by Megan Hart
smile. Her gaze took in my coat, the same cut and color as
hers but not as nice, my legs, clad in nude hose, and finaly
settled on my shoes. They were the only part of me that
seemed worth her approval, but she raised a brow anyway
and just tossed off a fake little laugh as she stuffed her mail
into her Kate Spade bag and turned on her matching
pumps.
Bitch.
Bitch.
Oh, I knew what discipline meant to me, al right.
Discipline was what kept me from popping her in the back
of the head with the heel of my barely-passing-inspection
shoes. It's what kept my chin high and my mouth fixed in a
pleasant smile instead of turning down at the corners so the
tears would stay burning behind my eyes instead of
slipping out.
Discipline, or maybe it was pride. Or stubbornness.
Whatever it was, I had enough to spare.
I waited until she'd gone before I crossed the lobby and
pushed through the revolving door. Outside, gray and
overcast skies echoed my mood, and the breeze brought
the scent of cigarettes to me. I looked automaticaly,
wondering if I'd see someone pondering discipline.
"Ari," I said, surprised. "Hi."
Miriam's grandson tossed his butt into the sand-filed can
and shrugged his coat higher around his neck. "Hey,
Paige."
"I didn't know you lived here."
He grinned. "I don't. Just dropped off something for my
grandma, you know?"
I didn't know, but I nodded. "Tel her I said helo."
"Stop by the shop and tel her yourself," he suggested with a sweetly dipping smile.
It was nice to be flirted with, albeit without much heat. "I'l
do that. Have a good day."
"You, too."
I looked back as I crossed the aley to the parking garage,
and Ari was stil looking. Maybe there was a little heat,
after al. And what woman didn't like to be appreciated? I
had a much bigger smile on my face than I had before, and
it lasted me al the way to work.
I wasn't even close to being late, but I might as wel have
been because by the time I got to my desk, my boss had
already piled a stack of files on it. It could have been
worse. He could have been standing over my desk with
the empty coffeepot in his hand. He did that, sometimes,
though I knew he was as capable of making coffee as I
am. More, maybe, since he inhaled the high-octane stuff
am. More, maybe, since he inhaled the high-octane stuff
like it was air and I limited myself to a mug once or twice a
day.
Spying the empty Starbucks cup in the trash, I knew he'd
already had his first dose of the day. I was safe a little bit
longer. I could get the files ordered and put away without
him breathing down my neck. I decided to put the coffee
on anyway, though, just in case. There were many days I
could predict my boss's every move, from the midmorning
break when the bagel man came around, to his post-lunch
trip to the bathroom.
Today wasn't one of those days.
"Paige. Listen. I need you to get those files taken care of,
okay?"
I turned from the smal bar sink, where I'd been filing the
coffeepot with water. "Right, Paul. Of course."
Amazing how someone with only a community-colege
education could stil deduce simple things.
"Good." Paul nodded and smoothed his tie between his
thumb and forefinger while he watched me fiddle with the
thumb and forefinger while he watched me fiddle with the
coffeemaker.
I hadn't yet figured out if Paul hovered because he
expected me to screw up, or if he hoped I would. Either
way, it didn't bother me the way it would have some of the
other personal assistants on the floor. Brenda, for
example, liked to brag how her boss, Rhonda, spent most
of her time traveling and she barely had to deal with her.
She also liked to brag that she'd worked for Kely Printing
longer than that Jenny-come-lately Rhonda anyways, and
knew what she was doing, so why should she have to run
everything by someone else when she could get her work
done faster and better without interference?
I never told Brenda I found Paul's constant supervision
more comforting than annoying. After al, if he never
alowed me the autonomy to make decisions, I couldn't
exactly be held accountable for anything that went wrong.
Right? Even when Paul did his share of traveling, he never
left without making me a sheaf of notes and lists…lists.
I thought of the cards I'd found. Two, now. Two
misdelivered notes with explicit, mysterious (to me)
instructions. I could stil feel the sleek paper under my
fingertips. I regretted not taking the time to smel the ink.
fingertips. I regretted not taking the time to smel the ink.
With the coffee set to brewing, I turned to face Paul.
"Anything else?"
"Not right now, thanks." Paul smiled and disappeared
back into his inner sanctum, leaving me with the cheery
burble of the coffeepot and a bunch of files to herd.
This is what I knew about Paul Johnson, my boss. He had
a chubby, pretty wife named Melissa who sometimes
forgot to pick up his dry cleaning on time and two
teenagers too busy with wholesome activities like sports
and youth group to get into trouble. I knew that because
I'd seen their photos and overheard his telephone
conversations. He had an older brother, the unfortunately
named Peter Johnson, with whom he played golf several
times a year but not often enough to be good. I knew that
because he'd asked me to make a reservation for him at
one of the local golf courses and to cal his brother to
confirm the date. The request was slightly out of the realm
of my professional duties, but I'd done it anyway. I also
knew Paul was forty-seven years old, had earned his
MBA from Wharton, attended church on Sundays with his
family and drove a black, but not brand-new, Mercedes
Benz.
