by Lee Winter
The media mogul’s expression made Maddie freeze. She was bent over her desk, typing furiously. Her mouth was pulled down. Was she angry? She might just be focused, so that didn’t mean anything. Maddie strained to see, but couldn’t spot the plant she’d placed there this morning. Huh.
She wasn’t entirely sure she’d gotten the exact variety of Angelica right, but her internet search last night said it meant “inspiration”. As Felicity had said, Elena had taken a little publishing company into a global concern. That was something inspiring.
Maddie worked steadily until a sharp noise made her turn. Elena had slammed the phone down in its receiver and was glaring at it. Maddie spun around and whispered to Felicity, “What’s crawled up her ass today?”
“Some lowlife left her a deranged gift.” Felicity glowered, as though she wished to find the culprit and flay them alive. And then flay them dead, too.
Maddie’s stomach dropped into freefall. “W-what?”
“A witchcraft plant. Can you believe it? They use it in exorcisms and the like. Elena tossed it, of course. People are disgusting.”
Maddie’s gaze fell to floor level. A mangled green leaf was poking out of the trash can.
Oh. She took in the deep lines on Elena’s face. Her gift had backfired. Spectacularly.
“You didn’t happen to see anyone put that on her desk?” Felicity asked her. “She’s on a witch hunt for who did it. No pun intended.”
“No, I didn’t see anyone.” Well, it was the truth. Her stomach sank even further.
“What’s your problem? You look like someone shot your puppy. With a bazooka.”
“Nothing.” She swivelled back to her desk. “I have a few obits to catch up on. No rest for the dead.”
Felicity sniffed. “Whatever. Not like I care.”
Maddie called up the website she’d found when half exhausted last night. The one that said Angelica was inspirational. With the benefit of sleep and hindsight, she could see it was just an almanac a farmer had thrown together. She dug further and discovered that there were actually more than sixty varieties of the plant. Trust her to have bought the exorcism kind.
Maddie had to make this right. She called Simon. Last night’s can’t-sleep-baking frenzy would come in handy. She just needed a delivery boy.
Later that evening, when Elena stepped out of her office, Maddie snuck in with her peace offering and a printout of the original page that claimed the plant was inspirational. She also scribbled out a note.
To fix any misunderstandings, I give you more angel, less devil.
And then her signature velvet-angel-food cupcake was left beside it.
Thank God, Simon hadn’t already eaten them all.
Hoping it was enough, Maddie went back to work. She was vaguely aware of Felicity packing up her things and leaving for the night and the office emptying out around her. She kept working hard until a shadow fell over her desk.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Elena asked, voice low, holding up the cupcake in a pincer grip. “Are you mocking me?” She dropped the baked good on Maddie’s desk.
“N-no!” Maddie’s eyes went wide, her stomach lurching. “Never. I meant what I wrote.”
“Then what are you doing? Leaving me offerings like spoor around the office?”
Maddie flushed. Spoor? That’s how she saw it?
“I just wanted to say well done.” Maddie felt miserable under that burning gaze. “But I’m sorry if you see it as some sort of an attack. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to offend you. Don’t worry. I won’t do it again.”
Elena peered at her for a long time, so long that Maddie began to shift in her seat.
“You truly never meant that ridiculous plant to be a witch reference?”
Maddie gave her head an adamant shake. “I had no idea there was more than one meaning.”
“So what are you congratulating me for?”
“Businessperson of the Year. That’s amazing!”
“Is it? Third year in a row. I suspect they are simply lazy. I could fill a room with all the trinkets and titles various organisations feel the need to foist upon me. They just want the publicity that would come from my attendance.”
Maddie blinked at her. “So you don’t think it’s an honour?”
“I don’t do any of this for honours. If people throw awards at me for just doing my job, I can’t very well stop them. I will appear on cue, read Felicity’s speech—a variation, no doubt, on her previous two—smile, wave, leave. It’s good for publicity and share prices, but that’s all.”
