One Flight Up by Susan Fales-Hill

Author:Susan Fales-Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

chapter twenty-five

India sat at her desk eating a penitential salad of grilled chicken with romaine lettuce, no dressing. Three days of chocolate indulgences brought on a slight battle of the bulge, at least by her “live a size six or die” standard. She had refused to answer Keith’s phone calls for an entire week, but her hunger for him had to find its outlet somewhere. And it did in an orgy of truffles, Rochers, and pralines. She wore her phone headpiece and tried every few moments to get a word in edgewise as on the other end, fast-talking Feldman rattled on.

“But, José,” she managed to interject at last. “My client is taking the kids to school, picking them up, feeding them dinner, and bathing them every day as it is. For their sake, can’t we just move this along and formalize the custody arrangement?”

“I’m not going to rush my client into anything; this is an emotional time for her,” José answered in the earnest tone of an undertaker.

Emotional time, my bloated ass, India thought. Paula Winston, the Queen of Green, wouldn’t know an emotion if it fell on her like a pile of unrecycled garbage. This was all a stall to inspire desperation and capitulation in India and her client, Paula’s long-suffering husband. It wasn’t unlike the mating dance between men and women, people seeing who could be maneuvered into the first move. India decided to call José’s bluff.

“José, you can drag this out as long as you like. You won’t get us into court,” she said sweetly.

“Divorce is a long proposition,” José responded, dropping all pretense of charm as he hung up. India ripped off her headphones and tossed them on her desk. This was the worst part of her job: the waiting game during which she felt utterly powerless. And in fact, she was. It also killed her to think of Paula’s three children, pawns in the cold war between their parents. She flung open the chocolate drawer. Ripping off the top of a Lindt chocolate assortment box, she sank her teeth into a hazelnut praline. She stopped herself midbite. At the rate she was going, she’d have no man, no clients, and an ass the size of Texas. That which she could not have, she would destroy. She grabbed a letter opener and furiously stabbed at the remaining chocolates, then dumped them handful by heaping handful in the wastebasket.

“What have we here? The immolation of the chocolates?”

India looked up and saw her mother poised in the doorway. As usual, Una stood behind her, mouthing, “Sorry.” A bad day had just gotten worse.

“Oh, I do apologize for interrupting. I only rushed over here to see if you were still alive since you’ve not returned any of my calls. Or attended a single rehearsal,” Elizabeth reproached.

“Mum, I’m sorry. I’ve just been really tied up,” India responded.

“To a bed, I hope, and not this dreary desk. You haven’t made it even once. It’s unlike you.”

India looked away. Her mother had an uncanny ability to detect shifts in her emotions.

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