Hector examined the file and sighed in resignation, but he didn’t give up. “Fine. What about the Davidson file?”
He finally had her. She shook her head and looked through the shorter stack of files that she was still working on. “I haven’t gotten to that one yet,” she answered, knowing that she shouldn’t feel bad about it, she would still have had it done before the day’s end, and she knew that he was probably just going through the list of names of the files that he had given her until he could hit one that she hadn’t done yet.
“I’ll have it to you right away,” she told him, opening it up and setting it on top of the other files.
“I need it immediately,” he told her sternly. Then he turned and walked into his office, leaving the door open.
She focused with laser beam intensity on the Davidson file, and just a few minutes later, she stood up and walked with it into Hector’s office. He looked up at her in surprise from behind his desk and took it from her gently when she leaned over his desk and handed it to him.
“Here you go,” she said pleasantly, then she turned and began walking out of the room.
He called out to her. “Thank you.” She turned and looked at him over her shoulder, giving him a smile and a nod, and then she returned to her desk, feeling as if she was on top of the world. She felt as if she was definitely going to be able to do the job that she had been hired to do, and that in time she would be able to advance in the company, and the changes in her life would just keep on getting better. It was almost too much for her to believe, but she was willing to put all of her faith in herself and in the possibility of a very bright future ahead.
Even though she was feeling good and working hard, she barely managed to get all of the files done before she had to leave for the night and head over to the grocery store. The only good sign at the end of the day was that Hector did not come out to review her work. He stayed in his office and only waved at her when she poked her head in the door and said that she was leaving for the night.
Celeste felt an increasing dread in going to the grocery story to work. It was the last place in the world that she wanted to be, and she had no other choice but to be there. She couldn’t afford to have a bad reference in her work history, and nothing would stop her boss from doing just that if she walked out and quit cold turkey.
She greatly disliked that he was forcing her to work when she didn’t want to or need to, and more than that, she hated that she was missing school and flunking out of her class because her boss was making her work at a job where she wasn’t going to stay. She knew that if she wanted to get her degree, she was going to have to take the class again and pay for it again. It seemed unfair to her, when she should have been able to attend it, and she should have been able to just walk out of her job.
Trying to keep a pleasant look on her face, rather than the dark expression that she was actually feeling, she walked into the store and slipped her apron on over her head. She wasn’t at her register more than five minutes when Tonia and Keisha arrived at their registers and began to bother her about the things going on in her life outside of the grocery store.
Keisha, who was on her right, leaned over closer and spoke a little too loudly. “There she is! I been waiting to hear what’s going on with your secret boyfriend!”
Tonia chuckled and turned around to face Celeste where she was working at the cash register to the left. “Yeah, I want to know about him too. We know you got somebody, and we just want to know who he is!”
“Yeah, who he is and what he do, and where you met him, and all of it. The whole story. So, spill it!” Keisha laughed, but her face was serious. Celeste could see that she fully suspected that something was going on, and she wanted to know all about it.
“Don’t leave anything out!” Tonia chimed in again.
Celeste sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know what you two are going on about, but you’re acting like fools. I don’t have a secret boyfriend!” She wasn’t about to give them any information at all about Kevin. He was her secret, and hers alone. She knew that they would try to shred him just because she was hiding him, but if they actually knew anything about him; that he was from the other side of the tracks, that he was a successful accountant and had helped her to get a job, and that he was white… especially that. If they knew that he was a white man, they would never let her live it down.
Keisha’s mouth twisted into a frown. “Well that’s just another cover-up. You can’t fool me, I know you have someone on the side. I’m not gonna quit asking you about him until you fess up and tell us what’s going on. You can’t hide him from us, Celeste.”
Celeste leveled a hard look at Keisha. “I’m telling you, there is no secret boyfriend, now drop it!” she snapped. Keisha blinked in surprise and stood there dumbly for a moment, and then raised her hands in the air with her open palms toward Celeste.
“Whatever. You keep on telling your tales like you are. Whatever. I don’t believe a word you’re saying.” Keisha waved her hands dismissively at Celeste, and then turned back to her register, where a customer was just putting their groceries up on the counter to be rung up.
The minutes there at the grocery store seemed to drag on for hours, and every time Celeste looked at the clock, it looked like it hadn’t moved more than a few minutes, though it felt like those minutes had dragged on for hours and hours.
Midway through her shift, while Celeste was wiping down her register and counter, she became aware of an eerie feeling, as if she was being watched, and she lifted her head and looked around.
