Visions of me hiding behind a bush, Cyrano de Bergerac style, while I stage whispered sweet nothings for him to shout up to her window flashed through my mind.
“Um, Jupe, I’m not good at poetry. Rafe’s the one with the words if that’s what you’re after.”
His face creased up in confusion. “Poetry? What the fuck do I want poetry for?”
“How do you want me to win her back?”
“Not with fucking poetry… I need you to give her a job.”
“What?”
“I need you to create a job for her. If I’m coming to New York, I want her there too. She needs a reason to be there. Set up a foundation or something.”
A foundation? A fucking foundation? When Decker had asked me this morning how I thought this conversation was going to go, there is no way I’d have been able to predict this.
“What sort of foundation?”
He stood up then leaned back against one of the giant walnut pillars which ran the length of the veranda. “I don’t care. But that hundred million you’re giving me? Use it to createsomething that she can run. What about a program that gets girls into S.T.E.M.?”
I rubbed hard along the back of my neck, trying to figure out a way to stop this conversation from derailing further.
“S.T.E.M.?!”
“Yeah, S.T.E.M. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.” He counted each one off his fingers.
“I know what S.T.E.M. is. How do you know what S.T.E.M. is?”
“I fucking read!” he snapped.
“Okay…” I held my palms up, “so you’re saying if I find this girl and give her a job, you’ll come to The Lions for two fifty mil?”
He nodded. “Yes. If you find her, I give you my word, I’ll come.”
I thought getting Jupiter to agree would be the hard part. I didn’t think it would be easy compared to this missing person’s wild goose chase he was sending me on. But I wanted him, and I said I would do anything to get him.
It didn’t seem that ‘anything’ had a limit.
“You wanna give me any clue about where to start looking? A name might help.”
He grinned for the first time since I’d arrived, though this had a distinctly sappy feel to it. “Her name is Marnie, Marnie Matthews.”
“Right, Marnie Matthews. Anything else?”
“Maybe start at N.A.S.A.”
I was thankful I was neither eating nor drinking at his announcement, because it would have been sprayed everywhere. As it was, I nearly fell off my chair at the speed I jolted forward, “N.A.S.A.?”
“Yes.”
“N.A.S.A.? Fucking, N.A.S.A.?!” I rubbed hard at my temples while Jupiter just stared at me. “Just to be clear, wearetalking about the space people?”
“Yep. The very same.”
I suddenly wished I had a Plan B as Plan A was slipping further and further away from me.
“Reeves, who is this chick?”
“She’s the key to getting me. And Shepherd, she can’t know any of this has come from me. I mean it.”
