The Everything Girl

by L. Maleki

  I decided to text Benji. He wouldn’t see the message until morning but at least the police would know where to begin their search for my body.

  Hey, I texted. I have to deliver something to my crazy boss, way out in Oyster Bay. I’m taking an Uber, but I wanted someone to know if I go missing. Ha ha. I’ll text when I get back home, so you’ll know I’m alive.

  My phone rang again as I hurriedly put on clothes. “Dammit, Frank,” I muttered to myself, but it was Benji.

  “Oh my God,” I said into the phone, embarrassed, “I did not mean to wake you up! Go back to sleep!”

  He laughed. “I’ve been working on a new exhibit; I haven’t been to bed yet. And I’m thinking I’m in the mood for a road trip …”

  He had a car. But was it right to rope him into this? I peered through the blinds and appraised the landscape. Dark alleys, sirens, drunken shouting.

  I might be embarrassed I bothered him so late at night, but I’m not stupid. A car ride with a hunk, or with an unwashed old man? “Thank you.”

  Chapter 16

  My mind, sodden, worked overtime to process the numbers on the computer screen in front of me.

  Benji had dropped me off at my apartment at five that morning, after spending the night driving around on behalf of the esteemed Franklin Coyle, who had not bothered to say thank you. He couldn’t, because he was passed out, snoring in a deck chair by the pool. Someone had thrown a towel over him, presumably the hooker with a heart of gold. Hope she helped herself to something nice before she left.

  I put his wallet and phone on the kitchen island next to his keys, offered Benji a meatball from Aquavit’s foil-covered plate, and then balanced the dish on my boss’s chest. If I was lucky, a raccoon would smell the Swedish snack and attack the sleeping man-beast. We left him and his food next to the pool.

  Back at my apartment, I spent a good five minutes trying to beguile Benji to come inside, but he was right, I needed to sleep. My drooping pajama bottoms, disheveled hair, and mucky breath probably didn’t help my cause. Outside my door, he’d gently held my face in his hands and kissed the tip of my nose.

  “You are so beautiful, Paris. Inside and out.”

  I’d fluttered. Throughout the day, his words stuck with me, like a glowing light I kept coming back to as I got coffee, or sat in a meeting, or read at my desk. Oh, how I wanted to live up to that compliment, to please him. To keep him close, to keep his deep, hazel eyes focused on me with that same caring intensity he’d revealed in that moment.

  In that minute, I’d grabbed him, holding on. “Thank you so much, Benjamin Stark, for tonight. I owe you a million times over.”

  “I’ll take that payment right now.” He’d bent down and pressed his lips to mine, molded his body to mine, pulling me up so our groins were mashed together. He was perfect. One hand had threaded into the hair at my scalp and held me to him, the other cupping a buttock, his tongue slow and measured in my mouth, demanding attention. He was not sloppy or awkward or aggressive; he was an artist. After a breathless moment, he broke away with a small laugh. “Oh, Paris. If only you knew how much that was worth.”

  As I unlocked my door with a shaking hand, he’d said, “Hey, look at me.”

  I had turned and he’d snapped my picture with his phone camera. “Something to look at while I fall asleep.” He’d grinned and then loped down the hallway.

  A text drew me out of my dreamy state. I blinked back into real time, at my desk in the middle of a long afternoon.

  To my new favorite person …

  Benji included a link to an old YouTube video of Van Morrison singing “Brown Eyed Girl.” I’d never really paid attention to classic rock, but it was a lot different when you could picture a hot photographer singing it to you in the bathtub. I listened to the song thirty-two times in a row. He was singing directly to me. I was Benji’s brown-eyed girl. I was Benji’s.

  Whoa. Okay. Moving pretty fast here. Take a breath.

  Frank had called in sick, not surprisingly. I hoped he was suffering from raccoon rabies along with his hangover. I stayed because he told me I needed to sign for a package and put it in his safe, but no one in the office needed me for anything.