“Um.” Maddie tried to hide her shock. Because it all sounded so ungrateful, not to mention kind of…empty. “You don’t want to even hear you’ve done well? That’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
Elena glared at her. “You don’t get to judge me. I employ thousands of people worldwide, and they rely on me to get things right, not swan about at various award nights. I make one mistake, and papers and magazines close. You have no idea what it’s like to be me or have the focus I require just to do my job as well as I do. You don’t know me at all.”
“No, I don’t know you.” Maddie took a deep breath and said the most insane thing she ever had. “So tell me. I’d like to know you. I really would.”
“Excuse me?” Elena rocked back on her heels. “Is this some Australian thing, just blurting out statements like that?”
“You know, I get asked that a fair bit.” Maddie gave her a rueful smile. “Like, whether I always just say what I think or whether there’s any thought behind it. I’m not too sure of the answer myself. I know I can be blunt, but is that so bad? And you didn’t answer my question—would you like to talk to me anyway? There’s no one here but us. I’m like a vault, I promise.”
Elena stared at her as if unsure what to say or do with that unlikely suggestion. “I…” she faded out. “No.”
“Oh.” Maddie swallowed. Yeah, of course. What was I thinking anyway? She felt her face flush and the tips of her ears burn. “I… It’s okay. I really do need to shut up sometimes and not—”
“I have a contract to go over. And a report to submit.” Elena glanced at the far wall, with the time-zones display. She frowned. “By ten.”
“Oh!” Maddie couldn’t hold back her smile. Elena hadn’t turned down her offer as a bad joke. She’d just said she was busy. “I mean, so, another night, then? I admit I’m even more impertinent after a coffee in me. But I can be pretty amusing too. Half the time I have no clue where my mouth is going. I’m told it can be gobsmacking to listen to at times.”
Elena’s lips quirked. “I’ll bet. But no. I do have work.” She started to leave, then stopped, turned, and picked up the cupcake she’d dumped on Maddie’s desk minutes ago. “A shame for it to go to waste.”
“Yep.” Maddie tried to sound neutral. Hot damn. As Elena turned to go, Maddie grinned so wide her cheeks hurt.
“And stop smiling,” Elena said on her way to her desk, not looking back.
How did she do that?
“It’s blinding,” she added.
Maddie laughed.
Okay, so that was not the worst thing to ever happen.
BlogSpot: Aliens of New York
By Maddie as Hell
I remember the time I learned to ride a bike. I pushed off from the curb at my old house on Mitchell St, South Penrith. I was wobbling like crazy. My older brother was holding his sides from laughing and calling out names, and my mother was telling him to be quiet and offering me encouragement.
I fell off. It hurt. I got back on. I fell off. It hurt some more. I got back on.
When people say something’s like riding a bike, I think maybe they mean it will hurt sometimes, but it will get better.
Today, I remembered how to smile.
I wonder whether it will hurt later.
CHAPTER 6
An Exercise in Tolerance
It became a…thing between them. Oh how Elena hated the imprecision of that word. Late at n
ight, when no one was around, Madeleine increasingly shared things with her. As if Elena was anyone else and didn’t run a multimillion-dollar global organisation and could fire her with the twitch of a finger.
At first, she’d tried to dissuade the woman. Distance was required. “I’m sure you’d rather be writing about dead people,” Elena had suggested one night. “I know I’d prefer you were.”
Madeleine had merely laughed.
Tonight, the woman was wearing some ode-to-grunge T-shirt for a band that probably shouldn’t have gotten out of a Seattle basement. Her dark blue jeans curved snugly around her ass. And the boots, black and shiny…well, the boots Elena approved of. She owned a few of that style herself, although hers weren’t knock-offs. But the shirt was an abomination. Grey, bland, and formless, it did nothing to flatter Madeleine’s appealing shape.
“Why do you wear that?” she asked. “Ugly rock bands as workwear?”
“You don’t like Alice in Chains?” Maddie seemed intrigued. “You know, being on the midnight shift, the only perk of the job is getting to dress how I like. It’s not like I see anyone.”
“You see me.” Elena gave her a pointed look.
