Dark Redemption Page 9

  I have been looking for work since the beginning of the summer after Mom started to feel significantly better. I have been invited in for only one interview, and then no one called me back.

  The thing about the news industry is that they're just so many people that are willing to work non-paying internships to get ahead. It makes sense for them, and of course it makes sense for the company itself. But if you don't have rich parents who can support you it's hard to make that work.

  I have worked for two years in various roles, mainly as an administrative assistant, hoping to get a cover story at least once. But of course I didn't. I've written a number of articles for Huffington Post and other online newspapers, but they pay very little, and making it as a freelance journalist while living in the city is a hard road.

  I was so certain that I would get that job, or at least be invited in for an interview since Allison did put in a good word for me and now I just got a form letter rejection back.

  But hey, at least they messaged me! Nowadays it seems like you send out your resumes through all of these online job portals and no one even deems it appropriate to write you back.

  Suddenly, I wonder if perhaps I'm a little overqualified. I know that this is a standing joke in a lot of businesses, but no one wants to hire someone and pay them $30,000 a year when they have a master's degree. I thought that a graduate degree from Columbia School of Journalism would do me good, but I don't also have the internship and the connections to match the degree.

  What if I can't find anything?

  Whenever I feel frustrated, I tend to bury myself in work, and applying for jobs is no exception. I go on Indeed and Monster as well as most specialty forums just for news jobs. The thing that people do seem to be hiring more for are the audiovisual and videographer positions, something that I have no experience with.

  There are a few administrative assistants at news desks, which basically requires you to route calls from one person to another. It's something that I have done before and thought that I could get away from by getting a graduate degree.

  Still, I fill out the applications.

  Without even thinking about it, and just out of curiosity, I expand the search outside of the Tri-state area. I haven't thought of not living in New York City. Growing up in New Jersey, I've always thought that I'd be a grownup once I get an apartment in Manhattan and live the fun single life portrayed on Sex in the City.

  But suddenly, wanting to have a career of my own and a place to belong is more important than the location.

  What if I were to consider jobs outside of here?

  Yes, of course this is the media capital of the world of the United States, but there are news outlets everywhere.

  I focus my search on the big metropolitan areas, scrolling through Indeed looking for anything that would strike my interest. Then I decide to look outside of the major cities as well. Who knows, maybe there'll be something.

  An ad from Nantucket pops up. It's a place I've been to a couple of times as a kid, having barbecues with cousins on my mother's side. She had a falling out with that side of the family a while ago, why I can’t remember. But I've always found that town to be quaint and lovely, and sort of romantic in the way that you would least expect.

  They're looking for a news assistant for their local news station.

  * * *

  This position includes a mix of journalistic and administrative responsibilities, such as assisting editors with tasks during the day including minor editing and proofreading, as well newsroom administrative duties and directing phone calls to the news desk.

  * * *

  Some experience in news reporting and feature writing is required, and news assistants are encouraged to propose and write feature stories for various sections of the newspaper.

  * * *

  My eyes light up when I read the last part: propose and write feature stories!

  The shift begins at 5:00 a.m., so you have two get up at 3:30, but that’s not unexpected. The job post says the salary is competitive, and I wonder how much that would be in a town like that.

  I don't know why, but the prospect of this makes me a little bit excited. I've never thought about leaving the city, but walking around the Hamptons, I wonder if life is just a little bit calmer and a little bit to my liking somewhere smaller.

  19

  Jacqueline

  I wait a few hours for Allison to come back and when she doesn't, I head back out to the beach by myself.

  I text Dante to meet me there and he does, arriving half an hour later with his laptop and an umbrella in tow.

  "Wow, look at us," I joke. "We're like a couple on vacation."

  He smiles. "You don't know the half of it. I have a cooler with me. I left it up there at the end of the trail."

  After getting it, we set up the rest of our stuff and the umbrella, creating a good amount of shade along with everything else.

  I open a lounge chair and plop myself in it.

  "Well, this is nice. A little bit more upscale than simply sitting on the towel," I say.

  He grabs a bottle of suntan lotion and puts it on my back as I tell him what happened with Allison.

  "You don't want to go to The Redemption, do you?" I ask, hesitating and holding my breath while he answers.

  "No. I'd rather just be with you. But we can have a little party of our own tonight."

  I smile. "I'd like that. See, she just doesn't understand. She thinks that I should just go with her and be there as her buddy, but people are going to approach us and have certain expectations. I don't know. I just don't think she's being fair." I go on a long rant, complaining about everything and anything, exasperated by her unwillingness to compromise. "I just thought that we were closer friends than this."

  Dressed in the same swimsuit, he pulls his lounge chair a little bit closer to me, burying his feet in the sand. Grabbing his computer out of his bag, he opens it on his lap.

  “I have some emails to answer, but I'm here. Is that okay?"

  "Yeah, sure." I nod.

