Dean and Deluca
601 Words
3
Dean and Deluca
Two weeks later, Midtown Manhattan.
With the sunlight just cresting the buildings, Jana walked south on Fifth Avenue past Rockefeller Plaza and turned down Forty-Eighth. It was quicker to come this way in order to go into Dean and Deluca to grab a cup of coffee. Her budget didn’t allow her to make a regular habit of buying specialty foods from the retailer, but the place smelled like a little slice of heaven, and Jana couldn’t resist. The line at the coffee bar was short, unusual for this time of morning; a sign Jana was starting Monday off right.
“Help you?” the man behind the coffee bar said to her.
“A medium Manhattan blend, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. That will be five eighteen with tax. How would you like to pay for that?”
A man standing just to her side reached across and put his hand on Jana’s shoulder. His physical contact wasn’t overtly s****l, in fact, to an onlooker, it would have looked more like the way a father puts his arm around a daughter.
“I’ll get that,” he said as he handed a credit card to the barista. “Make it two.” He withdrew the hand from her shoulder as quickly as he had placed it there.
“Excuse me,” Jana said as she shifted away and looked at the man. He was wearing a crisp navy business suit and looked to be in his early fifties. Her look of disapproval was obvious, and to Jana, it was apparent he was hitting on her. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh it’s no problem.” He leaned closer, but his eyes scanned over the tops of shelves and across the store; it was as if he was looking for someone. He then leveled a gaze at her. “How’s the internship going?”
“What? Oh, you must work at Petrolsoft too. Sorry, I don’t recognize you. Did we meet already?”
He ignored the question. “As the assistant to the CEO, you must have fairly unrestricted access across the corporate intranet. Am I right?”
“Excuse me?”
He crossed his arms. “Don’t you find it interesting the amount of investing going on over there?”
“Look, I don’t know who you think you are but—” She stopped as the barista pushed two coffees across the counter.
“Cream and sugar are over there,” he said while pointing.
The man continued. “Investing in oil futures, that is.”
Jana paused. “I can’t talk about things that go on at Petrolsoft. Do you work there or not?”
“What’s concerning is that Petrolsoft seems to be making an awfully large bet that the oil market is about to skyrocket. A dangerous bet, in fact.”
“I don’t know anything about—”
He smiled. “Of course you do, Miss Baker. You’re the assistant to the CEO. You see everything that comes across his desk, and you’re the one making the buys.”
Jana began a swift walk toward the exit, but stopped and turned. “How do you know my name?”
He quoted from memory, “Jana Michelle Baker. Born October 19, 1986. The only daughter of Richard and Lillian Baker. Father, died 10/29/1988. Mother, deceased also, died November 8, 1993. You graduated summa c*m laude from Georgetown University with a bachelor of business administration, and you just passed the Series 7 stock broker’s exam.”
Her eyes flared. “What the hell is this? Are you stalking me? You want me to call a cop?”
The man simply smiled. “We’ll be in touch.” He walked past her and said, “Oh, you might not want to mention our conversation to anyone, especially anyone at Petrolsoft.”
As Jana’s mouth hung open, he exited through glass double doors and disappeared into brilliant morning sunlight pouring into the front of the store. He was gone.
- Writer