  Most of the traders were having a Candy Crush tournament, as far as I could tell. I’d already put in more than enough hours, starting at 2:00 a.m. I could have spent my time researching current trading trends. Instead, I Googled “dating tips” and “when is he your boyfriend” and “how do you know he’s cheating” because you know, once bitten, twice shy, and all that.

  An hour later, I was weighted down by the wide world of cynical women and their capitulation to nights alone with Netflix and dildos, and the searing abhorrence or feverish passion for The Bachelorette. I did glean a few helpful ideas, like I should try to be as real as possible around him, so six months down the road “he’s not irate when you have to admit you can’t actually ski and you wished he hadn’t bought that expensive black diamond package in the Alps.” Another good tip was to find something you have in common other than drinking. I felt smug in that arena. And, most importantly, have your girlfriends vet him before you’re serious. That’s a damn good idea, I thought. If I’d listened to my girlfriends back in California, I would never have suffered the dick that was Darien.

  Finally, the FedEx delivery woman trudged up to my desk, glassy-eyed and reeking of weed. “Do you speak English?”

  I sighed. I didn’t get that nearly as much as my dad, but still. Annoying. “Maybe.”

  “The anorexic chick at the front desk said Frank is back here. Are you Frank?”

  I started to laugh but then realized she wasn’t joking. “Um, yes, I speak English, and no, I’m definitely not Frank. But I will sign for him.”

  She thrust a small box at me, moving away before I had a firm hold. The heavy package dropped to the floor between us. There was a jingling counterpoint to the thud. I froze, but the delivery person meandered away without the smallest glimpse backward.

  I stared at it. Shit.

  I picked it up and casually, oh, so casually, eyeballed the room. The office was half-full of people being held hostage by their computer screens. Nicki and Michelle were off in a corner, gossiping with a new analyst. No one had seen the big drop.

  I removed the Book of Frank from my locked desk drawer and strolled into Frank’s office, slow and calm, binder and package in hand. Nothing to see here. I nudged the door shut behind me with my foot and flipped the binder open to the combination page. Mumbling the numbers under my breath, I left the binder on a chair and opened the safe. I set the package into the iron box, trying not to shift the broken glass, and re-spun the dial.

  For all Frank knew, the item had arrived broken.

  I slunk back out, guilt finding an easy, well-worn foothold.

  I was supposed to meet Gina and Lucia for appetizers and drinks—virgin drinks for the pregnant girl. The two were back to talking, somewhat, but Gina was unsure of how to help her friend when it came to her family or, more importantly, now that she’d decided against an abortion, if Lucia should give up the baby for adoption or keep it. But Gina also continued to pass judgment on Lucia’s reason for sleeping with the guy. Apparently, it was okay to bring home strangers from a bar, but not to use sex to get ahead in your career. On the other hand, Gina had told me privately she was kind of happy at the thought of a little Lucia running around the world. Once again, my friends proved to be complex but caring women.

  I could offer an open mind and a kind ear. I thought about inviting Benji but decided he didn’t need to be part of the baby saga, not until Lucia had made a decision.

  I yawned a huge, gaping yawn, ending with slitted eyes that were hard to reopen. Okay, I’m tired. Maybe a little nap first.

  I shut off my computer, went home, and fell asleep in my clothes.

  The angry calls from Gina and Lucia, waiting for me at the restaurant, did not wake me up.

  The next morning, I fired off a string of apology texts,
and then ordered a chocolate-dipped fruit bouquet delivered to their apartment.

  At the office, I still felt like I was moving underwater.

  “Paris! Par-iiiiiisssss!”

  I jerked, sloshing coffee onto the desk and my hand. Sucking my skin, I cringed. Had Frank opened the broken package? I was hoping he’d forgotten about it, or that he really couldn’t open his own safe. I put my head up and walked into his office confidently. Whether or not I decided to take the heat depended entirely on the next few minutes. I didn’t mind owning up to something I did wrong—as a matter of fact, I preferred to purge my sins—but if the package was inconsequential, or he was a total douche, then I would rather burden my non-Catholic soul with a lie than be fired from the only job that was keeping my father, and myself, from the poorhouse.

  “Do you know why I called you in here?” His doughy face was inscrutable.

