Most of the time she didn’t give a shit about how she looked any longer, rarely if ever bothering with makeup, going months without trimming her long, straight black hair, and paying little attention to her wardrobe. But every so often she’d get a fleeting urge to glam herself up like she used to – to spend hours fussing over her appearance in order to please –
Angela grimaced, forcing
those
kinds of thoughts firmly out of her head as she opened the exterior door to the flats. She helped Julia carry in the grocery bags, dumping them on the kitchen counter. Even Julia’s re-usable grocery bags were stylish – in a variety of bright pink and purple prints – while Angela couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually shopped for food, much less what sort of bags she’d used.
Julia smiled gratefully. “Thanks for helping. I’d have had to make two trips otherwise. Why don’t I return the favor by inviting you over for brunch?”
Angela gave her friend a knowing little smirk, well used by now to Julia’s not always subtle attempts to feed her. “Nice try, Jules, but I’ll pass. Thanks all the same.”
But Julia wasn’t so easily deterred. “Come on, Angie, you need to eat something, especially after that long run you did. Have you had anything to eat today?”
Angela sighed, knowing she was incapable of lying to her friend. “A protein bar before the run. And one of these nasty tasting recovery drinks that Dwayne gave me. Maybe the chocolate one will be better than the vanilla was.”
Julia shuddered daintily. “Ugh, neither of those items you just mentioned constitute a real meal. Look, Nathan’s supposed to be here in a few minutes and I promised to make eggs Florentine. That used to be one of your favorites back in high school when Mom would make it.”
“Maybe.” Angela knew the poached egg and spinach dish covered in Hollandaise sauce would be delicious since Julia was every bit as good a cook as her mother Natalie had always been. And while she never seemed to feel actual hunger pains anymore, and food in general just didn’t seem important, she realized that she did need to make more of an effort to eat.
Julia scented blood and went in for the kill. “I’m also serving home fries and fruit. Oh, and tangerine mimosas.”
Angela laughed. “Actually, hard as it might be to believe, I’ve been on the wagon for over two weeks. In fact, the last time I had any booze was during our New York trip. But I love your tangerine mimosas so you’ve talked me into it.”
Julia gave her a quick hug before wrinkling her nose delicately. “Oh, that’s great news, Angie. Why don’t you, uh, go catch a shower and I should have everything ready in about half an hour.”
“I can take a hint, Jules,” Angela replied drolly. “I’ve got wet dog stink and a hot shower that’s calling my name.”
After promising Julia that she would in fact return, Angela jogged upstairs to her own flat, and wasted little time getting into the shower. She almost wept as the blissfully hot water hit her chilled body, and she gradually felt the blood in her extremities begin to warm. Her hands and feet in particular were always cold these days, no matter how many layers she wore or how high she cranked up the heat.
She pulled on clothes without paying the slightest attention to what she grabbed, grimacing as she noticed her size zero jeans were a little looser than the last time she’d worn them. Her breasts were small enough not to need a bra but she pulled one on anyway for the extra layer. Over it she layered a white camisole, a long sleeved navy T-shirt and a gray thermal Henley. The three layers not only helped keep her at least a little warmer, but also added some bulk to her ultra-lean torso.
Angela pulled her almost waist-length hair back into a barrette, not bothering with makeup as was her norm these days. In fact, it was more than likely that any cosmetics she might still have lying about had long since dried up or expired.
As she pulled a pair of low heeled boots on over her thick wool socks, she fought off the temptation to call Julia and dream up some excuse to back out of brunch. Oddly enough it wasn’t the idea of actually eating that was causing her reticence, but instead the thought of having to watch Julia cuddle up to her very affectionate fiancée Nathan.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Nathan, even if his initial treatment of Julia had been more than a little on the douche-bag side. And so long as Julia was happy – which she evidently was in spades, being knee-deep in wedding plans at the moment – then Angela’s own feelings about Nathan shouldn’t matter. Part of it, she supposed, was that she had an inherent distrust of men in general these days. And the other part, she admitted ruefully, was that it bothered her to witness the frequent and rather blatant displays of affection that the besotted couple seemed to engage in almost constantly.
