by Bec Linder
“You’re the most stubborn person I know,” he said, “and I’m married to Regan, so I don’t say that lightly.”
“Sadie’s worse,” I said. “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me about her.”
“The two of you deserve each other,” he said. “The more I hear about your exploits, the more I’m convinced that I made an excellent decision in referring her to you.”
“Stop matchmaking,” I said. “You’re worse than Carolina.”
“The lady doth protest too much,” he said, smirking.
“I’m going home,” I threatened, but just then the waiter brought our sandwiches, and mine looked so good that it would be a shame to waste it.
FOURTEEN
Sadie
On Monday morning, I woke up early and called Elliott to let him know I would be late to work. He didn’t answer—maybe he’d taken my advice and was still at home—and so I left a message. I didn’t try to sound sick or anything, and didn’t make any excuses, just said I would be in late. I didn’t intend to hide what I was doing.
I dressed up a little for the interview. Airliner didn’t need a “look at me I’m quirky outfit”; they knew clothes had nothing to do with creativity. So I wore a pantsuit and a colorful blouse, and sensible heels. I wanted them to take me seriously.
I really wanted this job.
The office was in Soho, a light-filled loft on the top floor of a converted warehouse. The secretary, a perky white girl in her early twenties, smiled at me as I stepped out of the elevator, and said, “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for an interview with Tricia Evans,” I said, returning her smile.
“You must be Sadie,” she said, standing. “Right this way.”
She led me toward the back of the building. I took full advantage of the opportunity to gawk. The workspace was open: no cubicles. People sat at long tables, clicking away at their top-of-the-line computers. In one corner, a sofa and several armchairs faced a white-board, and five or six people were having an animated discussion about the diagram a tall man was drawing. Leafy plants hung from the ceiling, trailing long tendrils down toward the floor.
And then I spotted it: not just a coffee maker, but a shiny espresso machine.
Oh God, I really wanted this job.
A row of offices lined one wall, each with a large window that looked out into the main room. The secretary led me to one and tapped on the doorframe. “Tricia? Your 10:00 is here.”
I peeked in. Tricia was seated at her desk with stacks of papers arrayed around her. She smiled at me as she stood up and came over to the door. She shook my hand, her grip warm and firm, and said, “Sadie, thank you for coming. Thanks, Lulu.”
“Sure thing,” the secretary said, and left.
Really: Lulu? That sounded like a name for a child or a small dog, not an adult woman. But I kept my mouth shut and just said to Tricia, “Thanks for offering me the chance to interview.”
“Yes, let’s talk,” Tricia said. She returned to her desk and shoved some papers aside to clear a small space. “Please, have a seat.”
I sat, holding my bag in my lap. My heart beat rabbit-quick in my chest.
I was nervous. This job was everything I had ever wanted, and I didn’t want to screw it up.
“I was really impressed with your portfolio,” Tricia said. “Very fine work.”
I glowed.
“Can you tell me a little bit about your design aesthetic?” she asked.
God bless Tricia. She had just tossed me the biggest softball of all time. I could talk about that for ten million years. “Well,” I said, and drew in a deep breath.
Half an hour later, Tricia and I were laughing together like old friends. I knew, without her having to say anything, that I had aced the interview.
“We still have one other candidate to interview,” Tricia said, standing. “But I’ll be in touch. If I have any say in the matter, you’ll be hearing from us very soon.”
“Thanks,” I said. My head was spinning. “Great. Thanks.”
I gathered my things, and she walked me back to the elevator. “I think we’ll put you at that desk by the window,” she said, and winked at me.
Oh my God. I clutched my coat to my chest, too excited to speak.
We shook hands, and she said, “I’ll call you soon. No later than tomorrow afternoon.”
“Great,” I squeaked, a frightened little mouse-squeak, too unaccustomed to good things happening to me that I didn’t have any clue how to react.
Alone in the elevator, I curled my hands into fists, pressed my knuckles against my mouth, and let out a long, high-pitched noise, joy and terror bubbling inside me like the fizz in a soda bottle. Tricia loved me. She thought I was a great designer. She’d used the word “brilliant.” I wanted to work there, in that light-filled office, with the espresso machine and the cheerfully bickering co-workers.
But I felt guilty about leaving Elliott.
Cart before the horse, Sadie. Airliner hadn’t even offered me the job yet.
Elliott would be fine, anyway. I didn’t owe him anything.
I couldn’t worry about it now. I needed to book it to Midtown and hope Elliott wasn’t too angry with me for skipping out on him. I couldn’t imagine him yelling or anything, but I knew he was on a tight deadline, and every day counted. Maybe I would offer to do some work in the evening to make up for it.
The weekend’s snowfall had turned into brown slush in the gutters and dirty, packed piles at every corner. By the time I reached Elliott’s office, my boots were crusted with salt and my fingertips were frozen inside my mittens. But the inside of the building was warm and dry, and when I took the elevator up to the sixteenth floor, I was greeted with the sight of a rubber mat on the floor just inside the elevator, and a new floor lamp casting a wide yellow circle across the bare concrete.
