The Receptionist

by Kate Myles

  She asks, “Are you mad at me?”

  He needs a minute. He needs to decide if he’s doing this. These girls have a way of becoming dependent. Chloe breaks away in a huff and reaches for her bra at the bottom of the bed.

  “Of course I’m not mad,” he says.

  “But you think I’m a slob.”

  “Do your parents give you money?”

  She gives a caustic laugh and fastens her bra. “I was raised by my grandparents.”

  “Do they help you?”

  She pulls some cotton underwear out of the banker box next to her bed. “I don’t need any help.”

  Oh yes, she does. She turns from him and starts dressing. He reaches from the bed and snaps the elastic on her bra.

  “Ow!” She jumps back. He stands.

  “I’ll buy you a dresser,” he says.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do,” he says. “I do have to do that.”

  She pouts. “So you’ll be my new daddy?”

  “Whoa,” says Doug. He grabs a handful of her ass. “That’s what you want?”

  Chloe brings her lips near his. She presses into his body. He kisses her, fully aware that he’s sinking into a mess: a steaming, sloppy, luscious mess.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHLOE

  It’s been three weeks. Everyone at the office knows. How can they not? It isn’t that they can read Chloe’s mind. But when she’s at her desk and thinking about Doug grabbing her neck or kissing his way down her stomach, the images shimmer so brightly it’s like it’s all happening in real time, and her skin and lips and trillions of tiny blood cells are reduced to a single function.

  They crave.

  They crave in the direction of Doug’s office. They crave when she hands smooth, cool bottles of water to visitors in the lobby. When she runs her hands along the curving Lucite counter above her desk. Her fingertips, the shape of the walls, the muted clicking of dozens of keyboards all resonating in the same frequency: sex.

  He tried to leave her last night at two in the morning. He mumbled something about his wife. But Chloe’s body was still humming. She convinced him to take a Viagra, and he stayed another forty minutes. She asked him to wait until she fell asleep before he left. The two times they spent the night together, she didn’t have her usual dream.

  But he woke her a few minutes later, clearing his throat as he put on his shoes. Soon after she had the nightmare, the same one as always: an old lady on the ground, shielding her head. “Why!” screams the woman in a garbled tongue. It’s always the scream that wakes her.

  Chloe stands up at her desk. She’s restless. She looks toward Doug’s office even though he’s not in there. He hasn’t come in yet. She sits back down and lays her head on her desk, like the teachers used to make her do in school. The elevator bell chimes. She jerks up. Elise, the vice president, in a sheath dress and sweepy blonde bob, gets off and sends a vague nod in Chloe’s direction.

  Chloe checks her phone. It’s eleven. She pulls up Doug’s Twitter. No posts today. She goes to his Instagram and scrolls down. His account is mostly business related—conference pictures and promotions for Beyond the Brand. But about four pages in, there’s a wedding picture of him and his wife on a beach. Chloe clicks on it. The bride seems out of place. Emily’s expression is too hard for her breezy surroundings. Her smile looks plastered on, and she has her fingers pressed into Doug’s arm like she’s holding him hostage. Chloe brings her phone close to her face and examines Doug’s strained smile. He’s not happy.

  “Chloe, have you checked the voice mail?”

  Chloe looks up. Jo-Ann is standing over her. Her perfume is astringent. It cuts through the musk Doug left on Chloe’s T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry?” says Chloe.

  Jo-Ann points to the blinking message indicator light. “The Volvo focus group participants were supposed to call if they had to cancel.”

  Crap. Chloe dials into the mailbox. “Are we missing anyone?”

  “We’re supposed to have ten. We only have eight.”

  Holy crap. Chloe’s insides start churning. The clients are already set up in the viewing room. She punches in the password, praying for this not to be her fault. She and Jo-Ann listen as two cancellations play on speakerphone—a woman with a kid home from school and a man with car trouble.

