by Alexa Davis
“That’s not so bad,” I say.
“You don’t get it,” she says. “With one laugh, you went from being the high-powered CEO of one of the most successful startups in the last decade to Nick, the cool boss who lets people go out for pizza. The act itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that we’re on thin ice here, and we need everyone working like their jobs are on the line if we’re going to make a go of this very unpopular move before the board decides to put a penny loafer up your ass on your way out of the company. Are you sure you know what you’re doing here?”
See, along with being a lawyer, Marly’s also my mole. More than that, when Jacque and I were just getting the company put together, Marly was also my mentor. It’s a role she hasn’t yet shed, and if I have anything to say about it, she never will.
“It can’t be—” I start.
“It wasn’t the laugh,” she says. “The laugh was just permission. I’ve been hearing a lot of people talking about how this whole trip is insane. Nobody knows why you’d want to move the headquarters from Manhattan to wherever we are. I’m pretty sure if they did know, you’d be on your way to the ground with your golden parachute before the end of business. New York can’t wait until next week,” she says. “You have to get back there now and start plugging holes or this whole ship’s going down.”
“Not today,” I tell her.
She raises an eyebrow.
“I have some things to work out here before I can go,” I tell her. “Book me something for tomorrow, and—”
“What about your jet?” she asks. “Malcolm said you were belt-tightening.”
“No,” I tell her. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to burn all that jet fuel when it’s only taking a couple of people and me. Creating a cleaner environment is all our responsibility.”
“Yeah, that would have been a lot more believable before you told me to give you the number of my ‘plane guy’ so you’d have something ‘to get from A to B,’ don’t you think?” she asks.
The problem with Marly is that she never forgets anything. She insists she has a “normal” memory, but I don’t think I’ve gotten away with anything since I met her.
I tell her, “Yeah, but if I jump right on the corporate jet the day we’re down twelve points—”
“Nineteen,” she says. “We’ve dropped seven in the last hour.”
I grit my teeth. “You remember a few years ago when I took that month-long vacation in Denmark?” I ask. “If I recall right, our stock was way up by the time I got back. What’s the problem this time?”
“Going to Denmark didn’t make you a liability,” she says. “This time, people care if you’re heading the company because you’ve learned how not to kill a business.”
“Calm down,” I tell her. “I may pay you for your honesty, but that doesn’t mean you have to grab a shovel.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means,” she says. “I’ll get you on a plane in the morning, but you’re going to have to start listening to me, or we’re in some serious trouble, all right?”
“All right,” I tell her. “Oh, by the way …”
Marly rolls her eyes. “What?” she asks.
“Well aren’t you a bowl of grapefruit this morning?” I ask.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that means, either,” she says. “Is there anything else? I’ve got to go put out some fires you started.”
Part of the reason I’ll never fire Marly is if she ever writes a book, my career is over.
“Get two tickets,” I tell her. “I’m going to ask Ellie to come with me.”
“Things are going well then?” she asks.
“You could say that,” I answer.
Marly sighs and gets to her feet. She says, “Just don’t burn the company and everyone in it for her; promise me.”
“I’m not looking to burn anything,” I answer. “Do you need a minute to put on your scared face?”
“Oh please,” Marly says. A moment later, her eyebrows are going up in the middle, and her bottom lip is quivering. Two more seconds pass and there are tears in her eyes.
“You’re too good at that,” I tell her.
“I just think about what this company’s going to look like in a year and what can I say? The tears just start flowing,” she whispers. Then, for the first time since she’s closed the door, Marly speaks at her normal volume, saying, “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I’m so sorry for letting you down, sir.”
“Wait,” I whisper. “What are you going to tell them this meeting was about.”
“Something I don’t want to talk about because it’s just so,” her breath catches in the most convincing fake sob I’ve heard from her in a while. I get the point.
“Go,” I say. “Do.”
She opens the door, sniffing loudly to draw just enough attention and she’s on her way to put out another fire.
* * *
By the time I’m headed back to the room, I’m exhausted. Fortunately, I’m so overflowing with stress I hardly feel it. When I open the door, though, for a moment at least, all that tension fades.
It seems along with a change of clothes Ellie brought a thin, black, silken robe. She’s sitting with her legs draped over the arm of her chair. Dangling lazily from one hand is what looks like an unlit cigarette until she puts it to her lips and blows out smoke. It’s one of those e-cigarettes that only glows when you’re taking a drag.
She looks over at me, and with a faint smile, she says, “Back from the office? The chef came by, told me you'd ordered something.”
“Yeah,” I answer, loosening my tie as I walk further into the room, the door closing behind me. “I thought it’d be fun to get something not on the room service menu for once.”
“There was something I wanted to ask you,” she says, really committing to the role.
“What’s that?” I return.
“The chef,” she says. “Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looked rather familiar. Have I seen his many recipe books at the local shop, perhaps?”
Without a clue where she’s going with the roleplay, I decide to join in. “Why yes, darling,” I say, affecting just a hint of a British accent. “He’s the young man from the Food Network, I believe.”
