Silver Currents of Change

Chapter 23

From the very start, the trip seemed destined not to go as planned. Five days before they were set to leave, Marcus Patterson announced he would have to finish his internship in Chicago, because he was already there going through orientation after accepting a job working for Thurgood Williams. He told Zarah Mr. Williams needed him right away and had "made him an offer he couldn't refuse." Still months away from his May 2008 graduation, in addition to continuing to produce and host Beyond Reason, which Thurgood now owned, he was being trained to assist Mr. Williams in all aspects of running the radio broadcasting division of The Hits Network. The job of a lifetime, it was the same job Thurgood offered Zarah; the one she turned down to work for Wilson Publishing.

With Marcus in Chicago, the WPI group traveling to New York would include Harvey and Zarah, Joshua Smith, and Jessica Wells. Harvey Wilson had planned the trip of a lifetime. They were flying to New York on his and his dad's company jet, and Harvey's admin assistant, Priscilla, had made reservations for them at The Plaza, Central Park. Their accommodations included a twentieth floor, Royal Terrace two-bedroom suite for Zarah and Jessica, and two Deluxe Rose Suites for Harvey and Joshua a few floors down from the girls, on the eighteenth floor.

Joshua Smith was headed to New York to stay. At the end of August, he would get his Bachelor's degree, and, after that he would be taking a semester off from school to find a job and to get settled into an apartment in Manhattan. In January, he'd be a law student at NYU, and Harvey Wilson was helping him find a job in publishing. His ultimate career goal was to become a communications lawyer. Just two days after agreeing to the arrangements regarding their trip, Joshua had to tell Harvey his plans had changed. He couldn't stay in Manhattan, he said, and would have to spend his nights on Long Island with his family. He hadn't seen his mom in a year, had spent the summer in L.A., with his dad, and his mother and stepdad wanted equal time, and weren't taking no for an answer.

Harvey didn't mind the change in living arrangements, but he did feel a strange sense of foreboding creeping into his spirit after Joshua delivered his update. After thinking about it for a while, he decided to brush it off. Jessica would be in the city with him and Zarah, so, as long as Joshua was there as often as needed to finish his last assignment for Wilson Publishing, everything could still go smoothly, just as planned.

The last shoe fell just one day before the WPI team was set to leave. Jessica Wells' mother called Laura saying her daughter wouldn't be able to go on the trip at all, because she'd accepted a job offer. She would complete the copy editing of her last story for her WPI internship, but Jessica, also graduating in August, had accepted a job as a junior copy editor at the largest daily newspaper in her hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. And, since the new job called for her to start immediately, she was already in transit, on her way home.

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When Zarah told her mother and Josie about the New York trip, she didn't tell them about the changes in who would be going. They both already knew and liked her boss, and they knew she had traveled with him before on assignments. Certain this trip would be no different, she didn't want her family worrying for no reason. And that was how, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in August, she ended up in New York City in an enormous, elegant suite that she would have to herself for almost a week, at The Plaza, Central Park.

Entering the space, she thought it looked like something out of romance novel. All kinds of fruit and flowers greeted the three of them as they walked into the spacious twentieth floor two-story suite. Looking around in amazement, it was the largest hotel room she had ever seen. A two-bedroom duplex, it had a four-hundred-square-foot terrace and was exquisitely furnished. Soothing, natural colors were all around, mostly sand tones—including beige and brown, along with regal jewel tones—turquoise, ruby and emerald. All were among Zarah's favorites, and they were everywhere she looked. On the lower level there was a stylishly designed living room overlooking Central Park with a restored marble fireplace, a full dining room, a Butler's pantry and a powder room. The smaller master bedroom overlooking the city was on the lower level, and the larger master bedroom, more lavishly appointed with exquisite views of Central Park, was on the second-level. The upstairs master bath had a huge Jacuzzi tub and a separate glass-enclosed shower with twenty-four-carat gold-plated fixtures. The bedrooms and living room had wall-mounted flat screen TVs, and the whole suite had high-speed wireless Internet access.