Fidelity Files

  I didn't drive home. I couldn't stand the thought of entering that empty house all alone and coming face-to-face with the judgmental silence. There was only one person I wanted to see right now.

  SOPHIE ANSWERED the door wearing her lounging jeans and a T-shirt. "Hey, honey. What a nice surprise." And then after seeing the distressed look on my face, she asked me what was wrong.

  "How long have you got?" I asked, suddenly very thankful that my best friend was now in the know. Because for the first time in my life, I could actually talk about everything I'd never been able to talk about before.

  She shrugged and looked at the clock. "However long you want."

  I stepped inside, dropped my stuff on the coffee table, and fell onto the couch with an exasperated sigh. "Good. 'Cause it's finally my turn for a session. And I don't think you're going to find this problem in any textbook."

  20

  Leaving . . . and a Few

  Jet Planes

  "OH MY God!" Sophie sat motionless on the couch after I had relayed to her the horrid details of my visit to Raymond Jacobs's office today.

  "Well, what did you say?" she asked, her eyes wide, as if she were watching the season finale of 24. Although given the recent drama in my life, I didn't feel far from it.

  I looked down at the floor where Sophie's cat, Pollo, was playing with a string attached to a stick. "I didn't know what to say. I was speechless. Sophie, he knows who my mother is, he knows where she lives, what she does. If I don't do what he asks, he'll make sure she finds out about..." I paused and gulped, barely able to stand the thought of it. "All of it," I finished softly.

  "So, you didn't do it," she confirmed apprehensively.

  "No! Of course not." I took a deep breath. "At least not yet."

  "Jen!"

  "What? What else am I supposed to do?"

  "And he gave you a deadline or something?"

  I stared straight ahead of me, a defeated look on my face. "Sort of. He told me to take some time to think about it." I shivered. "The whole thing is just so creepy."

  "Is he going to take down the Web site while you're 'thinking about it'?"

  I shook my head. "I don't think so."

  "Well, when do you have to decide by?"

  "Two weeks." I closed my eyes.

  "And then what? You self-destruct?" Sophie attempted a joke.

  "Then I guess I need a bigger boat," I said, referring to Richard Dreyfus's line when he first saw the shark in Jaws.

  Sophie nodded her agreement.

  "But I have to resolve this sooner than that or someone is going to see it. Someone is going to find out. And I'm afraid it might be Jamie. Or worse...my mother! If he knows where she lives, I'm sure he'll have no trouble getting his little minions to track down her e-mail address."

  "Your mom has e-mail?"

  "She's learning," I explained. "Ever since the divorce she's been on some kind of mission to become more techno-savvy."

  "Wow, my mom can barely turn on the DVD player."

  I sighed and dropped my head in my hands. "This is hopeless!"

  "Shhh," Sophie cooed as she rubbed my back. "It'll be fine. We'll figure something out."

  Despite the grim outlook of my current situation, I quietly remarked to myself how nice it was to have Sophie in the loop about everything. I had missed her natural ability to comfort me.

  "What if," Sophie began thoughtfully, "you just told your mother?"

  I picked my head up and looked at her as if she were crazy.

  "That way," she continued, ignoring my skepticism, "it wouldn't matter what e-mail she got, or who managed to sneak notes into her mailbox. She'd already know."

  "I don't think so." I shook my head.

  "Just think about it," Sophie went on. "You didn't want me to find out, right? You probably would have gone through just as much agony figuring out a way to keep me in the dark. And now that I know, it's totally fine. And aren't you relieved?"

  I considered. "Yeah, but..."

  "Maybe it'll work the same way with your mom. Maybe if you just—"

  "No," I interrupted, attempting to chase the disturbing thought from my mind and Sophie's lips. "She's finally started to get over the divorce and get back to normal... after three years. And then to find out that her daughter is breaking up marriages all over the country? She'll never see it clearly. She can't see anything clearly right now."

