by Mara Jacobs
A moment of inactivity. I willed the dots showing he was typing to start growing, but nothing.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, a simple, Me too.
I foolishly hoped that Montrose had blown off his training session, or that maybe it had been cancelled and he’d still be in his office when I arrived around four-thirty, but no.
It was obvious he’d been there, though, and also obvious—at least to me—that he’d spent a fair amount of time going through the Esme/Rachel pile. The stack was still neat and tidy, but in a different order than I’d originally organized it.
I wondered if there was a reason he’d reordered the pieces of paper, and decided to work on a different stack tonight in case he wanted to clarify something with me first.
I took the pile I’d named One Mile Trot with me to the desk, where I saw a note he’d left for me on top of his laptop.
I won’t need my laptop tonight, so if you’d rather work on it, go ahead. At the very least, transfer over the work that you’ve got transcribed to my machine when you’re done. I might get a chance to go over it tomorrow before my first class.
I liked working on my machine, so I pushed his laptop to the side of the desk, pulled the One Mile Trot pile to just within reach and began typing.
After I finished transcribing the stack of papers, I spent a fair amount of time cutting and pasting and moving passages about to try and create some kind of cohesiveness to his various trains of thought. When I was pleased with the results, I transferred the files I’d created onto a flash drive that Montrose had left on top of his laptop.
Booting up his laptop, I packed mine away in my backpack. I was a little uncomfortable with poking around on his computer, but I supposed that many literary assistants had this kind of access to the machines of the authors they worked for.
And, he probably wouldn’t have left all his downloaded porn, or sensitive love letters to past girlfriends, out on the desktop and then leave a note for me to use it.
Nope. No porn. On his fairly empty desktop was a folder titled “WIP” which I took for Work In Progress. Opening it, I found five more folders named by the past five years.
His notes had all been dated at the top, but I wasn’t sure if the dates he scribbled the note necessarily coincided with the year from his folders. Probably not, as even with Trot there were notes from several different years.
I opened the most distant year’s folder, from five years ago. In it were at least forty Word docs, all named with what looked to be different book titles. And also a corresponding file with the title and “notes.” None of them were titles of the copious piles of notes I’d unpacked and sorted.
Perhaps the notes for these books were in the boxes still at his apartment?
I opened all the years’ folders to find the same thing, only there were progressively more files in the ensuing years. I matched up the names with the piles of notes I had created. They were all accounted for, but there had to be at least an extra two hundred files. Were there that many boxes at Montrose’s apartment?
Suddenly I was extremely grateful that I’d put so much time in during the holidays and got through all the boxes in his office. I was thinking I was over halfway done with the organizing part of this large project.
Now I realized I probably wasn’t even close.
I opened the files for Trot and its notes, intending to see where it would make the most sense to add on the material from the flash drive.
The notes file was empty, but the book file started with the two words every voracious reader loved to see—Chapter One.
Yes, the character introduced on the first page matched the pile of notes I’d just transcribed, and I scrolled down to continue, resigning myself to a long evening ahead, spending time with my favorite author and his next—or possibly his next—book.
Except, there was nothing to page down to, nothing beyond the opening paragraph or two. Disappointed, I quickly realized that that’s why I was here. So I could add notes and he’d be able to continue. Though, looking at it from solely a reader and transcriber’s point of view, his notes were almost too random, too esoteric, to be called an outline or plot points, or anything close to a story structure.
Undeterred, I plugged in the flash drive and transferred my whole folder onto his desktop. I ejected the drive and put it in my bag to have as backup, then returned to his files.
I opened my Trot file from his desktop, copied all, then pasted it into his “One Mile Trot Notes” document. That way he’d have all the transcribed and organized notes in one place, my transferred folder, but also in the notes doc for each book title. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the files I had that didn’t match up with a title for which he’d already created a Word doc. I grabbed some scratch paper from my bag and jotted down the ones that didn’t match, so I could ask Montrose about them later. I also wrote a note to him, describing the approach I took and that he could find my transcriptions in two spots on his computer.
Then I set about lots and lots of copy and paste.
It was the same for each document that I pasted my work into. The notes doc would be empty and the main doc would have two or three paragraphs of chapter one. No more. Not on one single document of the over forty I had transferred from the flash drive.
Curious, and basically done for now, I selected all of the main Word docs from every year and opened them all at once. The documents flying open on top of each other seemed to go on and on. My eye was not quite fast enough to see if any went beyond a few paragraphs, but it didn’t look like it.
I started reading each of the docs—it didn’t take long—and closing them when done. Just doing some quick math in my head, it seemed like he had enough different chapter ones of different stories to have started something new each week for the past five years. It probably wasn’t exactly how it had happened, but that’s what it would have averaged.
I had no idea how authors work, but I would have imagined that no matter how much tinkering with different ideas, at some point they committed and got to at least page two.
