Catch a Falling Star (5 page)

But Natalie’s dad wasn’t much better than Brianna’s dad, as it turned out. Except Anthony was able to keep a job, and he didn’t walk out on them. He stuck it out, even when he obviously didn’t want to, until the car crash that killed him and Brianna’s mom. So in that way he was a lot better than Brianna’s dad, but that was sort of like rating which failing student was failing better. It didn’t really matter, did it? It was still
failing
. It was still
bad
.

Dakota came over and leaned into her, one hundred twenty pounds of solid muscle standing on her foot.

“Ow,” she said, reaching down to touch Dakota’s coat. Dakota always knew when she was upset, and always came over to stand with her.

“Or stand
on
me,” she said, and rescued her foot. Then she kept moving, crouching down, then sitting on the floor and burying her face in Dakota’s fur as Dakota stood there patiently, the best dog in the world, and let her cry.

“Hey.”

Natalie was sitting in the hallway outside Dr. Dryasdust’s classroom, trying to finish her homework because she hadn’t done it over the weekend, because … well, because Brianna had been a wreck. She had never seen Brianna be a wreck before and it had scared her, it still scared her, Brianna holding on to Dakota and crying, big gulping sobs, and Natalie wished she hadn’t gone out to talk to Richard, she wished she had stayed inside with Brianna. Wished wished wished Richard had not come back to make Brianna into a wreck. Not when —

She looked up and saw Joe smiling down at her, a little hesitant, like he thought she might have forgotten him between last week and today. “Hey, there,” she said, and he must have taken that as an invitation because he sat down next to her on the bench.

“How was your weekend?” he asked.

She went back to her homework. “Fine,” she said.
If a taxpaying entity adopts a different method of accounting …

“Good,” he said. “I worked like crazy. Carl, he’s my brother — he owns the lawn-care company — he ended up twisting his ankle playing basketball so he wasn’t much use.”

… the IRS may:

“If people would just stick with their decisions!” she said. “You pick cash or you pick accrual, and you stick with it! Then you don’t have to worry what the IRS is going to do to you!”

“Oops, you didn’t get your homework done in time,” Joe guessed. “Here I am distracting you.”

“I’m not really paying any attention to you,” Natalie said and tucked her hair behind her ear, ready to give the answer one more shot in the five minutes she had before class started.

“That one’s a little trickier than it seems,” Joe advised her.

“Everything in the tax code is trickier than it appears,” she said darkly, and Joe laughed and said, “True enough,” and went into the classroom, leaving her in peace.

• • •

Matthias looked at the pedestal where his Yuan dynasty plate had stood. It wasn’t that he missed it, really; it was just that a thing that used to be there was missing and he noticed the empty spot. He didn’t want to replace it with another Yuan dynasty plate or anything like that. He didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t know if he wanted anything. He just noticed. He hadn’t gone into his office over the weekend, so this was the first opportunity he’d had to see that the plate wasn’t there.

He picked up the phone and called the Cooper-Renfield Museum, announced who he was and with whom he wished to speak.

“Brianna Daniels,” Brianna said a moment later, with the breathlessness that made him smile. Sometimes he thought maybe she was excited to talk to him but it was hard to tell with Brianna. He knew more about her than he’d known about his last girlfriend, but she had a wall with a big Keep Out sign on it, and so what he knew were facts, not feelings. Sometimes he thought about getting past that Keep Out sign, but he couldn’t quite picture her making cookies with him in his kitchen, and he didn’t think it was fair to tackle that wall if he wasn’t serious. And so he had settled for this … whatever it was. Friendship, maybe.

“How are you, Mr. G?” Brianna asked, cheerful as ever.

“Disconcerted,” he said. “I’m looking at my empty pedestal.”

“This is a literal pedestal, right?” she said. “Not figurative or anything? You’re not quoting a metaphysical poet at me?”

“It’s a literal pedestal.”

“Which means you’re missing your plate already. You just gave it away on Friday, Mr. G. And I’m pretty sure we won’t let you have it back.”

