by Marie Turner
“I’ll let you get to your reading,” I say, standing and deliberately stopping to check the weather outside the window. The sky holds slumped, dangling clouds, frozen in place.
“Nice to meet you, Caroline. Come by again. I like to have visitors. Lunch is a good time. I always have my lunch in the little dining hall if you ever want to join me. They make pretty good turkey enchiladas on Tuesdays.” He opens the nightstand drawer and retrieves his reading glasses. Then he pops them on, looking above them to totter his fingers at me.
“Bye Mr. Spencer,” I say.
“Bye, Caroline. Close the door tightly on your way out.”
I pull the door tightly shut and make my way down to the street, which seems to be full of the silhouettes of mortal men, their dark caped shapes moving in and out of buildings. They all have closed umbrellas in their hands. A drift of gutter smoke rises out of the sidewalk as I glide past.
Realizing I won’t have time for a real lunch, I roughly ransack a small convenience store along the way. There I rustle up a half turkey sandwich and a bottle of water. On the street, I eat and walk while the wind whines through my open raincoat. All the time my thoughts are fully shaped and ever-moving. I wonder how I could have worked for Robert for two years and not known about his gnarled past. I ask myself questions. Does this truth make Robert’s assistant-trampling acceptable? Does his past excuse him from somehow and fuel his cruelty? Does he deserve special treatment because his mother was a meth-addict? Has being abandoned just made a bad person? Is he the bad guy? Or am I now the bad guy for sending the video? And why would Robert send me on such a personal errand now, when he never has before? I coax my thoughts, trying to come to some palpable resolution, but the questions just circle, like a merry-go-round without end. They cling to nothing.
After arriving at the office, I barely have time to haul what I need down to the street, where Robert is standing there, holding the door to the town car open. The car sits idling on the curb. A patch of sunlight shines on the building across the street, making several windows crimson, gold, and rose. I see the sun also hits Roberts face, banding and flaring across his cheeks. I wonder, does his loveliness bear the mark of kindness? At the thought, nervousness boot-heels my stomach. The feeling is almost unbearable. Hurrying through the lobby doors and along the concrete walkway, I hold my documents tightly and wrestle my thoughts.
What is he going to say to me? Will he say it now or wait until later?
Once I sit down, I watch Robert’s arms swing as he lopes around to the other side of the vehicle. As he gets inside, the air feels butchered. The driver sits silently studying his mirrors and preparing to pull into traffic. Soon we begin gliding through rain blown streets occasionally littered with sodden trash. Robert doesn’t look at me. He just looks toward the Transamerica building, with its rooftop pointing toward deepening shades of sky in every direction. He only says in a quiet voice, “Buckle your seatbelt.”
Chapter 5
“De que tocan a llover, no hay más que abrir el paraguas.”
If it starts raining, one has nothing to open up one’s umbrella.
At the 555 California building, Robert and I stand on opposite sides of a conference room. On the floor around us white boxes are piled almost to the ceiling along the walls. They completely cover the conference table. Only the window remains unhindered. On the other side of the tinted glass, dark fog shapes itself around skyscrapers.
The client, a yellow-haired short man in a brown suit looks at us over the box-strewn conference table.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to sort through these,” he says, his eyes cutting around in the room as if he is uncertain about leaving the boxes in our care. “We’ll be needing you to make copies for yourselves of the relevant materials, of course, but do keep everything essentially in this room.”
“Fine,” Robert nods. The short man exits the glass conference door. It shuts itself as he totters down the hall.
Robert puts his hands on his hips. He surveys the white boxes as though they are many children looking at him at once.
“You start on that end,” he orders. “We’ll mark them with letters that designate the addresses. All boxes relating to the Folsom Street properties get an F, those for Market Street properties get an M, and so on. Put the letters on the lower half of the boxes. We’ll send out for copies in shifts. Meanwhile, get the copier guy over here. What’s his name?”