Elliott, as always, was hunched over his desk. I wiped my feet against the mat and called out, “You’ve redecorated.”
He looked up at me and smiled. “I decided it was time to stop tracking slush everywhere.”
If I took this job at Airliner—if they offered it to me—Elliott wouldn’t be my boss anymore.
And then, maybe…
Cart, horse.
I went to my desk and took off my coat and scarf. “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I hope you got my message.”
“I did,” he said.
That was evidently all he had to say about the matter. Talking with him could be pretty unnerving, because I was used to people who strung together more than three words at a time and gave me some hint as to what they were thinking. When Elliott felt like being inscrutable, he went all out. It put me on uneven footing. I wasn’t sure of the right move. Should I apologize more? Leave it alone? Tell him I was a grown woman and could do whatever the hell I wanted?
I decided to just go directly to brutal honesty. “I had a job interview this morning,” I said. “With a design agency. I think they’re going to offer me the job.”
An expression flickered across his face, too brief for me to identify. “Please let me know if they do,” he said, and turned back to his computer.
Well, okay. Annoyed by his lack of a reaction, I booted up my laptop and got to work.
Irritation with Elliott’s taciturn bullshit notwithstanding, I got so sucked into what I was doing that I worked straight through lunch and well into the afternoon without a break. I enjoyed branding work because there were so many different ways to go about creating a company’s image, and the trick was to figure out how to do it in the most visually appealing and accessible way. It was like a puzzle: how to reach the right people and make them care about a product.
And then, mid-afternoon, my phone rang.
I snatched it up right away and walked away from my desk, heading into the dim recesses of the office. There wasn’t anywhere really private unless I wanted to talk on the phone in the bathroom, but at least I could get more or less out of earshot before I answered.
I glanced behind me. Elliott was either ignoring me or pretending to.
I answered. “Sadie Bayliss.”
“Sadie, this is Tricia Evans, with Airliner.” I could hear the warmth in her voice: it was good news, then. “I’ve spoken with our partners, and we’d like to offer you the position.”
The adrenaline rush was immediate and thrilling. I swayed on my feet a little, dizzied.
“That’s terrific,” I croaked out.
“I’ll email you a written offer shortly,” she said, “but I didn’t want to keep you waiting. We can offer you 100 to start, and a competitive benefits package.”
100? Did she mean 100 thousand? As in $100,000? That was $3,000 higher than what I made at my old job.
I was moving up in the world.
I opened my mouth to tell her yes, yes, oh God of course I will accept this wonderful, cushy job with a beautiful office and happy co-workers and benefits, but instead what came out was, “Wonderful. Thank you so much. I’ll take a look at the offer and I’ll be in touch.”
Holy shit. Was I playing hardball?
“Of course, take your time,” Tricia said. “We’d really like to make this work, Sadie.”
I could have died and gone to heaven right then.
When I got off the phone, I went over to Elliott’s desk and said, “They just offered me the job.”
He spun his chair around to face me. “How much?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I said, “but $100,000. Plus benefits.”
“I’ll match it,” he said immediately.
I frowned at him. “You can’t afford that.”
“The Boston investors,” he said, which was a load of bullshit, because none of that was finalized yet. “I’d like to hire you on full-time.”
My belly flipped. That was exactly what I wanted, if I was being honest with myself. I wanted to work with Elliott and help him make the company succeed. But the job security that Airliner offered was hard to turn down.
But the look he was giving me, clear and intense, with so much certainty behind it—
How could I say no to that look?
I sighed. “Let me think about it,” I said.
* * *
I thought about it.
I thought about it all the way home on the subway, and all through my dinner preparations. I didn’t cook as much as I used to, now that I was only making dinner for one, but recently I had decided that I needed to start making more of an effort and eating more vegetables. So I still cooked a lot of instant noodles for dinner, but now I added baby bok choy and carrots and pan-fried tofu and a hard-boiled egg, so at least it was more like an actual meal.
The fact of the matter was, I had drunk the Kool-Aid. I believed in what Elliott was doing. Yes, he was an idealist, but he was a realistic idealist. He understood that money made the world work. He was aiming high, but I thought he might actually be able to pull it off.
And I liked seeing him every day. If I went to work for Airliner, I probably wouldn’t ever see him again.
I stopped mid-chop, knife posed over my cutting board, while the implications of that thought sunk in. Was I really considering passing up my dream job because of a boy?
Well. To be fair. He was no boy. He was most definitely a man.
But still.
“I’m going to do something really stupid,” I said aloud, and decided that I needed to talk to Regan.
I texted her first, to make sure she wasn’t in the middle of feeding the baby or something. Can we talk?
My phone rang a few minutes later, and when I picked up, Regan said, “Please say something to remind me that there’s more in life than breastfeeding.”
I grinned. “Feeling used, huh?”
“Caleb only loves me for my boobs,” Regan said mournfully.