  “Um …” I felt like I was in a sitcom from the eighties, the scared student facing down her insipid principal in a bad suit. What was the right answer?

  Glancing at the wall safe out of the corner of my eye, I realized the door was shut. Suppressing a sigh of relief, I thought, He doesn’t know the combination … oh hell. The Book of Frank. Did I leave it in here yesterday? I flicked my eyes around but saw it nowhere.

  “You are supposed to be in charge of my medication. I’ve been out of it for two days. Two days!”

  He did look more crazed than usual, with greasy hair and bugging eyes. He had three screens set up and linked to his computer, and his desk was six inches deep in trade sheets and financial printouts. I edged further into the middle of the room, to be closer to the door.

  “You’re right, I’m sorry, I don’t know how I missed that.” I maintained a gentle tone. Then he threw an empty prescription bottle at my head, the wind moving my hair as it flew past. “Hey!”

  He pounded his fist on his desk. “Look around here, Paris! I am the one holding this place together! Me! If I wasn’t telling those moronic ballbags out there where to take a piss, they’d be sitting in their own piddle.” He twirled one of the computer screens toward me. “See this? I’m currently tracking nine hundred and sixty-two trades. If I’m not paying close attention, some other fucking gunslinger is going to steal the horses.”

  “I’ll go right now—”

  “The head of NBC isn’t going to settle for a fucking pony, Paris!” He pounded his desk again. “My concentration is shit! Maybe you can tell me which of these is a goddamn Arabian!”

  I scooped up the bottle from the floor. “Okay, Frank. I got it. I’ll help you corral the horses—”

  “What in the holy fuck are you talking about? Get me my goddamn medicine!”

  Michelle burst through Frank’s door just as I was reaching for the doorknob. “Frank! I can hear you clear across the office. What’s going on?” Her blonde ponytail bobbing, she tried to ascertain the damage.

  I grabbed Michelle as I marched past and pulled her out with me. She shut the door and gently pried my fingers off her forearm. Seeing my face, she patted me on the shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. I held up his medication bottle and shrugged, afraid if I said anything I’d start crying. I hated being screamed at, I definitely hated having things thrown at my head, but I really, really hated it when I failed to do something I was expected to do. It certainly didn’t help matters that the Book of Frank was missing and the CEO would probably find it, read the snarky comments about himself, and then fire me, even though I hadn’t written them. Well, not many of them.

  Then, something on the bottle caught my eye. The date. The prescription wasn’t set to be refilled until the following week. Frank had been double dosing himself.

  Alright then. Onto the next problem. Frank’s binder … where had it gone? He didn’t have it or he’d have thrown that at my head, too.

  I told Michelle I was fine and then frantically rechecked every drawer, already knowing it wasn’t in my desk. It had to be in his office, maybe under a chair. As if my blood pressure wasn’t high enough. Frank was going to assume I was its creator, reducing his life to a three-ring binder. So much of it could be construed as condescending. Because it was.

  Chapter 17

  Returning from the pharmacist, I found Nicki in Frank’s office, on a stepladder, screwing L-brackets into the wall. He was gone.

  “What are you doing?” I didn’t really care. I put his medicine on the desk and then scanned the floor under the desk and side chairs.

  “Well, since you decided to take a long lunch, Frank picked me to be the one to put up a shelf.” She held out a hand. “I already broke a nail. Thanks a lot.”

  She had no idea what a cliché she was. “Why does he need a shelf?”

  “He wants to display his wife’s newest piece of art.” She snorted and stepped down. “So stupid.”

  There, on his desk, was the ripped-open envelope and a pile of blue shards of glass, some chunks bigger than others. Whatever it used to be would remain a mystery.

  Nicki slid a glass shelf over the brackets, climbed down, walked over to the desk, and then scooped the crystal shards back in the large, padded manila envelope. Then she marched back to the wall and dumped the shards into a pile on the shelf. She stood back and looked at it, smirking.

  “He told me it was abstract, representing the fragility of the human psyche. I’m pretty sure he just made that up.”

  “He saw this?”

