Scout’s Honor: Chapter 29

A Shattered Lens

“You’re killing me. You’re absolutely killing me,” Stan Diamond said, clutching his chest, feigning an operatic death. “No groundbreaking ceremony? No splashy ad campaign? So do you tell the contractor to forget the cement? The carpenters to skip the nails? No. But the fat schmuck with the bad heart? Screw him. Take his cement, take his nails, let him do a worthless press release when the project’s finished. When it won’t do any goddamn good. No, we’ve got to do what’s right for the project. Right?” With a mischievous grin, the rotund public relations man glanced from Billy to Austen, nodding, anxious for agreement. 

“Forget it. Groundbreaking ceremonies are a waste of time,” Billy said, chilled and miserable with flu. He was desperate for Austen to bend his commandment against publicity to aid their snake-bitten project. 

“The front page of the Times.” With his penchant for name-dropping luminaries—some of whom he had actually met—Diamond gave the impression of consummate insider. “People, I mean serious people, owe Stan Diamond, and I’m talking the front page of the real estate section. You can’t buy publicity like that.”

“So you’d work for free?” Billy snapped.

“I love this kid, Mr. Austen. If he had a neck, he’d be dangerous. Pow.” Diamond swung his leg from the knee in a dainty, doll-like kick, laughing, sweeping Billy into a wet-nosed grin. 

“Sir, isn’t it worth it if we’re on the front page?” asked Billy, hopeful.

Austen looked up from his desk to face Billy and Diamond. While he had agreed to the meeting to mollify Billy, he’d privately acknowledged the need to advertise, knowing his lofts would struggle in the down market. The public relations man was right, he had to hedge his bet this time. If the three hundred units sold out quickly, the project might still turn a profit. If they languished, more than his investment was at risk. 

“We get a sexy floor plan, the architect’s spiel about the project’s priceless quality. A rooftop view shot, broads in bikinis at the pool, sell the sizzle.” Diamond knew even a small picture in the Times was impossible, but he was selling hard to overcome Austen’s resistance. He added, “Maybe a picture of you, smiling in front of the building.”

“No. No pictures and no mention of my name. Do you read me? If we do any publicity, it’s only about the project.”

“So we’ll run my picture instead,” Diamond said, smoothing the thinning curly brown hair he parted just above his left ear. Laughing, he took a sip of his diet soda, his pinkie finger pointed. “What if we turn all this sitting around on our tushes into an asset? We pitch Hearthstone like a fine wine that was years in the making. What an idea. I like it. No, I love it.”

Billy flinched at the allusion to the project’s many delays—a sore that wouldn’t heal. From the day he’d started at DAP two years earlier, he’d done everything short of ritual suicide to push the project forward, but he’d been buried beneath one city-planning setback after another, each display of bureaucratic indifference enraging him. 

“Put it in writing, Mr. Diamond,” said Austen. “But I don’t like the idea of comparing my project to wine—”

“You’re right. Absolutely right. Terrible idea. I would have seen it myself in another—”

“I don’t like ass-kissing, either.”

“Oy. There goes my ace in the hole.” Diamond laughed, a jiggling belly laugh so genuine that Billy and Austen had to laugh along with him. 

Unseen by Billy and Diamond, MJ Watershed had slipped inside the office and tapped on her wristwatch. Austen stood and extended his hand across his horseshoe desk. “What I want is a detailed, written proposal with an explicit scope of work. I hope you can do what you say, Mr. Diamond.”

Struggling up against his chair, Diamond rose, catching Austen’s hand. “Remember, it’s diamond, not zircon. Give me the work, and Hearthstone will be on the lips of every buyer from here to Atlantic City. But about you?” In a cartoon gesture, he zipped his lips shut.

An elderly volunteer for the blood drive sat behind a table outside Ascott Swanne’s largest conference room, closed her eyes, wishing her break would arrive. How lovely it would be if only she could perform her charitable work among pleasant, civilized people. 

“Lady, hello? Talk to me, lady, how much longer? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? I give up my lunch to donate blood and I got to wait an hour? Do you know what my hourly rate is?”

“Mr. Garay,” the volunteer said, reading his name from the sign-in sheet, “If you would care to come back later, perhaps about four, they could probably slip you right in.” 

“And lose another hour? Are you crazy? You need more nurses. Can’t you people organize anything right?”

“Go ahead of me,” Austen said. Once outside the isolation of his office, he was often in no hurry to return. Roaming the streets, he could imagine away the years, pretend he was still an innocent from Lemon Grove and drop Richard Austen’s heavy mantle, if only for a while. 

“I can wait, too. You can go next,” said a young woman with a cascade of rich chestnut hair. She was highlighting sentences in a brief with a yellow marker. Austen glanced from his contract to study her, wondering whether she was a lawyer or paralegal. She wore glasses and was dressed in a navy suit and beige silk blouse. He shook his head and returned to his purchase contract, puzzling over his lawyer O’Keefe’s ornate jargon. A paragraph later, he stole another glance at her, and then another and another, admiring her legs.

