Haze

I reach to tap on the frame of the wooden double doors but it's unnecessary. Her dark eyes catch mine as her gaze wanders the reception area. She's bored with whatever, Sophia, my assistant is talking about. That's clear to me. Sophia, on the other hand, is oblivious to her disinterest and only ups the volume of her voice. The clattered chatter of her words is filling the space, seeping into my office.

"Gabriel." An instant smile courses over my mother's deep red lips. "I'm early."

She's not.

I'd asked her to meet me almost an hour ago. She'd countered with a proposed dinner meeting, but my plans for tonight are non-negotiable. When I'd explained that I needed her in my office no later than three, she'd told me she'd make it by five. It's a quarter to four now.

"Join me in my office." I hold her gaze, waiting for her to dismiss Sophia with a thoughtless flick of her wrist. It's the same gesture she's used on me time and again.

"Your secretary is telling me the most outlandish tale about a bullfrog."

My eyes drop to the marble floor in an attempt to mask the grin that I feel on my lips. "A bullfrog?"

"She asked where I grew up, Mr. Foster," Sophia goes on, "I was telling her about some of the things I saw back home."

I look up and directly at her. I have no idea where 'home' is to her. She was a quick hire after my last assistant quit on the spot more than three months ago. Her name escapes me but the vile loathing in her eyes when I refused her request for an extra week's vacation to accommodate her honeymoon was memorable.

All the pent up resentment she'd held within for the eighteen months she worked for me had collided with her better judgment and had won. She'd hurled a barrage of insults at me in such rapid succession that I struggled to distinguish one from the other.

Once her peace was said, I calmly informed her that the two weeks of vacation time she'd previously requested had been approved months earlier and tacking on 'a few more days' as she casually put it, would eat into my time in London during fashion week. I needed her there with me, not on a beach in the Caribbean drinking cocktails crafted from tropical fruit and flavored rum.

"We need to talk, mother," I say, ignoring the expected question about Sophia's childhood and the amphibian that apparently played an important role in the story of her life. "You can continue this conversation when we're done."

She shoots me a look that carries a veiled warning of something intended to be menacing. It may have worked, and likely did, when I was still a child, but now that I'm thirty-two-years old and running an international conglomerate that boasts our shared surname, the impact it has is fleeting, at best.

"You're asking me to be rude, Gabriel." She yanks softly on the diamond earring that is hanging from her left ear. "I'm just getting to know Sophia. You can wait a few minutes while we finish up."

It's now clear that she knows exactly why I insisted she make time for me today. It's also obvious why she lobbied for a discussion over dinner. She wanted the security that a crowded restaurant would bring. My mother knows me well enough to recognize that discussing family business in public isn't something I willfully do. That has a time and place, and regardless of what my mother wants, the time is right now.

"This can't wait." I motion towards my office. "We need to talk. That needs to happen now."

Her lips etch into a firm, thin line as she tosses her purse and coat on Sophia's desk in an overly dramatic gesture before she walks straight towards me.

***

"Your father would have no part of this." She arches her neck to once again look at the now closed doors of my office. It's the third time she's done it since I suggested she sit on the black leather sofa before I sat next to her. "He wouldn't approve of this at all."

I unbutton my suit jacket. "When is the last time you spoke to him?"

"Why? It doesn't matter when I spoke to him."

It actually does.

Since their divorce more than a decade ago my parents' broken relationship has swung on a pendulum from adoration to unconstrained contempt, bordering on hatred. The latter usually is in play when my father brings his latest companion to a company function in full view of my mother.

The string of dalliances he's had since they separated has been with women younger than me who view him as a tolerable rung on the ladder to success. Not one of the dozen or so women who have flirted their way into my father's life has lasted more than a few months.