Page 68 of Boardroom Mask

I take a sip of coffee and, like a captain going down with a sinking ship, I stick to my regularly scheduled programming. “It was just a late night. Met a guy at a bar. You know how it goes.”

Weston doesn’t laugh, waggle his eyebrows, ask for details, or make some dumb joke about my sexual stamina. He just looks at me skeptically and declares, “Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit!”

“It is grade-A farm fertilizer. I would know, I’m from Wisconsin.” He pulls me closer on my wheely chair and drags my hand into his lap. “Jill, sweetheart, you roll in here every day looking like a goddamn magazine cover. Hair done, outfit coordinated, nails perfect. Today, you’re wearing a navy blazer with black pants and your shirt is inside out.”

I glance down. My shirt is, in fact, inside out. And backwards. The tag is poking out right under my chin. Fuck me.

“So whatever’s going on,” he continues, “it’s not from a fun one-night stand. Try again.”

The look in Weston’s eyes says there’s no chance in hell I’ll be wriggling out of this one. But what am I supposed to do? The truth is obviously out of the question. After what happened to Elliot, the last thing I’m going to do is get another innocent person wrapped up in this sordid shit. My normal lies and pretenses are also not gonna fly, though, so I’m feeling stuck.

Fortunately, I’m saved. Sort of. Not that Doug is much of a superhero, because once he starts talking, I realize it’s really more of an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” kind of situation.

“Weston, scram,” orders Doug as he stalks up, pointing toward Weston’s cubicle with his bagel. “You owe me five hundred words by eleven A.M. and, if my suspicions are correct, you haven’t written a single damn one of them.”

Weston blushes guiltily. “Aye-aye, fearless leader.” He glances at me and frowns, then mouths,We’ll talk later, okay?I flash him a thumbs-up and he trots away.

I try to pretend like I’m headed to the ladies’ room to escape the wrath of my editor, but my ass is barely an inch off the seatbefore Doug redirects his bagel at me like the royal scepter he seems to think it is. “I don’t think so, Pierce. Pop a squat. Debrief me.”

Sighing, I sit back down, resigned to my fate. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

He wrinkles his nose. “You’ve been hanging out with Weston too much. Your sass is starting to sound like his. Anyway. As it were. Did you get a sit-down with anyone at Lazarev yesterday?”

I put on my bestI’m definitely not lyingface and shake my head. “I tried, but this ice queen communications director stonewalled me. Offered to pass along my questions through ‘proper channels.’”

“So that’s a no.”

“It felt more like a‘no, and also go fuck yourself.’”

Doug grunts and holds up his phone screen. “Then why are you sitting here? Kir Lazarev’s doing a ribbon-cutting at a children’s hospital this afternoon. His family’s charitable foundation donated a new wing to save kids with incurable cancer of the eyebrow or whatever the fuck. It’s a big donor photo op, the whole nine yards. Local press pool, too, and an open gaggle afterward.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

He glances up at the heavens like he’s praying for the patience to deal with me. “It’s a chance to get in front of the younger Lazarev, numbskull. You show up, you introduce yourself, you shake his hand, you ask for a formal sit-down. That’s it. You don’t have to ambush the guy. Just get your face in front of him so next time you call his office, you’re not a stranger.”

My chin falls to my chest. “Do I have to?”

Doug doesn’t even deign that with an answer. He just brandishes the bagel at me one more time. Pumpernickel today, I see. Good on him for mixing it up. “Wear something that doesn’t have the tag sticking out.” Then he stomps off, whistling Vivaldi under his breath.

Grimacing, I grab my press badge and my voice recorder, shrug on my coat, and make for the door. On the way out, I catch my reflection in the scuffed chrome of the elevator doors.

Alright, Kir… Game time.

The children’s hospital is on the Upper East Side, a big modern building with a fresh banner strung across the entrance that readsLAZAREV FAMILY FOUNDATION — PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY WING.Inside, a Lazarev Global PR team has corralled the members of the media into a bright atrium with balloons and a podium. The press pool is small. I count six reporters and two camera crews. A local NBC affiliate, a couple of health trade publications, a blogger I vaguely recognize from a philanthropy newsletter. Nobody from theTimesMetro desk, which means Bartlett isn’t here to steal my scoop. That’s a small relief.

I grab a spot near the back, behind a cameraman adjusting his tripod. I flip open my notebook and click my pen, same as everyone else. Just another reporter covering a donor photo op on a Tuesday afternoon. Nothing to see here.Who, me? Sleeping with the CEO?! No, no, of course not! You’ve got the wrong woman.

At the top of the hour, Kir emerges through a side door flanked by two hospital administrators and a woman I recognize as Vera, the press liaison I met yesterday. He’s wearing black suit pants with a crisp white shirt and no jacket or tie. It’s casual and charmingly at-ease, with none of the predatory menace of the man who darkened my door and murmured filthy promises in my ear twelve hours ago.

For starters, this version of Kir is smiling. It’s a smile that makes you trust him instantly. Well,Idon’t, but others might. He shakes hands with the hospital CEO, laughs at something one of the doctors says, and then crouches down to talk to a little girl in a wheelchair with a bald head and an IV pole. He stays down there for a while. It’s not a quick photo-op crouch, either. He’s legitimately talking to her, eye level, nodding very seriously at whatever she’s telling him.

The girl giggles. Kir reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a small stuffed animal and hands it to her. She hugs it against her chest, spilling over with love.

I watch all of this with my pen frozen above my notebook. What the hell am I supposed to note aboutthat?

When the gaggle opens, he steps to the podium and handles the initial barrage of softball questions without breaking a sweat. What inspired the donation, what’s next for the foundation, how does it feel to give back. He answers every one with warmth and specificity. Damn near every woman in the room sighs longingly when he talks about “building a world where every child gets the full and happy life they deserve.” I’d bet dollars to donuts that they’re all thinking,Did he say “child”? I’ll give him a child if that’s what he wants.