Fringe Benefits

by Christine Pope

I wasn’t sure how to reply to Pieter’s remark, so I tried to hide my uncertainty by eating a few more bites of salad. He remained silent, but he did reach over to pour some more Bordeaux into his glass. Mine was still mostly full; I’d only had a few sips.

  My need to know more overcame any scruples I might have about asking further questions. I couldn’t keep chewing forever, so at last I set down my fork and swallowed, then asked, “Have your other assistants been to the store?”

  “No.”

  Surprised, I sat up a little straighter in my chair. “Why not?”

  His mouth thinned. “They never showed any desire to learn that side of the business.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him. “But I’m different?”

  “Oh, yes.” Those bright blue eyes, unshielded by sunglasses, caught mine and held. I felt powerless to do anything but stare back at him, even as my heart began to hammer away in my chest. For a few endless seconds we remained that way, and then he smiled, adding, “For one thing, you’re the first one who spent her free time teaching herself Photoshop instead of texting her friends or looking up gossip or fashion sites on the Internet.”

  The contact broken, I was able to glance down and reach over for my own glass of wine. I needed it. So Pieter thought I was different? Did that difference extend itself to keeping our relationship purely professional? If that were the case, what was up with the wining and dining? Then again, nothing we had discussed at either our dinner last Friday night or even today could possibly be construed as anything except professional.

  “I told you I liked to learn new things,” I managed.

  “So you did.”

  Just then a waiter appeared and removed our salad plates, and promised our entrées were on their way. Pieter thanked him, then returned his attention to me. The diffidence I’d seen earlier appeared to be gone; he now looked relaxed and faintly amused. “Any other questions?”

  Only about a thousand. Problem was, asking any of them seemed the quickest route to getting fired. Guilt over peeking into his personnel files kept bubbling up to the surface, which also didn’t bode well for my continued employment at Pyramid Imports. I hated keeping secrets, and wasn’t very good at it. And I hated it when people kept secrets from me. I’d rather face the worst than be lied to or left in the dark.

  Luckily, our waiter came back just then and saved me from my moral conundrum. What with getting my entrée and taking the next couple of bites, I had at least a minute to try to screw my head on a little straighter.

  Pieter didn’t let me off the hook for very long, however. “You have the look of someone with something on her mind.”

  “I do?” I allowed myself another bite of duck confit, then said, “Well…”

  He waited.

  The words came out in a rush. “I’m sorry—it’s just that I was filing, and I saw it, and—”

  “Saw what?”

  “Your personnel file,” I finished miserably. As dangerous as making such a confession might be, I felt a tiny trickle of relief at getting that one off my chest.

  For a few seconds he was quiet, watching me. Again I felt as if those scalpel-sharp blue eyes were dissecting my very soul. “And you found—”

  “A big stack of employment applications.” Suddenly I realized there hadn’t been any accompanying photographs. I wondered what Pieter did with them. Kept them in a separate file, or just loose in his desk drawer so he could pull them out and look at them when it amused him?

  I’d been expecting anger. Instead, he smiled. “And what did you do?”

  Off-balance, I blurted, “I—well, I called Gina Stillman.”

  The smile didn’t waver. “And?”

  “You want a direct quote?”

  “Certainly.”

  “‘Tell that son of a bitch that I don’t need any goddamn charity.’”

  “Ms. Stillman always was the direct type.” He lifted his glass and took a measured swallow of Bordeaux. “Anything else?”

  His lack of response unnerved me. Shouldn’t he be reading me the riot act about now regarding the impropriety of prying into private personnel files? “Uh, no. I think that was about it.”

  “Was she the only person you called?”

  “Yes.”

  Another one of those penetrating blue stares. “Thank you for your honesty, Katherine. I find it’s a rare commodity these days.”

  So instead of firing me, he was praising me? It felt a little like peeking into the scary closet of your childhood fears and finding Santa Claus hiding in the corner instead of the fanged monster you expected.