Matthias smiled, some tension easing across his shoulders.
Call me Matthias
, he didn’t say. He wasn’t sure why. It was just that … she knew his name. It was like she wanted to keep that distance between them. But even if they weren’t going to bake cookies together, that didn’t mean they couldn’t explore … Tarzan movies. For example.

“You’re sure?” he said.

“Yep, I’ve got the papers right here,” she said. “And Anita has put a sticky note on them: ‘Don’t let Mr. G have his plate back no matter how much he misses it.’”

“Well, then, if those are the rules,” he said.

“Change is hard,” Brianna said. “But! Listen, change can also be good. That plate has been in your family forever, right?”

“Maybe not forever.”

“
You
didn’t pick it, right?”

“Right.”

“So, now’s your opportunity to pick something
you
like to go on the pedestal.”

“I was thinking about just getting rid of the pedestal.”

She sighed, a long-suffering sigh that made him smile more broadly. “Lawyers! So pragmatic. Here’s an opportunity for you to start the Mr. G Collection and you won’t even take it.”

“I’m not that interested in art.”

There was a pause because he had apparently shocked her into speechlessness.

“Well,” she said, finally. “Don’t say that around
here
, all right? And definitely not on the night of the gala.”

“I promise.” He wondered what she’d say if he explained
. I call the museum three times a week because I like to talk to you.
That would probably make her Keep Out sign flash neon red.

“Okay. I’m sending you a link.”

He was flummoxed. “A what?”

“A link, a link. I’m sending you an email that has a link embedded in it, and if you click the link, it’ll lead you to a web page. Oops, gotta go, getting the death glare from the dragon — I mean, Mrs. Curtin.”

Matthias hung up the phone and turned cautiously to his computer, saw the email from Brianna, and clicked on the link, which brought him to a web page selling a very inexpensive replica of the Maltese Falcon statuette. He’d been expecting her to direct him to a pricey marble bust of Shakespeare. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to have in your library to prove your learnedness?

He started to laugh, and wondered what Brianna would think if he clicked buy.

• • •

Brianna put her head down on her desk and made herself breathe. Inhale, counting to ten, exhale, counting to ten. It was so annoying that talking to Mr. G made her lightheaded, especially when she had to report to Mrs. Curtin immediately.

She took a last deep breath, then grabbed her pen and her notebook and went down the hall to Mrs. Curtin’s office, knocking on the open door.

“Ah, there you are,” Mrs. Curtin said, as if Brianna were a misplaced set of car keys and not someone she’d summoned over the intercom. “Please, come in and sit down.”

Uh oh. Mrs. Curtin being genial and smiling so forcefully at her couldn’t be good news. Brianna took the guest chair in front of the desk, and gave her boss an alert look.

“My dear,” she began, making Brianna’s gut clench
. My dear
was never a good start. “I think you are happy working here?”

Oh crap oh crap oh crap. What had happened? She could
not
lose this job. She just couldn’t. She forced herself to take a deep breath and said, “Yes, of course. I enjoy my job and my colleagues are wonderful.” No one had to know that she’d spent most of Friday evening bitching about Anita. Natalie would never tell.

“Good. That’s good,” Mrs. Curtin said. She rested her bejeweled hands on her desk and leaned forward a little. “I only ask because I noticed that you left work a little early several times this week, when we had important things to do.”

I didn’t leave early
, Brianna wanted to say, but contradicting Mrs. Curtin was counter-productive.
I left on time
wasn’t an excuse Mrs. Curtin understood. To be fair, Mrs. Curtin never left on time so it wasn’t like she expected her subordinates to do something she wasn’t willing to do. On the other hand, she had no life, so she had no incentive to leave the office at all. And her “important things to do” equaled handwriting those stupid invitations.

“I guess I don’t understand,” Brianna said. She didn’t dare go on the attack, but she needed to keep the job. Natalie needed her to keep the job. And that meant finding a way to defend herself or appease Mrs. Curtin. “Everything was done on time.”

“That may be, but I had to redo a number of the invitations myself,” Mrs. Curtin said. “They were too sloppy, Brianna. You were in a rush to get them done.”

That was true, so she could hardly pretend it wasn’t.

“Brianna, I know you have … personal difficulties, but we all do and we can’t let them interfere with our work.”