Benz.
Those were things I knew.
This is what I thought about Paul Johnson, my boss. He
wasn't a tyrant. Just precise. He held himself to the same
level of perfection he expected from an assistant, and I
appreciated that. He could be funny, though not often, and
usualy unexpectedly. He gave every project his ful
attention and effort because it pained him to do anything
less. I understood and appreciated that, too.
I'd worked for him for almost six months. He'd told me to
cal him Paul, not Mr. Johnson, but we weren't anything
like friends. That was okay with me. I didn't want my boss
to be my chum.
Though sometimes it felt as if al I did was make coffee
and file, my job did actualy have more responsibility. I had
documents to proof and send, invoices to fil out and
appointments to book. I did al this to leave Paul free to do
whatever it was that he did al day long in his lush, swanky
office. If hard
pressed, I wouldn't have been able to tel
anyone what, exactly, that was. I didn't hate or love my
job, but it sure as hel beat working at a sub shop or being
an au pair, which was what I'd done while looking for a
an au pair, which was what I'd done while looking for a
job that would use my freshly minted degree in business
administration. If I never slung another plate of hash or
wiped another ass I'd be happy for a good long time.
There was another advantage to having a boss who
needed everything just so. He was wiling to do what it
took to make sure he got what he wanted, whether it was
leaving me a three-page e-mail of the week's work, or
taking five thorough minutes to describe to me exactly
what he wanted me to get him for lunch. Also, if he sent
me out to get him some lunch, he usualy treated me.
Today it was a pastrami sandwich on rye from Mrs. Deli.
Mustard, no mayo. No tomatoes, no onion. Lettuce on the
side. Potato salad and an extralarge iced tea with real
sugar, not what he caled cancer in a packet.
I met Brenda in the hal on my way back. She took one
look at the bulging paper sack from Mrs. Deli and sniffed
hungrily. She held a smal, boxed salad I recognized as
coming from the same guy who sold bagels in the morning.
I'd had one of those salads once, when I'd forgotten my
lunch and had been so desperate for food I'd been wiling
to use my laundry quarters.
"Gawd, Paige," Brenda said. "Lucky. I wish my boss
would send me out for lunch. Heck, I'd like to just get out
of this place for an hour."
Officialy, we got an hour for lunch, but since our building
was located in a business complex on the outskirts of the
city, by the time you drove to anyplace decent for lunch,
you'd barely have enough time to eat and come back.
Rhonda might not hover over Brenda, but she was a
stickler about office hours and break time. Everything has
a trade-off.
"Let me just drop this off with Paul and I'l be right down."
Brenda looked at the box of sadness in her hand. "Yeah,
okay. I've only got about forty minutes left, though."
"I'l hurry."
Paul's door was half-closed when I rapped on the door
frame. At the muffled noise, I pushed it al the way open.
He sat at his desk, staring at his computer monitor. The
screen had dissolved into a rapidly changing pattern of
expanding pipe-work, his screen saver, and I wondered
how long he'd been sitting there.
"Paul?"
"Paige. Come in." He gestured and swiveled in his chair.
Careful not to spil or drip anything, I puled his lunch from
the bag one item at a time. It felt like a ritual, passing lunch
instead of a torch. Paul settled each item onto his blotter.
Sandwich at six, potato salad at nine, plastic fork and
napkin at three. His drink went to noon, and he looked up
at me.
"Thank you, Paige."
It was the first time since I'd started working for him that
he hadn't lifted the bread to make sure the sandwich had
been prepared properly or sipped the tea to make sure I
hadn't mistakenly brought presweetened.
"Do you need me for anything else?"
He shook his head. "No. Go ahead and take your lunch
now. I wil need you back here by one-fifteen, though. I've
got that teleconference thing."
"Sure, no problem." Taking my own sandwich, I headed
down to the lunchroom to meet Brenda.
down to the lunchroom to meet Brenda.
Since no clients saw it, the lunchroom had seen better
days. The vending machines were new, but the tables and
chairs looked as if they'd been salvaged from the garbage
more than once. My chair creaked alarmingly when I sat,
but though I poised, prepared to hit the floor if the rickety
thing colapsed, it held. I unwrapped my food quickly, my
stomach already rumbling.
"This weather, huh?" Brenda stabbed at her limp lettuce. "I wish winter would make up its mind."
