The Creepshow: A Novel
the
Creepshow
a novel
ADRIA J. CIMINO
Published by Velvet Morning Press
Copyright © 2016 by Adria J. Cimino
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Ellen Meyer and Vicki Lesage
Author photo by Didier Quémener
To those who have looked up and discovered a glass ceiling overhead
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
“Les cons, ça ose tout. C’est même à ça qu’on les reconnaît.”
Michel Audiard, Les Tontons Flingueurs, a film by Georges Lautner, 1963
“Jerks will try anything. That’s exactly how you recognize them.”
Prologue
There were two kinds of people at the Creepshow. Those who drank the Kool-Aid and those who pretended to. Both could survive and coexist in the company. Meeting at the water cooler, complaining about how overworked they were and then returning to their desks with self-righteous smiles.
Wanda Julienne belonged to the latter category. At first, she didn’t even know it, didn’t realize the importance or the implications. She was a young old-timer in the glass tower under-looking the Eiffel Tower. More than a decade earlier, as she was about to graduate from college, a recruiter for Whilt Investment Services Inc. snapped her up for the company’s Paris office. Her foreign language and financial skills would make her the perfect addition to the team.
Management immediately liked Wanda’s analytic prowess, the way she could run numbers and turn a company’s finances inside out, and the way she constructed charts and graphs. But that was simply part of a financial analyst’s job, wasn’t it? Whilt management quickly promoted her to fund manager and praised her talent for choosing the right investments.
The icing on the cake was that Wanda kept her mouth shut and smiled. Did what she was told, returned to her desk with lowered eyes, didn’t count her hours, joined the team at a wine bar after work. She was innocuous.
But with the arrival of interns and fresh faces right out of college, Wanda Julienne was also getting expensive.
As Wanda thought back to the events of that winter two years ago, she asked herself: Exactly when did everything in my life switch from organized to chaos? Was it the day I started calling Whilt Investment Services “the Creepshow”? Was it when I let my voice be heard? Was it the day my boss reached up my skirt?
No, it began with the suicide of Elodie Clark.
Chapter 1
For the first time in six months, Wanda Julienne hurried down five flights in high heels. She quickly checked her reflection in the massive mirror hanging in the vestibule of her apartment building. Long brown hair drawn into a smooth ponytail, minimal makeup, stylish trench and overstuffed designer handbag. Other than the fact that her green eyes looked puffy from lack of sleep, and her belly no longer blocked the view of her feet, she looked about the same as the last time she headed out the door for a long day in the office.
But this time, the context was different. She wasn’t leaving home with a carefree heart, eagerly thinking about the appointments and tasks ahead. Instead, last-minute questions filled her mind: Would Nelly’s fever from the day before come back, and if it did, would the nanny follow her instructions? Would Nelly fuss so much that the nanny would change her mind about watching an infant among her small group of toddlers?
Wanda shook her head as if to rid her mind of the fears and get back to the business at hand. Sure, she had left three-month-old Nelly across the hall at the nanny share for the first time, but this didn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Wouldn’t Nelly, little by little, have a lot more fun with the older children than she would bouncing around in the baby carrier attached to her mother’s chest? Of course she would. Wanda pictured the colorful toys scattered in the playroom and the delighted faces of the toddlers when they saw a baby would be joining them. The thought reassured her, and she smiled, feeling a sense of freedom as the cool autumn air caressed her cheeks.
It was time to return to the offices of Whilt Investment Services, and she knew it.
Whilt was an international asset management firm, and Wanda was one of two senior fund managers in the Paris office. She’d left her clients in the hands of Thomas Champlain, a junior fund manager she didn’t particularly trust, but Wanda had tried not to think about that as she passed along her files months ago. Her boss, Louis, had appointed Thomas before Wanda even had time to list all of the bad investments Thomas had been responsible for in the past. Now, part of her cringed as she walked the short distance from her apartment to the office.
Then she stopped the destructive chain of thoughts. Perhaps she had underestimated Thomas. Maybe he ended up doing a decent job. Unlikely, but at least the idea comforted her.
A swirl of brittle leaves, buoyed by the wind, rushed before Wanda as if paving the way. She followed, clutching her silk scarf closer to her neck and glancing left and right at the familiar buildings that lined this grand avenue in the ritzy sixteenth arrondissement. The scalloped balconies, stately iron gates and expertly cut hedges painted a picture of elegance.