  Actually, I don't mind. I like having this time with him, working, doing normal things. I've always wondered what it would be like if we were an actual couple.

  What would our day be like? And if this is it, it’s pretty good.

  "Are you sure she's not going to be mad if she were to come out here and see us on the beach?"

  "I have no idea. I mean, probably, yes. But it feels like she's mad at me for everything."

  "Well, you did kind of promise to hang out with her this weekend and now you're spending time with a guy."

  I make a face in his general direction. "You know that's not true, okay? I don't want to be that kind of girl, but it's really not true. I would never do this if you were just some stranger, but you're not. For some reason, she just doesn't understand that."

  Dante reaches over and squeezes my hand. "Just give her some time to cool off. I think things will be fine after that."

  I nod, hoping that that's the case. Dante and I spend the afternoon together.

  He works on his laptop, typing away feverishly, looking at spreadsheets. In between all that, we kiss and frolic in the water, and bake under the sun.

  When it gets too overbearing, we hide under the umbrella. He opens his laptop again and I pull out a book on my phone, and we repeat the process again.

  We stay for hours, until the drinks and the snacks are all gone and the day is as perfect as it can possibly be.

  While my skin feels a little hot, I hope that I didn't get sunburned, and I carefully examine Dante to make sure that he's not red anywhere either. The consistent application of sunscreen seemed to have taken care of that.

  Finally, as the sun slowly moves away toward the horizon, and only hinting at the fact that twilight might be coming in a few hours, I tell him about my job rejection.

  It has been weighing on my mind and I haven't been able to put it all out. I try to push it away. I try not to think about it. But still, I can't
help but wonder what I'm going to do for work.

  "So they just sent you a form letter?" he asks. "No personal email?"

  I shake my head no. "At least they wrote back. Most don't even bother with that."

  "That's pretty shitty," he agrees.

  I shrug. "I guess it's the way the world is right now. Too many applicants, not enough positions, especially something like that where lots of people are willing to work for free for six months, a year, whatever it takes to get in with an organization."

  "What about you?" he asks.

  "Internship is really out of the question. I need money coming in. I've moved in with Allison and I'm working part time at this bar/restaurant as a waitress just to pay the rent. It's where I used to work before ..." I let my words trail off.

  He knows what I mean, before my brother's death.

  "I thought that you were a secretary," he says.

  "Administrative assistant," I correct him. "But yeah. But that was thirty hours a week, and I needed a little more. Plus, they were flexible at the restaurant so I could, you know, take different shifts when I needed them."

  "So what happened to both jobs?"

  "I couldn't deal with it. It was just ... When Michael was alive, I managed to juggle everything. Full-time school plus practically full-time work, sometimes more than that. I just sort of was like this Energizer bunny, just kept on going. But after his death, I tried and it's like whatever momentum and energy I had was just completely zapped out of me. First, I quit the restaurant job. Then I couldn't even make it to the administrative assistant position in any decent way. Luckily, I didn't get fired. I just told them that I was going through something and I couldn't keep working. I thought that that would allow me to finish school, at least somehow, but the semester was gone. I couldn't focus. I had to drop out just so that I wouldn't get all Fs."

  "Well, having this degree should be a lot of help," Dante says. I nod. "You don't seem so convinced."

  "I don't know. I don't mean to put a damper on today. I'm really having a lot of fun. I just kind of have all this shit going on and it's worrying, you know?"

  "Yeah, totally. I understand."

  I want to tell him that he may hear me, but he surely doesn't understand. From the looks of it, and from how easily he paid my mom's loan off, it seems like whatever work he does is purely voluntary, if that. He doesn't actually work for money, and he doesn't know what it's like to have to take jobs that you don't want to take just because you have no other options.

  "Can I run something by you?" Dante says, closing his laptop. I nod. "I need some help and you don't have a job, so I have an idea."

  I sit back in my chair and wait for him to explain.

  "I told you about my client, Vasko, and the fact that Apex Capital invested five million into his company?"

  "The microprocessors?" I ask.

  "Exactly. Well, it's been a while and everything seems on the up and up, but I have a feeling that it may not be the case."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Well, I've had my suspicions about him for a while, and he's very good at hiding paperwork, that sort of thing. You have done some investigative journalism, and you're currently sort of flexible with your work."

  "What are you getting at?" I ask.

  "They have an opening for an administrative assistant in his office. What if you applied? No relation to me, of course, otherwise he'd never hire you. But what if you just applied? You know, you're more than qualified, you have a few years of experience. Tell him that ..."

  "What about my degree?" I ask. "Wouldn't they think it's a little suspicious?"

  "You can leave that out. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But definitely mention your bachelor's. We can figure out the details if you're interested."

  “So, what would I do?"

  "Work for him. Figure out how he works, what makes him tick, maybe get access to some of his internal files. I mean, you will be doing all that, and I want to confirm my suspicions. If you tell me that there's nothing shady going on, then that's it. We let it go. I'm wrong. But I just can't help but wonder that my investors are losing a lot of money. They're getting swindled. I don't want to be a part of that, no matter what kind of deal Cedar made on their behalf."