“How terribly bourgeois,” Ellie says, then tosses her head back, cackling.
I shake my head and chuckle. “You know,” I inform her, “in this scenario, we would be the bourgeois.”
“I was going for the trophy girlfriend,” she says. “Given what I understand from Naomi’s hours watching celebrity television, I came to the conclusion they’re not particularly sharp as a breed. How’d I do?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’m usually so busy with my yacht that I don’t have time for such endeavors.”
“Yeah, we’re done with the accents,” she says. “You think you could give a woman some warning before doing something like that?”
“What, the accent?” I ask.
She throws the unlit cigarette at me, but it misses its mark. “You’re throwing stuff at me,” I say. “What about the mystery of the unlit cigarette which magically produces smoke, but only in the lungs?”
“It’s called an e-cigarette, Nicky boy,” she says. “You’d think someone as well informed as you would be up on that sort of thing.”
“So, you’re a smoker,” I say.
“No, Naomi is, and I like to steal her e-cigs every once in a while. At first, it had something to do with trying to get her to quit, but it’s devolved a bit,” Ellie explains. “Now, what do you say we dig into this dinner before it gets cold?”
“You could have started without me,” I tell her. “Also, the whole ‘Nicky boy’ thing?”
“Not a fan?” she asks.
“Not especially,” I answer.
“You’re a bit high-maintenance, aren’t you?” she asks, smirking. “ As far as starting dinner without you, I planned to,” she says. “Luckily for you, though, your timing was perfect. I got your me
ssage just after he left, which gave me enough time to get into my lovely robe. Everything should still be warm.”
“I was hoping Girard would keep you company for a few minutes while I was finishing with work,” I tell her while pulling the dinner trolley toward the foot of the bed.
Ellie laughs. “Yeah, that wasn’t happening. He came in here and started telling me about the dinner and about how you’d called him yesterday while I was in the shower or something and I think I might have started hyperventilating.”
“Yeah, that’s not very bourgeois,” I tell her.
“He wasn’t very impressed,” she says. “I mean, he was nice about it and everything, but I could just tell he wanted to get out of here.”
I’m a little disappointed I’m not the only one that can elicit that response out of her. To my credit, I did get her to pass out. Girard only managed some light hyperventilation.
We sit down to dinner, but that tension’s starting to rise in my chest again.
“Ellie, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from corporate,” I tell her.
She covers her full mouth, nodding. Once she swallows, she’s saying, “Yeah, I think I’ve overheard more than one of them over the past few days.”
“Well, it looks like we have some jittery investors and I’m going to have to make a trip back to New York for a little while,” I say.
“Okay,” she says, nodding. “When do you go?”
I look at my watch. “I’ve got two tickets for an eight o’clock flight,” he says.
“Two tickets, huh?” she asks, her face starting to go flush. “It’s probably none of my business, but who’s the second ticket for?”
“It’s for you, if you want it,” I answer. “I know you have responsibilities around here, even with still being off work, but I’d love it if you’d come. It’s going to be a business trip, so there’s going to be a lot of time where you’re on your own, but I’m sure we could figure out something for you to do in Manhattan. What do you say?”
“Tomorrow morning?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I’ll have to talk to Naomi and make sure she’s up for taking care of Max and Sammie by herself a few more days,” she says. “I should probably see if I can get ahold of Troy, too. I haven’t heard anything from him yet, but I can’t imagine it’ll be too much longer before it’s time for me to go back to work.”
We finish our dinner and Ellie makes her phone calls. As for me, the stress is finally being swallowed by the exhaustion, and I’m lying on the couch, just trying to keep my eyes open.
“Looks like I’m ready to go,” she says. “You want a drink?”
“Sure,” I answer, sitting up again. “There are some single-serve shots in the minibar, or we can have something brought up.”
“Minibar,” she says. Leaning forward to open the minibar, she doesn’t bend her knees, causing the bottom of her robe to come up just enough to give me a partial glimpse of her pussy while she’s picking out drinks for the night.
She takes her time deciding. I don’t complain.
“Oh, did I tell you?” I ask. “We finally got the last of the walls up down in the conference room.”
“Yeah?” she asks, standing up straight again and walking toward me. “Ever fooled around in your office?”
“The one downstairs?” I ask. “No.”
Ellie unceremoniously drops three of the bottles she grabbed from the minibar on my lap, saying, “But all the other ones, yes?” She opens one of the bottles she didn’t drop and drinks it down.
“No,” I tell her. “I’ve never fooled around in any of my offices.”
“Where are you from, originally, anyway?” she asks. “When I’ve heard the story of Stingray’s ascension in the press, it always starts with you meeting your college roommate.”
I can feel the blood rushing to my face. “We moved around a lot when I was growing up,” I tell her.
“Anywhere in particular?” she asks.
“I don’t know, it was hard to put down any real roots until after I was out of high school,” he says.
