Page 5 of The Business Trip

If someone looked at my life from the outside, they might be impressed. I had money and a career and a healthy adult son. I had never had a major disease, and while my body could stand to tighten up a bit—the little bat wings under my arms especially bothered me—I was still in decent shape. My brown hair had a slight natural wave. Grays were creeping in, but I went to the salon to have it dyed every other month and wore it in a professional cut below my ears and above my shoulders. I had my eyebrows microbladed twice per year and my fingernails and toenails gel-polished every three weeks. This month both were a soft pink. I had a Peloton that I didn’t use nearly as much as I used to, a treadmill, yoga mats, bricks and bolsters, Pilates balls, and a home weight set, all in a spare room in my townhouse. Clothing arrived in a box from Stitch Fix, meals in a box from Hello Fresh, anything else I wanted in a box delivered within twenty-four hours from Amazon. Sometimes I felt as if my life was a series of boxes. Robert joked that I was “boxed in.” He preferred shopping in actual stores.

I guess I was just a normal American female executive. But I felt a sameness to my days, a lack of camaraderie outside of Robert. Even my relationship with Evan seemed like it was slipping out of my control. He appeared to be upset with me, not Jason, over the divorce, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and now he usually said he was too busy to talk. Our once-per-week conversations were becoming more like every other week or even less frequent. He had chosen Jason’s house for both Thanksgivingand Christmas this past year, saying it was more fun with his stepsisters in the house. I practically had to beg just to get him to meet me for lunch the day after Christmas.

At night, when I lay awake staring at the ceiling, I would sometimes wonder if all the times I had missed school events when I was working nightside or pulling a double in television news had hurt our relationship too. Jason’s normal day job let him be there for everything. Could Evan harbor resentment about me pulling those late hours and not being able to slip away to all of the band concerts and soccer games of his youth? Or taking a phone call from a young staffer during dinner, stepping away and telling Evan I’d be right back as I answered some urgent plea about something? He had never said so, but the thought gnawed at me. The thing was, we had needed the money, and those were my hours and duties in a 24/7 business, so I didn’t regret it from that standpoint, but my son’s recent coldness had ripped a small seam in my soul that seemed to be expanding.

Sometimes I thought that Evan might need a reminder of how important I was to him. Nothing tragic, of course, but if I were diagnosed with a disease that would scare him just enough but I would recover from, maybe he’d feel some sympathy for me and get back into my corner. Or if I got lost in the woods for a few nights and returned as the conquering hero—would that make him respect me again? Would he come running into my arms like he did when he was a toddler? Maybe that would be the kick in the butt he needed. I had been a good mother, damn it, and launched him into full adulthood with every tool he needed, and now he largely ignored me. I vented about it to Robert one night, and he chuckled.

“So… are you telling me you’d be willing to be kidnapped?”

“I mean, maybe, as long as I’m not hurt in the process.”

“A kindhearted kidnapper, got it,” he said. “I’ll put an ad on Indeed for you.”

I punched him in the arm.

But truly, Evan wasn’t my only issue. I longed for the old me when I used to be a rebel in college. I had been the one willing to skip class or use a fake ID to get into a bar. I was known for playing pranks on others in the dorm, or dressing up as a professor and doing an imitation of their style. Sadly, those days seemed another lifetime ago. I was a professional woman now and had appearances to keep up. Secretly, though, I ached for something fun and rebellious.

At least I would be meeting Diana, a new friend, in San Diego. We had a lot in common. I had just recently connected with her, and she seemed as interested in having an adventure as I was. She didn’t work in news, but she would be a good help to me in having just a little bit of excitement this weekend.

I had been dreaming of just running off, starting a whole fresh and invigorating world for myself in Mexico, getting out of the news business and retiring to a life of wine and good books. Maybe that would make Evan want to visit me just to be living at my beach shack, checking out the girls down at the surf. This life-as-an-expat fantasy came more and more often lately. I found myself watchingHouse Hunters Internationaland making a list of places I could move to in Mexico due to its warmth and easy proximity to the US. What was keeping me in this cold northland other than Robert? He was a great neighbor, but I couldn’t pin my whole world around that, could I?

