by Jason Letts
CONTENTS
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
From the Author
Copyright Page
AGENCY
a #MeToo Romance
Jason Letts
CHAPTER 1
“Hey, I read about you!”
I had just reached the front of the line at a bagel place and was all ready to put in my order for a toasted everything with chive and onion cream cheese when the guy behind the counter surprised me with that. Being recognized never stopped feeling strange, and I was secretly glad the effect was wearing off, not that being in one New York Times article resulted in all that many outbursts like this to begin with.
“Oh, that’s great,” I said awkwardly. I’d never come close to settling on a good response. I said thanks half the time, but was a stranger really doing me a favor by reading a news article that I happened to be the subject of? I wasn’t sure.
“Sarah Faverly, right?” The guy had dark circles under his eyes but jovial, fluid mannerisms that made it seem like he was on his way to becoming a professional dancer. Most people who recognized my picture couldn’t remember my name, but when they did it usually meant something had really struck a cord with them.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said quietly, hoping the people behind me weren’t catching wind of this unnecessary conversation and resenting the delay. I blurted out my order and as the guy went about preparing it he kept glancing at me over his shoulder, and it wasn’t because he was afraid I was going to dash off and leave him with a toasted bagel.
When he returned he suddenly had a dour expression and was staring at the counter between us, where he placed the bagel wrapped in wax paper. It was early and I couldn’t pay for it fast enough. But the young man in front of me swallowed hard before opening his mouth.
“Things still working out for you and Keenan Roche?” His question came with raised eyebrows and a little smile, not without a fair dose of charm. He’d make a very good dancer.
“Yes, they are,” I said as I took my bagel and left.
But that was a lie.
It was the very beginning of March and Keenan and I had over a month of uninterrupted bliss—all the time we could’ve wanted together, romantic dinners and excursions, and mind-blowing sex once a day at least. But the dulling effect of time was taking its toll, bringing us to what felt like a saturation point. Suddenly that lack of interruption seemed like a problem, especially when walking away from Keenan at work only meant I was walking toward him after work, or vice-a-versa.
There he was in his dashing suit distributing memos into the office mailboxes. I’d never get tired of the hair poking out over his ears or his green eyes, but I had to admit that something had changed even as I put an arm around his back and squeezed him next to me with my head on his shoulder.
“Funny running into you here,” I said, hoping to get a smile out of him.
“Well, I do own the place,” he said. I detached myself from him, feeling deflated. It was fine that he didn’t think my comment was humorous, but pointing out that he was in charge wasn’t something I needed to be reminded of.
“Speaking of places you own, I think I left my notebook in your apartment. Do you mind if I pick it up after my appointment this afternoon?”
Keenan scratched his stubbly cheek as he looked at me.
“If you want. It’s right on the kitchen counter, right next to…”
“The sink,” I said, suddenly incensed. A chill swept over my shoulders that made me hunch a little. “I hate when you put things there. When you wash your dishes there’s spray all over and everything gets soaked. I’ve told you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, though I could tell he wasn’t really. “It’s a convenient place to put things, and I don’t get why you can’t just go a day without it and I can bring it to you tomorrow. Or you can grab it the next time you come back with me.”
I knew he didn’t mean it that way, but to me it felt like he sometimes dangled the promise of going back to his place because it would save me from having to spend another night in my loathsome sardine can apartment. The money I was making all went to my student loans, and it wasn’t like I could put down a deposit somewhere else using a copy of a newspaper with my face in it, so for now I had no escape.
It made me want to push his buttons for a change.
“I need it to get ready for my trip, and that reminds me. Do you want to plan on bringing me to the airport or should I just expense a ride?” I asked, knowing that for him it was a choice between curdled milk or rotten eggs. He grimaced predictably and shook his head.
“I’ll drive you. That trip is going to cost a ton as it is. It’s amazing that they want you to come sit on a panel but don’t offer to pay for it. If it were just that I’d tell you to skip it, but there’s something else I want you to do there that could make it all worth it ten times over,” he said.
“What?” I said, glad we could stop reality from encroaching further on our relationship and shift into real work talk.
“There’s someone else who’ll be in attendance that you need to approach. His name is Gary Polling and he runs an ad exchange network called Interlink House. What you need to do is negotiate a discount for us. That would be huge. Can you do it?”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“I’ll give it my best shot,” I said.
“You need to come through here,” Keenan said with a firm look. I gave him another nod and watched him step by me and cross the office floor. I’d already been feeling apprehensive about giving a talk, and now I had a secret side mission to take care of that Keenan thought was so important he needed to pressure me about it.
At least it was just South by Southwest, not a big conference or anything.