  Sophie nodded, silently forfeiting her argument. "Okay, well, most people don't even open random e-mail forwards anyway. I know I don't. I usually just delete them right away out of sheer annoyance."

  "Are you kidding? My mom lives for e-mail forwards. She'll take e-mails any way she can get them. She even subscribes to those stupid retail newsletters just so she can hear the AOL man tell her she has mail."

  I leaned down and picked up the cat's toy stick from the floor. I waved it through the air, causing the attached string to dance spastically around my feet. Pollo batted it curiously with his paw. "Not to mention, I'll soon be out of a job if that thing continues to circle the globe."

  Sophie leaned back against the couch. "Well, I could say the thing that both of us are refusing to say, or I can just shut up and let you contemplate it yourself."

  I sat back up and looked at her. "Which is what?"

  "Quit."

  And there it was, dangling in front of me just like the string tied to the stick, just begging to be batted around in my head. The word I had been refusing to acknowledge for almost a month now. "Quit."

  Quit, quit, quit.

  Start over. Leave it all behind. I'd thought about it casually on rare occasions, as someone offhandedly talks about wanting to write a novel or take up ballroom dancing. Everybody close to them knows they'll never actually go through with it, just as I'd always known I was nowhere near quitting.

  Until now.

  "What would I do?" I asked softly.

  Sophie's eyes widened as she looked at me. She couldn't believe I was actually taking the suggestion seriously. "Well," she said, after seeing the true pain of my dilemma settling into my face, "how much money do you have saved up?"

  I shrugged. "Some. Maybe enough to get me by for a few months. But I wouldn't be able to stay in my condo. I'd have to move."

  Sophie nodded. "Yeah, probably."

  "Besides, I don't even know what I would want to do. I don't even know who I am without this job. It's been my life for two years now. And it's made me a completely different person. I wouldn't even know where to start. It's not like there's a guidebook out there: Career Options for Former Fidelity Inspectors: Find the One That's Right for You."

  Sophie chuckled. "You could always go back to investment banking."

  "Yeah, wouldn't that tie up a lot of loose ends."

  "Well, if you do quit," she began lightly, "just make sure you complete my assignment first!"

  I laughed...even though I felt like crying. "Right." I stood up and gazed desolately in the direction of the front door. "Well, I guess I'll go home and try to get some sleep."

  "Okay."

  I reached out and pulled Sophie into my arms, squeezing her tightly. "Thanks," I whispered in her ear.

  She pulled back and looked at me. "For what? I didn't even do anything."

  "No, you did," I assured her. "Trust me."

  THE NEXT night Jamie Richards arrived at my front door. I half expected him to call me again so I could meet him downstairs like I did last time. I hadn't exactly had time to think about whether or not I was ready to let him into my house yet. But apparently I didn't have a choice. It's not like I could crack the door open, stick out my head, and say, "Hold on a sec, I'll be right out," and then slam it in his face while I finished gathering up my stuff.

  I hid my reluctance with a warm smile and swung the door open for him. "Hi. Come on in." The words practically caught in my throat.

  He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and told me that I looked beautiful.

  I thanked him, as I once again f
elt my cheeks flush.

  "So this is your place?" he asked, stepping inside and surveying the living room. He gave an appreciative nod. "Not bad. You've done well for yourself. It's very... white."

  I let out a nervous giggle. "Yeah, I...um... like white."

  "I think the PC term is 'Decorationally Colorless.'"

  "Hey, I'll be just a second. Um . . ." I could feel a panic bubble rise up in my throat, but I managed to get out, "Make yourself at home."

  I ducked into my bedroom and picked out a white Chanel knitted clutch from my closet. I took one last look in the bathroom mirror. I had put together an outfit consisting of a black A-line skirt that ended right above the knee and a fitted three-quarter-sleeve boat-neck shirt with horizontal black and white stripes. My hair was up in a tight ponytail, and I had selected a pair of small silver hoop earrings. Finally, I had matched up the entire ensemble with my black Michael Kors pumps that had dull silver hardware and a rounded toe. I had to admit, for someone who generally found it difficult to dress herself, I was rather proud of my selections.