I sighed as I put my phone back on the bedside table. My long-term future was too much to ponder at 11:45 at night. I just needed sleep. Clicking the light off and closing my eyes, I tried deep breathing to slow my heart rate. In for four counts, hold for seven, out for eight. The lavender scent frommy pillow drifted into my nostrils, and I focused on letting it wash over me.

But it wasn’t working.

As I lay there with my fluffy flowered comforter surrounding my body, and Fred by my legs, I felt myself becoming more alert instead of more tired. The fatigued feeling I’d had just forty-five minutes prior was disappearing. I felt like I had missed my window of sleep. There was anxiety poking at me about the trip ahead.

Opening one eye and peeking at the clock, I saw that it was almost 12:30. I had to be fully functional as the boss of a TV newsroom in less than eight hours, up in six and a half. Fuck. This wasn’t good.Go to sleep, I told myself.Go. To. Sleep.But my mind fired back and said no.

At 12:45, I gave up. Heaving myself out of bed, to the annoyance of Fred, who lifted his head and gave a meow, I zipped open my suitcase, dug around in the dark until I found the bottle of Ambien, twisted the cap off, and swallowed one pill whole, washing it down with the water in a glass at my bedside table. My doctor had warned that I shouldn’t drive within eight hours of consuming Ambien, and now I would have to be on the road in just over seven, but I needed to sleep. Sorry, Doc.

I hated nights like this, and they came too often, my mind whirring with a variety of worries—personnel issues, viewer hate mail, viewer love mail for some of our anchors and reporters that bordered on stalking, declining ratings, social media shenanigans by our staff. The list went on and on.

Crawling back under the flowered comforter and fumbling for my phone, I typed “ASMR” into the search bar. One of my girlfriends from an annual girls’ weekend had turned me on to this years ago, and when I really needed sleep, I leaned into it. There were thousands of videos to choose from, mostly womenbut also some men. They did things like role plays where you were visiting a doctor or getting a facial. The soothing sound of their low talking promised to give you an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)—or, in other words, a tingle in your head. It was my secret weapon for relaxation. I dialed up an oldie but goodie: a woman pretending she’s giving you a consultation in a tattoo shop. Between that and the Ambien, I was finally getting sleepy a little after 1:15 a.m. As I drifted off, I kept thinking that maybe a change of scenery this weekend would be just what I needed. Maybe I’d actually have fun. Or have a fling. Maybe my life would never be the same again.

CHAPTER 3Jasmine

The Day of the Flight

It was a long morning waiting at the airport. First, I grabbed a breakfast sandwich and some coffee and tried to catnap in my seat for a while, but the caffeine plus adrenaline made it impossible. Checking my phone over and over, I waited to see when that first text from Glenn would come in. As predicted, it was shortly after eleven.

Where the hell are you?

My stomach tensed up to the size and density of a golf ball, but I had a plan for this. Figuring I could buy myself a little time, I texted back.

We were out of milk and a few other things. I walked to the store

He didn’t know that I had dumped the milk down the drain the day before in case he opened the fridge to check.

That’s a fucking long way. It’s cold. You know I don’t like you walking alone. I’ll come get you

No, I need the exercise. You told me to lose a few pounds, remember? I’ll pick up stuff and make dinner. I’ll see you after work around 5:30. I’ll make steak

Medium rare. And potatoes too

This lie about walking to the store would buy me some crucial time, really all day, before he got home at 5:30 and saw I wasn’t there.

I pictured him throwing off the sheet now, standing up and letting out one of his giant yawns, maybe adding in a belch or a fart too, then walking naked to the bathroom to take what he liked to call “my morning pisser.” Shuddering at the image, I distracted myself by looking around at the other passengers in the airport. Such a mix of humanity, so many of them appearing happy. It wasn’t fair that they got to experience joy and a carefree trip while my stomach was in shambles, my head jumbled with images of a boyfriend I was trying desperately to get away from.

---