Page 35 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Oliver
Oliver had been in the office for all of five minutes, and he already wanted to throw Zac out a window.
“What if I kick off the executive meeting and give the broad strokes of the new strategy,” Zac was saying to Puja, “and then Tolly takes over to talk about the hardcore numbers?”
“Absolutely not.” Oliver crossed his arms over his chest from the other side of the table.
They were in one of the gleaming conference rooms, and it was only the presence of their boss (and the glass walls that everyone could see through) that kept Oliver’s temper in check.
“First of all, I’d appreciate it if you called me by my actual name.
And second, I should be the one giving the overview of everything that the quant program has accomplished in the past three months, because I’m the one who engineered it all. ”
“Yes, but we’ve been over this before,” Zac said slowly, like he was placating an unreasonable toddler. “The CEO and CFO—and maybe even some board members—will be at this meeting. You can’t treat it like a linear algebra lecture. There’s finesse involved.”
“Then I don’t know why you’re even in the running for the speech.”
“Gentlemen,” Puja said, clacking her pen onto the table. “Let’s remember that we’re on the same team, please. And let’s also remember that I have a lot at stake here, too. If this meeting goes well, I might get to spin out the quant division into something bigger, and you two would be my deputies.”
“Of course,” Zac said, smiling. “I only want to do what’s best for the company.”
Puja looked over at Oliver. He nodded, but when she glanced back down at her notepad, he shot Zac a glare.
“I do want you to divide up making the slide deck,” she said.
“Zac on the introduction—where we were last year, where we’ve already made strides this year, and where we are heading.
Oliver will work on all the evidentiary slides—examples of your new models, what they’re based on, anything with data, graphs, et cetera. ”
Zac started to smirk.
“However,” Puja said, “you will lead the executive meeting jointly.”
Zac’s smug smile faded.
“I tapped both of you because you’re the best,” Puja said. “The CEO and CFO should walk out of our meeting wondering why they aren’t giving our division even more resources and money. Show them how tech and quant intersect and why we are Hawthorne Drake’s future.”
“Understood,” Oliver said, although he had no idea how he and Zac would work together without it devolving into a brawl. Maybe Oliver could put Zac into a jiu jitsu hold with one arm and then do the work the way Oliver wanted with the other hand.
“Let’s see. It’s Tuesday now… I’d like the slide deck by next Monday at noon,” Puja said. “That’ll give us time to fine-tune before the meeting at the end of next week.”
“No problem,” Zac said, as he rose from his seat. “Tolly— Oliver —I’ll email you if we need to coordinate anything. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a call with the Winston family.”
Of course he had to get in that last dig to remind Oliver of the account he stole.
“Knock ’em dead,” Puja said.
Once Zac had gone, she turned to Oliver. “Is the Monday deadline doable? I know your part of the slides will take a lot more time, and half of the weekend is shot with the gala—”
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m not going to the gala.
” Work parties were anathema to Oliver. Why spend an entire evening making excruciating small talk with the same people you made small talk with every day in the break room and the hallways and the elevators, except in a suffocating tuxedo?
Besides, this party was some sort of fundraiser for an arts foundation, and Oliver didn’t like art.
It was, in his opinion, the converse of logic.
Puja looked at him like she was trying to figure out whether Oliver was messing with her. But then she quickly recalled how antisocial he was. “Hawthorne Drake is the main sponsor of the gala. Everyone with a title of ‘director’ and above goes. It’s important PR for the company.”
“I hate to agree with Zac, but maybe I’m not the best at public relations.”
Puja arched a brow. “It’s not optional.”
Oliver sighed. “Then I guess I better dust off my tux.”
He didn’t get home until late that night.
If you could call it home. Oliver didn’t like to waste money on interior design, so he’d bought the minimal amount of IKEA furniture possible, and there was no art on the white walls.
It was fine, though, because even if you spent a ton on paintings or photography, sooner or later your eyes would glaze over and you’d stop seeing them.
So, really, there was no point, and this was a much more sensible and frugal way to live.
Oliver dropped his briefcase by the front door and went into the kitchen for some wine. He’d been at his computer for so long today, his vision was blurry and his eyes felt crossed.
He opened a bottle of pinot and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. He was just about to pour when he saw it.
A yellow paper rose in the glass.
It had the same gold stripes as the one he’d thrown into the trash at the hot dog stand, but this one was obviously new, because it wasn’t crinkled and creased up from his crushing it into a ball.
“What the—?” Oliver jumped, spilling wine all over himself.
He set the bottle down but didn’t bother trying to save his clothes. Instead, he turned the glass upside down, and the paper rose tumbled out onto the counter.
Impatient, he jerked the petals open.
I can’t promise that wishes always come true. But I believe they can, and I would be willing to bet my heart on that—because if there is anything worth wishing for, it’s a happily ever after.
It was a continuation of their previous conversation, where Oliver had challenged his correspondent to name a wager.
He didn’t even need to look at the minuscule rosebud heart sign-off to know it was the same person writing to him as before.
But she had started a new rose, presumably because they were running out of space on the first one.
He took a long pull of wine straight from the bottle. How did these damn roses keep finding him? And how was it logically possible?
The intercom buzzed. Oliver frowned. Who could be visiting him? No one even knew he lived here.
He pressed one of the intercom’s buttons. “Hello?”
“Your mother is on the way up,” Sal, the doorman, said.
“My mother ?” Oliver froze, a deep chill consuming him, as if he’d been standing a second ago on what he thought was a solidly frozen lake but had now fallen straight through into the icy water.
Last he’d heard, Jennifer Jones had been serving time in a prison in northwest Pennsylvania.
He hadn’t known she’d been released. He hadn’t wanted to know anything about her.
