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  “Well…” I backed off. “There’s always Miami…”

  She laughed.

  I sighed.

  A man eyed us as he brushed by and smiled, as if we’d all just shared a joke. He sat in one of the chairs, presumably waiting for the next speaker. He was probably somewhere in his thirties, with piercing eyes, longish black hair, and a slender build. He seemed to be part Asian, part Caucasian, and he reminded me of Keanu Reeves in a pinstriped suit.

  Teresa and I exchanged glances. She smiled. “Nice.”

  I checked her left hand. No wedding ring.

  “He’s all yours,” I said. “I’m off the market.”

  “Can’t do it,” she said. “You know what they say about where you eat…”

  “Pity.” The guy was sexy in an understated but undeniable way.

  “You said it.”

  I liked Teresa.

  • • •

  Producing, when you have a great director like Mac, is easy. I didn’t have much to worry about except the script and how we’d edit the footage in post. I drifted around the booth, studying the models of wide-bodied jets. They were three feet in diameter and remarkably accurate, down to the upholstery on the tiny seats. I decided to ask for one of the models once the trade show was over. My boyfriend, Luke, is a pilot. He’d love it. I could picture it on the mantel above the fireplace in his office. Although maybe it should be suspended from the ceiling. I was mulling it over when I was interrupted by Keanu Reeves.

  “Pardon me.” He smiled politely. “I couldn’t help noticing…” He motioned to the crew. “Are you with them?”

  I nodded.

  “What are you filming?”

  “It’s a promotional video for Delcroft,” I said.

  “Promotional?” He tilted his head as if he didn’t know what that meant.

  Now that we were standing together, I saw that his eyes weren’t dark like his hair. In fact, they were sea blue and fringed with dark lashes. Striking.

  “We’re showing the softer side of Delcroft,” I said, stealing the old Sears ad line.

  His expression remained blank. He didn’t get it. I cleared my throat and stuck out my hand. “Ellie Foreman.”

  He looked me over. I have long, wavy black hair, which, thanks to my hairdresser, will never contain a strand of gray, and blue-gray eyes, and I can still fit into a size eight, although they keep liberally interpreting the measurements. Still, it didn’t appear he was interested in my feminine attributes, which was what I’d figured when he approached.

  We shook hands. “I’m Gregory Parks,” he said. “Do you work for Delcroft?”

  “No. I’m a freelance producer. Delcroft hired me to make this video. Actually, a series of videos,” I added.

  “Oh.” He didn’t seem to know what to make of that.

  “I used to be in broadcast news.” I still feel compelled to tell people that. As if to assure them that while I might be a flak now, I was once a respectable member of the fourth estate. Then again, given the deplorable state of TV news today, it might not have been such a wise decision.

  His brow furrowed into a puzzled expression, which was cut short by the trill of his cell. He picked up, and a tender look came over him. He spoke softly in what sounded like Chinese, smiled, then disconnected and pocketed the cell.

  His smile brightened, his eyebrows arched, and he looked more interested. I wondered if he’d been talking to a woman. Maybe his girlfriend or wife. I looked for a ring but didn’t see one.

  Suddenly he was all business again. “What division of Delcroft is making this—this video?”

  “Public information.” I wondered why he was asking. “What about you?” I asked

  “I’m a—a consultant.”

  The consummate corporate catchall. It could mean anything from janitor to CEO. “That covers a lot of territory.”

  “My company sent me to research new developments in aviation.”

  “Oh. What company is that?”

  “You wouldn’t know it.” He smiled, reached inside his jacket pocket, and pulled out a crush-proof box of Marlboros. I’d know the red-and-white logo anywhere. When I smoked, Marlboro was my brand, and the packaging hasn’t changed.

  I frowned. “Those things can kill you, you know.” One of the things I’m most proud of is that I quit twenty years ago.

  He colored and reached back into his jacket. “Sorry. I meant to give you this.” He withdrew a business card, handed it to me, and put the cigarette box back into his pocket. I dug into my bag and gave him one of mine in return.

