Page 27 of No Kind of Hero
“Maybe that’s what I’m on vacation for.” Once again, the words were slipping out of Beth’s mouth like she had no will of her own. “To get a personality. To get some emotion.”
“You can have personality and emotion when you make partner. Anyway, you don’t get to choose. People like you and me don’t have emotion. We have success.”
“Eight-point-five more days,” she said. “Think of it as my personality-reassignment surgery.”
“It’s noon already. Eight days. Max. And it’s not going to work anyway. I know. I tried relaxing once. Then I realized that I wasn’t the one who was crazy. It was all the relaxed people.”
“So why did you try?” You didn’t talk to your senior partner like this. Not if you wanted to be ajuniorpartner. But then, she wasn’t working. She was on vacation.
“If you were in family law, you wouldn’t have to ask. My wife said I had to change or she wanted a divorce.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think? We got divorced. She’s relaxing with somebody else. They go for walks. Another overrated activity. I’ve also been on the phone with you for six unbilled minutes now. Next Monday, then. Fifteen days of toilet painting ought to do it.”
Fifteen days was plenty. It was Monday now. That was a whole week more. Time to help Evan paint and . . . everything. She’d fantasized about great sex during her breakdown, right? And she actuallyknewthat Evan gave more than he received. Well, he’d used to, and to say that she wanted to find out if it was still true was an understatement. Six more days would be fine. She’d made her position perfectly clear to Evan. Perfectly clear to herself, too. She was here for a good time, like the man said. They both had their eyes open.
“I can’t,” she said instead. “I have eighteen-point-five days. I’ll be back next Thursday afternoon.” She started painting again, since the words weren’t going to fly back into her mouth and get unsaid.
A long silence, then Simon said, “I’ll email you Marjorie’s information.”
She stroked her roller over the wall another time that it didn’t need. “I’m not able to receive email.”
“Everybody’s able to receive email.”
“Except I’m not.”
“Where are you? Outer Mongolia?”
“Far away. Far far away.” She held the phone a foot from her ear. “Hello? Simon?”
“Do not pretend to lose me,” he said.
“I can’t hear you. I’m hanging up. See you on Thursday.”
Evan came through the door while Beth was talking. When she shoved the phone back into her overall pocket, there was a faint pink flush on her cheeks and a spark in her eyes. He was a fan. He leaned against the door, even though he should be getting straight back to work—not to mention propping the door open—and asked, “What?”
“Nothing.” She came out of her stall and swished her roller around again in the pan. There wasn’t enough paint left, so he tipped the five-gallon bucket and filled the pan again, which made her eye his biceps. Well, he could hardly help noticing. Or flexing a little for her. Every man had his weak spots.
“I may have—” she said once he’d finished and she’d coated her roller again. She took a breath and started over. “I may have just told my boss I wasn’t cutting my vacation short. Which could cost me my partnership, the one I’ve been working toward for six years, but you know.” She waved the roller in a careless motion, and a tiny spray of droplets hit the cloth, Evan’s overalls, and his face. “Whoops,” she said. “Sorry.” She dropped the roller back into the pan and looked around. “Rag?”
He reached down for a rag and a spray bottle of water, and she took them out of his hands, misted the rag, put a hand on his shoulder, and wiped off his cheek, then smiled at him, rose on her toes, and kissed him gently in the spot she’d painted. “There. Sorry. A little overenthusiastic with my declaration of . . . whatever that was.”
“Mm.” He wasn’t exactly hating this. “You get to be enthusiastic.” He had a hand around her waist. If she was going to kiss him, he was going to hold her. “Really? You don’t get to be a partner if you take your vacations? That can’t be right.”
She stepped back and went to pick up her roller again. “Welcome to the shark tank.” She was still going for bold and brave, but he knew his Beth.
“Hey.” He reached for her hand. “Don’t you think that somebody as smart as you, who works as hard as you, is going to make it no matter what? Is anybody there better than you? I don’t believe it.”
Her blue eyes got too bright, and she blinked a couple times. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve never said no. They say jump, I ask how high. College, law school, the firm. The firm especially. I don’t even know what I want or what I feel anymore. But the thing about that is—it works. Iknowit does. It always has.”
“A-plus student?”
“Yeah.” She took her hand back, rubbed her palm on her overalls, then fiddled with her roller. Nervous. She’d been brave, and now she was having second thoughts. “You know about that, though. That was how you did football.”
He knew what he wanted to do now. He wanted her not to look at him. So he picked up his own roller and got back to work. “Football was a long time ago,” he said with his back to her.
Did she let up? She did not. “But that was how you did it. I know it. You gave it everything. I’ll bet it’s how you do this too. Your company, I mean. Who was here yesterday, on Sunday, meeting with the customer? And I’ll bet it’s how you’re a dad. I’ll bet there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for Gracie, because I know you. How is coming back early from my vacation any different from saying, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right’?”
