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“I used to be able to talk her into anything, but she’s gotten really stubborn lately,” complained Charlie.
Gherring said, “I think she gets that from her mother.”
“Absolutely,” Charlie agreed.
“Be careful,” Anne said. “You’re still partially on the payroll.”
“Just kidding, Mom. No need to play the money card. But even Grandpa says you’ve always been stubborn. He says you got it from Grandma.”
“Luckily for you, Jared is back. So I’m going back to work. Otherwise we’d be having a little talk.”
“Awesome. I’d love to give you The Talk. I thought you already knew about the birds and the bees, but I guess you are a little naive.”
Anne blushed crimson, and mumbled in a low voice, “Charlie, stop it. They might hear you.” She backed into the second bedroom.
“Too late! We already heard!” Jared was chuckling along with Gherring. “So this is what happens when your sweet baby girl grows up... She turns on you.”
Two hours later, Anne was making a few final changes on the slides. Gherring had Jared practice his presentation, which took about an hour without questions or discussion. The bulk of the PowerPoint slides were devoted to the portion that had been Jeff’s responsibility. Gherring said, “Jared’s part is first, of course. Then we’ll have a short break. Anne, you’ll start at the beginning of part two with the introduction and just keep going for a while. Probably to about slide fifteen. When they ask a question you can’t answer, I’ll step in as if we planned to switch at that point.”
“What about introductions and opening the meeting?” asked Jared.
“I’ll do all the prep work and introduce the two of you. Jared, you’ve met about a third of these people, but Anne won’t know anyone. I’ll know all but a few.”
“And they’re all going to speak English?” asked Anne.
“Yes,” said Gherring. “French will be their primary language, but all of them will understand English. Most will be pretty fluent, and I’m pretty fluent in French as well. Most of these people speak at least three languages.”
“I didn’t know you could speak French,” Anne said.
“Oh yeah, he speaks French, German, and Spanish too.” He looked at Gherring. “You speak anything else?”
“I’m passable in Italian and Portuguese. I know some Mandarin Chinese, but I’d never try to conduct business in it.”
Anne wondered what else she didn’t know about Steven Gherring.
“I guess I should try to practice.” Her hands were already sweaty. With her irrational fear of public speaking, she’d managed to avoid taking speech class in high school and college as well.
She started the presentation, reading from her slide notes in a tentative voice.
“Look up,” said Jared. “You wrote that stuff. I know you mostly know it.”
Anne tried to look up, but Gherring’s stare made her incredibly nervous. Her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t process her thoughts properly.
Gherring said, “I don’t think that’s right. Are you sure your notes are correct? Maybe you were a little careless copying from Jeff’s notes. We may have to start over and double-check everything.”
Her temper flared. “I double-checked and triple-checked. Look here on the next slide, you can see how the numbers changed from year to year. That’s exactly what I said. And on slide five, you can see the totals averaged over five years. I didn’t make any mistakes.” She fumed with indignation. She’d poured her heart and soul into that presentation, and she knew there weren’t any errors.
“All she needs is a little emotional distraction, and she’s fearless.” Gherring grinned at Jared.
Jared’s eyes were wide. “No doubt. I’ve never seen you so mad before.”
Anne began to chuckle and felt the tension leave her body. “Promise you won’t provoke me on purpose, tomorrow. If I really lost my temper it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.” After that, she kept going through the first hour of the presentation.
Gherring held up his hand. “Okay, that’s enough for tonight. I’ll probably take over long before we get to that point. There’ll be a lot of complicated questions on section three.” He stretched. “Eight o’clock—not bad. I say we go out to eat instead of ordering in. We’ll go someplace casual. Let me call the concierge, and we can meet downstairs in, say, fifteen minutes?”
A short drive brought them to Restaurant Meridiano. Anne was happy to let Gherring order for her, as long as it was “something good I can't get in the United States.” She had a four-course meal with a matching wine for each course. She started with Vietnamese spring rolls, followed by redfish and then Simmentaler veal with a basil mash. Dessert was a chocolate bombe filled with ice cream, Grand Marnier, crunchy crisps and cream. She was absolutely stuffed, but refused to leave a morsel of the delicious dessert on her plate, no matter how miserable she felt. Both men ordered a tasting menu with twelve different entrees, and appeared equally sated and wretched.
On the way back, Jared asked, “Did you ever see that really old Alka-Seltzer commercial? I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”
