Spin (18 page)

~ Jane ~

THE WORK WEEK dawned hot and bright, perfect weather
to wrangle a caterer, find music, hire help, and get my body handed
back to me on a platter by Finn every night.

I never spent another night in the hotel
room, but I had it, reserved in my name, a testament to my
self-reliance and power, and that had to count for something more
than just a significantly larger bill at checkout.

Right?

Under everything I did was Finn. Stressors
on top, Finn underneath, so I felt like I was riding above it all.
It made me feel kind of drugged, in a good way, but that was
probably not a good thing in an event planner. Still, I couldn’t
help noticing that in dealing with the sometimes less-than-amiable
conflicts between Katie the Caterer and Mrs. Lovey, I was a lot
less…noisy. Perky.

Annoying. I was a lot less annoying.

And the problems got solved anyhow.
Shocking.

I had a sort of I-can-handle-that glow.
Moreover, an Even-if-I can’t-it’ll-be-okay,
because-I’m-going-to-be-with-Finn-tonight kind of glow.

Calm and upended, that’s what Finn did to
me.

Apparently my relaxed, postcoital, drugged
state was enough of a concern that Mrs. Lovey asked several times
if the heat was too much and ought she turn up the
air-conditioning? I smiled and said no.

Then she asked if I was pregnant.

That knocked me out of my dreamy state. I
immediately got more perky and uptight, and she stopped eyeing me
with that suspicious, concerned look. Understandable. No one wants
their event planner to lose her maniacal edge two weeks before
their big event.

And when she saw I was still in the game,
she brought up DC, and Mr. Peter J.’s multinational corporation and
its various, far-flung event-planning needs. Turns out he was part
of a lobbying group too, so there’d be Congressional events as
well.

I felt a little dizzy. As long as I stayed
sufficiently perky and uptight, here it was, my ticket. I was going
to make it.

I handled shit that week. A lot of shit. I
handled the shit out of shit that week. Katie the Caterer was
amazing and knew it, therefore, she knew she didn’t have to take
all these hassles with the Peter J.’s. Which was true. I convinced
her to. I don’t know how; I offered nothing but a heartfelt plea.
No promises, no lies, not even one of my special drinks. And
somehow, it worked.

Katie was a good woman.

I managed landscapers, an ice sculptor, two
of Olivia’s small and ineffectual moral stands, and one extremely
randy valet company owner, whose valets, I’d heard, were also a
pretty randy bunch.

I briefly but earnestly considered starting
an all-girls’ valet service.

I hired two night-of staff members, based
upon the recommendations of Katie. I met with them. They seemed
responsible and unflappable, two essential traits in event help. I
eyed them suspiciously while we talked, tossing in a string of non
sequiturs, at one point gestured over their heads and said, “What,
wait, is that…?
A UFO?
”

They looked, sure, who wouldn’t? But neither
of them so much as blinked.

I am not a fan of blinking. I hired them on
the spot.

My assistant, Savannah, was taking care of
our other, less map-y clients. We had alternate-day video calls set
up to help manage this. I handled them on my laptop at the hotel,
because it had wifi, unlike Finn’s place. Initially, the lack of
wifi had been a concern. A big one.

It stopped being one after I tallied up our
time together and realized we were mostly having sex or cooking or
watching raptors soar overhead or stars falling out of the sky. Any
of those was better than what I’d found online.

After a couple of days, the spotty phone
reception stopped bothering me too.

Still, I couldn’t drop out of the world
entirely. Our summer-event season was hard in progress, and while
this week was not too busy, all the weeks to come were. Savannah
and I talked every other day, just to stay on top of the
ever-morphing piles of to-do’s and near misses.

I loved the near misses and to-do’s.

Today we covered the basics, including what
things I needed from home for the Sandler-Rosses’ event, including
our favorite flair bartender, David, who we loved with a passion.
Enough to ship out for the event. He cost dearly—we made sure of
that—but Mrs. Lovey wanted “wow,” and of everyone, Lovey knew you
had to pay for “wow.” It was one of her most endearing traits.

Savannah and I were barely halfway through
our mountain of last-minute items, running through them one by one.
It’s not that Savannah couldn’t manage them. She could. In fact,
she’d asked to. You might say she’d
begged
to. I just liked
to, you know, be in complete control of everything.

“So, the Jaspers were okay with the date
change?” I asked, ticking things off a paper tally list and then on
my computer too. If only I had a holographic calendar, I could
project it everywhere I went, viewing people through small square
boxes and checking them off when I was done with them and their
issues.

It sounded sort of horrible, if you thought
about it. So I didn’t.

The things you don’t think about define
you.

I didn’t think about that either.

“Yes, Jane,” Savannah drawled in her
Savannah way. “The Jaspers are good.”

“And you know to keep the
ex-
Mrs.
Jasper away from the
current
Mrs. Jasper, or there’s going
to be trouble in the sandbox.”

“I know.”

I shifted my attention to a color sample
Savannah had emailed over. “And they’re sure they want the royal
blue this time? Not the peacock? Or the pea green?” Or any of the
other three colors they’d previously selected and discarded for the
table runners.

“That’s what they say.”

“Pin them down,” I said. “On paper. With an
actual pin if you have to.”

Savannah laughed, and we moved on.

“And Missy Forner knows the dress order was
pushed back two weeks because of the size change? And that’s a rush
job, so she’s just going to have to hunker down and chew nails or
something while she waits. Why don’t you teach her some breathing
exercises?” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm for teaching
this spoiled bride-to-be how to calm the hell down so everyone else
could do everything for her. “I’ll find some websites and send them
over.” I filled it in both calendars with the to-do. “And tell her
I’ll go pick the dress up myself if I have to and pin it on her
skinny butt, but she needs to stay calm, because I will not let her
burn you out.”

