Knockout Mouse Read Free Page B

remain friends with. Jenny had been glad to take over the job. He was quite the commodity: six foot one, dark hair sweeping across his forehead, sharp handsome features. He’d already cashed in his first set of options and had plenty still accumulating. Jenny was full of ideas for his social life.
    I gave him a thumbs up, then tilted my thumb a bit. There was something unsettled about Sheila. Actually, she was probably more my type than Wes’s.
    “Who else is coming?” he asked.
    I elbowed him. “Don’t be greedy.”
    “Marion,” Jenny said. “But you can’t go out with both of them. They work together.”
    I poured Sheila a glass of wine. Wes grabbed it. “Allow me.”
    Wes always surprised me when he went into operator mode. In college, he’d been a stringy-haired physics major who’d had a hard time making eye contact with anyone, including me. And although his confidence had grown with success, he still would end a conversation abruptly if he started to feel nervous. He was a geek at heart, but some chemical kicked in around women.
    I drifted into the dining room for a look. Sheila was telling Wes she got her doctorate in molecular biology. Wes gulped his wine.
    The doorbell rang again. This time Fay got it. More people poured in. I put my facial muscles where they belonged, shook hands, and let names slip through my ears. Most of the guestswere friends of Jenny and Fay, clients and potential clients. They were generally younger than me and sported the hip-nerd look: the correct era of retro haircut, the correct length sideburns, the occasional piercing. The more slickly dressed ones were probably lawyers or MBAs. A couple in shorts and sandals were likely engineers.
    As I finished putting coats in the closet, Wes caught my eye. He held out his glass for a refill. I took it to the dining room, where Jenny was holding court. She was in her element here, keeping everyone entertained, dispensing drinks, and adding last minute touches to the table, all without skipping a beat. As I poured wine, she introduced me to a guy wearing a shirt in that blue that had swept the business world. He had a tie and an important busy look to match.
    “I didn’t catch what you do,” he said.
    What did I do? The number one question around here. The real questions behind it were, one, what can you do for me? And two, did you have the wherewithal to survive the deflation of the bubble?
    “Film,” I said.
    “You must travel to LA a lot.”
    “I don’t do features so much. Documentaries, and, if I’m forced to, industrials.”
    He nodded. His attention wandered to a tray of cheese. I didn’t try to retrieve it. Jenny’s friends did not inspire me to share confidences. Young and bright and good looking, they were all running in the same race. What brought them together was a sense of being career accelerators for one another. My friends had their quirks, but I knew I could count on them. Rita in particular—anywhere, anytime. Wes, usually, unless he was busy chasing some new capital or new romance.
    I took Wes his wine. Sheila’s back was to me. As I handed Wes the glass, she turned. Her elbow knocked the glass into my chest.
    “Oh no,” she apologized. “All over your white shirt. I’ll get you some soda water.”
    Wes waved her off. “Bill’s got a closet full of them. He wears the same thing whenever he goes out. White shirt and jeans.”
    I looked at the spot above my left breast. “Bad enough I have to drink the stuff,” I murmured. “Now I’ve got to wear it.”
    “I’m jealous. You can’t get away with wardrobe tricks like that when you’re female,” Sheila said.
    “Nice meeting you,” Wes said abruptly to her. He headed for a tall woman with large dangling earrings across the room.
    I caught a
was it something I said?
glance from Sheila. I could only shrug and dab a napkin on the stain. “He’s bad at good-byes,” I told her. I didn’t add that although I always told Wes he ought to go for a