Her Man Friday(15)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"Elsewhere?"

"At Mr. Kimball’s other residences," she clarified. "As I mentioned, I do travel with him from time to time. This time of year, however, with the holidays coming up, I tend to keep close to Ashling."

"Mr. Kimball celebrates in a big way, does he?"

"You could say that."

"Lots of parties?"

"Well, lots of guests," she said, evading the question.

"And just how did you… oh… get this position with Mr. Kimball?"

Once again, he’d made a simple word like position sound sexually charged, and it finally, finally hit Lily that Mr. Freiberger thought she played a much different role in Schuyler’s life than social secretary. She almost laughed out loud at the suggestion, so appropriate was it in its own strange way. Still, she supposed that the kind thing to do would be to set him straight. Well, straighter, anyway. There was no reason to tell him the entire truth. It would only serve to get her into trouble.

"Mr. Kimball and I have known each other for some time," she began. "Since college, in fact. I met him, oh, let me think… It was twelve years ago, I guess. I was nineteen at the time, trying to beat the Xerox machine in the school library into submission because it had stolen my fifteen cents. Schuyler came up behind me and fixed it in a snap. I was immediately taken with him. He’s a very arresting individual on first contact. And, naturally, I was impressed by how mechanically capable he was."

"Oh, I bet that was what impressed you."

She narrowed her eyes at Mr. Freiberger’s tone of voice. But his expression was completely impassive, so she had no idea if he had just made a disparaging comment or not. Deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt—for now—she continued.

"We remained friendly throughout college—"

"Oh, I’ll bet you did."

"—and when he started up his business," she continued crisply, pretending—but not very hard—that she hadn’t heard his comment, "Schuyler was nice enough to offer me a position."

"A really interesting position, too, I imagine."

"And since I had few other prospects at that point," Lily continued on valiantly through gritted teeth, "I was happy to take him up on his offer."

"And what an offer it must have been."

There, she was finished. And she congratulated herself for not slapping Mr. Freiberger silly during all his adolescent commentary. She’d explained her history with Schuyler all nice and simple and to the point, and she’d done it truthfully. She was rather proud of herself for that. Well, pretty truthfully, she amended. She may have left out one or two little things. But she’d covered all the major points. Well, most of the major points, anyway.

Before Mr. Freiberger could demand a more thorough explanation, not to mention ask her another question she really didn’t want to answer, Lily leapt up from the desk again.

"And speaking of my work for Mr. Kimball," she said, "I really should be getting back to it. I’ll be happy to leave the tea things here for you, if you think you’ll be wanting more."

"Oh, I’ll definitely be wanting more, Miss Rigby."

There it was again, she thought. That tone of voice that let her know he was talking about something significantly different from what she was talking about herself.

But all she said in response was, "Fine. Then I’ll just… leave these here, shall I?"

"Fine."

She turned to go, but something made her hesitate. Not that Mr. Freiberger said anything that might have halted her progress, but she sensed somehow that whatever business the two of them had was by no means finished. So she pivoted easily around again to face him, and wasn’t exactly surprised to see him lift his gaze from where it had been—right at fanny level.

"Was there something else?" she asked.

He shook his head slowly, his expression a complete blank. "Why no, Miss Rigby. Not today. Did I give you the impression that there would be something else?"

She opened her mouth to respond, then decided she’d be better off if she kept quiet. So with a silent shake of her head, she turned again and made her way out of Schuyler’s office. Somehow, though, she was beginning to suspect that Mr. Freiberger’s stay at Ashling was going to result in a lot more than a simple discovery of some minor income tax infraction. And furthermore, somehow, she got the distinct impression that income taxes were the last thing he’d come to investigate anyway.

She only wished she could figure out what it was, exactly, that he was looking for. And she wondered if she should alert Schuyler to the fact that there was something funny going on. Immediately, she dismissed the idea. Schuyler would tell her she was being silly. And, perhaps, she was. In many ways, he had always known her better than she knew herself.

Even when the two of them had been students, Lily had known, as had everyone else who had ever come into contact with him, that Schuyler Kimball wasn’t normal, that he knew things, could see things, could understand things, that no normal human being would be able to process. His IQ was off the charts, his brilliant mind the eighth wonder of the modern world. Only one thing had ever even come close to equaling it—his ambition. These days, people referred to Schuyler as driven. As a student, however, he’d been consumed.

As a student, he’d also been very poor. Then again, so had Lily. Back then, neither of them had been able to afford any more than the basic necessities of life, and often, they’d gone without even those. In fact, their shared poverty had probably been what had initially bonded them so quickly, even though it was something else entirely that fueled their friendship today.

But by the time Lily had met him, poverty had been a constant companion of Schuyler’s, from the day he was born. She, on the other hand, had enjoyed all the benefits of excessive wealth until shortly after her sixteenth birthday, when her father’s business had failed—miserably—and the Main Line Rigbys had lost everything. She and Schuyler had often joked about how they’d both come from entirely different backgrounds only to end up in exactly the same place—with less dollars than sense.

In spite of that—or, perhaps, because of it—he had always placed infinitely more importance on money than she ever had. He had determined early on that he would make a fortune someday that was truly obscene, and that he would spend it entirely, frivolously, selfishly on himself. Lily, in turn, had pointed out that the billions he intended to keep as his own, the billions with which he intended to indulge himself so shamelessly, could instead be used to feed and clothe and make warm people who needed and deserved it far more than he did. But whenever she reminded him of that fact, Schuyler had always scoffed at her, had always responded the same way.