Savannah nodded. “I’ve got the breathing
exercises, Mac. And she can’t burn me out. I’m a superstar.”

I smiled, but it didn’t spread to anywhere.
The weight of the minutia could get to a girl if she let it.

I looked at Savannah’s clear-complexioned
brown face in my computer screen. “You know we’re babysitters,
right?” I told her glumly. “Just a couple of babysitters.”

She nodded. “You got that right. A couple of
high-paid babysitters who banked six figures last year.”

I laughed and shrugged off my odd mood just
as a knock sounded at the door. Either Finn was early or I was
late. I glanced at the clock. I was late.

Damn. I’d wanted to avoid this, my
clue-sniffing assistant being presented with evidence of the man I
was having wild monkey sex with. It could only lead to trouble. For
me.

I excused myself and opened the door with an
index finger pressed to my lips. Finn stood there, looking way more
dressed up than usual, with his face shaved close and a white
button-down shirt and real, honest-to-God slacks. He looked good.
Real good.

He leaned in and kissed the finger I had
across my lips, then shut the door quietly after him.

I sat back down at the computer. “Well, I
guess we’re all done then,” I said in a bright, casual voice.

“Done?” Savannah’s eyes narrowed. “Done?
You’re done now? Who was that at the door?”

I had every intention of saying
no
one
. I opened my mouth to say
no one
. But I was looking
at Finn and his blue eyes, and apparently I couldn’t lie when I was
looking at his stupid blue eyes, so instead I said, “An old
friend.”

Savannah’s radar snapped on. “You met an old
friend way out there? Jeez, what are the odds?”

“I know,” I said quietly. “It’s like
magic.”

Nothing got by Savannah. A thousand miles
away, she sat up straight. “Magic?”

“No!” I said, snapping straighter too. “No,
not
magic
magic, just…you know, unexpected.”

“Mm-hmm. Girl, you better tell me
everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I insisted,
glancing at Finn, who was leaning his perfect ass back against the
desk. Grinning. I looked back at the screen. “Nothing at all.”

Savannah shook her head. “Oh, there’s
something.”

“Nothing.”

“Lots.”

“Nope.”

“Is he good in bed?”

I grabbed the sides of my laptop and leaned
in real close to hiss at the screen, “Savannah, so help me God, I
will get in my car
right now
and drive home and hunt you
down with my shotgun.”

Her smiling face beamed at me. “So he’s
really good?”

I almost sobbed. “He’s
right
here
.”

Her face got real bright, manically bright,
and she sang out, “Hello, Old Friend.”

I covered my eyes. Finn came and stood
behind me, bending down to the screen. “Hey there,” he said, in his
low, calm,
all-I-have-to-do-is-talk-this-way-and-you’ll-have-to-fuck-me
voice.

Savannah’s grin got stupid. I knew because I
was peeking out from between my fingers. “My name’s Savannah,
honey, and I work with Jane, but I guess you already knew
that.”

“Pleased to meet you, Savannah. I’m Finn,
and I sleep with Jane, but I guess you already knew that.”

I groaned and my forehead thunked onto the
desk.

Savannah draped herself over her keyboard to
get closer. “Finn? Finn
Dante
?”

“Noooo,” I said miserably.

Finn said, “You’ve heard of me?”

Savannah said, “Honey, Jane told me a story
about you that—”

I slammed the laptop shut. The room got
quiet. I kept my forehead down on the desk. My hot breaths filled
the little cocoon of space, smelling of varnish and fake wood. “Can
we not talk about this?” I mumbled.

“Sure. Want to just forget it ever
happened?” This would never, ever be forgotten.

I lifted my head. “Okay, fine. I told one
story about you. One.” I spun the chair and looked up at him.

His grin was beautiful and awful to see.
“Which one?”

“The one about when your pants fell down on
the playground in first grade.” I pushed past him and marched into
the bathroom. Because I had a lot of stuff to do in here. Like
stare at myself in the mirror.

His laughter followed me in. “Yeah, you’ve
always liked my ass.”

“I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t
stop laughing.”

I stood there like an idiot, gazing at the
shower curtain and toilet and packaged hotel accessories. All my
stuff had been moved to Finn’s piece by piece, until nothing was
left of me here.

He finally stopped laughing, and I marched
back out. As we left, I looked around for anything I’d left behind
or might need between today and my next check-in. I scanned the
immaculate, fashionable, generic hotel room. It looked a lot like
home. Beautiful, glossy, barren.

There was nothing I needed here.

I shut the door behind us, planning to be
back in a day or so.

But of course, my life was cast in voodoo
now, so nothing went as planned.

~ Jane ~

THE REST OF the week passed about how you’d expect a
hot summer week on the eve of a major family event without access
to a beach to pass—full of sweat, irritation, short-tempered
people, and constant negotiations. To the good, Mr. Sandler-Ross
was away for most of those hot days, back in DC, so I didn’t have
to worry about Finn showing up intermittently to stare him
down.

Lovey had no problem with Finn’s presence,
though, because he did done work for her every time he came,
including figuring out the circuit breaker, even though he didn’t
do circuit breakers, so everyone was happy. Especially me. Very,
very happy.

This was clearly a problem. I wasn’t built
for happiness. I was built for chaos and tension. So I was totally
off my game. My watch-out game. My self-protect game. My
trouble’s-coming game. All my shitstorm radars were turned off.

And of course, that’s when the storm
hit.

Thursday morning started out pleasant
enough, arguing with Mrs. Lovey about alcoholic beverages in her
kitchen.