Chapter Nine Amelia

NINE

Text exchange between Reginald Cleaves and Frederick J. Fitzwilliam

REGINALD: I need clothes for Sunday night.

FREDERICK: I still completely disapprove of you doing this.

REGINALD: I know

FREDERICK: Seriously, Reginald, what were you THINKING.

REGINALD: That it’s a great idea. That maybe I’ll get my taxes done for free.

FREDERICK: Also given how long this situation with The Collective is likely to persist don’t you think you should buy at least SOME of your own things?

REGINALD: why waste money on boring clothes when I can just borrow your boring clothes?

FREDERICK: my clothes are not boring

FREDERICK: Cassie bought them for me

REGINALD: they work for you

REGINALD: but you know I like to stand out

FREDERICK: Indeed. In either case we are away the next few days. I cannot lend you anything beyond what I have already lent you.

REGINALD: Going anywhere good?

FREDERICK: A little seaside village in Maine that the brochure says has beautiful sunsets and great beaches for strolling.

FREDERICK: I’m finally formally proposing to Cassie.

FREDERICK: And hope to work up the nerve to ask for an answer re: what she’d like to do about “the whole mortality thing,” as you put it the other day.

REGINALD: DUDE. That’s amazing! Thrilled for you, buddy

FREDERICK: I’m thrilled for me too.

REGINALD: Nervous?

FREDERICK: Terrified.

REGINALD: You’ve got this, man

REGINALD: Also, do I have permission to go into your apartment while you’re gone?

FREDERICK: ABSOLUTELY not.

FREDERICK: Not after what you did to our mantel.

REGINALD: I said sorry

FREDERICK: Apology accepted.

FREDERICK: My answer remains no.

REGINALD: fine, fine, I’ll just wear what I have in my closet

FREDERICK: Just don’t wear Old Fuzzy, any of those things you pilfered from the Steppenwolf Theatre props department back in the 1980s, or anything from your feather boa collection.

REGINALD: well now I am going to wear all that stuff EVEN HARDER

FREDERICK: I suppose that if you show up as yourself it’s Amelia’s problem, not mine.

FREDERICK: I gather, by the way, that Amelia eventually came around to the idea of taking a vampire with her to wedding events?

REGINALD: she actually seemed surprisingly okay with it right away??

FREDERICK: Really?

REGINALD: Yeah! I was surprised

REGINALD: I was expecting her to freak like Cassie did

FREDERICK: Honestly, so was I.

FREDERICK: In fact, the Annals suggest that humans react to “I am a vampire” revelations rather poorly across the board, with a lot of screaming and wooden stakes and such.

REGINALD: Maybe Sam told Amelia about you at some point? So now she thinks all vampires are like an undead Mr. Rogers?

FREDERICK: Cassie says she made Sam promise not to breathe a word about me to anyone.

FREDERICK: And I am NOT like Mr. Rogers.

REGINALD: An undead Bob Ross, then. Either way, maybe Sam didn’t think that promise extended to family

FREDERICK: Hm. It’s possible.

FREDERICK: In the meantime, how did she take the news that there’s an unhinged vampire vigilante gang after you?

REGINALD: She seemed fine with me being a vampire fugitive!

FREDERICK: I can’t believe this.

FREDERICK: Are you sure?

REGINALD: I think so? But she was falling asleep on the phone so maybe I read that part of it wrong

REGINALD: I’ll follow up on it soon

Amelia

When I walked into my office the next morning, my assistant, Ellen, was organizing papers into neat piles on my desk.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, looking up at me. “The Wyatt Foundation overnighted us another box of documents. These were waiting in the mail room when I got here this morning.”

“Don’t apologize.” I tossed my briefcase on one of the blue fabric-covered chairs where my infrequent office guests sat during meetings and flopped down at my desk. “It is literally your job to bring me this stuff.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m just sorry this file will apparently outlive all of us.”

Ellen turned and left, leaving me alone with a mounting headache.

I hadn’t slept very well after getting off the phone with Reggie. It wasn’t every day that someone I’d agreed to fake date called me in the middle of the night. Apparently when it happened, so did insomnia.

Too many consecutive sleepless nights were catching up with me.

I’d hoped to get caught up on a couple of files I’d been neglecting since getting the Wyatt assignment, but considering all these new documents, I could tell that wasn’t happening.

Hopefully this batch would be responsive to my most recent requests. If they weren’t, and if once again the CFO had sent me things like promotional materials a summer intern made for their Facebook page, or ticket stubs from an Exsanguination Society fundraiser, I’d need to set up an in-person meeting soon.

I was just about to get started when Evelyn Anderson, the senior partner I reported to most frequently, rapped on my door.