  I took a look at the card. Just his name, an email, and a phone number.

  “And the company?” I asked again.

  His color deepened. “Actually—uh—I’m doing some work with Delcroft.”

  “Really.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, in that case, don’t let me keep you. Nice meeting you, Gregory.” I dropped his card into my bag and turned away. He’d been pumping me. Checking me out. But he clearly didn’t appreciate being pumped in return.

  When we broke for lunch at a McCormick Place restaurant, I spotted Gregory again across the room. He waved as if we were best friends. I waved back.

  “Who’s that?” Mac asked between bites of a supersized twelve-inch hot dog.

  “I’m really not sure. At first I thought he was trying to pick me up.” I paused. “But he wasn’t. He was pumping me about Delcroft. But then he said he worked with them.”

  Mac raised his eyebrows.

  “Weird dude.” I said.

  The rest of the day was a blur of presentations, close-ups of the model planes, and cutaways. By the time we were finished, it was after six.

  “Shall I upload the footage to you?” Mac asked.

  Now that everything’s digital, I no longer need to spend long hours in a dark room hunched over a machine with an editor. I can screen and tag shots on my desktop, then email Mac what I want. Still, I miss the intimacy of the editing room. That’s where the magic happens, and if you’re lucky enough to have an editor like Hank Chenowsky, who works for Mac, it doesn’t feel like work, even when I walk out of a darkened room hours later like a cranky owl blinking in the sunshine.

  “You know what? I think I’ll come over tomorrow morning and screen it with Hank. Let him know, okay?”

  “Good deal,” Mac said. “Bring doughnuts.”

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday

  I tend to waver between the concepts of free will and destiny, but if ever an individual was destined to become a video editor, it’s Hank Chenowsky. He claims he spent his formative years in front of the tube, and I believe him. It gave him an innate understanding of shots, images, and eye candy that make a film—or in our case, a video—more polished and impressive than it has any right to be. I’m not sure where Mac found him—he says he rescued Hank from an after-school computer-programming class—but wherever he’s from, Hank’s the best editor I’ve ever worked with.

  I dropped the box of doughnuts beside the coffee machine in Mac’s studio and opened it. I pulled out a jelly doughnut covered with sugar. After snagging a napkin, I headed down the hall to the third room on the left. The door was open, and I could see Hank already hunched over the console, screening tape.

  “For you,” I said, placing the doughnut next to a mug half-full of coffee. Hank straightened, inspected the doughnut, and grinned.

  “Krishna has revealed himself.” He templed his hands.

  Thin and gangly, with light blue eyes and long pale hair, Hank’s coloring is almost albino, although when I teased him about it once, saying that’s what comes from never being out in the sun, he took offense. I learned later that an absence of skin, eye, and hair color is sometimes associated with mental retardation. Hank is as sharp as the sun on a Caribbean beach, but his reaction made me wonder if someone else in his family wasn’t.

  Now I gazed at him. “Him?”

  He looked up, an impish gleam in his eyes. “I am grat
eful to all gods. Regardless of gender. Especially when they bring jelly doughnuts.”

  “So I guess that makes me a goddess?”

  “The goddess of doughnuts.” He bowed his head. “I worship at your altar.”

  “Jeez. If I bring you chocolate, do I get elevated to supreme goddess?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t do chocolate. Bad for my skin.”

  “Ah.”

  “But…another jelly? Or honey-glazed? That could be worth an entire church.”

  I smiled and lowered myself into a chair beside him. “Then consider yourself worshipping at the church of Delcroft.”

  He took a large bite out of the doughnut, followed it with a swig of coffee, and turned back to the console.

  Each time I visit Mac’s editing room, there is some new piece of equipment I don’t understand. Today it was the monitors. There were at least two new ones, each showing something different. Which now made a total of eight. And that didn’t include the monitors on the Avid, or whatever new editing system Hank was using. The panel of switches, sliders, and levers on the machines resembled the cockpit of a small plane. It used to look like all the control rooms of the TV stations I worked at, something I understood and felt at home in. Now, though, I was lost.