  Somehow I managed to meet his gaze and asked, “So are you going to be honest with me in return?”

  Finally I did see a flicker of anger, although it came and went so fast I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it. “About what?”

  “All those assistants.”

  Pieter didn’t pretend to misunderstand me. “Have I treated you in any way that was less than professional?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Well, then,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  I wasn’t stupid. I had a slight inkling (well, all right, a strong belief) that Pieter had probably had flings with all his former assistants. Judging by the stack of papers in that personnel file, that was a hell of a lot of notches on his bedpost. Not that Pieter Van Rijn would do anything so crass as to willfully vandalize a piece of furniture. For whatever reason, he’d decided to take a different tack with me.

  I didn’t know whether I should be offended or not. Then I didn’t know exactly what had offended me. Did the fact that he’d decided, for whatever reason, I wasn’t worthy of the hundred-and-first notch on his bed upset me? Was I so unenlightened I’d be offended by not being considered worthy of his attentions?

  All this convoluted logic had begun to make me feel more than a little muddled. I reached for my own glass of Bordeaux and drank, trying to pretend I couldn’t feel his heavy gaze resting on me the whole time.

  A rather ugly silence descended. I didn’t know what to say next that wouldn’t make me sound belligerent, or worse, defensive, so I retreated to the safety of another mouthful of duck confit.

  And still he said nothing.

  On the discomfort level this had to rank right up there with the time when I was fourteen years old and I’d walked in on my parents having sex. Why had I opened my big mouth? Was I trying to get myself fired? Was there some self-destructive little beast living buried at the bottom of my psyche that couldn’t believe I possibly deserved the salary I was currently earning? More to the point, did it think I didn’t deserve someone like Pieter Van Rijn? Oh, I’d confessed to Pieter because the secret had felt like a tight, ugly knot in my chest, one I needed to unravel so I could face him with no deceptions between us. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe I was engaging in a little self-sabotage to prevent this from going any further.

  Of course, all current evidence seemed to point to the fact that he didn’t even want me. All those women, and yet, for whatever reason, I didn’t measure up.

  I wanted to put down my fork, get up from the table, and walk out. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was just years of indoctrination by my mother as to how good girls behaved. I didn’t know. All I did know was that I remained seated, butt so firmly planted on the chair it might as well have been glued there.

  “You’re angry,” he said at last.

  Any answer I could give would be a lie, so instead I remained silent, my gaze directed at the white tablecloth.

  “You are,” he repeated. “Why?”

  There was no way I could answer that question, since I couldn’t say exactly why I was so upset. “I don’t like being lied to,” I said finally.

  “You think I am lying to you?”

  “Okay, maybe lying isn’t the right word,” I replied. “Obfuscating?”

  Instead of taking offense, he smiled once more. “Yet another difference. I doubt any of my previous assista
nts could have pronounced that word, let alone used it correctly in a sentence.”

  I was torn between wanting to scream and wanting to laugh. The latter sounded safer, so I did that instead. “You should have gone into politics,” I said, after I was done laughing.

  “How so?”

  “Because you can redirect a line of questioning with the best of them.”

  “Thank you.”

  My remark hadn’t been meant as a compliment, but I could tell Pieter didn’t want to pursue that particular conversational tack any longer. And really, what would be the point? To antagonize him further? It was clear he’d casually lob back any verbal volleys I might make. If I couldn’t accept the fact that he may have had a past with at least some, if not all, of his previous assistants, then I should just tender my resignation and have done with it.

  I knew I couldn’t do that. Call it weakness, call it stupidity. Probably any sensible person would have just washed her hands of Pieter Van Rijn and called it a day. I had no idea how to handle someone like him. Lovesick premed students, ranch hands, and medical supplies sales guys hadn’t quite prepared me for a man like Pieter. Did he have any inkling as to my confused feelings toward him? While most of me (the part still clinging to what remained of my common sense) hoped sincerely that he didn’t, a small, wistful bit wished he did.