She never showed up unannounced like this. What was going on?

“Evelyn,” I said, sitting up straighter. “Hi.”

At fifty-seven, with her expensive suits and perfect hair, Evelyn looked better and more effortlessly elegant than anyone had a right to at thirty. I was suddenly acutely aware of what I was wearing: slacks dark enough to hide that they were overdue for a trip to the cleaners, and the one cardigan from the pile of clothes on my bedroom chair that wasn’t covered in cat hair.

It could have been worse. But I hated how at loose ends I was. When my apartment was a mess, I was a mess. I felt unlike myself, and unmoored in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

In my seven years at the firm, I could count the number of times Evelyn Anderson had initiated small talk with me on one hand. I cleared my throat, hoping it masked my surprise. “Oh, you know,” I said, going for nonchalant. “It’s going.”

Evelyn leaned against the doorframe to my office, folding her lean arms across her chest. “I know the Wyatt Foundation file is a nightmare, Amelia. And I know how hard you’re working on it.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, honestly.

“I was hoping you might give a presentation on the Wyatt Foundation to the partners once you’re on the other side of this deadline,” she said.

My heart leapt. “Really?”

Evelyn nodded. “I’ve been wanting the firm to devote more resources to helping nonprofits.” She smiled at me. “After the excellent work you’ve been doing on this file, you’d be the perfect person to help me convince the other partners.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was probably already a lock on partner, but having the attention of the same people who’d be voting on my partnership could only be good.

Even though the idea of spending even one more minute on this terrible file was repellant, and even though what I really wanted to do was tell Evelyn we needed to drop this client, I recognized this for the incredible compliment, and opportunity, it was.

“I’d love to present the file,” I said, meaning it.

“Good,” Evelyn said. “I’ll have my admin set up a meeting with you and the partners for about six weeks from now.” She smiled again. “Six weeks will put us after this filing deadline and give you a chance to recover from tax season.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. Six weeks would give me plenty of time to prepare.

“Excellent.” Evelyn glanced at her wristwatch and pulled a face. “Oh, lord. It’s already past nine. I’m late for a meeting.” She glanced at me, and added, “Don’t work too hard today.”

I nodded in agreement, though I was already thinking through everything I had to accomplish before going home that night. “I won’t,” I lied.

·······

To my pleasant surprise, some of the financials the Wyatt Foundation had sent me were relevant. Even if most of them left me scratching my head.

What sort of foundation invested in Transylvanian silk mills and made regular charitable contributions to blood banks in Western Europe?

The more I dug into the financials I received that morning, the more concerned I became that the IRS wouldn’t view a group with such a scattershot mission as deserving of 501(c)(3) status. If we wanted to keep this file, I’d definitely need to schedule an in-person meeting with their CFO to try and reconcile all of this.

I was still knee-deep in documents and halfway through my meager dinner of takeout pasta when Mom called. I stared at my phone, trying to decide whether I should answer it or whether, in the time-honored tradition of millennials everywhere, I should let it go to voicemail and text her later. I hadn’t spoken to her since dinner the other night, so I was pretty sure she was calling to ask about the boyfriend whose name I still had not given her.

But Mom rarely called during the week unless it was an emergency. Grandma was in her nineties and lived alone. What if something had happened to her, and Mom was calling to tell me?

It was probably worth risking a conversation I didn’t want to have about Reggie on the chance Mom was calling about something serious.

“Hi Mom,” I said.

“Good evening, dear.” Mom sounded breathy, the way she sometimes did after one of her yoga classes. Not nervous or worried. I breathed a small sigh of relief. Grandma was fine, then. But then I cringed; there was only one other reason why Mom might be calling. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yeah,” I said. I put the phone on speaker and set it on my desk. If Mom wasn’t calling because of an emergency, I could have this conversation while eating. “What’s up?”

I could hear Mom’s new puppy, an adorable little white dog that looked more like a jumpy cotton ball than an animal, barking in the background. Chloe was one of the cutest dogs I’d ever seen in my life. No wonder my parents doted on her. “So, I promised your father I wouldn’t do this, but—”

“Then why are you doing it anyway?” I heard Dad say in the background.

“I just couldn’t wait any longer to get all the details,” Mom continued, laughing a little and ignoring Dad’s interruption. “Tell me all about your new boyfriend .”

I closed my eyes. It was entirely reasonable for Mom to have questions, given that it had been years since I’d last told her about a guy. I’d just hoped I’d have a little more time to think through what Reggie and I would say about our situation before this conversation happened.

How much information could I even give her, since deciding what to tell my parents about Reggie was on my to-do list for between now and Aunt Sue’s party, and I didn’t currently know anything about him at all?

