by Rome, Ada
“Breakfast of champions, I see,” I pointed to the donut. “That looks delicious.”
“Yeah, well, our intern didn’t pick up donuts for the office, so I had to go get my own,” he said with a sarcastic eye roll.
“That sucks. You should fire that crappy intern,” I responded with a mock serious nod.
I heard the rumble of a clearing throat from behind my back. Marcie edged around my left elbow, waiting for an introduction.
“I’m sorry! Tony, this is my roommate, Marcie. Marcie, this is my new colleague, Tony Wong.”
“Pleased to meet you.” She thrust her birdlike wrist in Tony’s direction. “You don’t look like a Tony though.”
“I guess not.” Tony’s cheeks flushed pink. “It used to be Han Liu. My parents changed it when I was a kid. I guess Tony sounded more American to them.” He laughed shyly, his handshake with Marcie lingering a few extra seconds.
“I kind of like Han Liu.” She winked. Tony’s eyes glinted with interest. I was suddenly a third wheel.
“What do we have here?” Trent’s voice slithered over my right shoulder. His large hand clapped me on the back. I felt a brief electric thrill from the contact of his fingers through the delicate fabric of my shirt. “Why are my employees wasting time here on the sidewalk when there is so much work to do?”
Trent loomed over me, smiling slyly and observing me sideways from the corners of his piercing blue eyes. Marcie’s sharp little elbow jabbed insistently into my left side.
“Trent…Mr. Montaine…this is Marcie Middlewood, a friend of mine.”
I swallowed hard. My heart fluttered wildly in my chest. Trent’s forearm, roped with thick muscles and swirling with tattoos, brushed against my own pale, bare arm as I gripped the strap of my purse. He leaned over me, exuding a fresh cloud of clean shower scent, and shook hands with a speechless and staring Marcie.
“You can call me Trent,” he said smoothly. “And so can you.” He straightened up and playfully nudged me in the shoulder.
Marcie’s eyes were as wide as a cartoon. Tony kicked the sidewalk lightly with his toe, looking embarrassed and slightly disappointed.
“Well, ladies and gentleman, I need to head up to the office.” Trent patted Tony fraternally on the shoulder and trotted up the stone steps.
Kill, whose presence I had not registered until that moment, followed on Trent’s heels like a spaniel. He spun toward us with a snarl.
“We’re not paying you to stand around and chat.” His eyes were even more dishwater murky in the sunlight.
“You’re not paying me at all,” I responded flatly.
Tony shot me a warning look. “We’re right behind you, Kill,” he said with an artificial pleasantness.
Kill growled and stared at me from the height of the third step. He huffed disdainfully through his nose and shook his head, following Trent through the revolving door.
“Remember what I told you,” Tony said soberly once Kill was out of earshot.
“I know, I know. Don’t poke the bear. But that guy just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Be still my heart.” Marcie flapped her hands dramatically. “I touched Trent Montaine.”
“So have a lot of other women in this city,” I said with heavy emphasis on “a lot.”
“I shall never wash this hand again.” Marcie flipped her palm in the air like a beauty queen waving to a parade crowd.
“I’ll…um…see you inside, Kat.” Tony nodded curtly at Marcie and jogged up the building steps.
“Are you happy, you little weirdo?” I asked the swooning Marcie.
“He totally wants you,” she declared.
“Who wants me? Tony?”
“No! Although Tony is kind of cute. But I’m talking about Trent. Trent Montaine wants a piece of the Kitty Kat. Holy shit. This is amazing. You lucky fucking girl.”
“Oh please, Marcie. That’s ridiculous. I’m not having this conversation right now. I am going to work, and you are going home to make sure that Vaughan wakes up before dinner and doesn’t trade all of our belongings for new guitar strings.”
“Trent and Kitty Kat sittin’ in a tree,” Marcie sang in a childish soprano.
“Ok, we’re done here. I love you, dear, but you’re a real asshole sometimes.”