“Typical man,” I said. “You need to get out of the house, girl. Tell Carter he’s on baby duty tomorrow night. We’ll go out for dinner.”
“I can’t leave the baby for that long,” Regan said, sounding alarmed. Poor Regan. Sleep deprivation was really doing a number on her.
“You can and you should,” I said. “You’ve still got a life. The kid’s going to daycare when you start law school in the fall anyway, so he might as well start getting used to being without you. Carter can take care of him.”
Regan sighed. “You’re right. But I can’t even leave him alone for fifteen minutes when he’s sleeping. I have to go in there and check on him just to make sure he’s okay. It’s really sad, but—”
“I know, he’s your slug creature and you love him,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with loving a slug. But you need to get out of the house sometimes.”
“Okay,” Regan said. “You’re right. We’ll do dinner. But this isn’t why you wanted to talk.”
“No,” I said. “Elliott offered me a job.”
“That’s great,” Regan said. “I thought he couldn’t afford to hire you on full-time.”
“He’s got some funding now,” I said. “Or, he’ll have it soon. That trip to Boston, you know. But, okay, I also had a job interview this morning with a big design agency, and they want to hire me. So I told Elliott, and he said he would match their offer. And I’m just—I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, which job do you want more?” Regan asked.
“I don’t know,” I wailed. “That’s the problem. I can’t decide. Airliner—the design agency—is basically my dream job, and Elliott works in a creepy office and refuses to turn on the overhead lights because he wants to save money—”
Regan laughed. “Does he really? That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
It occurred to me that I could pump Regan for information about Elliott. “What do you know about him?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know him too well. He was in Africa for a long time. I met him once right after Carter and I got engaged, when he was back for a visit, but then he left again.”
I frowned. “Wait a second, I thought he was just in Uganda for the last year.”
“No, he was in East Africa for like, five years. I don’t really know the whole story. I think he’s been abroad for years. Maybe a decade or more. He’s an unusual guy.”
“Sounds like it,” I said. Not as much of an idealist as I had thought, then. Any wide-eyed naiveté was probably long gone after a decade overseas.
Or maybe he was one of those people who just stubbornly refused to give up on hope.
“Well, you know,” Regan said. “You’re working for him. He’s really happy with you, by the way. He had lunch with Carter over the weekend and apparently he couldn’t stop talking about how great you are and how you really understand his vision, or something.”
“His vision?” I asked, pleased despite myself. “Is that really what he said?”
“Okay, not exactly, but I think that was more or less what he meant,” she said. “Look, if you want the scoop on him, all I know is that Carter trusts him.”
“Sound enough endorsement for me,” I said. “Carter’s a suspicious bastard. Okay. I know you can’t make the decision for me. I guess the fact that I’m so conflicted sort of indicates what my decision is going to be.”
“Even if it doesn’t work out, this isn’t the last job you’ll ever have,” Regan said. “So maybe do whatever will make you the happiest, at least for the time being.”
“You’re so wise,” I said. “Is that something that happens automatically when you reproduce?”
She laughed. “I’m just talking. I haven’t slept for more than four hours in a row in like, two months. I don’t think you should listen to me at all until Caleb is at least a year old.”
And that right there was why I was never having kids. I liked my sleep. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. “Thanks anyway. I’ll text you about dinner tomorrow, okay? Don’t punk out! Carter can watch that baby for a few hours. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Caleb stops crying
as soon as Carter picks him up,” Regan said. “It’s incredible. He’s the baby whisperer. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
We hung up, and I sighed heavily. It wasn’t really Regan’s job to tell me what to do, but I’d been hoping she’d make the decision for me anyway.
Well. I would just have to decide for myself, like a real grownup.
I did the dishes and thought about it. Really, I already knew what I wanted. Airliner was a dream, but my heart was with Elliott’s work, and with Elliott. I was an idiot. It mattered to me, what he was doing. I wanted him to succeed. I wanted to help him succeed.
I blew out a long breath of air and looked up at the darkened window above my kitchen sink. My own face stared back at me, my braids and thin mouth reflected with the overhead light glowing behind my head. I had already survived the worst thing that could happen to me. Ben was dead, but I wasn’t dead yet. I still wanted to live.
I would live, and be happy.
The next morning, I walked into the office feeling like a million bucks. I strode directly to Elliott’s desk and paused there, waiting for him to acknowledge me.
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t look up from his computer. “Can I help you?”
“I accept your job offer,” I said. “I’ll work for you.”
That got his attention. “What about the design agency?”
“I’m going to tell them thanks but no thanks,” I said. “We’re going to have to make some changes, of course,” I said. “We need better lighting. And maybe a mini-fridge. I like snacks.”
For a moment, he looked like he was going to argue, but then he just shook his head and said, “Sure. Whatever you want.” He tipped his chair backward and gave me a speculative look. “Dare I ask what convinced you?”
“You conned me, you jerk,” I said. “I care about clean water now. I’m all in. Congratulations.”