  Chloe brings her arm in front of her stomach. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I usually check the messages first thing.” Jo-Ann leans onto her cane and starts back to the client room. Chloe follows. “Is it too late to get alternates?”

  Jo-Ann shakes her head in irritation. She ignores Chloe and closes the door to the observation room. Chloe stands there a moment before she heads back to her desk. She wants to hide under something. She wants to smack her own face. It’s awful, the sense of being in trouble.

  Doug isn’t here; that’s the problem. It’s like she needs him now to function. The easiest tasks—like answering the phone with a cheerful “Beyond the Brand!”—have turned into some kind of performance, a private one, meant only for him. When he’s not here, it’s like there’s no point to any of it.

  Jo-Ann and Tom, the recruiter, come back from the direction of the viewing rooms.

  “They’re going ahead with eight participants,” Jo-Ann says. “But we need to talk about how to handle this going forward.”

  Tom smooths the silver wreath of hair above his ears and brings his thumbs to his suspenders. “It’s a lot of work putting these groups together, Chloe.” He lands on her name like a punctuation mark. She lowers her head.

  The phone rings at Doug’s assistant Harper’s desk. The back of Chloe’s neck tingles. “Hey, Emily,” Harper says, emphasizing each syllable of Doug’s wife’s name.

  Tom continues, overenunciating as he speaks. “The participants have to be able to reach us. That’s why I give them the main number.”

  Harper laughs at something Doug’s wife says. “The size of a sweet potato!” Harper exclaims. “I love the food comparisons.”

  Where is Doug? Chloe texted him earlier, but he hasn’t responded. There’s no one she can ask. It’s technically none of her business. Harper lowers her voice into gossip-sharing mode. Chloe strains to listen.

  “Can I count on you?” asks Tom. He smiles at her with a practiced-looking warmth. All Chloe wants is for him to shut up or go away. She can’t hear anything Harper is saying.

  “Of course. I’m so sorry.”

  Tom’s smile shifts to the left. “Let’s shake on it,” he says. But Chloe doesn’t want to touch him. She glances at Jo-Ann, who’s clicking away on her phone. Chloe reaches up. He flicks his thumb over her knuckle as they shake, in some bumbling message of dominance.

  Doug comes to her performance later that afternoon. The group is hiking this time, on a dusty trail in Griffith Park overlooking LA on one side and the Valley on the other. They’re wearing formal clothes with their white masks today. They wanted to pop among all the midriff-baring athleisure wear.

  But no one pays attention to the group. The other hikers came to exercise. They came to show themselves off. It reminds Chloe of the time they imitated everyone in a café and buried themselves in their phones. None of the other patrons ever bothered looking up. People in LA are jaded.

  Chloe stops in the shade of a lone tree overhanging the trail and looks back. Doug is following behind Sheralyn, who stops and says something to him before smacking her sequined hip and jogging up toward Chloe.

  “I think we need to stick with tourist spots,” Chloe says.

  “Yeah, this isn’t working,” says Sheralyn. “We’re just walking.”

  Chloe lets Sheralyn go on ahead. She decides to work against the action around her, provide a counterpoint. She faces the edge of the trail. She kicks her leg out over the cliff in slow motion and pauses, midstep.

  A man’s voice, a British accent, cuts through the air. “Did you hear that?” Chloe turns. There’s an older guy standing in the knobby brush, n
ear the tree. He looks like a broken-down rock and roller with long gray hair and deep creases in his face.

  “Did you hear that?” the guy asks again.

  His jeans and button-down are covered in dust, and his eyes are sick, like they’re looking at her from a sick place. She wonders if he’s trying to hit on her. She gets so many guys coming up to her, all the time. Maybe this is how the disturbed do it.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Chloe says.

  “Sure you do,” says the guy. The way he’s smiling, it’s like he recognizes her, like he’s some sprite from a fairy tale, malevolent but all-knowing. She mirrors his stance, leaning her torso to the right. The guy moves closer, kicking his leg as he steps in slow motion, just like she was doing before. It’s like they’re performing together, like they’re in a trance.