“Takes one to know one.” Marcie laughed, a wide grin animating her face. “I’ll see you at home later.”
She sauntered down the sidewalk, her petite frame lost within seconds in the bustling pedestrian traffic of Fifth Avenue.
Chapter 4
I walked through the glamorous lobby, my soft heels tapping faintly on the marble flooring, and pulled open the ancient elevator cage.
“Hold that, please,” said an elegantly accented voice.
I turned to see the same sharply dressed elderly gentleman from the day before. He wore a peachy coral shirt with a pinstriped navy blue suit. He carried a long-handled umbrella even though the forecast showed no sign of rain.
“Ah, it is you!” He peered at me through his bottle cap glasses and broke into a welcoming smile. “I see you made it inside the building.”
I pressed my hand toward him. “My name is Kat. Kat Raney. Do you work for the magazine too?”
He shook my hand with a loose and delicate grip. “Charmed, Miss Raney. I am Miklos Balik, the magazine’s art director.”
I recognized the name immediately and felt like a fool for not having associated it with this grandfatherly figure. I had imagined that the art director for a publication like KTFO would be someone young and edgy, in keeping with the trendy vibe of the magazine.
My confusion must have registered on my face because Miklos interjected to fill the awkward silence.
“And you are the new intern, I presume?” He rolled the “r” in “presume” in a particularly sophisticated manner.
“I am! Just started yesterday. But, I guess you already know that,” I stammered.
The elevator opened to our floor. Miklos twirled his umbrella in a dramatic arc and held the door for me.
“Well, Kat Raney, I am sure we will see much more of each other. In fact, I will see you at the staff meeting in approximately two minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” Staff meeting? What staff meeting? “I…um…look forward to it.”
Miklos disappeared down the corridor of executive offices. I edged through the maze to my desk and set my belongings on its cold metal top. I was just lowering myself into the chair when Tony appeared from nowhere like a fast-moving apparition.
“Come on, Kat. We need to go to the conference room. Tuesday morning meeting.”
He beckoned for me to follow with a scooping gesture. I complied, hurriedly grabbing a pen and paper and jogging to catch up with his rapidly swishing khaki steps.
The conference room was larger than I expected, practically an auditorium. Tables were arranged in a large rectangle around the borders of the room. Staff members filed through the entrance alone or in eagerly chattering pairs. Tony directed me to an inconspicuous location at the back corner. I slunk into a seat, observing the room’s other occupants.
Most of the magazine’s regular staff were in their 20s or 30s and dressed in a casual uniform of jeans and t-shirts or cotton button-downs with rolled up sleeves. A few had the muscular body types of former athletes, while others had the lean and lanky looks of perpetually hungry writers.
I spotted Kill on the other side of the room, leaning over the table where Miklos sat. The two were talking. I sensed a tension in their exchange, but they were too far away for me to hear the substance of their conversation.
“What’s the story with Miklos?” I asked Tony in a hushed voice.
Tony squinted across the room at the well-dressed art director.
“Miklos is great,” he said simply. “He grew up in Hungary. I don’t know too much about his past, but I get the feeling that he had some issues with the Communist government over there. He doesn’t say much, but when he does speak, it has an effect. Trent
relies on him as a kind of mentor. One word from Miklos will decide most questions. Anyway, he’s a good person to know.”
Quiet instantly enveloped the room as if a volume knob had been spun to silent. Trent entered like a rock star commanding a stage. I had been too flustered to notice his full appearance when we met earlier on the street, but I now saw that he wore a plain black form-fitting t-shirt that hugged the chiseled contours of his chest and stomach. The short, tight sleeves accentuated the swell of his well-worked biceps, which stretched taut as he perched on the end of the table and pressed his arms backwards.
The vibrant colors of his tattoos stood out vividly against the dark fabric. He was inked from his wrists to his shoulders. Another tattoo, which looked from afar like gnarled tree branches, curled around the side of his neck. His jeans fit snugly over his hips. I fought a surging hormonal impulse to stare blatantly at his perfectly outlined crotch.