  “Oh yeah. He made everyone come in and admire it. And then told me to hang a shelf, that he wanted to see it from his desk.”

  She stepped back to the wall and adjusted some of the pieces, trying to give the mound some semblance of an aesthetic shape.

  The brackets tore loose and the shelf fell off the wall. We stared at the mess on the floor.

  “Did you find the studs first?”

  “You think you’re so smart, you do it!” She huffed, and then marched out.

  I called in one of the handymen from building services to hang the shelf, which Nicki should have done in the first place. While he measured and pounded nails, I got on my hands and knees and looked for the binder under the sofas, then under the cushions, with no luck. It took the guy three minutes to get it done, most likely because he wanted to be gone before Frank came in.

  As the handyman left, I “artistically” arranged the blue shards and stepped back to assess my handiwork. Nope, looks just as stupid from a distance as it does close up.

  I went into Frank’s bathroom to wash glass slivers from my hands, and to find white toothpaste to fill the first set of drill holes. There, on the back of his ridiculous toilet, was the Book of Frank. I groaned. So, he had found it. And he was using it as reading material while he pooped. I should have known.

  Gagging, I wiped down the binder cover with a Lysol cleaning cloth and took it back out to my desk. I refused to picture the bacteria clinging to the pages inside as I tucked the binder into the drawer and locked it.

  He hadn’t returned by the time I left for the evening. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance Frank would forget about the binder by the time he returned, especially since he hadn’t come in to get his meds. I’d had them messengered to his house, with a note for the cook to make sure he took them, but who knew if he’d listen to her. He should be good and crazy by now, I thought, relieved to make it out the building without a showdown.

  That night, just as I was sinking into my couch with a bowl of chocolate peanut-butter ice cream and an episode of Gilmore Girls teed up, Frank called.

  Berating myself as a coward, I answered. “Hi, Frank.”

  “Hey! Where’s the binder?” I could hear water hitting water in the background. He was peeing while talking to me. I shuddered.

  “Oh, uh,” I said, thinking fast, “I took it. I locked it back up, since it has your banking information and passwords in there.”

  I heard droplets, and then the sound of his zipper.

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,�
�� he growled, “but I want to finish reading it.” The toilet flushed. “I could totally help you add more to it. We could use your content when I hire a biographer to write my memoir.”

  Oh my God. He liked it.

  The whole notebook revolved around managing his moods and idiot choices. There was a section on the crazy, disgusting protocols he had implemented for maintaining his hygiene. There were lists of words and phrases not to use because they made him “throw a screaming fit like a deranged toddler.” There was a page on how to walk and hold yourself, offering the least amount of possibilities for him to ogle your ass or breasts. Michelle had recently added in what to do if he continued to “accidentally” brush against you or rub his privates in public, who to contact in HR. I’d been praying I wouldn’t have to use that information.

  He thought I was responsible for its creation. Instead of getting fired, the narcissist thought I was brilliant. I was about to tell him Michelle deserved the credit, when he changed topics.

  “By the way, you need to hire a new research assistant. You know what I like.” He wasn’t referring to smarts. “I want you to fire the skinny one tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “She came into my office and I gagged. She stinks. I don’t like how she always smells like burnt cookies. Or how she says ‘thank you.’ I’ve told her, but she keeps doing it. That’s disrespectful. And I’m really tired of repeating myself to her. I’ve told her to go get the wax cleaned out of her ears, but she hasn’t done that, either. I don’t need her bullshit.”

  “What am I supposed to tell her? I’m pretty sure you can’t fire someone for smelling like cookies or being polite.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye.

  Frank, the great mumbler, next in line for Humanitarian of the Year.

  I was suddenly too depressed to watch Gilmore Girls. I walked into the kitchen, placed my melted bowl of ice cream in the sink. I felt bad for the young assistant, but there was nothing I could do. We had no union. She could probably try bringing suit against Frank, but I doubted she could afford a good lawyer, much less the horde of attorneys that PRCM would throw at her. It was so unfair. This man has a few switches locked in the off position. His brain does not function properly.