“Conrad,” I say.
“Yes, get him over here now. Tell him to bring a van and several of his best crew. We can’t lose anything.”
“Right.”
I leave the conference room and step over to the receptionist, where I use her phone to call Conrad. When I return, Robert is sitting on a chair at the far end, only his perfect hair peeking above the boxes on the conference table. I briefly wonder what this situation would look like in reverse—if he were my assistant and I were the lawyer. I contemplate how delightful it would be to make Robert do all the copying himself.
Without speaking, I organize the boxes at my end of the room. We carry on in silence for a while, only the sound of papers shuffling and boxes sliding, before Robert speaks. His thick-lashes don’t hide the snow-blue of his eyes when he pauses and looks across the room at me.
“We should talk about last night,” he begins. The tone of his voice makes me think he’s going to apologize, but then he adds, “You were really out of line.”
And there it is—the enormous elephant in the room, just floating there between us. Only in my head the elephant wears a metal chain on its foot that ties it to the ground. 1
In my memory, the elevator kiss replays, and the more I think about it, the clearer my memory captures it. Still, I’d rather be condemned to live out some ancient curse than to look at Robert’s face right now. I can only keep my fingers moving and attempt to concentrate on the task before me: organizing boxes. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Organizing boxes. I mark the one in my lap with a giant “F” before putting it with the other “F” boxes.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I say. “I don’t know what got into me. I don’t usually drink.” His proximity seems too close although he’s across the room. I can feel my own skin cells heating up. This is the terrible part about being a fair-skinned redhead. When you’re embarrassed, your whole body turns lava red, not just your neck or face. You can’t hide it.
Meanwhile I can feel the anger blowing from his side of the room and half expect him to be wielding a guillotine. After all, he has to know the havoc it would cause for anyone to find out that we kissed. He has to be worrying about his career right now.
“That can never happen again,” he states, unequivocal. His voice sounds deeper than usual, like a judge issuing a verdict, if that judge were tall and lovely. Outside the conference room window, the sky darkens to a milky charcoal, leaving only the artificial lights to illuminate him, but Robert could be wearing the ugly black cloak of the grim reaper and still be beautiful in any light.
“Absolutely,” I say, a good assistant. Does he sense the bad attitude emerging? I feel empowered by taking action. The thought of hurting someone who has hurt me so much is like eating after a very long period of famine. Maybe this is what I need to change my life—a little decisive, albeit dodgy, action. I’m no longer milk-toast for Robert. No longer his wounded pet. I’m a person, with thoughts and feelings, who exists outside of his realm of influence.
“Another thing,” he continues. Oh no. “I hear you’ve been looking into finding work elsewhere in the firm. Is that true?”
Of all the things he might say to me today, this question was not on my list. How did he find out about my applying for another job in the firm?
“I’ve looked,” I choke out, a convict being sentenced. I feel that I should continue talking, but what else can I say?
“Why?” he asks.
I hear his fingers stop walking through the files. With a file box in my lap, I sit there in the chair, my fingers drift
ing nonstop through it. Because you’re a horrible person to work for, I want to say, because you’re just a horrible person, period, but my confidence only goes so far and then it flops down and dies. Like a weak little lizard.
“I don’t know,” I reply.
There’s an immense silence. I can hear Robert resume skimming the files. He pauses to take off his suit jacket and roll up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He loosens multicolored tie. Across the table, I glance at his shirt but not his face. He really is very pretty if you can avoid hating him so much.
“There has to be a reason,” he blurts. “One doesn’t seek work elsewhere without reason.” His voice is hot sand.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? I didn’t get the job, so…” I’m actually arguing with him; it feels alien. Our arguments are always one-way: he yells at me and I retreat to lick my wounds.
“And why the Public Relations Department? You have an interest in working in PR?” He asks as though only boil weevils work in PR. “You’ve never shown any inclination for a desire to work in PR.”