Angela had known little affection in her twenty six years, her childhood one of loneliness and emotional neglect despite growing up in a seemingly stable household with two parents and two older sisters. The few sexual partners she’d had during college had all been fleeting, casual encounters, all during a time in her life when she’d been angry, rebellious, and totally incapable of managing anything remotely resembling a relationship.
And then had come the time in her life she merely referred to as “the year” – though in actuality it had only been eleven months and five days. It had been the only time in her life when she’d felt truly alive, truly fulfilled, even though there had also been countless days during the same year when she’d felt helpless and out of control. And since then, she’d spent every day trying to claw her way out of the depths of hell that she’d fallen into when the ill-fated affair had ended so horribly.
But now, for the first time in years, she was beginning to find hope. That fleeting sensation of
something
that she’d felt earlier today during her run had been hovering on the outskirts of her emotions for a little while now, and she wasn’t sure whether to embrace it fully and welcome it in, or shove it brutally aside so she could continue to wallow in her sorrow.
Not wanting to dwell any further on what might be happening to her, Angela headed downstairs. hoping she could find enough of an appetite to do justice to Julia’s admittedly delicious eggs Florentine.
April
As usual, she was the first one in the office, arriving well before the sun came up and most likely before the majority of her co-workers were even getting out of bed. She liked the quiet, preferred the solitude that she could enjoy before the intrusions of ringing telephones, loud voices, and client meetings demanded her attention. And despite her largely anti-social behavior towards her co-workers, Angela presented a much different persona to her clients. She was certainly businesslike and professional, but also engaging and personable, and her clients were extremely loyal to her. And of course that loyalty was further ensured by her unquestionable success in picking the types of investments that had performed exceptionally well over the past couple of years. She’d received a number of very lucrative referrals from those clients who’d been very pleased at the increase in their portfolio value.
Angela booted up her computer and sipped her coffee while she looked over her schedule for the day. She was meticulous about her daily to-do list, insisting on maintaining strict control over it as she had done for most facets of her life. It was somewhat ironic, considering the fact that no one had ever imposed any rules or controls over her as a child or teen, and that she’d been more or less free to do whatever she wanted for as long as she could remember.
Unfortunately, her unsupervised childhood hadn’t been because her parents had been the sort of free spirits who believed in letting their children be themselves and make their own choices. In Angela’s case, it had simply been because no one had really given a damn about her. So she’d made her own rules, controlled her own life, made her own decisions. Except for one all-too-brief period in her life – a time that had encompassed eleven months and five days. A period where she’d alternated between heaven and hell on a daily basis, but had still felt happier and more alive than at any other time in her life.
As she’d become so adept at doing these past few years, Angela firmly blocked out the memories that hovered so tantalizingly in the back of her mind. Instead, she focused her energies on the portfolio proposal she was finalizing for a prospective client – another referral from one of her largest accounts. Her ability to pick out suitable and well-performing securities gauged to the individual needs of each client was a large part of her success. Even in an office with over a hundred brokers, she was regularly ranked in the top fifteen percent for production credits.
Of course, most of the other brokers in the office would credit Angela’s success solely to the good fortune that had come her way via an otherwise tragic event. She had been a very junior partner to Barbara Lowenstein, one of the top producers in the office and certainly the most successful female among them. And when Barbara had suffered a sudden, fatal heart attack, fifty percent of her very lucrative book of clients had automatically been passed on to Angela.
And while Angela never failed to be grateful for the opportunity she’d been given, the success she enjoyed today was almost entirely of her own doing. She’d taken the accounts she had inherited from Barbara and tripled that number, not to mention adding substantially to each client’s portfolio value. But she continued to be subjected to professional jealousy from both male and female brokers in the office, and had learned some time ago to block out the catty, spiteful comments – much as she’d mastered the art of ignoring everything else in her life that caused her hurt or pain.
