The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange

by Anna Ferrara

  Whenever I went over to the office, usually only once every six months for my compulsory appraisals, I would wear a black business suit over a crisp white blouse and pull my long black hair back into a tight, neat bun to blend in with the office crowd on the streets below and within the building.

  After going through the glass door with the Everquest Incorporated logo on it, I would go right to the corridor of doors on the left of the reception counter, to the first bright blue door on the left, behind which I knew my boss and the smell of stale, bitter coffee would be waiting for me.

  On the rare occasion I ran into another office-attired person when making that short journey, I would simply smile and walk on without saying a word like my boss had told me to do very early on. He never explained why but since nobody I ran into at the Everquest office, not even the receptionist, ever made conversation with me, I presumed it was because we all had projects we weren’t allowed to talk about.

  “Hello, de Roller,” my boss said the moment I stepped into his room that Monday, right on the dot at 3pm. His name was Mr Yamamoto. He was Japanese, in his early fifties, with a greying moustache, perpetually neat side-combed hair and a preference for short-sleeved shirts in pale blue, which he usually wore with a black tie. “Nice to see you again. You look prettier than ever.”

  “Thank you,” I said, even though I could see his beady black eyes running over my chest from behind his thick glasses and feel my cheeks go hot. (My blouse was buttoned all the way up to my neck and the jacket above it covered three-quarters of my chest, mind you.) I made myself smile anyhow because I knew that was expected of me. Mr Yamamoto was not the owner of Everquest, just a salaried employee who made it up the ranks over the years, but he had been my boss from day one; he was the one who appraised my work once every six months and also the only person from Everquest with whom I interacted on a regular basis. So even though I had nothing nice to say about his appearance in return—I honestly thought he looked much older and more worn since the last time I saw him, with eye bags that were double the size they had been and creases on his forehead and eyes that were now more visible than ever—I saw no sense in making him dislike me. I kept my thoughts to myself because I knew I needed him more than he needed me.

  “Please, sit.” His tanned hand sprung up from behind the mountains of files, envelopes and paper that buried his desk and he gestured at the cushioned office chair that sat between his desk and me. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  I sat but found it hard to be comfortable in the presence of a man who could determine the future of my career with mere words and numbers; who also seemed to prefer keeping his eyes fixed below my neck most of the time.

  “I called you in today, de Roller, because I want to know why it is you think you deserve a promotion right now,” he said.

  “I’ve been accomplishing my assignment on time and without any problems for six whole years, sir. I would like to progress in my career at some point and, I think, now that I have shown myself capable, I would like to do more.”

  “Fair enough. Unfortunately, de Roller, at Everquest, due to the difficult nature of our business, we don’t give out promotions that easily.” He looked up and into my eyes at last. “We require our employees to pass a test, so to speak, to prove themselves capable of handling the next level of duties before we promote them.”

  I held my head high, held his gaze with confidence and nodded. “I would be happy to give the test a go, sir. If you think I’m ready.”

  “The test won’t be easy, I’m afraid. It will require a lot more of your wits and skills than your previous assignment ever did. So, de Roller, what I want to know is... how badly do you want a promotion? Will you be willing to take on an assignment that will take up the whole of your existence for an indefinite amount of time and challenge you in ways you cannot yet imagine or would you prefer to remain on C31, doing what I personally think you’ve been doing a fantastic job on?”

  I noticed he didn’t once mention C31’s move to the U.S. and it made me apprehensive all over again. A sign he was getting ready to remove me from the organisation? “I’d like to take the test, sir,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” He narrowed his already relatively narrow eyes and leaned forward, his brown crinkled cheek almost touching the formerly white, now yellowish, boxy computer monitor that stuck out from behind his stacks of papers. “Because there’s no backing out once you choose to accept the new assignment and any screw up you make will have repercussions. It’s written in your contract. You might want to read it again before coming to a decision.”

