I ran my fingers up into my hair. "She shouldn't think those things. It's just a job."
"It's not just a job, you know that. It's the beginning. Look, Jesse, there's probably not a man alive who understands your situation, what you’re feeling right now, better than I do. Let me tell you a story. I was at Brown Law School when I met this girl who was just stunning. I didn't have any classes with her, but she came out of a class in the same building at the same time I did, and I would linger around just to watch her walk away. I didn't talk to her. It seemed like every guy there was trying to get her attention, and she was way out of my league. One winter day she was walking, carrying an armload of books and she slipped. I caught her in my arms and she looked at me like I was something fantastic. I could not believe she was looking at me.
I was from an upper middle class family, Jesse. Unlike you, I had a pretty easy life and parents who could and did support me. I expected my future to be exactly what my life had always been. But Caroline was privileged. Her lineage included two Senators and a President just to name a few. Her family wasn't just wealthy, they were American Royalty and she was the princess. She was a beautiful princess. She had ambitions to continue their political dominance, and I knew that from the start. I knew from our first date that if I wanted a life with her, my career would be impacted by her status. Everything I've done since that day has been followed by whispers of her name and a fortuitous marriage. Did you happen to notice that I was the youngest partner in the room today? There are plenty of whispers as to why I got that position. But none of that matters to me. I love my wife. So this is what my life is. I am fortunate to have a career I enjoy and a beautiful family. Would I be where I am right now without Caroline? Probably not, but I am still the guy who goes into the office every day and gets the job done, and the other partners know I pull my weight."
I nodded. We both sat quietly for a minute and drank the beers.
"I tried to give my daughter everything in life, Jesse, but I guess everything was too much and somewhere along the line she lost confidence in herself. I don't know the event that did that to her, but I saw the change. And there was nothing I could give her to bring her back to that place where she was happy with her life.
She found the thing she needs in you, and I can understand that. It's possible her mother found that same thing in me. I was just a guy who thought she was a pretty girl. I wasn't looking for what most of the others were looking for when they looked at her. She wasn't a stepping stone to me," he finished as he lifted the beer again and drank.
"Interesting. Jade said something very similar to that."
"She wants to be with someone who loves her. As her father, I want that for her."
"At least you had something to offer your wife. I can't even take Jade on a date. I don't have anything. How can I tell her that I love her? How can I ask her to be with me?"
"I think most people your age start out with nothing, Jesse. You're going to get the job. Go a little easier on yourself. Live a little. You two can take care of each other."
"You think I am going to get the job? I was terrible in that interview."
He laughed. "You weren't terrible. What I saw today was very honest. I didn't know why you looked like you'd been blindsided. I hadn't had a chance to look at your resume until I was seated at the table, but I had a pretty good idea what the story was when I saw your current job. Anyway, I've seen a lot worse. I would much rather see what I saw today than some of these cocky bastards that come in and think they are just going to sit in an office and drink coffee while their legal assistants do all the actual work. And yes, I know you are going to get the offer."
Numbers I could hardly fathom suddenly became very clear in Mr. Hartzog's thoughts, but I pushed them aside in my mind. "What did he say about me?" I asked quietly.
"We talked for a good while after you left. Ron noticed that you seemed distressed when I introduced myself. He was wondering if it was my late arrival and disrupting the interview or if we knew each other. I think he might have even been hoping we did know each other and he could get some real feedback on you. I told him I didn't but that I suspected that Bianca might have been the problem, pointing out the current employment on your resume. He thought that was funny. Ron has a good sense of humor. So she didn't tell you her father was one of the partners?"
"No. She was afraid I would cancel the interview."
"Would you have cancelled it?"
"I don't know. Probably. Maybe. It's a dream job, Mr. Hartzog. It's exactly what I wanted to do and I really liked Mr. Coleman. I honestly don't know what I would have done. I didn't think I had a shot at the position at all. I knew my resume was weak compared to every other applicant in this city. My only chance was convincing someone that I am a hard worker, and Mr. Coleman listened. No one else had even given me the opportunity to try to sell myself. I really wanted to see it through."
"But then you had to wonder if it had already been done for you."
I shrugged. "Yes. But I knew that I froze in there, which was my own fault. I let myself be angry at Jade when she did the right thing."
"You're an honest man, Jesse."
"I lost the thing I was supposed to hold on to."
"I don't think it's lost. From what little I know I think she's probably been the one trying to make something happen between the two of you. And now it's your turn. But you asked me what Ron said and Ron wants you for the job. The meeting with all the partners is just a formality, you'd be working under Ron, and it's his decision. You impressed the hell out of him in the first interview. He could not stop talking about your work ethic and what you've been able to accomplish on your own. I'm very sorry about what happened to your mother, it's a terrible thing to watch people you love struggle. We don't see your sort of drive very often. But there was something else that you had that no one else had, something very personal. Sometimes that human element is simply more important than grades or letters of recommendation. I've known Ron for nearly twenty years. I saw him go through the worst time of his life. I saw him lose something that can never be replaced."