Billy Montrose had been literarily paralyzed for five years. No wonder he’d come to Bribury to shake things up.
I thought of our kisses yesterday. Yes, he was definitely shaking things up.
The key in the door made me look up, and also made heat rush through my body. He had come back after his training session.
“I was hoping you might still be here,” he said with a smile when he entered the office. I watched his quiet, graceful movements as he took off his coat and hung it on the hook behind the door, which he then closed. And locked.
Turning to me, he saw how my gaze went from the locked door up to his face and he grinned. Right then I couldn’t have told you one character name from the multitude I’d just read and typed.
The only name I could think of was Montrose. The only plot point I wanted to document was getting beneath him on the old leather couch in the corner.
The only character arc that seemed relevant was mine…and his.
Looking at me like that, his hair slightly wet from the snow outside, his grin both promising and devilish, I wanted to arc his brains out.
He crossed to me, and like he did yesterday, he penned me in with a hand on his desk and one on the back of my chair, which he turned to face him.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” he said, leaning in for a soft, barely-there kiss. My head followed him as he retreated, then fell back against the chair, as if a string had been cut.
I smiled up at him. “Me too. Do you want to go over what I got done? I left you notes on it, but—”
“Later,” he said. He glanced at the desk, seeing his computer open. “As long as it’s all on my machine I can look—” He did a double take at the screen, registering what files were open. “What…what are you doing?”
I briefly explained the whole process, but he wasn’t listening. He pushed on the arm of my chair, wheeling me a little beyond the well of the
desk, which he stepped into. His arms no longer penned me in, but instead were placed firmly on either side of his laptop as he began clicking through all the different chapter one documents, though, unlike me, he didn’t take the time to read each one.
By the look of his face clouding over, something told me he didn’t need to reread each one, he probably did so all the time.
And I also realized that maybe I’d screwed up.
Chapter Fifteen
I again tried to explain what I’d done with the files, but it was like he couldn’t hear my voice, he just kept clicking each document closed one by one, his eyes becoming that darker grey as he worked.
Finally, I edged him out of the way, and swiped the cursor across, catching all the files and closing them all at once.
He stayed where he was, leaning over, one hand still on the desk, the one I’d nudged now dangling lifeless by his side. His eyes stayed on the empty screen. I pointed to where I copied my folder of transcribed work and he silently nodded.
I sat back in my chair, willing myself not to speak, knowing that I probably wouldn’t say the right thing. He was obviously embarrassed that I’d seen the fruit—or lack of—his labor for the past five years. That embarrassment now looked like it was turning into a healthy dose of anger. I learned from my stepfather that it was best in these situations to not speak first.
That, and become as small and invisible as you possibly could.
“I know I said you had free rein as far as giving feedback, and I did ask you to transfer your files to my machine, and we never really discussed boundaries…but…I…” He shook his head as he stood straight, running a hand over his chin and then placing both hands on his hips and turning toward the door.
Turning away from me.
A feeling of panic rose from me that I would lose this job, and whatever chance I had of being with—in whatever capacity—Montrose. And yet, I kept silent.
Like I said, I’d learned a lot from living with my stepfather.
“I mean,” he continued, still not looking at me. “It’s a weird situation. On one hand, as my assistant, eventually you would have had access to some of those files. Who knows, maybe all.” I didn’t miss the emphasis he put on “eventually.” Clearly in his mind, we were not there yet on a working level. “But, in another aspect, you’re someone I’m…” The hand across the chin again as he walked away from me, to the couch, where he sat, sinking down into the old, soft leather. He held his hands palm up, as if that would help him put a label on us. It didn’t help and his hands dropped to his lap. “I don’t know. Whatever we are. It’s early, yes, but it feels like over the last three weeks and all our talks that we missed a few steps. Doesn’t it? Like we were on the accelerated course?” He looked directly at me as he asked and I nodded, wheeling the chair back into place behind the desk, as if needing its protection.
And noticing he had used the past tense “were” when summing us up.
He waved his hands in the air, then let them rest on his thighs. Yesterday, my legs had been pressed up against those rock-hard thighs, rubbing against them as we’d tried to get closer to each other.
“Whatever we’ve got going, I would never allow my…person in my life to read any of my works in progress. I guess I should have explained that, but…” he trailed off, leaning back into the couch. His body read defeated. And pissed off.
I could keep quiet no more, even though my hard-earned lessons whispered to me to keep my mouth shut.
“Look, I get that you’re embarrassed, but—”
“Embarrassed?” he said, sitting up, his hands braced on his knees as if he could pounce at any moment. “It’s not about being embarrassed. I’m not embarrassed by my work. Any of it.” There was a touch of defensiveness in his voice and also hubris, and I saw the first sign of the affected person he’d sworn he had been near to becoming. Yeah, not a real stretch to imagine him at full blown artistic prick.