“Not necessarily.” I attempt to avoid sounding as though I’m five years old and don’t know what I want in life. And then I wonder why I didn’t get that job in PR. Is it because the PR department called Robert? And what did Robert say about me? If my last evaluation is any indication, he likely said that I was as competent as a stick.
“If you want to find work elsewhere, all you have to do is tell me. I can certainly help make that happen.”
“That’s not necessary,” I say.
And there it is again. The dragon fuming beneath the surface. He can only keep it in check for so long. I picture his beautiful shell of a body slipping away like a fake suit and the dragon beneath unfurling itself, stretching out its body. The head would reach the ceiling and the wingspan would take up the whole conference room. I imagine the emerald green scales and cat-like eyes. The dragon would flap his wings once and make some dreadful squealing growl like Godzilla approaching Hong Kong. With teeth barring, out would come his forked tongue and he’d shoot flames straight across the conference table, erupting all the boxes before lighting me on fire. Then the dragon would somehow manage to stride across the flame-laden table to bite me in half.
Anyway, why should he care that I want to work for someone else? Does it matter so much to him that he keeps me under his thumb? Does it give him pleasure to ruin my life specifically? Can’t he ruin another person’s life just as easily and enjoy doing so just as much?
Besides, I have already solved my problem. I won’t be working for him for long, that’s for sure. Whenever the firm lets an attorney go, the assistant fills in for people who are out sick or on vacation—until another position opens up. So I will just float, like a raft on the ocean. A blissfully free and happy raft.
“But you don’t want to continue working for me—is that it?” he asks.
The sudden knock at the glass conference room door makes me jump. I look up to see Conrad the copy guy and his team standing there. Conrad always dresses like someone who doesn’t make copies for a living, more like a well-paid stockbroker. He wears a suit underneath a rain coat. His helpers wear jeans, t-shirts, and rain jackets. One pushes a dolly.
“Caroline,” he greets, squeezing into the conference room. “Nice to see you again.”
He shakes my hand as if we’re presidents of small foreign countries.
“Hey Conrad, thanks for coming so quickly.”
“Robert,” Conrad says, taking the few steps over to shake Robert’s hand. Robert obliges, but likely only because Conrad makes a point to regularly shower Robert with gifts. Jars filled with candy. Tickets to sporting events. A fancy robe at Christmas time. Some people have no shame.
“Conrad,” Robert replies.
Before long, Conrad and his men barrel out, their dolly teetering with boxes, and leave Robert and me to continue our work alone.
Yet the atmosphere alters. The silence floats like dust while we make little box cities in each corner of the conference room. As I work, I sense Robert telepathically dissecting my brain. He’s too smart, you see. He knows something is up. He senses the change in my attitude. Maybe he realizes he’s falling off his very high perch. Maybe he’s consumed with worry. Perhaps he even knows about the cameras in the elevator that likely caught the kiss on tape. His brilliant mind no doubt simmers with all kinds of terrible consequences. I almost want to laugh, one of those evil villain laughs, if it weren’t for the migraine I’m getting from organizing stupid boxes for hours.
Robert glances at his watch and then at me.
“We’ll be working late,” he tells me. “Why don’t you take some Excedrin for your headache and order us a couple sandwiches?”
I want to ask him to repeat himself. I’m not sure I heard him correctly. How does he know I have a headache or that I take Excedrin? Such knowledge would require Robert to be unselfish, and he is anything but that.
“I don’t have Excedrin with me,” I barely articulate, looking at him as though he’s the headless child now. “I left it in my backpack at the office.” I press my finger to my temple trying to comprehend his words, which trot mystically through my brain, along with the pounding tempo. They seem inaccessible and without substance.