I spent the morning learning everything I could about Gary Polling and Interlink House, trying not to let my thoughts run away with how annoyed Keenan’s conversation left me. I felt like if only we had some space to breathe we wouldn’t get into these stupid little arguments, but breathing room was only going to be harder to come by if I was able to get what I wanted. There my thoughts went running away again…
Before I knew it the clock struck one and I had to grab my jacket and duck out of the office. It was nice of Keenan to allow me to take these appointments at all, because eating a chunk of the afternoon and still getting paid for it was a lot to ask for. But I hopped on and off the train, ascended the stairs to ground level, and then rode an elevator up to the eleventh floor, where Dr. Alexandra Kaydeross’s office was.
I checked in with the receptionist and took a seat, only then fully realizing how little time I’d put into the homework assignment I’d been given. The truth was I’d regretted beginning counseling almost immediately, feeling like it wasn’t getting me anywhere, but I couldn’t quit right away because it might come off poorly to Keenan. It shouldn’t have mattered what he thought of whether or not I went, but that unfortunately was the only thing pushing me to grapple with my past at the moment.
Once my session started, I sat in a puffy chair with white upholstery across from Dr. Alex, as she preferred to be called. The room was lined with packed bookshelves that left barely enough space for the two of us to sit but definitely not enough room for her effervescence and the happiness she radiated, which was undiminished by her extra pounds, the run in her stocking, or the burn scars on one side of her face toward her ear.
Somehow she’d ma
naged to get past whatever had happened there, and I had to admit that I’d never met anyone who gave off the sense that she loved her job more.
“Great. You’re looking refreshed today. Must be sleeping well?”
With anyone else these would’ve been filler greetings and questions, but I never got over being surprised at how much she meant everything she said.
“Pretty good,” I said, wondering if I really did look refreshed. We then went through a few breathing exercises to clear our minds and focus that I’d become used to during my visits here.
“Let’s start with what I asked you to do between last session and today, which was to find a few quiet moments in a calming place to approach the memories of your attack with sympathy and compassion rather than aversion. A lot of the pain we feel, emotionally but also physically, is created in the brain as a protective mechanism, but that mechanism prevents us from undergoing the healing we need. Even in the face of unspeakable horrors that we’ve experienced, shutting out those moments because of the the residual pain we imagine can block growth more than anything. So how did it go?”
It was hard not to think of the burns on her face and wonder how long ago she got them and what impact they had on her life when she mentioned horrors that we’ve gone through, but what I really needed to be thinking about was what I was going to say other than that I hadn’t done what she asked.
“It was uncomfortable. I’m not going to lie,” I said. “Even though I did it when I first got up a few times and was still in bed, my first impulse was to get up and get going with all of the stuff I had to do that day. But I’d purposefully set my alarm to go off five minutes early and tried to bring myself back to that day on the path by the water. I’m not sure what I really got out of it. There are parts I really can’t make myself remember, and it’s not like I have any trouble feeling sorry for myself if that’s what you mean by bringing compassion, but I felt like I was able to be there in my mind without freaking out about it so much.”
Sometimes I wished I wasn’t a writer and nonsense like that didn’t come so easily to me, but Dr. Alex gave me a faint smile when I finished speaking.
“The exercise isn’t so much about to being comfortable reliving the experience. That’s not the point and we don’t ever want to be numb to what happened to ourselves, but the frequency and a tolerable level of comfort just having it manifest in your head is a worthy goal that can be achieved through incremental progress. I encourage you to keep bringing it into your mind every few days if you can.”
“Alright,” I said. “I wouldn’t call it my favorite thing to do by a long shot, but trying to make it more normal to think about in order to not have it paralyze me during a crisis seems good.”
Dr. Alex always listened for a moment or two longer than I spoke, trying to get me to say more. There were times when I felt perfectly comfortable with her parsing the deepest feelings I had and other times when even the weather seemed like a touchy subject. Today was somewhere in the middle.
“What I want to spend the bulk of our time doing today is a little bit different than what we’ve done in the past. Rather than a straightforward discussion, I’d like you to create a physical representation of how you see yourself with the context of this memory. What does this trauma look like to you? How does it fit in with who you are?”
She pulled out a sheet of white paper and a set of markers from her bag, setting them on the small table between us. With anyone else I would’ve seen this as a ploy to eat up time because we’d already talked about everything in past sessions, but her genuineness was so convincing I couldn’t second-guess it. The question was what I would draw. Dr. Alex seemed to be drawing with her pen on a paper she shielded with the upward-tilted clipboard so as not to be all in my business about it, but I couldn’t do more than stare at the pack of markers.
Eventually I gingerly reached in and plucked out the black one and began to drag the felt tip over the paper. It didn’t even occur to me what I was making until I was halfway through it.
“Are you done?” Her question came promptly after I withdrew the marker from the page and leaned back, even though she hadn’t appeared to be paying me any attention.