“It’s about feeling violated. Having someone go through my private work. Someone who I’m seeing. Yeah, violated. Like…”
At the word “violation” my throat got tight and I felt a tingling at the back of my neck. If he brought up an analogy like his house had been broken into, I’d let it slide. But anything else, anything more—
“Like I’d been ra—”
“Stop,” I said, jumping out of my chair and holding my hand up. All thought of letting Billy Montrose lead in whatever dance we were doing flew out of my mind, and pure, raw emotion—most of it anger—fueled me as I pointed at him. “Do not say it. You have not been raped. You have not been violated in a physical way. Someone you’re…seeing looked at your work, which you would have preferred to be private until you were ready to share.”
He started to rise, but either the look on my face, or his own emotions, kept him on the couch.
“You are not harmed, you have not lost anything. You were not…violated.” My voice was strong and pure and just a tad bit violent, but I didn’t care. Later I was sure I would regret telling him off. I would tell myself that making this point wasn’t worth losing Montrose—or a good-paying job—over. But right now…right now I knew I had to make my case.
I took a deep breath, signaling the end of my tirade, but I didn’t look away, didn’t back down. I should have been scared shitless that I’d ruined everything. But honestly? It was the most…fearless I’d felt in five years.
His eyes narrowed at me and I realized that either he was going to come back at me hard, or worse, he was going to figure out something about me that I didn’t want him to know.
That I didn’t want anybody at Bribury to figure out. Something I wanted buried back in Queens and not to be a part of the new me.
I snatched my backpack from the floor, now thankful that I’d packed it earlier, and could just grab it, my coat, and go.
Montrose started to rise but I gave him a hand out to stop and he did, though he watched me as I took my coat from the coatrack, disentangling one of my sleeves from his.
“I like this job, and would like to keep it. But I understand if it’s now too uncomfortable for you. If you’d like to get someone else, I’ll understand. Just send me an email before tomorrow afternoon, so I won’t come in.”
“Syd,” he said from behind me, but I had everything I needed now and just shook the back of my head at him and walked out the door.
I walked quickly down the hallway, sliding my coat on as I did. Half of me wanted him to follow me, to shout for me to stop. The other half dreaded the thought that he would.
I felt naked, like I’d become someone that I couldn’t be, someone who would not fit into this world of the elite.
Someone I’d worked so hard to abandon.
I got to the main door of Snyder and walked outside. The snow was falling and I was glad because it blurred my vision as I turned to look at Montrose’s office window.
But even through the falling flakes, and, okay, yes, maybe some falling tears, I saw the movement of the blinds as Montrose pulled them back.
And then let them fall back into place.
Chapter Sixteen
The next day, I checked my email from my cubicle at the admin building when I finished up my shift.
Nothing from Montrose.
It was the second week of January and my long hours at the admin building were over, the new front end system working well, with only a couple of glitches. Everybody at work today was celebrating and backslapping and the consultants were getting ready to move on to their next assignment. I would return to just a couple of hours late in the afternoon a few days a week.
The guy who had asked me out for New Year’s Eve stopped by my cubicle and said goodbye and I wished him luck at his next stop.
I decided to have a long dinner alone at the caf and get my studying done there before heading to Montrose’s office.
Having only had one day of classes so far, there wasn’t much to do, but I got the reading done, not wanting to fall behind. I had worked
like a dog to get in here, there was no way I was going to get bounced for poor grades. Still, it was work, and though I did enjoy it, it didn’t come as effortlessly to me as it did to Jane, who seemed never to crack a book and still got great grades for the first semester. (Though I’d had to ask her several times before she put forth that information.)
I checked my text and email on the walk over to Snyder from the caf, not wanting to walk in only to have Montrose say, “Didn’t you get the message? Your ass is out of here.”
Not that he’d say it like that. He was a writer, after all.
No message from him. To my relief (and maybe a bit of disappointment) his office window was dark, my strategy of stalling paying off. I knocked on his office door, just in case, before letting myself in.
I was loud as I unlocked the door, even coughing, in case Montrose was there but had decided to take a nap on the couch or something, thus turning out the lights.
Not that I thought that would be the case, but I didn’t want to take the chance of surprising or waking him and giving him even more reason to be pissed off at me.
He wasn’t there. I hung up my coat, knit hat and mittens, and slid off my boots, putting them in the corner to dry out while I worked.
As I rounded his desk, the first thing I noticed was a space where his laptop had been. After yesterday, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Instead, there were a handful of flash drives and a note.
Unpacking my laptop and phone and other stuff from my bag, I read the note from Montrose.
Syd,
Sorry about the misunderstanding yesterday. Perhaps the best way to go about the work is for you to transfer all your transcriptions and outlines to a flash drive and just leave it on the desk. I’ll take it from there.
My last class is done at three daily, so I plan to take classwork home, and read it from my apartment each night, leaving the office open for you to work.
Billy