  I was too much of a coward to let him know the truth. Instead, I met his gaze as best I could, tried to mirror his smile, and did the only thing I could do.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Eleven

  Whether out of a skewed sense of mercy or because he also found the atmosphere after our little exchange more than a bit uncomfortable, Pieter let me go immediately after lunch. As I ducked out of the patio gate that opened onto the street, he said, “I’ll see you on Tuesday morning.”

  For a second the words didn’t register. Was that his oblique way of telling me not to come into the office anymore? Then I realized he’d simply referred to the fact that it was a long weekend coming up. The rest of the country would be off enjoying their symbolic last day of summer with barbecues, trips to the lake, or outings to the beach. For a second I could practically taste my mother’s famous German potato salad, which she’d always made for our backyard get-togethers, and a wave of homesickness hit me with an almost physical blow. So far I’d done pretty well at dealing with the separation from my family; after all, it had been my decision to come out here to Los Angeles. My exile was of my own choosing. But now, with a three-day weekend stretching ahead of me and no real plans to fill it, I suddenly wanted nothing more than my family’s comforting rituals. And that just wasn’t going to happen.

  I think I mumbled, “See you on Tuesday,” and hurried off to my car. For some reason my eyes felt hot, burning with unshed tears. After I ducked into the Mercedes and had the door shut safely behind me, I let them flow. Half-blinded, I pulled out into the street, narrowly missing a newish-looking Land Rover. It gave an irritated honk, and I blinked furiously to clear my eyes enough so that I could find my way back to Glendale without plowing into another vehicle.

  What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t even blame the deluge on hormones; that blessed event wasn’t due for two more weeks. Had the strange little not-argument with Pieter rattled me that badly?

  Apparently it had. I didn’t know what else to think. Or rather, I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to think about how I was just beginning to realize maybe it wasn’t such a big deal that he might have shagged all those secretaries. And maybe I really didn’t want to think about how much I did want to be with him, and how he’d shown no signs of wanting to reciprocate.

  All I did know was that it felt awfully good to hide in the tinted refuge of the Mercedes’ interior and cry stormily all the way home.

  By evening I’d recovered something of my sanity. Okay, so a meeting that had started out promisingly enough had skirted near-disaster. Still, it wasn’t as if Pieter had told me to get the hell out of his life. I should be glad that I was able to tell him the truth and not get blasted for it. He hadn’t even taken me to task for going through his personnel files, which as my employer he had every right to do.

  Whether these were the actions of a man not easily upset, or simply of one who kept such a tight rein on his emotions that he wouldn’t admit to his anger, I didn’t know. I’d seen flashes here and there of things roiling beneath the surface, but maybe I was giving myself more credit for reading Pieter Van Rijn than I should. After all, I’d barely known the man for two weeks. He didn’t let a lot out. For all I knew he could be absolutely furious with me.

  But not furious enough to get rid of you, my brain burbled away in true Pollyanna fashion, trying to convince me I should just let it go. It wasn’t as if all my angsting was going to change his actions one way or another. All I’d accomplish was to slowly drive myself insane.

  And really, I’d done a decent job of keeping my mind off things. After I’d gotten home I made myself package up the duplicate disk of the demo CD I’d made for my parents, then stopped at a mail center and sent it on its merry way. They probably wouldn’t get it toward the end of the next week, since Monday was a holiday, but that didn’t matter so much. They’d have it at some point, and that was the important thing.

  I killed the rest of the afternoon by going to a movie alone, something I’d done all too often during the past seven months. That was all right, though. I found an obscure comfort in sitting there alone in the dark with my smuggled-in bottled water, allowing myself to be lost in other people’s lives. Mine was feeling pretty complicated at that point, although a good deal of the complications might have been my own fault.

  If only I’d known just how complicated my life was going to get.

  Leslie had left a pleading message on my machine to go out with her and Joe to another party in North Hollywood. Her brothers’ neighbors must have hated them—I mean, those two seemed to be having a party every weekend. You’d think that would get old after a while. When I’d first met Leslie I’d gone to far more of those parties than I should have, and even though I’d backed off recently, the thought of going to another one didn’t sound like fun at all.