"His little girl."
"Yes, his baby. He's given hundreds of thousands of dollars to give other little girls the chance his daughter lived for, because talent and passion shouldn't be dependent on dollars. You are going to get the job because you are on Denise's wall. And not only are you on the wall, but it's practically like she's looking at you. You have all the qualities he loved in his daughter. He's made every argument in your favor, but it comes down to the simple fact that Father's do things for their little girls. He's done a lot to give young dancers the kind of chance his daughter had, and now the fact that you are on that wall is like Denise telling him to give you that chance. And maybe it's just that simple. Maybe fate put you in that place where that photo was taken just to open this door for you. Take the job, Jesse."
That was when it all clicked. He was right. The magic girl who turned my life around three years ago as she stood in the doorway to her future, she unlocked the door to my future too. And then she came back and told me to grab on. I should have just listened to her. I should have had faith in the magic.
"I need to talk to Jade. I really need to talk to her."
He pulled something out of his shirt pocked and slid it across the bar to me. "She left tickets at the will-call. Go see the opening of her show tomorrow."
"If she'll look at me again, I will give her the only thing she asked me for. I'll give it freely and completely."
"You seem like a fine young man, Jesse. Like I said, I don't know you well, but I think Jade does. I think she found something in you that makes her feel whole. She's willing to give that up for you to get your chance and I think that is something special."
"I know she's something special, Sir. I've known that since the first time she spoke to me. I was afraid to hold her back. I was
afraid to get involved knowing I had nothing to offer her. I was afraid of how badly it would hurt to love her and then lose her. I can't lose her."
"Tell her that. Look, you don't have to tell her we spoke. You didn't want to think she got you the job, telling her I came to see you is just going to make her think I, once again, gave her something she didn't think she deserved."
"Thank you."
"No, thank you. Make her happy, Jesse. I just want my daughter to be happy."
"I will do all I can to make that happen."
CHAPTER 16 - JADE:
Arabella was going to be the last show of my college career.
Lincoln Center was at the crossroads of Columbus Avenue and Broadway, but it was also my personal crossroad between being a gifted student and being a genuine talent.
I had four nights to find out if I had what it would take to sing on Broadway.
Only, mentally, I was having a hard time finding myself.
I didn't like being Bianca, but being Jade hurt.
Thorn had arranged one of his ‘parties’; it was a way to get the donors and alumni in the same room as the cast and usually added a good chunk of funds to his budget. He was a good director, but he was better at rubbing elbows, seducing women and lining his coffers. Usually I liked him because he was so transparent about his motives that his methods were almost comedic. This time, the sucking up was just getting on my very last nerve.
All of my practice at standing behind that cafe counter serving coffee with a smile to people who were too busy fiddling with their phones to look me in the eye, people who just barked out their order like I was a nonentity, still didn't prepare me enough to keep my smile in place for the people who made and effort to meet me just to ask me to give a message to my mother.
I couldn't take anymore. I just wanted to go home and hide until it was time I took the stage and the show started. I was trying to politely extricate myself from a couple that clearly did not get that I was not a politician and I did not care about their partisan policies. I caught Thorn's eye and mentally begged him to get me out of there.
And then he did something absolutely ridiculous.
He grabbed a microphone and began introducing the cast.
People were clapping politely.
He introduced me last. He made an excessively effusive show of it too.
Then he handed me the mic and told me to sing.
There wasn't even any music.
What the hell was he thinking?
I loathed him more than I had ever loathed anyone in my life. Bianca could have gotten away with throwing down the mic and walking out. Jade would have started to cry.
But Arabella just closed her eyes and shut out everything else in the world except the music in her head. And she sang.
The clear soprano rang through the room. It hung there like it was suspended in that place that was the inside of a cloud. I could see the whiteness all around me. I was awake and in a dream all at the same time. Then, like magic, the music filled me.
I felt it like a living thing within me.
I looked over the crowd as they stood and clapped. I bowed, took my things and left.
* * *
I undressed and crawled into bed.
I didn't check my phone or my messages. I didn't want to be disappointed. I promised myself that I was going to stay away from Jesse, that I was going to stay out of his life so he could have his future. But I could still smell the scent of his skin on the pillow he'd slept on, the pillow I was hugging to my body.
I said there was nothing I wouldn't do for him, but I didn't consider that might mean letting him go.
I tormented myself thinking about some other woman getting the happily ever after that I wanted more than I wanted to breathe. He would start his career and be successful and there would be some beautiful, Anika Rossi type of girl on his arm and in his bed. I wouldn't even be a memory.
Why couldn't that place that granted wishes just grant my wish that he would love me?