Along with Wanda’s personal and professional worries, feelings of elation also filled her heart. She thought of all that she loved about her job: researching a company’s potential, meeting with clients to explain her convictions of why a certain stock was worth their hard-earned money, rushing to after-work drinks with anyone who was able to get out of the office by seven o’clock. Well, the after-work drinks would likely be out of the question for a long while. But everything else would be the same, and that pleased Wanda.
And then, before she could ponder any further, she was standing before the glass doors.
~~~~
Lunchtime rolled around, and Wanda was still tryin
g to digest the news: Elodie Clark had fallen to her death the night before. Right on the premises. This young mother of two had left a messy leaf angel on the sidewalk below Conference Room A. That was why the meeting room was sealed with duct tape and police officers walked the halls in the morning hours as Wanda settled uncomfortably into her cubicle.
Management said it was an accident, but Wanda didn’t buy it. Why would someone lean so far out the window for a breath of fresh air when it was cold and windy outside?
A hand touched her shoulder.
Wanda jumped, then felt her face go hot. She hated being caught when her mind was wandering.
“Join me for lunch.” Maddie’s calm brown eyes met Wanda’s agitated ones. “I know it’s difficult to come back, and on a day like today… Well, there couldn’t be much worse.”
Maddie, about a dozen years older than Wanda, had helped her learn the ropes at Whilt. She now sat in an office upstairs with a position that held fewer and fewer responsibilities as the years progressed. She once told Wanda she didn’t care. She had a comfortable inheritance and her husband’s large salary to fall back on if her duties ever totaled zero. So far, those duties lingered at a low number, yet high enough to justify her presence.
Maddie didn’t spend much time socializing with the “downstairs” crowd—the fund managers and analysts—but always made an exception for Wanda. “For old times’ sake,” she would say.
Wanda hesitated as she glanced at the stack of mail on her desk and the darkened computer screen. She hadn’t been able to log on all morning due to a glitch the techs were still trying to fix. And Thomas had been in out-of-office meetings so couldn’t brief her on her funds’ performances. In vain, she had approached Louis’ office but then turned away when she saw he was embroiled in discussion after discussion with police.
“Clearly, everyone is in shock,” Maddie said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to get much work done today. So how about it?” She tucked her blond bob behind her ears and then crossed her arms across her chest with feigned authoritativeness.
Wanda nodded and grabbed her coat. A silent cloud of shock hung over the office. Hardly a word was said since Wanda had entered the building that morning. Louis’ secretary had informed them of the previous night’s events and told them to stay at their desks so investigators could do their job.
“Why didn’t they close the damn office?” Wanda asked as she and Maddie rounded the corner and made their way a block down to their favorite café.
“And lose a day of productivity, dear?” Maddie snorted and shook her head. “Wanda, you’ve been out for so long that you’ve forgotten how Whilt operates? Louis spent an hour early this morning convincing police we were preparing a project for the finance ministry so we couldn’t possibly be shut down, even for a day.”
“I guess I never saw management deal with suicide.” There. Wanda had said it. The word that had been floating through her mind since she learned of “the accident.”
“They’ll never say the ‘s’ word,” Maddie said, “especially since they know as well as most of us that this place drove Elodie to it. The constant pressure. She had been suffering from depression, her husband lost his job, and here at Whilt, her efforts never seemed to please them.” Without missing a beat, Maddie looked up at the approaching waiter. “The usual, times two. Quiche/salad combo still OK, Wanda?”
Wanda nodded, not caring much about the contents of her lunch plate. The Elodie that Wanda remembered was bright and hardworking. Wanda hadn’t known her very well since Elodie had been the sort to keep to herself, to stay away from after-work drinks. Wanda shuddered as she thought back to how easily she and the others had criticized that as they drunkenly toasted with beers under a starry Parisian night. Elodie preferred to be home with her kids. What was wrong with that?
“Was it our fault?” she whispered. “Those times when we got on her case for not going out?”
Maddie grasped her hand.
“Goodness, no! This is about what her bosses expected of her: the impossible. They wanted her to leave. She was costing them way too much money with that senior salary, Wanda! For half price, they could get two young ones right out of school. They only keep me around because I have dirt on Louis!”
“A lot has happened since I’ve been gone.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Maddie said.
The waiter delivered their lunch, but Wanda had lost her appetite.
~~~~
As usual, Wanda returned from lunch in less than an hour. With the sadness and shock of Elodie’s “accident” looming large, Wanda yearned to plunge herself into one of her favorite tasks: studying the market performance of her companies. The tech guy gave her a thumbs up sign as he passed her in the hallway, an indication that at least she would be able to access her computer.