Then Robert strides past me and out the conference room door, a scout on a mission. I watch as he approaches the receptionist, a petite curly-haired woman, whose head barely reaches over her desk. Her face deepens to a shade of hot as Robert advances. No doubt he is the best looking lawyer who has ever spoken to her. While his tall frame leans over her desk, they exchange words. The woman opens her desk drawer, pulls out a tiny paper package, and hands it to Robert. Robert glides away from her and toward the little water-cooler, where fills a paper cup full of water. On his way back to me, he passes the receptionist again. She watches him, too.
Soon standing before me holding a cup of water and Excedrin, he says, “Here,” looking suddenly benighted with the white glow of the conference room light over his head.
“Thank you. How did you know I had a headache?” I inquire, taking the pills and water from him.
“You pinch the bridge of your nose until it’s red. You need take more breaks, get something to drink,” he answers. He moves back to his side of the table. “You get headaches from not drinking enough liquids, which makes you dehydrated. You likely don’t eat enough either, which is why you can’t even drink a small pina colada without—” and he catches himself. But I notice the dragon is gone from his eyes. He picks up a box from the floor and sets it on the conference table. “In any event, you should stop taking so much Excedrin. You’ll kill your liver over time. If you ate more, you wouldn’t have so many headaches.” He opens the box and parts the files with his fingers, his eyes scanning paper.
I’m just staring at him, with the water in one hand, the pills in the other.
He almost snaps, “Take the pills and then take a break and order us some sandwiches. I’ll have the usual.”
“Right,” I mumble, then swallowing the Excedrin.
I stand to go make the call but feel as though I’m lost on a trail, or as though I have no trail to follow suddenly.
Using the receptionist’s phone, I order Robert’s usual: “A chicken breast, mayo, mustard, lettuce, and tomato,” but I’m watching Robert in the conference room as I speak. Then I order a roast beef for myself. All I can think as I speak into the phone is that Robert has never brought me Excedrin or water. Not once. Frankly, before this moment, if I had been lying in the desert dying of thirst and his town car had been speeding past, I would have doubted he would even toss me a bottle of water out of the car window. When the sandwiches arrive, we eat like kids in a cafeteria who hate each other.
Once we finish our boxes, it’s past 8:30 p.m., the receptionist area is a remote wasteland, and the whole floor is nearly empty. Each city of boxes is neatly stacked and ready for copying.
Alone, Robert and I clop toward the elevator, som
e files in tow.
“You can make the arrangements with Conrad tomorrow,” he instructs. “He’s likely gone home for the evening anyway.”
“Okay.”
We enter the elevator together. It feels narrower going down than going up. Time has turned back and he seems to be the mountain beside me. In my head I’m in the red dress threatening to kiss him again. And then I briefly wonder what he would look like naked. Why do I think these thoughts? I don’t know. My mind possesses a mind of its own. I refuse to look at him, but I can see his reflection in the brass elevator door. His beauty overtakes him, even in the distorted glossy image. We fall some forty stories together until the elevator doors open and we exit single-file.
“The town car can take you home if you like. It’s getting late to take the bus.” He holds the main door open for me and outside our town car awaits us. We slip inside and I feel a rush of dark as I contemplate why Robert is being so nice to me. Is he that afraid?
Soon the town car arrives at the office, and while I’m collecting my backpack Robert emerges from his office and hands me a blue manila envelope.
“Here,” he says. “I meant to give this to you earlier. If you could sign it and give it back to me, I need to forward it to personnel.”
Evaluations. I had totally forgotten that it was evaluation time again. I dread evaluations. I wonder what horrible things he said about me this year.
“Thanks.” I try to sound enthusiastic.
Shoving the blue envelope into my backpack, I rush back downstairs to catch my ride in the town car. It is a luxury I rarely enjoy. The last time I took the town car was at 1 a.m. after we’d spent evening on a document that had to be emailed to New York before the offices opened.
In the back seat, I open up the blue envelope, a sickening feeling of nail holes in my stomach overcoming me—that fear I get when someone criticizes me. What is it about criticism that is so hard to take? Everything.