I had to stop thinking about him.
I was supposed to be letting him go but a big part me feared that letting him go meant going back to being Bianca, because what else was there for me? And the memory that charged to the front of my thoughts was the day I really found out what being Bianca Jade MaryEllen Fitzgerald-Hartzog meant.
It happened the weekend of my seventeenth birthday.
My mother planned a huge, formal coming out party for me. I hadn't given it a lot of thought, I was a spoiled, little princess, and I knew that, so a big party was right up my alley. I had a gorgeous dress and a tiara. All the guys were in tuxedos. There were a lot of guys.
My girlfriends and I were all giddy talking about them.
And then Kevin Johnston McIntyre strode up to me and asked me to dance.
He was probably twenty-one or two at the time, he was very polished and I was stupidly flattered as he took my hand and led me to the dance floor.
The other girls giggled and gasped.
And then he opened his mouth.
"So I hear you are considering Julliard," was his opening statement.
"Yes, I..."
"Are you just doing that to spite your mother?"
"What? Why would..."
"Don't be stupid. It's ridiculous for someone with your pedigree to go to art school. Pick something sensible. You're attractive. I can see you on my arm when I am in your mother's position. You need to think about the future..."
I stopped listening to his words.
I looked around that room and actually looked at the people there.
Every tuxedo clad guy in that room was there to make a merger, to solidify an allegiance to my family line. I was just the cattle that got traded in the deal. It didn't matter if I was pretty or smart or talented. I was the Fitzgerald-Hartzog girl. That was Bianca.
I remember taking the tiara out of my hair and leaving it sitting on the counter in the ladies room. I didn't ever want to see it again. I loved my parents, but that day I started having to re-evaluate my whole life. I wondered if they actually loved each other or if I just assumed they did. I wondered what they thought of me? I wondered if they thought my desire to go to Julliard was ridiculous.
But I dug my heels in that day.
My decision was final. And my Daddy wanted his little princess to be happy so badly that he made some calls and Julliard sent me a lovely acceptance letter.
I didn't even get the satisfaction of applying.
I left home and I left Bianca behind.
Jade just seemed more fitting.
CHAPTER 17 - JESSE:
She didn't call. I stayed up late hoping. I called her one last time to say goodnight, but my call still went directly to voicemail.
I refused to lose hope.
It would have been nice to go to sleep and find myself in The White Room. I could have tried to figure out what I needed to do to get Jade to give me another chance. But sleep was evasive and even when it came it wasn't restful or deep. It was filled with that music that I couldn't place. And I guess I was wishing away the night because it was hard to lie there knowing that just one day ago, she was pressed against me and the world was as perfect as it was ever going to be. I just wanted to get this terrible day over with so I could go to her show and try to make things right between us.
Of course, I had all day to dwell on my stupidity.
And to make matters just that much worse, Lisa put me on the information desk so I didn't even have the satisfaction of physical labor to take my mind off things, no, instead I was stuck standing in the middle of the store with a clear view of the front doors. And I looked at those doors every single time they opened hoping she would walk through them, even though I knew she was most likely in class.
I admitted to myself that it was karma in action.
Sixteen months of keeping Jade at a distance and constantly disappointing her were
being repaid upon me every single time the door opened and every minute my phone did not ring.
I deserved the punishment.
It was Thursday morning and the store was not crowded. Carol was behind the cafe counter where Jade should have been standing, and the whole atmosphere of the store seemed wrong. Carol was most likely calling everyone 'Honey,' which might have seemed endearing, but always sounded condescending. Lisa was handling returns up at the register. There was a girl I did not recognize, with a pierced nose and tattoos all the way up her neck, putting the back stock from the cart onto shelves in the self help section. And Phil, the oaf who broke my foot, was doing my job.
And I envied him because I really needed the physical activity to keep me occupied.
Sitting around at the information desk when the store was empty just sucked.
It left me too much free time to dwell on my shortcomings and the fact that my phone was stubbornly not ringing.
I occupied my self by making a list of all the old love songs on that played on a continuous loop filling the empty air in the store with white noise. The late seventies and early eighties must have been the heyday of romantic ballads. No one really made songs like those anymore. Maybe the whole notion of romance had become antiquated. Maybe that was part of my problem, I still wanted the kind of love that started with a walk in the moonlight and a first kiss that made time stand still. I wanted to be the guy that gave flowers and held open doors. I still believed in falling in love before jumping into bed. I just stupidly believed I couldn't afford to be that guy, when really, what does a walk in the moonlight cost? What would it have cost to pull Jade into my arm,s as she stood in the doorway to the stockroom, and dance to that one song that was her dream? The answer was nothing but my heart and she already had my heart, I was just too caught up in my financial situation and my desperate need for some measure of success that I didn't see the simple things. I didn't see that what she needed was only that one dance and the closeness, the tenderness of that moment.