Madeleine stopped. “Oh. Yeah. I guess, well, yeah, I do. So you want me to dress for you?” Her eyes flew wide open. “Oh hell. That came out wrong.”
Elena withheld a snort of laughter. Really, squirming Madeleine was her favourite kind. She wondered when that had happened. Having a favourite kind of anything regarding this woman. “Why wear rock bands at all?”
“They’re not just rock, though. They’re grunge. They’re a protest to the boring sameness of ’90s music, a primal scream that music should be more than mass-produced, predictable pulp.”
“Until all the grunge bands were ripped out of Seattle, signed to record labels, and became mass-produced, predictable pulp.” Elena smirked. “Sorry, but your protest music sold out.”
“Oh, it’s not my music.”
“What?”
“I don’t really like grunge music.” She gave Elena a bright smile. “I just really like the shirts.”
Elena felt a headache coming on. The woman was utterly impossible. Figuring her out was akin to doing her corporate taxes in braille. While stoned.
“You don’t like grunge,” Elena repeated.
“Nope.”
“I’m probably going to regret this, but where are your musical tastes inclined? Loud Australian pub thrash?” Even as she said it, she couldn’t actually picture it. Not someone who wrote blogs the way Madeleine did.
Madeleine shot her a mysterious smile. “Too hard to explain. I’ll have to show you.”
Elena frowned. “How?”
“Tomorrow.”
* * *
Elena found a USB stick on her desk the next evening when she came back from a dinner meeting. It had the label: Music 4 E. She glanced at the crime reporter’s desk. Madeleine was on the phone, her fingers playing restlessly with the snow dome. Elena could hear conversation snatches. Something to do with following up a drug bust of some sort.
Well. It was a relief not to be drawn into another riddle of a conversation. She really did have a lot of work to do. Such as a Skype call with a Chicago publisher contemplating selling. He was so close to signing, she could taste it. And Elena still had to review the budget notes for Style Sydney that her accountant had sent over. So, she had absolutely no time or interest in putting that USB drive into her computer.
It was damned impertinent anyway. Leaving things for her.
She wasn’t even remotely curious.
The USB stick stared at her. Elena glared at it.
She would put it out of her mind. Maybe tomorrow, when she was less busy. Or the next day.
Fifteen minutes later, Elena flung down her pen and shoved the stick into a USB slot. She dug out her earbuds, plugged them in, and stole a glance back to Madeleine’s desk.
Still on the phone. Excellent.
She hit Play.
Four minutes later, she closed the music video and stared at her screen. Removing the USB drive, she considered throwing it across the room in frustration. Why did Madeleine persist in being without category?
It was like that Aliens of New York blog of hers. She flicked to the tab she had opened earlier in the day. The wonders of smiling now? Elena was well aware of what had prompted the blog. This was her fault. She was somehow encouraging Madeleine. She didn’t mean to. Forming a friendship with an employee was a terrible idea. She knew that. But some part of her was unwilling to play hardball and enforce the divide. And now she really needed to know—how could one person be so curious, so contradictory? How did she defy every box and label?
“Well?”
Elena’s head snapped up to find Madeleine only a few feet from her. She stabbed her browser window closed. “Well what?” She gave her a steely look, hoping her shock at almost being caught wasn’t showing.
“What’d you think of Veruca and Trinix?”
Elena slid the USB stick across the desk towards Madeleine with some haste. “Those can’t be real names.”
“Probably not.” She ignored the flash drive.
“So. Latvian folk singers,” Elena said evenly. “In the middle of a forest, with dancing nymphs.”
“Yup.”
“Dancing lesbian nymphs.”
“That’d be my guess. Although it was a bit hard to tell with all the rising mist.”
“It sounded like Kate Bush on LSD.”
Madeleine tilted her head. “Fair. I’ll pay that. And I like Kate Bush too.”
“As do I.” Elena studied her. “How on earth did you find them?”