  Hank had already assembled a rough cut of four chapters of the video, and I’d done a rough scratch track of the narration. Once we selected the shots from the trade show, we could easily drop them in. I’d scheduled a meeting the following Monday with Delcroft at which the top executives would, hopefully, approve what we’d done. Then we’d add the professional narration and all the special effects that make our videos a cut above.

  Hank and I scrolled through what we’d shot the day before, marked a couple of sound bites from the presenters, and looked for cover footage to make the visuals more interesting. Mac had taped some shots of the model planes on display at the booth, and we decided to do a cross-dissolve from the model to the real thing cruising through the air once we got file footage from Teresa.

  We were discussing where to make the dissolve when Mac stuck his head in. “Everything okay?”

  I nodded. Like Hank, I’m happy to spend all day in the editing room. I watched as Hank played with the static shot of the model and animated it so it looked like it was flying.

  “Nice.” I smiled.

  Hank smiled too. To create something out of nothing, something we could be proud of, was a form of artistry. Well, at least, skill.

  “Foreman,” Mac said, “didn’t you promise us a trip to the Bahamas? So we could shoot the plane’s interior?”

  I hesitated. “Um, that’s a negative. They didn’t go for it.”

  “Always promising…when are you gonna deliver, Ellie?”

  “Teresa seemed slightly more enthusiastic about Miami.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Hey…” Hank cut in, “who is this guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “He’s turning up in almost every shot.”

  I squinted at the monitor. “Oh, him. A consultant or something.” I checked my notes. “Gregory Parks.”

  “Yeah? Well, his name should have been Waldo. Take a look.”

  Hank had marked the video and rolled through three or four shots. Sure enough, Parks was either hobnobbing with other people, or studying the model planes, or sitting in front of the booth.

  “You know, now that I recall, he was pumping me during the shoot.”

  “About what?”

  ”Delcroft.” I bit my lip. “Keep going.”

  Hank cued up another shot and pushed “Play.” A woman was speaking at the front of the booth, the screen behind her. She was talking about the safety features of the new planes, and the screen showed close-ups of seat belts, fire extinguishers, and defibrillators. When she started in on the automatic pilot system, Mac panned from her to the audience. About a dozen people were listening, including Parks. His expression was so intense I had the sense he was parsing every word. I felt uncomfortable, as if I was eavesdropping on a private conversation.

  Mac must have sensed the same thing, because he chose that moment to pan back to the woman. She was clearly avoiding eye contact with Parks, looking everywhere except at him. Although a pleasant smile was pasted on her face, it didn’t reach her eyes. She looked worried.

  I leaned forward. “They don’t look like buddies, do they?”

  “No, they don’t.” Hank leaned back. “Who is she?”

  I went back to my notes. “Charlotte Hollander. She’s Delcroft’s VP and director of engineering. Just moved to Chicago from Utah. Teresa says the woman’s a rising star. Could possibly take over the top spot one day. Like the woman at GM.”

  Mac stroked the scar running down his cheek. He does that when he’s surprised. “A woman at Delcroft?”

  The three of us studied her image. She was tall, slim, and all business. Probably in her forties. Blond hair in a tight twist. A severe black suit. Dark eyes, and a long pointed nose that made her look sharp. She didn’t appear to be wearing a lot of makeup, but she didn’t need to. Frown lines on her brow indicated she’d fought more than one battle climbing the corporate ladder. At the same time, a slightly haughty expression said, “Don’t mess with me.”

  Mac frowned. “Engineering, you say?”

  I nodded.

  “Why was she in Utah?” Hank asked. “Is she Mormon?”

  “Hank, your stereotypes are showing,” I said.

  Mac stroked the scar on his cheek. “I still don’t get it. Why would she have to approve the video? We’re not dealing with anything close to engineering.”