  I saw myself in the reflection of his glasses and saw myself looking tense so I took a deep breath and tried my best to present myself as a competent and intrepid individual. “I am aware, sir, and I know I’m ready to take it on. If you’re ready for me to take it on, that is.”

  Mr Yamamoto smiled and dropped backwards into his chair—a chair that looked exactly like the one I was sitting on—and dropped his eyes below my neck yet again. “Good. In that case, de Roller, clean up C31’s apartment and be done with that. Don’t ever monitor her, talk to her or go anywhere near her ever again. The consequences of doing so will be severe. Check your contract if you don’t remember the details.”

  I nodded.

  “Great. Now that that’s done, I’m going to give you your new assignment.” He spun around in his chair, pulled open a drawer on the metallic shelf that was next to him, dug around and pulled out a brown and sealed A3-sized envelope that was puffed out, oddly shaped and full of bulky items. He tossed it over to me and when the envelope landed on my lap, I saw it had the photograph of a young man stapled on its front.

  “Your test will be C39, Danny Diaz from New York. He arrived in Hong Kong two weeks ago under a tourist VISA and our client received intel he’s planning a big terror event in the region. Oddly enough, he’s now, apparently, in a coma at King George Hospital. Your job is to monitor all of his activity, if any, and find out who he’s been in contact with. Send weekly reports and footage back to me, the same way you did with C31. Don’t leave anything out.”

  The young man in the photograph was an extraordinarily good-looking pretty boy who looked younger than twenty-five. His face was like a model’s—perfectly contoured, with dark brown hair shaved close to his scalp, thick eyebrows, dark brown eyes, no stubble and a healthy-looking golden tan. He looked happier than most and possessed the sort of smiley, boyish charm I knew Carla and her friends, and maybe even my mother, would swoon over. He had none of the brooding disgruntlement you’d expect to see on a terrorist’s face, but then, I remembered C31—she looked nothing like a terrorist either; she looked exactly like the average Hong Kong woman would when just a few years short of fifty, with the same innocuous demeanour, the same tight curls in her short hair, the same barely visible makeup, and the same floral blouses worn over loosely-fitted mono-coloured pants. I decided appearances were most certainly deceiving.

  “Do you see the importance of your role here? If you succeed, that promotion you seek is yours, of course, but you will also have contributed to something so much bigger.”

  “I see it, sir, and I’d be more than happy to take on the challenge.” I looked up at him and smiled in a way that would suggest I was both friendly and helpful.

  He smiled back, to my relief. “Good. In that envelope are tools you will use to get the job done. You will assume a new identity and wear the glasses within at all times. You will keep those glasses in the case they now sit in for at least five hours every night when you sleep, without fail, and put on the other devices within when instructed. You will carry the phone within everywhere and pick up every call you get on it as soon as you can. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir. We are very clear.”

  “Good. In that case, take that envelope, internalise your new identity and wait for the call that will instruct you on how you’re going to get started.”

  “Yes, sir.”


  “I look forward to seeing you succeed, de Roller. Just between us, I must say I think you’ve been one of the most capable junior hires we’ve had in a while. I have a feeling you’ll find a way to pass this test, just as you’ve always passed all of mine.” His eyes fell back down onto my chest and this time remained right there.

  I swallowed my discomfort, kept my smile on and stood up from the chair to bring my chest away from his eyes. “I will. I won’t disappoint you, sir.”

  He looked a tad disappointed anyway. “Good,” he said to my crotch. “Now get out of here, I’ve got another meeting in five.”

  I did exactly as he ordered.

  My mother, my teachers, career coaches, self-help books, they always said it was to my benefit to obey everything the boss said.

  (End of Sample)

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Anna Ferrara.

  First published December 2017.

  First ebook edition. v1.4

  ISBN: 978-1976878183 / 9781370060436

  ASIN: B078KYZKVY

  Cover design by Anna Ferrara.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  To acquire the rights to reproduce this book, contact Anna Ferrara via annaferrarabooks.com.