Her heart nearly jumped right out of her chest when she saw Wendell standing nearby, eyeing her with unwavering attention. Their eyes met and her heart began to race. Her face grew warm and her palms began to grow clammy. She looked away from his intense gaze and focused on anything else that she could around her work area, while still trying to watch him subtly from the corner of her eye to see if he was going to approach her.
He walked away with a soft chuckle that she could hear, and she sighed and went back to her work, her whole body tense with anxiety over having seen him. Ten minutes later, she was ringing up a couple who were trying to corral their children and buy their groceries, when he came and stood in her line, right behind them, his eyes locked on her.
Everything in her began to race, and her heart pounded wildly as she tried to keep her focus on the sale at hand and not look at him or think about him standing right there in her line. He stared at her. The couple paid for their purchases and left. He came to stand directly across the counter from her and then he leaned forward and she struggled to maintain her composure.
“Hey baby,” he began in a quiet voice, his eyes still steady on her face.
She didn’t look at him. Instead, she looked over at the single item that he was purchasing. A donut. She thought about what a trite purchase it was as he was standing there in his uniform. Cops and donuts.
“That will be seventy-five cents, please,” she said without raising her eyes to look at him. She bagged his donut and waited.
He leaned over even closer to her. “Look at me.”
“Just pay for your donut and leave.” She spoke as evenly as she could.
“Don’t be like that, baby. Now, I just thought that I’d come in here and have a little friendly conversation with you. I was just curious to know where you been the last couple of mornings. I go by to check on you, and you aren’t anywhere that you’re supposed to be.”
Tiny beads of sweat formed around the edge of her hairline and she swallowed and did her best to look as if she was in some kind of control. “Pay for your donut.” She refused to look up at him, but kept her eyes on the counter in front of her.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He just watched her and stayed where he was, leaning halfway over the counter toward her. After several long and agonizing moments, he spoke again.
“You bedding down with someone? You stayin’ over at some other man’s place? Is that what
you’re doing? Because I don’t like that. I want you where I know you will be. I want you here where you work, I want you at your school, or I want you home, and that’s it. I don’t want you thinking that you can just run off to any old place like that. I don’t want you disappearing every morning. I sure as hell don’t want you thinking that you can bed down with any other man but me, and I am going to make you a promise right now, baby, you’re mine, and if I find out you seeing someone else… some other man, baby I’ll kill him dead.”
His voice was stone cold and she could hear the reality and truthfulness in it. She swallowed again and looked up at him, sticking her chin out defiantly. “It’s none of your damn business where I go or what I do or who I do it with. Now pay for your damn donut and get the hell out of here and don’t ever come through my line again,” she spat at him.
As fast as a snake striking a victim, his big hand shot out from his side and he grabbed a hold of her arm, closing his fingers around it tightly. He pulled her forward to him and she gasped as their faces nearly touched. Searing pain blazed through her arm.
He gritted his teeth and glared furiously into her wide and terrified eyes. “Now you listen to me, you mouthy little bitch. Everything you do is my business, and if you try to hide anything from me, I’m going to make it my business to find out what you’re hiding. You don’t keep nothing from me, not never, do you understand me? Never! You are mine, and everything about you is my business, forever, and don’t you forget it.”
Wendell released her arm, shoving it back toward her roughly. She cried out softly and closed her own hand softly around the area that he had held so tightly to, massaging it gently. She kept her eyes on him, watching him to see what he would do next.
He reached into his pocket and pulled a one-dollar bill from a stack of money, and then threw it on the counter near her. Picking up the sack with the donut in it, he turned and walked out of the store and she locked her register and slammed a closed sign down on her counter before rushing to the bathroom to be sick.
Celeste washed her arm with cold water and splashed her face a little as she tried to catch her breath. When her heart had slowed and was beating normally again, she steadied herself and walked back out to her register once more.
Keisha whistled low and shook her head with a big grin on her face. “Ohhhhh girl, if I had a man that fine after me, I’d be all over him! If you had a brain in your head, you’d be with that cop in a heartbeat! He is hot, sister! I don’t know what your problem is. It’s so obvious that he wants you! If you don’t take him, you crazy!”
“I’m not crazy,” Celeste answered in a monotone.
“Well if you’re so crazy that you don’t want him then give him to me, ‘cause I’ll sure take him.” Keisha made no secrecy of her growing and heated interest in Wendell.
Celeste didn’t even look over at her. “Take him then.”
Keisha stared at her in stunned surprise then. “Fine, I will. I’m gonna make that fine man all mine.” She was quiet a moment and then she eyed Celeste skeptically. “That secret boyfriend you got must be something else if you’re gonna pass up a hunk of a man like that cop.”