  I called Leslie back and told her as much, and ignored the well-meaning but increasingly unwelcome jabs about my prolonged single state—“they have some friends from Orange County coming over that you haven’t even met yet!”—as if these unknowns could be the answer to my dating doldrums. Even if I hadn’t been mooning over Pieter, the last thing I needed was to get involved with someone where we’d have an hour-plus commute just to have a relationship. No, thanks.

  The argument went on a little longer, but at last I put her off by promising I would at least consider going to the end-of-summer bash her brothers had planned for Sunday night. I got the impression this wouldn’t be so much a separate party as a sodden continuation of the carousing of the previous two nights, but whatever. At least I’d gotten myself a little breathing space.

  Crazy as it might sound, I even enjoyed puttering around my apartment—dusting, cleaning the bathroom. My life felt disordered enough that it was good to put at least some small segment of it back in place. I read, watched TV, the usual. No doubt in the city around me thousands of people were doing the exact same things, Friday night or no.

  After the show I’d been watching ended at eleven, I turned on the radio, figuring it could keep me company as I went through my nightly rituals of brushing and flossing and moisturizing. I’d had it drummed into my head pretty much from junior high on that a woman who didn’t moisturize was going to end up a wrinkled hag by the time she was fifty. Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but my mother still looked fabulous and she’d passed the half-century mark a few years ago, so I figured she must know what she was talking about.

  I tuned the radio to KFAB, the local classic rock station. The apartment felt a little less empty with some good old rock and roll to drown out the quiet, and if I couldn’t have Pie
ter Van Rijn around, at least I could let Mick Jagger or Jim Morrison sing me to sleep.

  But it wasn’t Mick’s or Jim’s dulcet tones coming out of my subpar, tinny speakers. It was mine.

  I froze in the entrance to the bathroom, jar of moisturizer sitting forgotten in my hand. It can’t be, I thought. That has to be someone who just sounds like me.

  I tried to rationalize. My speakers weren’t the best. Maybe I just wasn’t hearing clearly. Okay, so KFAB had a show on Friday nights where people in local bands could send in their demo tapes in the hopes that they’d get some air time. Maybe it was someone else going all retro with a cover of a Pat Benatar song.

  Wishful thinking. Even if someone with a voice eerily similar to mine had recorded a cover of “Promises in the Dark,” it would be pushing the bounds of coincidence to think she also had the same name as me.

  “That was Katherine Wheeler,” said Bruce, one of the D.J.s. “Rumor has it that she looks as hot as she sounds—”

  “So, Katherine, you’re welcome to stop by the studio any time and give us an interview,” put in Mike, the second half of the duo. Amazing how he could get the leer in his voice across so clearly.

  They both laughed, amused by their wit even if I wasn’t. Shaking, I bolted over to the stereo and hit the power button. The little LED readout went dark.

  God damn you, Jonah Freeman. Had he planned this all along, or had he just decided to get a nasty sort of revenge once I’d dropped him? I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him not to make another copy of the recording. And here I’d thought his friend Tom the sound engineer actually seemed nice. The two of them must have been in collusion somehow.

  I was so angry I had the cell phone out of my purse and halfway to my ear before I realized what I was doing. Then I took a breath and set the phone back down on the dining room table. All I’d accomplish by calling Jonah at this hour and giving him what-for would be to show how much he’d upset me. Wouldn’t it be better to treat the whole situation with icy disdain and just ignore what he’d done? After all, the chances were pretty darn good that anyone I knew in L.A. wouldn’t have even heard the broadcast. Leslie and her crowd were safely partying hearty in North Hollywood. Her brother David was the king of Internet music piracy. He had gigabytes of illegally downloaded music and loved whipping up custom playlists for all his parties. No way he’d be doing something so plebeian as playing FM radio, of all things. With any luck, this little incident could be safely swept under the rug. Nice try, Jonah.