Letter from Freedom by Roberta Grimes (different ereaders TXT) 📕

The Letters From Love Series

Book One

Letter From Freedom

      Roberta Grimes

A Novel

Chapter One

Watching him walk from his desk to his wall of windows overlooking Central Park captivated Liz. It was something about the way he walked, lightly but with an air of certainty that anything that he stepped on, he owned. He spoke that way too. His voice was surprisingly mild and soft for a man more than six and a half feet tall, as if those around him listened so closely that for him to speak louder would be a waste of effort.

“The Symingtons bought it in 1862 from the Empire of Brazil,” he was telling her while gazing down on Fifth Avenue. “At one time we thought they used the island to replicate antebellum South Carolina, but we’ve never found any evidence of that. We’ve since learned that while the people there are mostly African, they long predate the Civil War.”

He walked back toward his desk. It was a polished block of gargoyles peering through foliage, each panel of which, he just had said, had been carved from a single three-foot-wide board of Venezuelan mahogany. He had added, “I’m not sure it’s right for this office. I may send it to San Francisco.”

“Good place for it! Looks like California!” Liz had been so overwhelmed by this man and his office that she was babbling. But that had been half an hour ago. By now she had adjusted. The private elevator to the triplex penthouse; the two majordomos dressed as if they were guarding Sleeping Beauty’s castle; the Picassos, Cezannes, Rembrandts and Titians: she was past all that now.

He took from his desk a substantial pipe, a burl of wood so highly polished that it glittered. He peered into the bowl, then knocked its contents into an ashtray. Liz was so entertained just watching him living this bit of his life that she wasn’t much listening to what he was saying. What was supposed to be a job interview felt more like a visit to a wealth museum.

“In the ’30s Great Britain tried to claim it as part of the Falkland Islands, but it’s thousands of miles away from the Falklands. It’s at least a thousand miles from anything. It’s important you know that,” he said with a look at her that showed her again his most arresting feature, his enormous wide-set pale-blue eyes. Meeting his eyes was such an electric connection that Liz felt as if he were holding her gaze in order to force her to flinch away, so she wouldn’t flinch. He looked down at his desk for a pipetool. As he began to scrape the bowl of his pipe, he said, “It may surprise you to know that more than five hundred people applied for this job.” He knocked the bowl’s contents into an ashtray, peered into it, then scraped it some more.

“Not surprising. You’re paying twice the going rate.”

An ad placed in the classifieds of Today’s Teacher that offered a five-year contract at twenty-five thousand dollars a year should have brought applications from every elementary-school teacher in the United States, especially considering the bad job market.

“I pay my staff well,” was all he said. He stuck the pipe stem into his mouth and sucked air moistly through it.

Liz was only interested in the money. The last thing she wanted to do was keep teaching. She had gone to Smith College on scholarship, and unlike the wealthy girls dating Ivy League boys, she had needed to learn a trade in college. Her surest bet for stable work had seemed at the time to be elementary-school teaching, since Smith had a great education department and all those little kids were cute. But after five years of teaching first grade, Liz had felt as if her mind was shriveling. The thought of spending the rest of her days wiping noses and conversing with six-year-olds had made even clerical work look good, so a year ago Liz had taken a job as a bank teller. Then in March she had spotted this amazing job that promised to pay her a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars over the next five years, and with living expenses and travel besides. How was that even possible?

“You, um, you have it down to me?”

“Staffing has given me three names,” he said around the pipe stem gritted in his teeth. He took his pipe from his mouth and added, “Your tragic history argues in your favor.”

Liz didn’t know what might have argued in her favor. She couldn’t believe she had made it this far. She had been put through a week of interviews and written tests, two physical exams, and even a polite but probing sort of congeniality testing over dinner by two different male-and-female pairs, none of whom would tell her anything beyond, “This is routine.” “You’re doing fine.” “We’ll get back to you.”

“I feel as if I kind of went through the mill to get this far,” she said.

He was packing his pipe from a leather pouch, still standing and not sitting at his desk. It occurred to Liz that a lightweight interview might constitute a break for him.