  Upon returning to the living room, I found Jamie meandering around, casually observing his surroundings. I watched him closely from the hallway as his eyes surveyed the small details of my living room. He walked to the TV and nodded approvingly. Then he made his way to the dining room and ran his fingertips across the tops of the wood chairs. At first watching him made me extremely nervous. I felt the sudden desire to remove him immediately from my room, to make this uneasiness subside in any way I could. But it wasn't until he stopped at the fireplace in the living room and paid particular attention to the framed photographs lining the mantel that I felt something else.

  An entirely new and unfamiliar feeling.

  I noticed a smile appear across his lips as he studied the photograph of me and my mom taken on a cruise a few years back, and then the picture of me, Sophie, Zoë, and John, taken at Jayes Martini Lounge. And that's when I realized:

  Jamie was the first man to enter this house (besides John). I had obviously never brought any clients back here. And since I hadn't been on a real date in years, there had been no other man to bring back here.

  Jamie was the first.

  And suddenly, watching him inside my home, observing my life, it somehow no longer felt nerve-racking.

  It felt... right.

  It was a feeling I'd never quite experienced before. A pang of some sort. Warm and peaceful yet completely terrifying all at the same time.

  And it didn't disappear the moment we stepped out the front door.

  It didn't even disappear after we drove away in Jamie's car and turned onto Wilshire Boulevard.

  In fact, that pang inside me, that small twinge of something unknown, it kept growing. Stronger and stronger. On the way to dinner, while sitting in the gourmet French restaurant he insisted on taking me to in order to prove that he doesn't only eat hot dogs and Coke for dinner, and by the time our dessert was delivered I wasn't sure what the hell was going on inside me. It felt like someone had unleashed a flock of hummingbirds inside my stomach and they wouldn't stop buzzing around.

  THIRTY MINUTES later Jamie and I lay on the front hood of his car outside of the Santa Monica Airport and watched small jets and propeller planes land on the runway in front of us.

  His hand was firmly wrapped around mine and his leg was resting so close to mine that every time one of us moved, even the slightest bit, our legs would touch. There was a faint chill in the air, but I could hardly feel it. I felt warmer than ever.

  "So, airplanes, huh?" I asked him with amusement.

  "I figured it could be kind of like a theme for us," Jamie replied, squeezing my hand.

  I smiled at the sky. "Makes sense."

  "Tell me about your job," he said, turning to face me.

  I continued to stare straight up into the sky. I couldn't look at him. Not when answering a question like this. Not when I was about to lie to someone I suddenly felt the strongest desire to never lie to.

  I wanted desperately to tell him the truth. To be as honest with him as I just knew he had been with me from the moment we met. I wanted to tell him about everything. Raymond Jacobs and his atrocious blackmail, Andrew Thompson and his weakness for beer-guzzling flight attendants, Parker Colman and his attempted "intervention" in the elevator, Sarah Miller and her robot facade, even Sophie – my best friend and her unthinkable request – all the way back to Miranda Keyton, my first, accidental, inspection.

  Something about him, something about lying next to him, holding his hand, and watching private jets zoom over our heads, made it impossible to lie to him.

  Well, nearly impossible.

  "What do you want to know?" I asked casually.

  "Well, you told me you're an investment banker. What kind of deals do you work on?"

  I shrugged. "All kinds."

  "Too much detail. Stop! I've heard enough."

  I laughed. "You know, mergers and acquisitions, hostile takeovers, private equity, risk management."

  "Wow, you're quite the Jill of all trades."

  "Uh-huh," I said, eager to change the subject. "What about you? Tell me more about your job."

  I wanted nothing more than to just be myself, and I felt an unbearable frustration in knowing that I couldn't.