I reached for one of the only details I had about him. “His name is Reginald. But I call him Reggie.” I didn’t give his last name; I still wasn’t sure he’d told me his real last name anyway, given the complete lack of Internet footprint for a Reginald Cleaves . There was a red flag in there somewhere, but I didn’t have the brain space or the time to think about that. “He can’t wait to meet everybody,” I added. That was probably true, since one of his primary stated reasons for wanting to do this was that he thought it would be funny to play a prank on strangers.

The puppy was still barking, probably wondering why her parents weren’t paying attention to her. “Hold on a second, dear,” Mom said. “Chloe needs her evening walkies. I just need to make sure your dad is ready to take her.” Mom mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out; Dad replied in the background with something that sounded a lot like but I don’t want to miss this .

“Thanks, John,” I heard Mom say. “Chloe’s little doody bags are in the drawer closest to the fridge.”

“How is the new puppy?” I asked, trying not to laugh at Mom’s use of the word doody. If she’d ever said the word shit in her life, I hadn’t been around to hear it.

“Oh, she’s a little doll,” Mom said happily. “Anyway, as for what we were discussing earlier…His name is Reginald?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful,” Mom said. “What’s he like?”

I hesitated. I couldn’t very well say, Well, Mom, he seems like a pretty weird guy, and I can’t find a single trace of him on the Internet, but he’s also kind of hot, and the other night when he asked if I wanted to fake kiss him to throw pursuers off his trail, I couldn’t stop thinking about what his mouth would taste like.

Should I build him up, somehow? My instincts said yes, but what if my parents then had overly high expectations, only to be completely horrified when Reggie showed up to the wedding in all his weird glory?

“He’s…” I trailed off and bit my lip. I was no good at this. “What do you want to know?” I hedged.

“Oh,” Mom said after a beat. She probably hadn’t expected to have to work for this. “Well, let’s see. Okay, for starters, what does he do for a living?”

A dozen potential answers came to me, but none felt right. I couldn’t say he was an accountant. Someone who joked about being a vampire on a middle-of-the-night phone call could never pull off accountant in front of anyone who’d ever met one before. Same problem with lawyer, and doctor.

“He’s…in tech?” I floundered, wincing at how unconvinced I sounded. But then I realized it was the perfect lie. No one in my family worked in tech and my parents knew nothing about it. Even if Reggie didn’t know anything about it either, the odds of someone seeing through the ruse before Gretchen’s wedding were low.

Besides, his eccentricities sort of fit in with all the stereotypes I’d ever had of tech bros. For all I knew, he actually was one.

“Tech?” Mom asked. “What does he do in tech?”

Shit . “Oh,” I said, laughing nervously. “I…wouldn’t be able to describe his job very well. Besides, he wants to tell you all about it himself. On Sunday.”

Unbelievably, Mom seemed to take that at face value. “Lovely. I’m looking forward to hearing all about his career.”

Me, too . As soon as this call was over, I needed to email Reggie and let him know he’d have to pretend to have a job in tech for this to work.

“And where did you meet?” Mom pressed.

Miraculously, the right answer came to me right away. “I met him at the office.” This was, technically, the truth. I guess we hadn’t been inside my office when he plowed into me on the sidewalk, but this felt like semantics.

“You met him at work?” Mom sounded intrigued. I relaxed minutely. But then she asked, “I thought you just said he was in tech? Is he an accountant, too?”

“Um. No, he’s…not an accountant.” Shit. Shit. “He…doesn’t actually work with me. We just met at the office.” And then, because I apparently didn’t know how to leave well enough alone, I added, “He sometimes does tech stuff for my firm, though.”

“Lovely,” Mom said again. Dad mumbled something in the background. I heard Chloe bark one more time, and then the snick of the front door closing. Walk time had begun, apparently. “Well, I’m looking forward to meeting him on Sunday. It’s so nice Aunt Sue is doing this for friends and family to celebrate Gretchen before the wedding hoopla begins in earnest.”

“Yeah,” I agreed perfunctorily. “Really nice.”

“I better go,” Mom said. “My yoga class starts up in twenty minutes. But I just wanted to tell you how happy your father and I are that you are taking someone to the wedding. We worry about you and how hard you work, and we just think it would be nice to see you happy.” I squeezed my eyes shut tight, willing myself not to reply to that. “Please tell that new man of yours that your father and I cannot wait to meet him.”

I almost protested, insisting that my thing with Reggie wasn’t serious enough to justify calling him that man of yours . A knee-jerk reaction, and a vestige of all the times in my life when I’d had to fight for even a modicum of privacy over my personal life.

I fought against that instinct. Letting them think I wasn’t seriously dating Reggie would defeat the entire purpose of all this.

“I’ll let him know,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.