"In another three months everyone wil be complaining
about it being too hot."
She looked at me with a blink. "Yeah. I guess so. But I
wish it would get warmer. It's nearly March, for cripe's
sakes. Though we did have that blizzard in '93, right
around Saint Patty's Day. I hope that doesn't happen this
year."
Under other circumstances we'd never have been friends.
Not that I didn't like her, but we didn't have much in
common. Brenda was older than my mom and had twin
girls in colege. She also had a husband she referred to
girls in colege. She also had a husband she referred to
constantly as "my sweetie," and whose name I hadn't even
yet learned. I imagined him as a Fred, though, for
whatever that was worth.
"We've hardly had any snow. I'm sure we'l be fine."
"I don't know how you stand it, honestly." Brenda, finished with her salad, had started casting longing looks at the
other half of my sandwich.
I was pretending not to notice. I might only have been
hungry enough to finish half, but the rest of it would be
dinner tonight. "The lack of snow?"
She laughed then lowered her voice with a conspiratorial
look around the empty lunchroom. "Gawd, no. I meant
Paul. I don't know how you can stand working for him."
"He's not that bad, Brenda. Realy."
She got up to get a snack cake from the machine. "Tel me
that in another month."
"What's going to happen in another month?" I wrapped my
sandwich carefuly in the thick white butcher paper.
Grease had turned it translucent in a pattern of dots and
Grease had turned it translucent in a pattern of dots and
made it unusable, which was too bad. Butcher paper was
great for coloring pictures. Arty loved it.
"Paul hasn't managed to keep an assistant for longer than
six months, tops."
"I've been here for almost six."
"Yeah," Brenda said with the knowing nod of someone
who's been keeping track. "And you can't tel me you
don't notice he's a little…particular."
The days when a good secretary was unfailingly loyal to
her boss had apparently passed. Even so, I didn't leap to
agree with her. "I said, he's not that bad. Besides, it's not
like he screams or anything if things aren't exactly right."
"He'd better not!" Brenda was already indignant on my
behalf. "You're his assistant, not his slave."
I gave a smal snort that tried and failed to be a chuckle.
"Slaves don't get paid."
"Just remember this conversation in another month when
you're groaning to me that he's become impossible. They
al do, eventualy," Brenda said. "He's gone through seven
assistants already since he's been in our department."
"They al quit?"
"No. Some he fired." She raised a brow at me. "They
were the lucky ones, if you ask me."
I checked my watch. Five minutes left before I had to
rouse myself from my postlunch lethargy and head back to
>
the office. Time for a snack cake, if I wanted to stuff my
face with processed sugar, or a cup of coffee from the
communal pot. I didn't want the calories or the germs. I
did crack the top on my second can of cola, though.
"Why were they lucky?" I asked mildly, not so much
because I cared, but to make conversation.
"The ones who quit had to put up with a lot more garbage,
that's al. I heard the last girl he had went to work at some
grocery store after she left here, that's how desperate she
was to get out."
"That's pretty desperate." I stretched. As I started to get up from the table, pain sliced the back of my thigh.
Brenda startled at my cry. "What? What's wrong?"
I craned my neck to look over my shoulder, my leg stuck
out behind me like I was a balet dancer getting ready to
perform some complicated dance move. My skirt hit just
above the knee and I could make out the ragged line of a
run in my stocking, but nothing else. "Something snagged
me."
"It's the chair," Brenda said. "It's ful of splinters."
I rubbed the spot stil stinging and smarting just behind my
knee. "I can't tel if it's in there or not."
"Shoot. I gotta run. Wil you be okay?" Brenda stuffed her
trash into the plastic box where a few scraps of lettuce stil
clung and tossed it al into the garbage can.
"Sure. Of course." Sort of like a bee sting, the pain had
turned from sharp to a dul throb. I was more upset about
the panty hose I'd have to replace.
In the bathroom I used the ful-length mirror to check out
my injury, but could stil see nothing. I ran my fingers over
my skin around the sore spot but felt nothing poking
through. I didn't have time to keep searching, so I stripped
through. I didn't have time to keep searching, so I stripped
off the ruined panty hose and went back to the office.
"Just in time," Paul said from the doorway between his
office and my smal work space. "I was beginning to think
you weren't going to make it."
I looked at him sharply. "I'm hardly ever late, Paul."
"Oh, I know you're not." He glanced at his watch. "C'mon, it's time."
I pushed Brenda's warnings to the back of my mind. This
was the best job I'd ever had, and while I never assumed it
would be the best I'd ever get, I wasn't in any hurry to lose
it.
My task during the teleconference was to type up the
notes. Paul not only had notoriously bad handwriting but
he was a hunt-and-peck typist. As he got settled into his