Thomas Champlain was sitting in her chair, a pile of folders in his lap, as she rounded the corner. Wanda drew in a sharp breath.
“Welcome back!” he exclaimed, popping up from the seat. “Sorry to startle you.”
“Thank you. And it’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting to see someone sitting here.”
Thomas shifted the files into her outstretched arms.
“How did things go?” she asked. She tried to sound casual, but she was ready to pounce, ready to criticize him for the blunders she had already imagined.
His face turned almost as red as his hair, but he maintained the smile of superiority that Wanda despised.
“Each fund is down twenty percent.”
“What?” Wanda’s heart pounded as if it were beating its way out of her chest. Never in her Whilt career had her numbers been that far in the negative. She didn’t understand how it was possible. Without trying she could attain better results than that. Most periods, her funds were up eight to ten percent. In a bad period, a fund might dip to negative one percent. But down twenty? How could she justify this to clients? The questions began to multiply in her mind.
“You left me with a bunch of loser stocks, Wanda, so I had to alter a lot of positions.” Thomas adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, and Wanda decided glasses, in fact, did nothing to make one look serious.
“Loser stocks? You mean you sold the positions I’d carefully constructed?”
“They were starting to decline.”
“Starting to decline doesn’t necessarily mean they will continue to decline!” The look of superiority remained, making Wanda’s blood boil. “OK, listen, forget it. I’ve got to catch up on things.”
She turned away but didn’t open the files until he disappeared around the corner. Quickly, she grabbed the latest report from her star fund, International Large Cap Prestige, and examined the buys and sells. He sold every share of L’Oreal after the stock slipped four percent in one day on minor news. The shares later gained ten percent. He increased a position in a company she specifically warned him about. Sure, it rose eight percent in one pop, but over the period, it was down fifteen percent.
That idiot! Why couldn’t he follow the basic guidelines I gave him?
As her eyes continued to travel through the documents, she found Thomas hadn’t followed any of her advice. He had done just the opposite, and as a consequence, ran her funds into the ground.
With a shaky hand, Wanda picked up the phone and began to call her clients.
Chapter 2
When Max Beaumont, diploma fresh in hand, walked out of Wanda’s life to join a year-long medical mission in Nigeria, neither of them knew she was pregnant. No one with an education accidentally gets pregnant these days, Wanda’s mother had scolded. Wanda, as usual, let the remark slide off her back in the weekly telephone conversation that connected her residence in Paris with her parents’ home in Boston. So she had taken the pill a few hours—OK, several hours—late. Apparently, that had been enough to make a difference. How was she to know she was that fertile? She was a financial professional, not a doctor.
Max and Wanda had met at an end-of-summer party, and ri
ght from that night, Wanda knew he would be leaving for Africa in the coming weeks. But it hadn’t stopped either of them. They became a short-term item, and a rather passionate item at that.
She remembered the seductive half-grin, the almond-shaped hazel eyes, the perpetually tousled brown hair. And she remembered the way he made her feel when he looked at her, his eyes never leaving hers each time she spoke. Nothing like her ex, James, whose head always seemed to be buried in his cell phone.
Although a small pang tugged at Wanda’s heart every time Max talked about his upcoming trip, she bit her lip and willed a look of strength onto her face. If she stopped him from embarking upon the adventure, any potential relationship was cooked. But, in spite of her efforts to handle the separation as best as she could, she realized a relationship was cooked anyway.
Communication was nearly impossible with difficult access to networks, and Max’s schedule was beyond intense. When Wanda found out she was pregnant, she couldn’t imagine announcing the news over a crackly phone line as Max prepared for his next life-saving operation. Especially since their phone conversations and emails had been fewer and farther between.
She couldn’t blame Max entirely; the situation had become so unbearable that she found herself lashing out at him when they did speak or avoiding his calls altogether. By cutting him out of her life, she regained control.
Not having the baby had only crossed her mind for a few minutes, after Louis’ secretary discreetly handed her a piece of paper with the contact details of a doctor who performed abortions at a hospital not far from the office.
She had been taken aback, and her flushed face became contagious, with the bearer of the message hurrying off before Wanda could say a word. Maddie later told her the big bosses hated “losing” their best girls to pregnancy.
“That’s ridiculous!” Wanda had said at the time. “If you have a baby, you don’t lose brain cells or the desire to do a good job.”