LITMIR.BIZ

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how do you feel about what we did?”

      “I don’t know. If you’re asking me did I enjoy it, hell yes. If you’re asking did it make me feel like I was alive for the first time in quite a while, again yes. If you’re asking me am I proud of it, then no. If you’re asking if I’m ashamed of myself, I really don’t know.”

      “I guess I’m asking if it was worth it. I mean, was it worth risking losing your family.”

      “My daughter, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing is worth risking that. As for Elley, well, I think it’s only a matter of time. Maybe I’ve been in some kind of denial about that and meeting you was the catalyst I needed to finally accept the truth.”

      “Jack, what I really want to ask is...this might sound a little crazy...but when we were having sex, particularly the first time in the truck, did you feel like it was really you? Or did you feel like you were somebody else?”

      “I think I’m ready to be somebody else for a while, Dani. Being me isn’t exactly paying dividends.”

      He didn’t feel it, Dani thought, he didn’t feel that sense of wrongness. Maybe there was nothing to feel. She changed the subject then and started to tell him what she had learned from the folklore book, and Jack telling her the stunt that his boss was about to pull on their client. Then his intercom buzzed. “Uh oh, that’s trouble calling. Can you hold on a second?” Jack jabbed the intercom button and said, “Yeah, Yoli, what’s he want now?”

      “He’s still waiting for the Wood City pictures.”

      “Right. I’ll send them right now.” Hanging up on Yoli, he told Dani: “I have to go, but call me again, just make it on the cell, okay?”

      “And you have my number, right?”

      “It’s displayed, I’ll write it down. Bye, Dani.” Jack hung up, and after a brief but dangerous pang of loneliness, he pulled out his laptop out of its carrying case and powered it up, then went to his picture file. He found photos of a job site from the week before, an abandoned warehouse in Torrance, and there were a few personal shots he had taken of Robynn playing in the backyard, but the photos of Wood City were nowhere to be found. “Aw, no!” he cried, launching a general search through his entire system, which came up empty.

      How could this happen twice? There had to be a problem with the camera.

      Jack was about to call Yolanda, but decided that news like this might have to be delivered personally. Trying to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, he got up and walked to Broarty’s office, telling Yolanda on the way that he had to see him. Jack was told to wait, a move he interpreted as one of Broarty’s patented “power-pauses”—the attempt to put the other person on their guard by making them cool their heels before deigning to see or speak with them. But if it had been Broarty’s intention to put him in his place, this time it had backfired, because Jack used the next four minutes to formulate an idea, one that might solve several problems all at once.

      The intercom on Yolanda’s desk rang, and she picked it up, then announced that Jack could go in.

      “Pictures, Jack, pictures,” Broarty said as he entered the large corner office.

      “Marc, I don’t know what in hell I did,” Jack began, “but I can’t find any of the second group of pictures that I took of the place, either. The first ones I emailed to you from the motel, but those didn’t arrive, and then they disappeared. The new set I took have disappeared too. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with my machine.”

      “No pictures?”

      “Sorry, Marc, no pictures.”

      “That was money well spent, sending you up there,” Broarty sneered.

      “I know, and I’m sorry. But look at it this way: now you don’t have to Photoshop anything, because they don’t exist.”

      “You may have a point. But we have to tell Emac something.”

      “I know, so tell him the god’s honest truth, that I screwed the pooch on this one. Tell him I’m going right back up there to take more pictures. Maybe the lighting will be better this time. I’ll take two cameras, my digital and a camcorder, so that if anything goes wrong this time we’ve got a video backup.”

      “Great. Now tell me how I’m supposed to convince Emac to fund a return trip, because I’m not paying for it, Jack. This is not going to come out of our profit.”

      “I’ll pay for it myself.”

      “You will?”

      “I’m the one who screwed up here, so I’ll make good on it. I’ll leave as soon as I clear up a few things on my desk, and I can be up there by late afternoon. I’ll pay for the gas, the motel room, everything.”

      “Let me think about it.”

      “No time, Marc. If I’m going back I have to do it now. This is the only solution, as far as I can see. Even if you want to take me off the job, you’ve got to send someone up there, right? If you send someone else, it will cost you or Emac. If you take another chance on me, it’s at no cost to you. I’m on my own dime.”

      Marcus Broarty looked deep in thought, or as close as he could come, then said: “No, screw it.”

      Shit! “Marc, eventually we’ve got to show Resort Partners something, don’t we?”

      “Why offer proof the place is a wasteland? That is what you said, right? That there was nothing up there? By not having pictures we buy more time to figure out what to tell them later.”

      “Can I make a confession, Marc?” Jack asked. “I’ve been in kind of a bum mood lately.”

      “No shit.”

      “I don’t know whether you fall into bum moods or not, but sometimes you look at things and everything on the outside looks just as bad as they do on the inside. Maybe when I was looking around Wood City, I was seeing things through my bad mood, making everything look worse than it really was. Maybe I need to go back and look at the place again with fresh eyes. I think I owe it to the project to take a second look, don’t you?”

      “Frankly, Jack, it sounds to me like a waste of time.”

      Why was Broarty being so dismissive of the idea? It would not cost Crane Commercial Building Engineering a penny, and Jack’s time was not an issue, since Broarty had freed up his schedule so he could devote the entire week to Wood City. What difference could it possibly make to his boss if he went back up the coast? Surely Broarty could not detect the ulterior motive that Jack was harboring. He was not that insightful or clever. There had to be some other reason.

      Jack had one card left to play. “Okay, Marc, you’re in charge,” Jack said. “So I guess it’s up to you to call Emac and tell him that Crane is breaching its contract and that Resort Partners should find another firm.”

      “What the hell are you talking about?” Broarty shot back.

      “Well, look, what if Emac finds out that I was willing to bend over backwards to make up for an error in judgment and some slipshod follow-through, and you wouldn’t allow me to?”

      “You’re up to something.”

      Oh, if only you knew. “I just don’t like making mistakes, particularly big ones. It bothers me, so I try to do whatever I can to rectify the screw-ups. God’s honest truth.”

      After a moment of silence, Broarty said: “I’ll have to think about it. Now go away.”

      Jack left, his mind already made up. Broarty could think about it all he wanted. Jack would not be there to hear the decision. He would be home throwing some clothes into a suitcase, clothes for both him and Robynn. Then he’d call Nola and tell her that he would be taking Robynn on a trip and she would not be needed for several days—unexpected time off that she would likely find welcome—after which he would swing by Robynn’s kindergarten class

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