  “Maybe to make sure we’re not spilling any secrets?”

  “Secrets?” Hank made his eyes go wide. “Are you saying a company like Delcroft has secrets?”

  “They’re the top military contractor in the country,” I said. “Fighter jets, drones, all that stuff. In fact, before we got the job, Teresa said she had to do background checks on all of us.”

  “Now you tell us,” Mac said.

  “You passed. I was the one they had a problem with.”

  If it were possible for Mac’s eyebrows to arch any higher, they did. I shot him a look. “No worries. We worked it out.”

  Hank scratched the side of his nose. “That doesn’t explain why she’s giving the cold shoulder to that guy.”

  “An ex-boyfriend?”

  “She doesn’t look like the type,” Hank said.

  “True,” I said. “But at first I thought he was trying to pick me up.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s just use him once or twice. Lucky for us we’re doing serials. Viewers won’t remember from week to week.”

  “You got it.”

  “Will I need to revise the scratch track before Monday?”

  Hank shook his head. “The first four will be ready by Friday.”

  “Great. You can Dropbox them to me.”

  “Sí, señorita.”

  “Wait. So now I’m a Spanish goddess?”

  “Just practicing for Miami.”

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday

  “If a heart attack doesn’t get me, the Medicare paperwork will,” my father said that afternoon. “You wouldn’t believe the mountain of paper on my desk.”

  We were in a booth at the kosher-style deli in Skokie that my father loves: a place with black-and-white square tiles on the floor, a giant menu that goes on for eight laminated pages, and a tantalizing aroma of garlic pickles and fresh-baked pumpernickel. Dad always orders the same thing: kreplach soup, corned beef on rye, coffee. He’s nothing if not consistent. He’s also over ninety, so he’s earned the right to be in whatever mood he wants. He continued to grumble.

  “You just wouldn’t believe it.”

  “What’s the problem, Dad? You’ve got your Part A and B, your supplemental, and your Part D, right?”

  My father leaned across the table. He’s never been tall, and age has stooped him. He
looks frailer every year, very much like a wizened Ben Kingsley. But his mind is as sharp as a box of tacks, and his heart, which has grown bigger and kinder over the years, makes up for what he’s lost in stature. “They send me reports of every doctor’s visit, every prescription, every time the home gives me a pill, practically every time I cough, for Christ’s sake. Then they tell me how much they’re covering, and what they may pay. Then when they actually do pay, they send it all over again. When I die, you’re gonna have to dig through the papers just to find my corpse. Emmes.”

  I sipped my coffee. I’m used to his rants. “So, why don’t you just trash them?”

  “What…and screw up the environment?” He straightened up. “Plus, who knows? One of those papers might save you a lot of money someday.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. My father was a lawyer, and he tends to be a hoarder. His case files from fifty years ago are still in my attic. “I can always ask for duplicates,” I said.

  “Then there will be another mountain of paper to get rid of. I’m saving you the trouble.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Since when have you become green?”

  “Green?” He looked puzzled. “Oh. That.” He lifted his coffee cup. His hand shook, but he didn’t spill.

  “And anyway”—I reached for a sugar packet—“you’re not dying.”

  “I’m gettin’ there.”

  I don’t argue with him anymore. Having reached a certain age myself, I suppose I’m more sensitive to his. Even though there’s a steady stream of new acquaintances in his assisted living home, he’s lost most of his close friends. He’s even outlasted the previous owners of the facility. I keep imagining the new owners slipping arsenic into his food, hoping for his demise so they can double the fees and screw some other old soul. But, as I told Luke, over my dead body.

  “And his, it would seem,” Luke shot back.

  Now, though, I kept my opinion to myself. The waitress, a middle-aged woman with bottle-blond hair and a toothy smile, brought our sandwiches, along with an extra plate of sliced garlic pickles.

  “You take good care of us, Shirley,” Dad said with a smile.