Finally, Celeste turned her head and gave Keisha a serious stare. “I don’t want to talk about it. If you want Wendell, then have him, but I’m not interested in talking about anything else so let it go.”
She turned her back to Keisha and waved at a customer who was looking for an open checkout lane.
Neither Keisha nor Tonia said anything else to Celeste for the remainder of the night, and when it was time to leave her shift for the night, Celeste said nothing to them. She just walked outside to the parking lot and kept her eyes wide open for any police squad cars that might be nearby.
Not seeing anyone, yet knowing full well that he might be watching her from some unseen distance, she got into her car, locked the door, prayed with all her might that her old clunker would start, and when it did, she drove off to her home.
After two hours of homework done through exhaustion, she shut her laptop down and went to her bed to collapse and get some kind of rest. Her dreams that night were dark and dangerous, and though they haunted her while she slept, keeping her from getting a restful slumber, when she woke up, she could not remember them.
Celeste got to work at the office early the next morning, but she didn’t go to her desk. Instead, she went directly to the coffee pot in the staff room that was just down the hallway from her desk, behind one of the closed doors.
She made a full pot of coffee, and when it was ready, she poured herself a cup of the dark brew in the biggest mug that she could find, and then she went to her desk.
Seeing that there was already a stack of files waiting for her, she sat down and got to work on them, going for the mug of coffee every few minutes and trying her best to stifle a yawn. Hector was in and out of his office, but not as much as he had been on her first two days. He studied her briefly each time that he walked by, but it didn’t seem as sharp a look as he had been giving her previously.
Celeste worked hard and did her best to focus on the details of each file, though she was completely exhausted and the gallons of coffee that she was drinking didn’t seem to be helping her much.
Lunchtime came and she didn’t even give the clock a look, she just kept right on working through, and hoping that she could finish all of the daunting work on her desk before the end of her workday.
Hector came out of his office and stood beside her desk at about five minutes after she should have left for lunch. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned slightly. “Are you leaving for lunch today?” He spoke with an even tone.
She shook her head and turned to look up at him. “No, I have too much work to do.”
He pushed his lips out thoughtfully and tipped his head. “You’ve been working through your lunches since you started here. You haven’t left for a lunch yet.”
“I want to get the work done. I ate, you know.” She blinked a few times. “I ordered lunch and had it delivered here.”
He nodded and pursed his lips. “Yes, you ate, but you didn’t leave. I think it’s important for healthy brain function to leave for a while during the day and get some fresh air, walk around, step away from your desk.”
She shook her head. “Not when I know that I will need my lunch hour to get through the files that need to be done.”
“Why don’t we agree to a compromise then. If you work through lunch, I will buy lunch for us both and have it delivered.” He eyed her optimistically.
Celeste couldn’t help but smile a bit. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t, but I want you to know that I appreciate all that you’re doing around here. You’re working hard to prove yourself to me, to get acquainted with the systems and the files here, and especially with the clients, so I just wanted you to know that I appreciate that. It’s hard work. So, we agree that if you work through your lunch, which you will not be doing every day, then I will buy lunch to compensate for it. Agreed?” His expression was pointed.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to back down and that he had at least offered a compromise, she realized that she was going to have to meet him halfway. “Fine. If I work through lunch, then you buy lunch.”
“Good!” He nodded and grinned. “How does Chinese sound?”
“Perfect!” she answered with a widening grin.
“I like Chicken Chow Mein. Order it from anywhere you like and when they ask for the card number to pay it, transfer the call in to me.” He gave her a nod and then turned and walked back into his office.
Celeste chuckled softly, thinking how very nice it was to have a boss who actually cared if she took a lunch or ate or worked too long or too hard. It was a huge change from any other place that she had ever worked.
She picked up the phone and called in her order, and then transferred the call to him so he could pay for it. Half an hour later, they were both working through lunch and eating some very good Asia
n food on the side.
It was the same routine as the previous two nights. She left the office with all of the files done and a great sense of satisfaction, and drove her jalopy to the grocery store where she made herself get out of the car and go in, slipping the apron over her head, and slipping herself back into the old life that she was hellbent on leaving.
Halfway through her shift, she got a text message and she felt her heart flip in her chest when she saw that it was from Kevin. ‘How is it all going?’
She texted him in return. ‘It’s all going really good!’
‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I really want to see you,’ he answered, and she felt her body warm and her pulse quicken.
‘I want to see you too,’ she typed and she couldn’t stop a grin as she pressed the send button.
‘When?’ he asked immediately.
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