Plopping into the visitor’s chair, Madeleine gave a shrug. “A friend recced it in a comment on a blog I…um, follow. So does this mean you liked them?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” A blooping noise sounded, and Elena turned. Her Skype call. Damn. She wasn’t ready for the man.
“We’re done,” she muttered to Madeleine, disturbed at how easily she’d allowed herself to be distracted. It was unprofessional. She did not do unprofessional.
There was no movement, and she glanced back. Madeleine was eyeing her with a guarded look.
“We’re done,” Elena repeated, wondering why she hadn’t heard her the first time.
Madeleine flinched. She left, movements jerky, closing the door behind her with a sharp clunk. Since Elena rarely closed her office door, it was a pointed act.
She frowned at the response. Elena was still frowning when she activated her incoming video call. “Nathaniel, good evening.”
He offered the usual pleasantries, but Elena’s gaze slid back to the crime desk. Its reporter was hunched over, shoulders tight. Surely she wasn’t offended? It was hardly the first time Elena had dismissed someone in such a manner. It meant nothing.
Or was it the dismissal itself, not the manner which bothered the woman?
Elena’s frown deepened. Yet another reason why this…friendship was a foolish idea. She was Madeleine’s boss. Madeleine must surely grasp that now.
So why do I feel so unsettled?
A throat cleared.
Elena forced her focus back to where it belonged. “Nathaniel, where were we on our deal?”
* * *
Three nights passed, and neither of them spoke to each other. Which suited Elena fine. She accomplished much more work without Madeleine’s chatter about things that held no importance. And the distance helped reinforce that they were never meant to have been friendly in the first place.
On the fourth night, Elena wore one of her favoured outfits to work, which involved a vest, pants, boots, crisp white shirt, and a fob watch. And that night she noticed Madeleine’s reaction to it.
Actually, it would be a miracle if Madeleine got any work done, because she’d spent most of the evening watching Elena. Her gaze virtually clung to her, yet she seemed unaware she was doing this. Belatedly, Elena recalled this was the outfit she’d been wearing when
Madeleine had derided her the day they’d first met. It occurred to her the intense scrutiny might therefore not be the flattering kind.
As she exited her office, she felt the woman’s eyes fixed on her again.
“What?” she asked, irritation rising. She stopped dead in front of Madeleine. “Does my wardrobe really offend you so much that you have to bore holes in it all evening?”
“Huh? God, no!” Madeleine started. A blush spread up her cheeks. “Is that what you think? That I don’t like it?”
“I know you don’t. I recall your verdict well. I heard you dismiss it as ‘yesterday’s steampunk’.” Her lip curled in disdain.
Madeleine shook her head. “Hey, you got it all wrong. I think retro steampunk is the hottest look ever created. Hell, I’ve got all the Warehouse 13 episodes H.G. Wells was in to prove it.”
Elena blinked at her. “You feel I dress like some old, dead, male writer?” This was mystifying. Had she offended Madeleine so much that she was now openly insulting her again?
“Oh wow. No! Far from it. Okay.” Madeleine scribbled a note to herself. “Tomorrow. Wait till tomorrow, then you’ll see.”
Elena sighed and kept walking. Possibly, flying Ukranian cows doing mist dances were in her future.
* * *
Tomorrow brought with it Felicity in a snit over the new PA, a widening, budget black hole in Sydney, and a disc sitting on her desk. She squinted at the image on it. The TV show, Warehouse 13, appeared to be science fiction. Definitely not for her. And she definitely didn’t have time for this. Not after those Sydney numbers.
She ignored the disc for most of the night. She also ignored the furtive looks Madeleine kept shooting her way, assessing whether the disc had moved position on her desk, no doubt. It made her more adamant not to watch the damned thing at all. She didn’t have time for distracting nonsense.
At ten, she called Amir to bring the car around to take her home. She picked up the disc, intending to drop it on Madeleine’s desk with a stern warning of “no more”.
Instead, she saw the hopefulness in the woman’s green eyes, her gaze fixed on Elena’s fingers clutching the disc. Pressing her lips together, she bit back her first response, slid the disc in her handbag, and said nothing as she left for the evening.