“They screened as they would for my personal staff. I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s excessive.”

That “I’m sorry” delivered from financial Olympus charmed Liz so much that she was babbling again.

“Everyone falls in love with you, right?”

He flicked a look at her. What she liked about his half-smile was the fact that one tooth was not perfectly straight.

“I bought the island two years ago. We’re trying to determine how to manage it. I haven’t been able to give it much time.”

He looked at Liz again. What she had said about falling in love with him should have put him off. Instead, it seemed to interest him. So she recklessly added, “I bet you’re married, right?”

She knew he wasn’t married. And he was – let me think – maybe thirty-six. He had inherited a fortune at the age of twenty-six, a fact that had been big news at Smith when Liz was a junior and he made the cover of Time magazine as the richest American under the age of forty. Liz’s classmates had gleefully figured out that Jack Richardson was only six years older, so his eventual wife might be someone their age. He soon became famous for being rich. Liz had seen him most recently on Time’s list of Ten Americans Who Are Making a Bicentennial Difference, noted there for having built a fertilizer plant in Appalachia meant to minimize river pollution by making use of the waste from family pig farms. Liz had been unable to believe that Jack Richardson was her prospective employer until she saw him in person. There was no mistaking that face. So asking if he were married was such a big overstep that she could feel a slow blush rising. Stupid, stupid. But to her surprise – amazement, really – he said after a pause, “No, I’m not married.”

She almost cheekily said, “Then how about it?” She came so close to saying it that she had to clench her jaw until the impulse passed.

He was lighting his pipe with a gold lighter shaped like a chess-piece knight, sucking flame down into its bowl with tense little puffs. Warm rope-and-molasses smoke was on the air. He was as oversized as his pipe, but he used his hands with feminine grace. He took the pipe from his mouth and said, “Is there anything so outrageous you won’t say it?”

This horrible habit dated from high school, when being one of three white students in a class of more than a hundred had made Liz fall back on wisecracking as a way to get respect. It had worked so well that by her junior year she was generally the center of a group of friends who were waiting to hear whatever Liz might say next. She even could play with racial cracks successfully. That was how expert she eventually became. So all she could say now was, “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed.” Then, “Um, no. Apparently not.”

Another small smile.

“But, you know, I can tame it. I didn’t, for example, say, ‘How about it?’ when you said you weren’t married. But I came pretty close,” she stumbled as she realized that, shit, she had said it after all.

His smile faded. He briefly withdrew into quiet puffing. He glanced down at something on his desk. To change the subject, Liz babbled, “So tell me the bad things.”

He looked at her.

“You know, great climate and all, but there’s a troll in a cave that eats little children? Tell me that part.”

“No trolls. It’s a primitive lifestyle. Five years would be a lot. The staff who stay learn to love it. Those who don’t, leave quickly.”

“Primitive. Great.”

To him, “primitive” must mean domestic champagne. Maybe unheated towel

racks.

“Does this job interest you?”

“They said it was an ocean trip?”

“We go by yacht. It takes about two weeks.”

Liz didn’t know what to say. A doubling of her salary, a trip on a yacht, more time spent in this man’s company: all of that did have some appeal. Putting her ex-husband even farther behind and getting herself out of the known world had even more.

“I – sure, okay. I think so. I think I’m interested. Sure.”

But then she had to add, “Too bad about the lack of a troll.” She had to go on to say, “I actually prefer domestic champagne.” To shut herself up, she said finally, “You won’t hire me. I talk too much.”

“On the contrary.” He was puffing his pipe again, talking through his teeth. “I am

pleased to hire you.”

“What?”

ROBERTA GRIMES is a business attorney who had two experiences of light in childhood. She majored in religion at Smith College, and she spent decades studying afterlife evidence, quantum physics, and consciousness theories in order to understand the fundamentally spiritual nature of reality. She uses fiction to explore human nature and the ways in which spirituality affects our lives.

To learn more visit: http://robertagrimes.com/

Publication Date: 03-03-2014

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