  Jamie gave me a puzzled look, most likely sensing my uneasiness, and I'm sure it confused the hell out of him. Why doesn't this girl like to talk about her job? What's her problem? But fortunately he didn't press the issue.

  "Companies hire us to help them develop marketing strategies, redesign logos, research new ways of reaching out to customers. That kind of stuff."

  I turned and smiled at him. "That sounds interesting."

  He nodded. "It is... most of the time."

  We sat in silence for a moment as a loud plane passed overhead. "Think they sat here on a Palm Springs runway for four hours before landing?" I asked, looking at the sky.

  He nodded. "No way. That runway's reserved for us."

  I smiled. "Have you ever heard of an airplane bag?"

  "You mean like the one they give you onboard to throw up in?"

  I laughed and playfully slapped his leg with the back of my hand. "No! Like a bag with lots of stuff in it. You know, stuff for airplanes."

  Jamie turned his head. "Airplane stuff?" he asked with a puzzled look on his face.

  "Yeah, like food and Mad Libs and playing cards, Silly Putty. Stuff like that. I used to make them for me and my parents before we'd go on trips. I always had the best time picking out the contents. As soon as my parents announced a vacation, I would start planning each person's airplane bag."

  "Oh, so they were personalized?"

  I nodded proudly. "Of course. I was no amateur bag maker. I was like the master airplane bag maker."

  "Is it weird that I've been thinking about you?" he asked after a beat.

  I couldn't help but smile. "Well, that depends on how you've been thinking about me. If it was like, me riding an elephant through the desert with a clown and a cheerleader... then yeah, maybe that'd be weird."

  Jamie jokingly nodded his agreement, and then his expression turned serious again. "No, I mean...a lot. I've been thinking about you a lot."

  I looked into his eyes as I tried to reciprocate the sweet sentiment. I tried so hard to open my mouth and tell him I had thought about him, too. But with that would come so many other truths. Like, "I thought about you because I don't want you to know what I do." "I thought about you because I'm deathly afraid that you'll find out and never want to see me again." And of course the new one: "I thought about you because every two minutes I think about leaving it all behind... the job, the money, the cheaters, the quest, the skepticism... all of it... for you."

  But all I managed to say was, "No, it's not weird."

  And it wasn't weird. It was exactly what I wanted to hear. And at the same time, exactly what I didn't want to hear. How much easier would my life be if Jamie didn't even exist? If I hadn't met
him? Or if he simply had decided that there could be no future with a girl who ate all the Apple Jacks?

  He leaned in and kissed me. It was just as amazing as I remembered. Maybe even more. The sound of his radio playing from the open convertible mixed with the sound of the next jet plane a few miles out. It felt like we were kissing forever, yet when it was over, I only wanted more.

  "I thought about you, too," I heard myself say as he pulled away and laid his head back down on the hood of the car. I didn't know where it came from or if anything remotely like it would ever come out again. But it felt good to say it, regardless.

  He looked at me and smiled. Then he kissed me again. This time he pressed his body close to mine, and I felt as though the incredible warmth radiating off of it and passing effortlessly through his clothes could melt me in an instant.

  There were no stars out that night, not that there ever are in this city. Too much smog, too many bright lights. But for some reason, tonight, I didn't really miss them.

  AT THE end of the night, Jamie walked me back to my front door.

  "Thanks for hanging out with me again tonight," he said softly, brushing his lips against mine.

  I closed my eyes and allowed the numbness to invade my entire body once again.

  "I like you," he whispered as he pulled his face away just enough to look into my eyes.

  I swallowed hard. "You shouldn't," I heard myself say softly aloud. I had hoped the thought was only in my head, but evidently it had escaped.

  "And why is that?" he asked, delicately kissing my neck.

  Because I'm not who you think I am, I thought. Because I'm a fraud.

  Thankfully those thoughts stayed in my head.

  And then I said the only thing I could think of, the only thing that came to mind. "Do you want to come in?"