  “Chloe!” yells Doug. He rushes up the trail toward her.

  She hears someone else running from above. It’s Dylan. He shouts, “Chloe, move away from the edge.”

  “You called me,” said the guy. For a moment Chloe believes him, that she conjured him, that she has that power. He’s only a few feet away now.

  Doug reaches them. He stands between her and the guy. “We’re good, thanks,” he says.

  Dylan is there too. He motions for the guy to leave. “Go. Now.”

  The guy cocks his head and watches Chloe with a quizzical expression. He knows, she thinks. He knows about me. The guy holds up his hands and shrugs. “She called me,” he says before turning back to the scrub brush. Doug and Dylan keep their eyes on him as he disappears over the hill.

  Chloe drops her mouth open. The interaction was so pure, so divorced from the everyday. She doesn’t know what to do with it, with the excitement and the energy of that guy, of the two men on either side of her. It’s like she’s about to explode.

  “That was so real!” she squeals.

  “Freaky,” says Dylan. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” she says.

  Doug grips her arm. “Chloe, that guy was about to push you.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” she says.

  “He was dangerous,” says Doug.

  Chloe shifts her head to the side and squints. “No,” she says. “He was fine. I can tell when someone’s about to be violent.”

  “We should get going,” says Dylan. He turns to head up the path. Chloe starts to follow, but Doug’s hand is still on her arm. He pulls her toward him. His face is serious and intense.

  “What’s your plan, Chloe?”

  “What plan?”

  “This . . .” Doug gestures to the group ahead of her. “You really think there’s a future here?”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  “I do, but you put a lot of time into it. Are you making any money?”

  Chloe breaks off eye contact and stares out at the LA Basin. The air is clear today. She can see downtown rising in the distance, a cluster of skyscrapers reflecting the afternoon light. She’s only just landed. She’s only just stopped obsessing about where she’s been. She can’t even think about what comes after.

  She smiles at Doug. “You could always give me a raise.”

  Doug laughs. He pulls her toward him. “Come away with me. Tonight. I’ll take you somewhere.”

  She wonders about his wife. How he can just leave like that. She wants to ask but doesn’t want to bring her up. “I’ll have to go home and get my clothes.”

  “Nope,” he says. “I’ll take you shopping.”

  Doug drives her north to Oxnard, a coastal town carpeted in strawberry and bell pepper fields, and pulls into a sprawling chain hotel on the water. “It’s not fancy,” Doug says as they stop at the top of a U-shaped driveway. “I can’t risk the usual spots.”

  Chloe looks to her right, down a sandy path into the dunes, shrouded in fog and succulents. She and Doug can go for a walk later. They can hold hands without worrying if anyone sees.

  “It’s perfect,” she says.

  They change into their swimsuits and bathrobes and follow the signs through the pool area to the hot tub. It’s chilly. All the lounge chairs are empty except for a lone woman wearing a pantsuit and lanyard. The woman glances up from her laptop as they pass and runs her eyes down the length of Chloe’s body.

  Chloe opens the separate gate to the Jacuzzi and slips into the water. It hurts at first. It forces the air from her lungs, it’s so hot. Doug picks up her bathrobe off the ground and drapes it over the fence.

  “Cannonball?” He pretends to take a running leap.

  Chloe laughs and screams. “No!”

  He turns the bubbles on and slides in next to her. She flicks foam onto his shoulder. Two women and a man in business clothes and name tags stop outside the pool area. They look so uncomfortable in their conference wear, so much less alive than she and Doug.

  “You know that guy, Tom?” Chloe asks. “The recruiter?”

  “Tom, sure.”

  “You don’t think he’s a little weird?”

  Doug lowers his chin into the water.

  “He creeps me out,” she says.

  “I’ve got a lot of employees,” says Doug.

  “Yeah, but he gave me this freaky handshake.”