  We talk about that for quite some time. He's not so much trying to convince me to do it, but just putting it out there as an option.

  I would be lying if I said that it didn't intrigue me.

  "Is this here?" I ask.

  "No. That's the other thing. It's in Seattle."

  "Seattle?"

  "Have you ever been there?" I shake my head no. "Well, I'd have no problem putting you up in a hotel. Whatever you need. Or renting you some short-stay apartment."

  "So I'd have to move to Seattle?"

  "It would be a longer term thing. I mean, it'd probably take, what, six months? I don't know how long. But he'd have to trust you."

  I nod. “Some of that proposition is a lot less enticing. This is like a full-time job, and that's if I can get it."

  "It's true." He nods.

  Suddenly, the question of where we stand in our relationship comes up, but I don't want to be the first one to bring it up.

  We have just met. We connected. This is unfair, this talk about ... so early in whatever it is that this is.

  "I travel a lot for work," Dante says. "I can take some time off, but not much. I don't have that much leeway. But we can see each other and I can visit you in Seattle if this works out just as easily as I could visit you here."

  I smile. This warms my heart. "Really?"

  He nods. "Really."

  "Okay. I'll think about it."

  20

  Dante

  I feel bad that I haven't told her the truth about everything. But when I saw her on the beach, we started talking. Then we were going on that date, it was like I suddenly got to be with her again and I remembered what it was like and how good it felt and I didn't want to ruin it.

  After Jacqueline had a fight with Allison, we spend the day at the beach. I pack a lunch and an umbrella and a cooler full of cold drinks, and we swim and make out in the ocean.

  We hold hands and play and laugh. We have the most perfect day. And while she reads stuff on her phone, I catch up on some emails.

  I'm putting in a lot of extra hours at work to pay off the debt that she doesn't know that I owe. The money that I paid for her mother's treatment came partly from my trust fund and partly from…elsewhere.

  I keep waiting for one of the companies that we had invested in to be sold. But they're hang-ups, nothing outrageous or unexpected, but every time there's a delay, it means that there's a delay in the money that comes back to me.

  The thing is that the trust fund is not the only place where I had borrowed the money from. I was short and I needed to do this for her because of the mistakes that I had made. So I borrowed about seventy-five from very bad people.

  This is part of the secrets and the lies that Jacqueline can never know.

  She thinks the money all came from me. But I owe debts, which I don't know how to pay back.

  Life would be so much easier if Cedar had told me the truth about his investments with Vasko. I have suspicions about the kickbacks and the fact that he's using this infusion of cash to raise other money or perhaps pay back debtors that he's beholden to. Not that I would allow him to do that.

  The duty that I owe my investors, I take very seriously. If they find out that Apex Capital is involved in some sort of scam, they will pull out. And if two pull out, then they all pull out because rumors are the one thing that can kill a financial company. The rumors don’t even have to be true.

  Our reputation is our bond.

  That's why I have to find out what is really going on with Vasko.

  I've brought in enough investors into Apex to get them to leave with me if I were to start a new company, but the success of that company is entirely dependent on the quality of Apex Capital.

  If
I were to leave now and set myself up as a competitor, theoretically stealing his clients away from him, Cedar will go after me with everything he has and I don't stand a chance.

  He will tell every startup, everyone he knows, not to invest with me. And even the clients that I do manage to bring over will start to have doubts if we can't find suitable investments to place our money into.

  If I find out and confirm that the deal with Vasko is a backhanded thing and show proof that I formed my company to not participate in fraud, then all of his clients will run over to me, setting myself up as the winner in this exchange.

  I will be someone who is on the right side of things.

  While Jacqueline tells me about her struggle to find a good-paying job, I suddenly have an epiphany. What if I had someone competent, someone who knew how to investigate on the inside?

  I saw the posting online for a personal assistant at the corporate office. And the way it was written, it seems like the assistant will be working for someone very high up in the company. Of course, Vasko is not identified directly.

  But even if the position is not for him directly, she'd work for the Chief Financial Officer, or the Vice President, or anyone else up there, theoretically with access to more information than I could possibly get from the outside.

  I run this idea past Jacqueline. She hesitates. I know that this isn't exactly what she has in mind and it has nothing to do with news directly.

  While we walk over to a local crab shack for some takeout and stand in the long line stretching down the highway for some of the best fried seafood around, I put my proposal in a different light.

  "What if you thought of this as a big investigative journalism job? You'd work from the inside out. You get them to trust you. You have access to all the paperwork and you'd see if they're doing anything that's illegal or not above board. Journalists do that all the time. But I'd pay for you to do this job. Afterward, you can write a tell-all story. You can expose him for the fraud and the liar that he is, and possibly even collect evidence for a criminal case.”