“I am,” I said, turning the sheet of paper around so she could see it right side up. She gestured for me to talk her through it. “I drew a house, but I’m not the house. There’s this one broken window, and I’m inside of that room, and this window is all I can see out of.”
She nodded slightly with eyebrows raised.
“And what happens if you come out of the room?”
“I don’t know. I can’t.”
The look she gave me made me think she was happy with what I’d done, but I had to remind myself that she was just a happy person who didn’t shy away from showing that she enjoyed our time together. If getting a counseling degree was what it took to be that happy, I was a lost cause.
“That sounds like a good segue to bringing up what I’d like you to do before the next session,” she said.
“Oh, that reminds me. I won’t be able to come in next week. I’m taking a trip,” I said.
“For the next two weeks then,” she went on. “This is one to really spend some time with anyway.”
“OK, what is it?” I asked. Dr. Alex’s enthusiasm was infectious and I found myself motivated to give whatever it was more effort than I did the last one. Though how much time I’d have to give to it while I was in Austin was another matter completely.
“I’ve gathered during our time together that you’re very comfortable speaking your mind and standing up for yourself verbally, but when it comes to taking action and being proactive in order to advocate for yourself, it’s a different story. From what you’ve said you often let others dictate the circumstances of what happens to you, which coalesces into feelings of not having control. I think if you cultivated a little more agency in terms of doing what it takes to make the changes you seek in your life, you’ll be more comfortable taking control even in uncomfortable situations. What I’m asking you to do is look for areas where you are waiting for others to act and take the initiative instead.”
I looked at her blankly for a moment.
“Are you saying I’m all talk?” I gasped. Dr. Alex immediately started shaking her head, her eyebrows raised in concern and sympathetic as ever.
“That’s an unnecessarily uncharitable way to put it. Certainly we’re all subject to the flow of events in some ways, and there’s no doubt that you have an incredible track record of doing what it takes to thrive in your environment. I’m asking simply that you focus more consciously on doing that in the weeks ahead.”
She could dress it up however she liked, but the implication that I ceded control of situations to others hit me as making about as much sense as if she’d said I was part fish and could breathe underwater.
“I…” For the first time in as long as I could remember, I couldn’t even think of what to say to that. Thinking back to everything we’d talked about—graduating from college, leaving Visonic for Mouse Roar, getting involved with Keenan—I didn’t see how anything I’d done could come off as passive. And besides, I knew all about the expectation that I would stand aside or shut up for men and always acted against it with the greatest awareness possible.
“I mean, like, what? What makes you think I haven’t had as much agency in my own life as you think I should have had? Visonic? Mouse Roar? Keenan?” I felt agitated, riled up, and her being sweet about it wasn’t helping.
“I can tell that you’re taking this as a criticism and I want you to know that it wasn’t intended that way at all. This is just my interpretation of what you’ve told me. From those periods you mentioned, it sounded like although you made the decision to quit Visonic, it was because an ex-boyfriend was poisoning your work environment and you didn’t really do anything to counteract that. At your current place of employment, you never followed through with your plan to seek redress for workplace harassment even though you had amp
le time to do so. The genesis of your relationship with Mr. Roche was the result of his advances, not that you can be blamed for that because you were a subordinate.
“This isn’t an attempt to blame you or suggest that you weren’t talking responsibility for yourself at any point. We’re always on a spectrum between having complete freedom to make decisions and having the circumstances of our lives guide us in certain directions. The challenge I’m offering is simply to shift where you are on that spectrum a little further toward the former,” she said.
Dr. Alex successfully disarmed me and we spent the rest of the session talking over the various pieces of evidence she’d produced, and I left not feeling entirely convinced that I could’ve done anything more to take control in those cases. But at least I wasn’t mad about her suggesting it anymore. When I left, I hadn’t even actually said whether I’d accept her challenge or not, but the thought stayed with me as I made it back to work at the very end of the day. I grabbed a few papers from my desk that I really didn’t particularly need, and then I knocked on the door to Keenan’s office. It took him a moment to tell me to enter. When I did, he was wrenched over his keyboard with the bright glare from the computer screen reflecting off his face.
“Hey, dinner tonight?” I asked, but what I was really asking was if we’d be spending the night together at his place.
Keenan shut his eyes as if he’d just been stabbed in the back.
“I really can’t. I’m sorry. You know I’ve been trying to get a partnership going with these guys in Japan and they’re demanding that we have live calls. It’s easy for them but they want me to call at 2 am. I’ve got to try to take a nap and then get ready to stay up for them,” he said.
I smiled understandingly, trying to perform my best Dr. Alex impression.
“Of course. Tomorrow then?”
“Maybe. We’ll see how it goes with them. We should’ve sealed the deal already but they are just being brutally methodical about everything, and the language barrier isn’t helping.”