“One of your parents was in the military?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I answer. I realize I’m being more than a little vague here, but she’s not ready for the whole story. Okay, that’s a copout: I’m not prepared to tell the whole thing.
Ellie looks over at the clock and says, “Well, if we’re going to trash your office, we should probably continue this conversation downstairs, huh?”
I shrug and get up, and together we leave the room.
We’re walking down the hall, occasionally passing one of my employees, though fortunately, everyone we come across seems content with a smile and a wave.
We get to the office, and I tell Ellie, “We’re going to have to be quiet if we don’t want any company.”
“Oh, you know I can’t promise that,” she says.
I chuckle, and we enter the room.
Once inside, Ellie stops to survey the area. “Huh,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“I think the plywood looks worse than the tents did,” she says.
“Probably,” I tell her, “but if you catch your foot against the wall of one of these, it’s not going to bring the whole thing down on top of you. Here at Stingray, we like to avoid lawsuits.”
“Are you getting snarky with me?” she teases. “Wait, hold on,” she says. “I have an idea.” She skips off toward my office at the end of the row and stops. “Is this one still yours?” she asks.
“Yep,” I tell her.
I have no idea what she’s doing.
She ducks inside but doesn’t come back out again. Am I supposed to follow her in there? She told me to wait. What’s she doing?
A moment later, I hear my pencil sharpener going and I start walking toward the office to see what the hell she’s up to in there. Before I’m halfway across the room, though, the sharpener stops, and a bright yellow No. 2 pencil comes tumbling over the front wall of the office and bounces off the ceiling slightly less than halfway across the room.
“Did I make it?” she asks.
I’m laughing, though I’m more confused at what she’s going for than ever. “That depends,” I answer, coming to the open doorway of my office. “Where were you trying to make it to?”
“The office on the other side of the room,” she says. “The dream shot would be landing it in a pencil holder on the other side, but I’m realistic, so I’d settle for just getting it in the office. Get over there,” she says. “You try to make it across the room into here, and I’ll try to make it over there.”
I smile. “I think the front walls are going to be too high to get the right kind of angle,” I tell her. “Your last one hit the ceiling before it was halfway across.”
“Did you get to be CEO by saying ‘it’s never going to work’?” she asks. “Go on, get over there.”
I laugh and start walking to the office on the opposite wall from Ellie, snatching the pencil she threw from the ground on my way. When I get to the door, I stop and turn around, calling, “Why’d you bother sharpening the pencils? If you’re just trying to get it in the room, or even with your dream shot, wouldn’t it work just as well if they were dull?”
“It’s not fun if there’s no element of danger,” she says. “Of course, you hit me in the eye with one of those, and we’re going to have some problems.”
I don’t know why, but this sounds like a fantastic idea. Getting into the office across the room from mine, Malcolm’s, I grab a couple of pens from the desk and have a seat.
“Tell me when you’re ready!” I call out. We don’t have to be quiet if this is what we’re doing. I just didn’t want someone walking in on us if things took a turn for the risqué.
Ellie doesn’t answer my question verbally, though I do hear the sound of another pencil hitting the suspended ceiling.
“Your turn,” she calls out.
She’s a little weird. I kind of like
that.
I lean back in Malcolm’s chair and let fly with one of the pens, but it catches the top edge of the wall and bounces back into the room in front of me.
“Did you go?” she asks.
“Hold on,” I tell her. “I’m taking a mulligan.”
I take one of the pens that were on Malcolm’s desk, and I try again. This time, the pen sails over the wall, and I don’t hear it land.
“Did I make it?” I ask.
“Not in this office,” she says.
We go back and forth a few times until we run out of writing utensils to lob across the room, and when we meet in the middle to regather ammunition, we’re both laughing.
Ellie stumbles a bit as she goes to pick up her last pen, but I’m quick to reach out and catch her.
“You all right?” I ask even though she didn’t fall.
She sputters laughter but doesn’t say anything. Instead, she repositions my hands from her shoulders where they were down to settle over her breasts. Sitting there, lobbing pens at each other, I’d almost forgotten she never changed out of her robe.
The fabric is thin, smooth; her nipples are hard and she’s turning her head toward me, reaching back to rest the palm of her hand over the front of my slacks.
“You know,” she says, “we never did finish our conversation.”
“What conversation is that?” I ask, lightly massaging her breasts through the barely-there robe.
“You know,” she says in a whisper, leaning toward me as she closes her eyes.
I bend down to kiss her on the mouth. Our lips meet, and her hand starts going up and down over the front of my pants.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“We never finished our conversation,” she says.
I’m about to respond when I catch movement out of the corner of my eyes. I glance up to see Marly standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth.
“Ellie,” I whisper, quickly bringing my hands back to my sides.
“I’m sorry, boss,” Marly says, covering her eyes. “I didn’t know anyone was in here.” Marly’s quick to leave the room, but my heart is pounding in my chest.
“Well that’s a little embarrassing,” Ellie says with a giggle.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “We should probably get back, anyway. We’ve got an early flight in the morning.”