“You sorta look like her,” Sal said through the intercom.
“Not that much,” Oliver said through gritted teeth. But unless he cut out his eyes, he would never fully be able to get away from her.
Oliver would have to have a talk with Sal later about checking before letting people upstairs. Even if it was obvious they were related.
His doorbell rang.
Oliver’s stomach flipped, and he clenched his fists to steady himself.
The last time he’d seen Jennifer was when he slammed the door and left for college.
He had never looked back. Not even when she was finally caught and sentenced.
As good as it would have felt to watch her walk away handcuffed in a prison jumpsuit, he had made a decision that he had no mother.
But now here she was, forcing her way back into his life. Once again making Oliver deal with her on her terms, not his.
He was going to throw up.
The doorbell rang again.
Oliver braced himself against the wall, took three deep, not-calming-enough breaths, then opened the door slowly. Just enough to see her but not enough to be an invitation to come in.
“My sweet boy!” The woman from whom he’d inherited his auburn hair and green eyes opened her arms to embrace him.
“What do you want, Jennifer?” Oliver made no move to accept her hug and remained on his side of the door.
“Can’t a mother just drop by to see her son?”
“Other mothers, yes. Not you, though.”
She faked a pout. “Oh, honey, at least let me inside. I’ll only be a minute.”
“If you’re going to be so quick, I don’t see the point of coming all the way in.”
“Your brother was much sweeter when I visited him.”
Oliver’s fingers burrowed red crescents into his palms. It was one thing for Jennifer to show up here. It was another for her to be digging her tentacles into Ben’s life after they’d finally gotten free of her…
Ben had a family. More for their mom to destroy. She would drain them of their savings, bankrupt his restaurant, trample over everything to serve her own egocentric needs.
“Your brother told me you were in New York and gave me the train fare to get up here. And… I met Noah and Davy.” Jennifer’s usually intense gaze misted over. “My grandbabies.”
“Don’t,” Oliver said.
She frowned. “Don’t what?”
“Whatever is going on in that mind of yours, leave them out of it. If you need money, I’ll give it to you. We both know that’s why you sought me out anyway. Just leave Ben and his family alone.”
Jennifer shook her head sadly. “I’m different now, Oliver, I swear. Prison changed me, and I want to be a better person.”
“Sure you do.”
“Honest!” She reached through the narrow opening of the door and gripped his forearm. “I’m trying. I’m going to make a difference in the world, I can feel it.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “That’s what you say about all of your schemes.” He peeled her hand off his arm. “How much money do you want, Jennifer?”
“I just wanted to see and hug you. And why won’t you call me ‘Mom’ anymore?”
“How. Much. Money?”
“I only want to hug my boy, all grown up now.”
Oliver crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Tell me a number now or I’ll close the door in your face.”
Jennifer shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Well, if you’re offering… Five thousand dollars would help me out a lot.”
He snorted. “That’s what I thought.”
“Baby, it’s so I can rent a proper apartment with a security deposit and buy some clothes to help me interview for jobs.”
“Sure it is.”
“If you don’t have five grand, I’ll take anything you’ve got right now.”
Oliver let out a long exhale and shook his head. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
He closed the door, leaving her in the hall. Was it blunt? Yes. But he wasn’t about to let Jennifer into his apartment.
Oliver strode into his bedroom and removed a beat-up Introduction to Statistics textbook from his bookshelf.
He flipped it open, revealing a shallow compartment carved into the chapter about stochastic processes, and pulled out two thousand dollars.
The trauma of his family fleeing Kansas in the middle of the night meant he always kept a significant amount of cash immediately accessible.
A minute later, he reopened the front door and shoved the wad of cash at Jennifer. “Here. Two grand. It’s all I have on me.”
Jennifer smiled and tucked it into her purse. “That’ll get me started. Thank you, Oliver. I’ll pay you back, I promise. I really am turning over a new leaf.”
He never expected to see the money again.
When she finally left, Oliver closed the door and pressed his forehead against it.
He had thought he was rid of his mother for good, but she was like a virus lying dormant in your body, hidden for years so that you started believing you were cured, then rearing its head when you least expected it and reminding you that you were woefully infected for life.
“Wine,” he muttered. After a day that began with Zac and ended with Jennifer, Oliver needed to get drunk.
He shuffled into the kitchen, leaned against the counter, and downed half the bottle with his eyes shut.
Then he forced himself to use a glass, and he drank more like a civilized person.
Still too fast, but at least he wasn’t chugging straight from the bottle now.
Within minutes, his head started to go pleasantly swimmy. Oliver picked up the unfolded paper rose.
I can’t promise that wishes always come true. But I believe they can, and I would be willing to bet my heart on that—because if there is anything worth wishing for, it’s a happily ever after.
It was nonsensical how this origami flower was here in his apartment, but it reminded him of that childhood game where you connected tin cans with a string and, supposedly, if you held it taut enough, you could talk on one end and whoever was connected to it on the other side would be able to hear and send an answer back.
The tin cans had never worked for him, but whatever was happening with these paper roses, it was working.
Oliver hated the lack of logic behind it, and yet, he was well on his way to drunk, so he reached for a pen.
That’s a wager I can’t match. My heart is too scarred for happily ever afters. I think a lot of people’s are.
Then, because it had worked before, he scooped up the square of origami paper to throw it in the trash. It didn’t make any sense that that was how it would get back to whoever was writing to him, but that’s what he’d done previously, and Oliver was too worn out to think any more deeply.
But just before he dropped it in with the kitchen garbage, he paused.
Then he carried the unfolded paper rose into his bedroom and tossed it in the trash can by his desk instead.
He’d thrown the prior rose into ketchup-and-mustard-littered garbage at a hot dog stand. Maybe this one deserved a little better.