He scanned the room with a sharp eye. I tried to maintain an absolute stillness, not wishing to attract any attention in the weighty silence, but my pen slipped clumsily from my jittery fingers and clattered noisily onto the tabletop. It rolled over the front despite my slapping attempts to control it and landed with a rolling bounce and a clack on the tiled floor. I strained in vain to retrieve it with the tips of my outstretched toes.
Trent stared hard at me, the corners of his lips turning upwards in an obviously amused smirk. He pushed himself from his perch on the table, his hearty biceps flexing, and walked the length of the room toward me. He bent low, his eyes fixed on mine, retrieved my traitorous pen, and handed it to me with a conspiratorial wink.
“Thank you.” My throat was sandpaper dry. My voice sounded like a strangled croak. I was sure that my hot cheeks were as red as a ripe tomato.
“Welcome, everyone,” Trent said with a booming base as he turned to the assembled staff. “You may have noticed a new face gracing our halls since yesterday. I would like to introduce Kat Raney, our summer intern.”
All heads turned in my direction. I gulped with anxiety and flapped my fingers in a feeble wave.
“Say, I’ve always enjoyed those fun getting-to-know-you exercises,” Trent continued with a sarcastic tone, swiveling his body to face me again. “Kat, why don’t you tell us an interesting fact about yourself. Something that we would never guess on our own.” He watched me, blinking expectantly.
“An interesting fact?” My words were barely above a whisper.
“Yes.” Trent shot me a sly grin. “You know, an interesting fact. As in, a fact that would be of interest to us.” I heard a few chuckles from around the room. “Do you have any unique talents or hobbies? Do you play the marimba? Read Sanskrit? Can you touch your tongue to your eyebrow?”
More tittering and chuckling erupted to my right and my left. I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat and cleared my throat with difficulty, stalling helplessly for time while my mind remained a complete blank. I grasped through the mental darkness for something, anything that might be considered interesting.
Suddenly, just as I despaired of ever breaking through the embarrassed silence, I heard myself uttering words beyond the control of my scrambling brain.
“I’m allergic to nuts,” I said weakly. Only when the words were out of my mouth did I realize the magnitude of my mistake. I desperately wanted to snatch them back while they hovered in the air.
“Nuts?” Trent leaned on one heel, crossed his arms over his muscular chest, and cocked one thick eyebrow. The corners of his lips twitched with a stifled smile.
“Yes.” I nodded seriously. There was no turning back now.
“What kind of nuts? All nuts? Or just peanuts?” He grinned mischievously, an unexpected dimple just visible under the stubble on his left cheek.
“Just peanuts,” I muttered limply.
“Well, that’s a relief,” he declared in a loud stage voice. “Fortunately, my nuts are not of the pea variety.” The room exploded into a chorus of guffaws.
“As for the rest of you,” he said, turning to the smirking and giggling crowd, “please keep your nuts far away from Miss Raney, and we should get through this summer just fine.”
My face burned with mortification from my pursed lips to the tips of my ears, which blazed scarlet under the sweep of my neat bun. At that moment, if someone had given me the option of crawling into a hole and never, ever coming out again, I would have accepted it with gratitude.
“Alright, that’s enough fun. Let’s get back to business.” Trent’s abrupt shift to a cool and professional tone extinguished any last flickers of mirth like a wind gust over a wavering candle flame. He returned to his perch at the front of the room.
“The August issue will soon be upon us. We need something big for the cover, something bold and different. I want a cover that jumps off the newsstands and demands to be read. To that end, I am announcing a contest. Whoever writes the best story will see his…or her…name on the cover of our August issue.”
An undercurrent of murmurings bubbled up from the assembled writers. Tony and I exchanged meaningful glances. He raised his hand tentatively.
“Yes, Tony?” Trent’s voice cut through the chatter.
“Is the contest open to everyone?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, the contest is open to everyone at the magazine.” Though he was answering Tony’s question, Trent’s eyes met mine with a searching force.