She was admittedly anti-social and a loner, but much of that was simply because she didn’t have the patience to deal with people who either disliked or envied her. She hated playing games and pretending to like someone just because it was the polite thing to do. Angela figured she could count on one hand the number of people in this office she actually liked or tolerated. One of those people was her administrative assistant Cara Bregante. Like herself, Cara was of Italian descent, though only on her father’s side, and also like Angela, she was a finance major, still working on her degree at night school. Cara was usually one of the first to arrive in the office as well, nearly always at her desk before seven a.m.
“Good morning,” greeted Cara’s cheerful little voice from just inside the doorway to Angela’s office.
Angela glanced up and couldn’t help the answering smile she gave her very young assistant. She seldom smiled these days but resisting Cara was nearly futile. The twenty one year old was adorable, charming, and so sweet she could melt the hardest of hearts – like Angela’s own. Cara was a tiny little thing, barely over five feet tall, and Angela always felt like a giant standing next to her. But unlike Angela’s super skinny frame, Cara was curvy, with full breasts and hips, and always hovering oh so close to becoming plump. She had a cute heart-shaped face, enormous golden brown eyes, and a mass of thick, glossy dark brown curls that tended to overwhelm her small face.
“Hey, Cara,” greeted Angela in return. “How was your class last night?”
Cara grimaced. “Gut wrenching. Sometimes I don’t think I’m going to survive this semester. It’s definitely the toughest one so far.”
Angela frowned, noticing how tired her assistant looked this morning. She knew Cara had a rough time of it – working full time to support herself and then struggling to finish up her finance degree at night, all without a penny of support from her family. Angela knew that she could have easily found herself in a similar situation if she hadn’t been lucky enough to receive an athletic scholarship to Stanford. Her mother would have never consented to paying for a college education, considering it a waste of good money, and her sweet but utterly spineless father wouldn’t have dared to argue the case further with his domineering wife.
“If you want some help studying, just say the word,” offered Angela. “And take it easy today, okay? Our schedule is pretty light and you look worn out.”
Cara gave a small shrug. “I’m fine but thanks for asking. Do you want some more coffee? I’m headed over to the lunchroom for some.”
“Sure, if you don’t mind. And before you ask, little mother, I do not want a donut or a bagel or any other free food that might be lurking around.”
Cara grinned. “Am I that predictable? Besides, I didn’t see any breakfast meetings on the schedule this morning. Not with the new hire from competition who’s supposed to be starting today.”
Angela barely glanced up from the research report on tech stocks that she’d been studying. “What’s so special about this one? It’s not often that Corcoran doesn’t pack the schedule full of meetings no matter what else is going on.”
Jay Corcoran was the office sales manager, and one of the bigger pains in Angela’s skinny ass. He was one of those overeager company men who did absolutely everything that management asked of him, and followed the corporate philosophy like it was religion. One of his responsibilities was to schedule meetings with the various mutual fund and annuity representatives, and he took that particular task to heart with a vengeance. It seemed to Angela that there was always one meeting or another going on, and the meetings almost always included some type of food service.
Angela despised meetings of any sort, and the ones with the sales reps were the worst. Her sentiments were wholeheartedly shared with most of the other top producers in the office, who shunned the meetings as frequently as she did. And of course this drove kiss-ass Jay crazy, making him fear that it would be a bad reflection on his abilities as sales manager if every meeting wasn’t filled to overflowing with attendees. Thus, the hyperactive, annoying as hell sales manager – whom Angela had once likened to a Doberman Pinscher on crack –could be constantly seen trying to hustle one broker or another into attending one of the meetings. Angela just ignored him now, refusing to even look up when he popped his balding head inside her office, and tried unsuccessfully to entice, bully, threaten or beg her to attend.