Personal difficulties
. Like Mrs. Curtin had the first idea what a personal difficulty was. And supposing she did, she almost certainly had no idea how much harder it was to tackle a personal difficulty with no money, no network of cronies, and not a lot of friends. An administrative assistant without a college degree didn’t have a lot of resources.

Brianna didn’t say any of that. She said what she had to say: “I’ll do better, I promise. I’m sorry my work was sloppy.” She’d known those damned handwritten envelopes were going to ruin her. The computer would have done them perfectly and she wouldn’t be sitting here, worried about her job.

Mrs. Curtin’s hands moved restlessly on the desk. “I understand that you’re doing a side job.”

Brianna tried to remember if there was anything in the employee handbook forbidding second jobs. She hoped not.

“I think it’s wonderful to have that much energy,” Mrs. Curtin continued, though clearly she did not think it was wonderful in the slightest. “But you can’t lose sight of who your primary employer is, Brianna. You owe us your very best.” She was still beaming that fake smile. Then she bent her head to make a note on the pad in front of her. Almost certainly recording the circumstances of their meeting and what had been discussed, and it would go in the folder with Brianna’s name on it. Bitterness surged through Brianna. It wasn’t enough that you did your work, they wanted to own you, heart and soul; they thought they had a right.

Well, they didn’t. They didn’t own Brianna, not her thoughts or her spirit or her dreams, no one did, especially not this shriveled-up old dragon lady.

“Is that everything?” Brianna said crisply, which provoked a startled look from Mrs. Curtin, who apparently expected her to be more cowed than she was. Mrs. Curtin’s smile slipped.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s all. But please be aware that I am … concerned, Brianna.”

• • •

Joe slowly put his accounting textbook in his bag, watching Natalie as she talked to Professor Dreyfus and handed in her homework. Her probably still-incomplete homework. Which was a relief. Almost perfect was a lot more approachable than totally perfect.

He timed the zipping of his bag and the swinging of it over his shoulder with her turning away from the professor and heading for the door. He fell in just behind her and said, “Hey,” as they passed through the doorway. She glanced up and then smiled at him. Smiled like she was glad to see him. Of course she smiled like that at everyone who spoke to her.

A strand of hair had come loose from the ponytail she wore and he thought about touching it. She tucked it behind her ear. Not that he would have touched it. But it had been kind of nice to look at it and imagine.

“Sorry about earlier,” she said as they walked out of the building together. “I was kinda rude. Trying to finish my homework.”

“That’s okay,” Joe said. Obviously she hadn’t grown up in a houseful of siblings or she’d know what rude really was. Anyway, it was an encouraging sign so he took a deep breath and said, “Hey, do you want to get together later and study? The midterm is coming up fast.”

He held his breath.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

He let out his breath, the sharp disappointment more acute than he would have thought possible. She didn’t soften the blow with an explanation like
I have to work
or offer an alternative like
Maybe tomorrow
, so she was just shutting him down, which he should have
guessed
. A girl like her probably had fifteen guys asking her out every day.

“Oh, okay,” he said and tried to sound like the rejection had rolled off his back, like he hadn’t even noticed it was a rejection at all. “See ya,” he added, which just sounded stupid, and he went fast in the other direction before he could do anything else dumb.

• • •

I hate my job
, Brianna fumed.
I hate my job I hate my job I hate my job
. That didn’t seem very useful, so she turned to her notes regarding the gala arrangements.

The Cooper-Renfield gala was held every year in early November, and it had been held in the same way for at least forty of those years. Brianna had given up suggesting “Let’s try something new” three years ago. Her main job now was to make sure that this year’s gala was exactly the same as last year’s gala, which was exactly the same as the one held in 1994, and the one in 1982, and so on. Which was a lot harder than you’d think.

Right now that meant confirming all of the arrangements with the musicians — those who would be playing in the main gallery as well as the three string quartets that would be tucked away in side galleries — not to mention the electrical contractor who’d be stringing fairy lights all over the grounds; the caterer who would be providing the finger foods, the liquor, and the servers; the printer and the program; and even the designer who would be arranging the silent auction to its best advantage. You’d think one of the museum curators could do that, but you’d think wrong.