“Hey, Margaret, right on, it didn’t hurt that much,” said a pony-tailed mail room clerk to the young woman, rolling down his sleeve as he walked through the reception area. “And, oh,” he added, lowering his voice, “thanks again for saving my dumb brother. He’d still be in jail if it wasn’t for you.”

“I’m just delighted it worked out so well for him, Dana,” she said. 

Watching their interchange, wondering what she’d done to help, guessing it had to be pro bono, Austen took in her large hazel eyes and gentle smile, white teeth framed by full lips, and faintly olive skin. Mesmerized, he froze when she turned an inquisitive gaze in his direction. They stared at one another until he blushed, and, with a slight nod, she smiled and returned to her brief. Had she been the owner of a building he coveted, he would have known what to do: He would have dashed to her side, summoning that seldom used boyish charm. Instead, he sat, pretending to read, wondering about a lawyer who donated time and blood, certain a woman so beautiful had to be married. But her fingers were ringless. He drew up a heroic plan: He would smile when her name was called and say hello. But when the moment came, his courage failed him. His eyes remained downcast as she disappeared into the conference room. 

“Hold your arm straight up, lovey. Press against the gauze like this,” the aide instructed Austen. “That’s it. Not so bad, was it?”

He lay on a padded table with his arms aloft, his left index finger firm against the hollow of his right forearm. With its nurses and donors buzzing about, the conference room reminded him of a field hospital. The young woman he’d admired was holding up a wobbly arm, pressing the bandage with her forefinger, her other fingers clutching her glasses. Her pallor reminded him of a terrible day when a grunt stepped on a booby trap, his face draining of color. Her full lips were pursed, troubled. He felt a sadness, perhaps a vulnerability. 

The moment passed when she opened her eyes, slipped on her glasses, buttoned her silk sleeve and, not waiting for the aide, swung her long legs down from the table and stood. She stepped toward the finished donors who were sipping orange juice. Without a word, she fluttered a hand to her face in surprise and, tottering a moment, keeled backward. Austen caught her, her flailing arm knocking him across the cheek, flinging his glasses against a waste can, shattering a lens.

He held her in his arms, standing still, inhaling her scent, trembling at the sensation of her breasts against his chest. He knew he should set her down, yet stood motionless, looking at her lower lip, feeling her warmth in his hands. 

A second ticked by, then another. 

“Let’s get her back on the table,” the head nurse ordered. 

Austen stepped back, watching her ministrations, ignoring a request that he sit down with a cup of juice. 

“What’s her name?” asked the nurse, holding a vial under the young woman’s nose, patting her forehead with a damp cloth. 

“Margaret Downs,” drawled a self-assured, fortyish lawyer who’d hurried into the conference room. “What happened? Did she pass out? Is she all right?” 

“She’s fine. Excuse me, I need some room here. You mind stepping back?” the nurse said. 

“Are you sure she’s all right? Should she visit with a doctor?” the lawyer asked, his honeyed Southern accent as incongruous as a bagel in Alabama. Accustomed to deference, he persisted. “Can y’all really take care of her, do everything for her?” 

She glared from his face to his wedding ring. “So, you’re her husband? Or maybe her uncle?” 

“Why, no, we work together.” A brilliant litigator, a man jurors swooned over, Wilson Hubbard had a simple way with people: He actually listened, he paid close attention in conversations, making it seem that he cared deeply about others’ opinions. He’d been after the firm’s newest associate from the day she started.

“She doesn’t need a doctor, she needs rest, liquids, and food. Maybe she didn’t get enough sleep last night,” the nurse said, fixing him with a stare. “Excuse me.”

An aide—a volunteer charged with giving snacks to the donors, turned to Austen. “Lucky you was there to catch her, dearie, might have fractured her skull. Shame about your glasses—do something nice, and it costs you good money. Is it orange or apple juice for you?”

“What?” said Austen, staring at the couple across the room, the tall young woman evoking shallow-buried images of his lost Jonnie. “Oh, orange, please. Thank you, ma’am.” 

“Better eat a few of these cookies. Take some more, go on.”

The lawyer was murmuring to Margaret, stroking her wrist, gentle as a country doctor. Austen saw the gleam in her luminous, sad eyes and her wan smile for the lawyer, and he cursed beneath his breath. If only he could talk like that. A few minutes later, when he heard her melodic laugh at some cleverness from the Southerner, he rose and marched out, chin held high, eyes forward. Margaret studied him. 

In the men’s room, Austen tapped the shards from his broken lens and shoved his glasses in his pocket. He splashed his face, wondering if he could ever charm a woman like that, whether he should follow Mrs. Shoer’s advice about gaining weight. He stared into the mirror, as always failing to see what others saw in him—the striking, assured business prince—instead seeing a criminal who had gone unpunished, a drug trafficker who’d skated free. He contemplated the young lawyer. Could he ever appeal to such a woman? Afraid he might see her again, then that he wouldn’t, he decided to skip his meeting with O’Keefe and walk instead. He took the cloth cap from his raincoat, left the building, welcoming the cleansing storm.

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