  “I’ll give you a freaky handshake.” He swims up on top of her. Chloe looks toward the three conventioneers. The man, a trim older guy with salt-and-pepper hair, makes eye contact with her. Doug reaches between her legs. His expression is neutral, giving nothing away to the people outside the fence. His lips hum with energy. She guides his hand to the inside of her bikini bottom. Doug gushes, “You’re incredible.”

  She is. She’s incredible. It’s like she’s a lightning rod. She feels everything. And she’s learning how to maneuver around her history, her awful bursts of rage. She can see past all that now, just in glimpses, to where there’s this exquisite undercurrent. Once she clears anger out of the way, she can see beauty and joy and aching and sex and grief all intertwined and streaming through everything and everybody, but most people never even bother to look for it.

  Doug looks. He sees it in her. She didn’t realize it before, how badly she needed someone to notice her.

  Two men in khakis and polo shirts amble along the fence. Chloe peels off her bikini bottom under the bubbles and grabs Doug by the hips.

  “Oh Jesus,” he exhales into her ear. She straddles him. “You’re fucking amazing.”

  She is. She’s fucking amazing. She rocks on Doug’s lap, just enough so that any passerby would wonder if what they think is happening is really happening. She sneaks a look behind her. The polo shirt guys are standing at the fence, watching them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DOUG

  Doug tightens his hand around his office doorknob. He doesn’t move. He’s been successful, so far, at staving off the panic. It’s been gathering. Just outside himself.

  Today is yet another field test of his EEG and app. Today, it has to work. He’s burned through two capital investments. He’s leveraged 49 percent of the project. He shakes out his hands as he walks toward the elevator, enraged at his team. They don’t communicate problems to him. Sanjay, his biomedical engineer, has created something beautiful—what should be a flawless mindfulness tool—that will usher in a new age of data collection, direct and unfiltered, straight from the consumer’s mind.

  But they can’t get it to work right. There are too many moving pieces. And Erik, the Dr. Maryn consultant, his partner in crime. He’s in charge of the app portion, but he doesn’t talk to Sanjay. No one talks to each other. All they do is cover their asses.

  Doug has been doing the same, of course, with Emily. All he tells her now is that there are delays. He doesn’t get into it. She’s been patient. Hasn’t pressured him, even though she went to huge lengths to get his EEG an exclusive on the Dr. Maryn Store. They were supposed to be a team. Equals. But now he’s practically her subordinate. It sucks. He has to manage up to his wife.

  He approaches Chloe at reception and looks
down at his watch, hoping to sneak by without acknowledging her. But she perks up with an expectant smile. He flashes her a quick grin. It’s every single time now. Whenever he sees her, he has to relay some private signal. Even today, when he’s preoccupied, when he’s worried about whether or not he’ll be able to tell his board the goddamned EEG is finally going to pay off, Chloe expects him to keep up the sexy subterfuge. If he doesn’t, she’ll send him a ??? text and ask if he’s mad.

  It’s been two months since they first slept together. Two months of being her audience, of replacing her cheap wardrobe with Phillip Lim and Marc Jacobs, of doing her from behind in brutally lit department store dressing rooms.

  Funny. He had no idea the degree to which semipublic sex would come to feel routine.

  But he has a business to run. He’s slept with a lot of employees in his career. He can tell when it starts affecting the staff. People get restless. They look for signs of favoritism and start showing up later and later until a 9:00 a.m. office turns into a 10:00 a.m. office. That one girl, Tamra from research, would take advantage of the newly lax workplace, oblivious that she was at the root of it. She’d stroll in around ten thirty the mornings after Doug had been with her, her eyes smeared with heavy makeup. Doug would mouth the word slut when he saw her. She used that detail later in the lawsuit, which was unfair, considering it made her giggle.

  He presses the call button on the elevator. He’s supposed to go to another one of Chloe’s performances later but doesn’t want to. They’re all the same. But then he thinks of Sheralyn. