-five-cent strawberry sodas at Taylor’s Hot Dog Stand, and your bearded pediatrician, Dr. Castiglione, made you feel as though you were the only patient in the world.

I will always be grateful for the lessons learned in places that are small and friendly, kind and unpretentious. I may have missed out on the glamour lessons, the sophisticated shops, and the distinctions between designer shoes, but I got other things, like how to distinguish orchards, drive in the tule fog, and enjoy the sweetest smell in the world: the scent of orange blossoms on a hot, dry summer night.

No one in a city can know that smell.

No one from a city can know the dust and boots, the jocks and the rebels, and the hundreds of kids with big-city dreams.

“I got fired,” I say calmly.

“Are you going to be able to pay your rent?”

“Hopefully.” And with a nod, I jog up the stairs to the apartment I never really could afford anyway.

*

I’ve been home barely twenty minutes when the phone rings. It’s Tessa. “What the hell did you do?” She’s swearing, cursing, a gibberish of angry words. “You are such a dumb-ass,” she rages. “Jesus, Holly. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Why cut your own throat? Why be a freaking martyr?”

“I’m not—”

“You damn well are.” She takes a short breath, a swift intake that sounds almost like a sniffle. “Don’t be a dumb-ass anymore.”

Is Tessa crying ? “I’m okay, Tessa—”

“The fuck you are.” She sniffs, pauses, then clears her throat. “Jesus.” She takes another breath. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything? When things are hard, you don’t quit—”

“Right.”

“And when things get bad, you don’t lay down and die.”

“I know. But, Tessa, I don’t have any proof, and I don’t even know for sure what happened.”

“Bull. You know, I know—everyone knows: Olivia shafted you.”

And I do know. But I also know that David needs Olivia in the San Francisco office. She brings in big business, high-profile clients, and represents a significant amount of the company’s revenue.

“Tell David the truth.” Tessa isn’t done, hasn’t given up. “Tell him you helped with the ball, got the article written. Tell him how this feud between you and Olivia started—”

“I can’t. But I’m not done yet, Tessa. I’m going to fix this Kid Fest thing. I’ve got to.”

She exhales softly. “Let me know how I can help.”