Kill emitted a wet snicker like a horse. Trent turned and fixed him with a potent glare. Miklos observed their interplay and smiled knowingly.
Questions piped up from the room’s periphery.
“When is the deadline?”
“Who are the judges?”
“Can the story be on any topic?”
Trent heard all of the questions and reeled off his responses with a mechanical efficiency.
“The deadline is one month from today. The judges will be myself and Miklos. Any topic is fair game.”
At the mention of Miklos’s name, I noticed Kill’s eyes flash upward at Trent, quick as a snake. Trent met his gaze with a flat unconcern and turned back to the room.
“Any more questions?” He waited for a few beats. “Meeting dismissed. Everyone get back to work.”
I exited behind Tony in a whirl of rustling papers and sliding chairs. I looked back once and, to my dismay and confusion, caught Trent watching me like a hawk eyeing a field mouse. Our eyes met for an electric second. Then he huddled over Miklos, deep in an intense conversation that noticeably excluded the fuming Kill. I was carried from the room on a wave of shuffling feet and excited chatter.
“So, do you have any ideas yet?” I asked Tony once we had found a clear space in the hallway.
“None yet, but that’s a great opportunity. You should start thinking of ideas too. You heard what he said. The contest is open to everyone.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said with a glance at the conference room entrance. “That would seem a bit presumptuous on my part, wouldn’t it? The intern?” Despite my apparent reserve, my mind was already busily clicking through possible story ideas.
“Spare me the false modesty,” Tony said with a dismissive flick of his hand. “It’s no more presumptuous for you to enter that contest than it is for anyone else. Besides, how do you think you get ahead around here? How do you get Trent to notice you? Take chances. Take a risk.”
His serious, cutthroat tone reminded me of Marcie’s earlier lecture on the subway. Show Trent you mean business. An image of Marcie and Tony’s lingering handshake on the street also flashed through my brain. Maybe those two could have a romantic connection. I just needed to find a way to kick that sleepyheaded Vaughan to the curb.
“I guess you’re right.” I smiled up at Tony’s eager expression and perfectly parted hair.
“Get used to it. You’ll be saying that a lot this summer.” He nudged me playfully with his elbow and ducked when I countered with a light slap to his shoulder.
Kill emerged from the conference room,
his normally pasty skin an unhealthy shade of pink, his head bowed like a battering ram, and his thin legs knifing through the air like swinging scalpels.
“I wonder what’s going on there,” Tony mused.
“Don’t know. But I get the definite impression that he and Trent are not on good terms right now. Funny, because they seemed like best buddies yesterday. What could have happened?”
Tony looked at me with a curiously quizzical eye and opened his mouth as if to speak but just shook his head.
“Beats me,” he finally said. “I gotta get to work though. Lunch at noon?” he called over his shoulder as he turned and headed in the opposite direction.
“Absolutely!” I shouted back, making my way to the desk I’d hastily abandoned a half hour earlier.
To my surprise, Kill was waiting for me. He sat on the corner of my desk, one foot impatiently clanging against the side and a scowl darkening his features.
“Hello, Kat.” His lips moved in what I assumed was supposed to be a smile, but which looked more like a cat bearing its fangs. “I have an important project for you.” His tone was almost cheerful. My dark suspicions were momentarily overtaken by a hope that he had decided to be friendly after all.
“What is it?” I stood before him at soldierly attention, my pen poised over my notepad, ready to jot down the vital instructions that I believed were forthcoming. He fished in his front pocket and removed a thin pink piece of paper, handing it to me with the solemnity of a Nobel Prize ceremony.
West Manhattan Cleaners. I was holding a dry cleaning receipt.
“My shirts are ready. Would you mind picking them up for me?” His lips parted in that same catlike grimace.
“Yes, I would mind, as a matter of fact.” I recalled Tony’s warning. Don’t poke the bear. I softened my tone, trying for diplomacy. “It’s just that, I’m here to learn this summer. Do you have any more…um…journalistic assignments for me?”