Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake (8 page)

She quickly fell into an exhausted sleep but frequently surfaced to the top of her dreams in a frightened shout, tangled in the bed sheet. Minnie’s mind was chaos, a frenzied mixture of painful recall, bad dreams and surreal imagination.

Amidst the many horrors, she saw her ex-boss, A.A Jones, swooping past the motel window on a bicycle. 

She woke up at 8.33am local time with the San Francisco sunshine burning through the pea-green patterned curtains in the old motel. It cast a psychedelic swirl over one of the walls. Minnie stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling and counted the cracks in the plaster. She was in a strange room, thousands of miles from home and felt more exhausted than she had the night before. She had been betrayed by her husband-to-be, had lost her job and had destroyed Greene’s credibility in the business world. She hadn’t the slightest idea how to rectify any of these or even how to begin the man hunt ahead of her. 

There were better ways to start the day. 

She ran through a simplified checklist in her head: 1 to 9, no zeros.

1
Find Greene. 

2
Apologise, apologise, apologise. 

3
Talk him through the natural gas deal. 

4
Make him a fortune.

5
Reverse the drop in Greene Inc stocks. 

6
Reunite Greene with Bachmann.

7
Go home to James George.

8
Accept his grovelling apology.

9
Get married! 

The fog that had briefly threatened San Francisco overnight had now dried out to reveal a sharply tailored city with structured architecture and a great silhouette. There was a fresh breeze to help clear Minnie’s over-stressed mind. She dragged herself out of bed and stared out of the window onto an unfamiliar street. 

As she watched the cars stop and start at the traffic lights, she briefly wondered where Jackson had gone to in his Dodge Ram. This thought was interrupted by someone else’s alarm go off through the wall. The repetitive
beep beep beep beep
went on and on as the person took forever to wake up.

The noise had no effect on its intended person but it seemed to jolt Minnie into action. She needed to speak to James George. She
had
to talk to him. 

She picked up her mobile, paused, and phoned Angie instead. 

Angie was on a bus chugging through central London when Minnie called so they reverted to a quick conversation on Skype with a plan to talk properly once Angie got home.

Angie Buckingham:
So. How was the flight?

Minnie Chase:
National Geographic missed his connection

AB:
Damn that man

MC:
Got a surfer instead

AB:
Like

MC:
(shakes head) Tattoos for sleeves

AB:
Artistic

MC:
Catches peanuts in his mouth

AB:
Party trick

MC:
Choking hazard

AB:
Love that man

MC:
Ladies man

AB:
Surfer sounds like fun

MC:
Hmm

AB:
Name?

MC:
Jay “Snowflake” Jackson.

AB:
Did you say Snowflake?

MC:
I opted for Jackson

AB:
Good call. You okay?

MC:
I miss James George

AB:
(puke face) (puke face) (puke face)

MC:
Five years! (sad face)

AB:
Reduced sentence. Free at last!

MC:
You think?

AB:
Don’t you dare call him

MC:
I won’t

AB:
Minnie!

MC:
I won’t!

AB:
Stay strong

MC:
Phone me later?

AB:
For sure (waving)

MC:
(kisses)

Minnie read over the conversation after Angie had gone off line. She knew that her friend was looking out for her but Minnie took a more pragmatic approach based on the basic rules of physics and practical experience – the bad stuff eventually settles to the bottom. Time is a great healer. No one need know about a broken past unless someone deliberately shakes it up.
It is possible to forget
, thought Minnie bravely, trying to ignore the fact that she was an expert at remembering everything.

She decided to call James George. Angie wouldn’t approve, but Minnie’s willpower had spectacularly failed her. It would be around five in the afternoon and he would still be at work. She studied the hands on her watch realising she had been left behind and it wasn’t just to do with a different time zone. Somehow, without noticing, Minnie had fallen behind in the relationship. James George, on the other hand, seemed to be making up for lost time, sowing his wild oats before he settled down.

He took nine rings to answer the phone, which set off a different kind of ringing in Minnie’s head: alarm bells. She’d expected him to pounce on her call with breakneck speed instead of risking it going through to voice mail.

Her mind started racing. Perhaps he was with Her.

She didn’t want to think about him in bed. Their bed. Shared bed. 

Then he finally answered with a, ‘Hey.’

Minnie said, ‘It’s me.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Did I get you at a bad time?’

‘No, it’s cool. I was just finishing a burger. Late lunch.’

He eats
, thought Minnie.
The real and present danger of losing his wife-to-be hasn’t affected his carnivorous need for red meat
. 

There was an awkward silence, an empty swimming-pool sized silence, forlorn and unloved, gathering dead leaves, algae and accusations.
Burger, really?
The question bounced around inside Minnie’s head. 

Minnie was affronted and didn’t believe him. She wanted to ask him the real reason he took so long to answer the phone. She felt even more neglected and unloved – even though she believed that to be impossible. She needed him to seize his phone: hand to holster, fast, in a high noon shoot-out. She needed him to have his phone grafted to his ear to facilitate an immediate response.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, ‘…I’ve been waiting for you to call me.’

‘
Me
to call
you
?’ snapped Minnie. The direction of communication seemed wrong to her.

‘Yes. Where are you?’

She hardened her resolve, then collapsed. ‘I’m in San Francisco.’ 

There was a slight time delay as he registered this fact.

‘San…
eh
? I thought you were staying at Angie’s.’ The surprise in his voice confirmed that he knew Minnie well: she was not the travelling type.

‘I was,’ said Minnie stiffly. ‘Now I’m in San Francisco.’

‘Work?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve never travelled with work before.’ He sounded sceptical. 

Minnie bristled. He wasn’t in the position to be suspicious about her whereabouts.

‘Minnie… hello?’

‘I’m still here.’

‘When are you coming home?’

‘Is she a prostitute?’ Minnie lobbed the question at him. She wanted to hurt him.

‘Who?
Vicki
? No!’ 

Vicki. 

It was like taking a bullet. Vicki. Minnie stopped pacing the room and collapsed heavily on the bed, pulling her knees up to her chest as though this might stop her heart falling through the floor.

Vicki! She didn’t want the woman to have a name. This made the situation a thousand times worse. Vicki was now a rhythmic beat inside Minnie’s head. She was a real person with a pulse, probably a high-powered job, on-trend wardrobe, killer heels and, as witnessed firsthand by Minnie, incredibly beautiful breasts and buttocks. Minnie had no problem imagining an appropriate nickname: Licky Vicki. The lusty woman who hungrily devoured other people’s boyfriends and husbands and
always
came back for more. 

Minnie almost dropped the phone. She frantically wondered, what had happened to brief encounters of the blind kind – distorted and blurred liaisons through an excessive consumption of alcohol? The kind where no one remembers a name, how it happened, or even what happened.

Minnie lay down on the bed and wished she hadn’t mentioned San Francisco. It would have done James George good to think she was staying just around the corner with Angie. She needed to have the element of surprise on her side.

‘Minnie, look, it was nothing,’ explained James George.

‘It was definitely
not
nothing,’ she snapped back, heaving herself upright. There was no disguising anger or the shakiness in her voice. 

‘Okay… okay… what I’m trying to say is  that… well… she’s… we… you know… we are nothing. Not you and me,’ he added hastily. ‘Me and Vicki.’

‘Stop it,’ snapped Minnie. ‘Bloody hell! Stop saying her name!’ She clutched her side. Perhaps an ulcer had burst or even her appendix. The practical side of her head quickly checked to see if she had remembered to sort out transatlantic healthcare or would she rack up thousands of dollars of debt as she wasted away in a San Franciscan hospital. Cause of death: suppurating wound from a butchered heart. 

Minnie filled the silence with a thousand questions inside her head. She was one breath away from an interrogation conversation that would surpass MI5 security levels. She wanted to know everything: where did he meet her; was he drunk; who introduced them; how long had he known her; did she have a job; was she a trustafarian; did she have less athletic interests; did she have beautiful friends; a marvellous sense of humour; in what order did she put on her limited number of clothes in the morning? The questions piled up in her head in random heaps threatening to coalesce into a migraine. Once she started asking these questions, she knew she would never stop.
And why did he take so long to pick up the phone?
demanded the insistent, hurt voice in her head.

James George broke the silence. ‘Minnie, please come home. We need to sort this out.’

‘I have… stuff to do. Work stuff,’ stuttered Minnie.

‘Let’s move forward.’

‘To where? Our wedding?’ Minnie shouted, her voice clattered around the motel room. The cheap furniture tried and failed to absorb the sound and she sounded loud and harsh. 

‘Minnie, I just made a mistake.’ He sounded mildly exasperated, like he had seasoned his food with sugar instead of salt. Like he could really do without the hassle.

He didn’t even know she had lost her job. Soulmate to stranger in such a short space of time.

‘No,
I
made a mistake,’ screamed Minnie, uncharacteristically raging. ‘I made a mistake the first moment I met you.’

She disconnected the phone with a vigorous punch using her thumb, wishing she was the kind of person who could throw a television set out of a window or trash the room. 

6

Internet chatter

Minnie sat quietly, tense and upset after having disconnected the call. The conversation with James George replayed over and over inside her head. She could still hear his voice whispering in her ear. Minnie was in urgent need of background noise not motel room silence so she grabbed her laptop bag and headed back to the diner she had visited the night before. San Franciscan urban birds greeted her with a rousing dawn chorus. The high-pitched chirps of the sparrows, in competition with the roar of the early morning traffic, were a welcome distraction as Minnie waited to cross the road. James George’s insistent voice, unrepentant voice, if she was honest, was finally beaten into submission.

Morning trade at the diner was brisk. Free refills of industrial-strength coffee were going down well with the regulars. Minnie slid into an empty booth with her back to the morning sunshine and found herself confronted by Sarah-Jane, the waitress who had been the calm at the eye of Minnie’s emotional storm the previous night. She ordered coffee and waffles with syrup and sat back. 

Sarah-Jane returned with a jug of coffee and smiled reassuringly at Minnie. A slightly raised eyebrow suggested the unspoken message: caffeine first, put the world to rights later.  

After a gulp of steaming coffee, Minnie took a deep breath and opened her laptop. The search started here. She quickly checked her personal emails. Her work account had been deleted, thank you Ross. Minnie considered hacking into the system to retrieve useful contacts but was distracted by a message from Sid Zane, the man behind the voice recognition software. What now? She feared bad things. It had been forwarded by Angie as requested. Angie added her own subject title: silver linings. 

Dear optimist Angie was reaching out through Minnie’s computer screen. 

Hi Minnie,

Tried emailing you at work but Angie has now brought me up to speed. I’m gutted to hear that you’ve lost your job over this. I know the advice you offered to Ashton Greene was well-intended and genuine. Such a shame it blew up like the way it did.

However, it might help you feel better about it all to know that we have had an incredible response from around the world. We’ve had an amazing amount of support and appreciation over the last 24 hours. Thousands of people have contacted us via our website to find out more about the software. 

Parkinson’s isn’t the easiest disease to diagnose so the awareness-raising might speed up that process and enable treatment to begin earlier. YOU made this happen. I know it was unintentional but some good has come out of a bad situation. Please believe this.

Thank you.

Give me a shout when you’re back in London.