Strictly Unprofessional

Chapter Four

VIVIENNE

Her parents lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn that smelled like garlic and old books and the particular brand of chaos that came from two people who had been happily married for thirty years and had absolutely no plans to calm down about it.

Viv let herself in at 7:43 p.m.

"She's here!" her mother announced, to no one and everyone, from somewhere inside the kitchen.

"I can see that, Elena," her father said from the living room armchair without looking up from his book. "She has a key. She lets herself in every Tuesday."

"Patrick. We are welcoming our daughter."

"We are also in the middle of a sentence."

Viv dropped her bag by the door, kicked off her heels, and felt approximately forty percent of her day leave her body.

This was what her parents did. They bickered in complete sentences with full punctuation and somehow it was the most comforting sound she knew. She had grown up to the soundtrack of two people who genuinely liked each other arguing about everything from grocery lists to geopolitics, and she had never once doubted that the foundation under all of it was completely solid.

She wanted that. Quietly. In the part of herself she didn't examine too closely.

She went into the kitchen and let her mother fold her into a hug that smelled like rosemary.

"You look tired," Elena Calloway said, pulling back to inspect her daughter with the clinical accuracy of a woman who had been reading Viv's face for twenty-seven years.

"I'm fine."

"You have your fine face on. Your fine face and your actual fine face are completely different and I have the photographs to prove it." Her mother turned back to the stove. "Sit. Eat. Tell me about your day."

"My day was normal."

"Damien texted me."

Viv stopped pulling out a barstool. "He texted you."

"He said, and I am quoting directly," Elena picked up her phone from the counter, "that you had, quote, a development, and that you were in denial about it, and that I should ask you about the red lipstick."

"I'm going to have him relocated."

"To where?"

"Somewhere without cell service."

Her mother set a bowl of pasta in front of her and sat on the opposite barstool with the focused attention of a woman who had cleared her schedule. Behind them, Patrick appeared in the kitchen doorway, book still in hand, and leaned against the frame in the way that meant he was listening but maintaining deniability.

"The lipstick," Elena said.

Viv ate a forkful of pasta. It was very good. Her mother cooked the way she did everything, with absolute commitment and a refusal to follow the recipe exactly.

"It's nothing," Viv said.

"Damien said it's your boss."

"Damien should be legally barred from communication."

"Viv."

She set her fork down. Her mother was looking at her with that particular expression, soft and direct at the same time, the one that had never once in twenty-seven years failed to extract the truth from her.

"He noticed something," Viv said. "That's all. It doesn't mean anything."

"What did he notice?"

"That I'm different." She picked her fork back up. "His word."

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. From the doorway, she heard her father turn a page.

"Are you?" Elena asked.

"Am I what?"

"Different."

Viv thought about the Henderson notes. The pre-call at 7:59. The navy tie. The way his voice had sounded on the phone at 1:47, stripped of its professional layer. The corner of his mouth at 5:58.

"I got over it," she said. "Months ago. I was sensible about it and I got over it and that was the right thing to do."

"Of course it was," Elena said, in the tone that meant she had more to say and was deciding how to say it.

"He doesn't do relationships, Mum. That's not a rumor, it's a documented pattern. And he's my boss. And I am very good at my job and I would like to keep doing it without it being complicated."

"All reasonable points," her father said, from the doorway.

Both women looked at him.

Patrick Calloway lowered his book. He had the kind of face that got more interesting with age, lined and steady, with eyes that had always seen considerably more than he commented on.

"What," Viv said.

"Nothing." He pushed off the doorframe. "I'm just noting that you listed four reasons why it's a bad idea without us asking you to defend it." He moved to the fridge, retrieved a beer, and paused on his way back. "People who are genuinely over things don't usually prepare arguments."

He went back to the living room.

Elena looked at Viv.

Viv looked at her pasta.

"I hate him," Viv said.

"No you don't."

"I hate that he does that."

"I know, baby." Her mother patted her hand. "Eat your pasta. The answers will still be terrible after dinner."

From the living room, without any possible way of having heard that, Patrick said: "She gets the dramatic streak from you, Elena."

"He has very good ears," Elena said pleasantly, and refilled Viv's water glass.

Viv ate her pasta.

She did not think about grey eyes or navy ties or the way her name sounded in a particular tone she had never successfully categorized.

(Four times. She thought about it four times. The numbers were going in the wrong direction.)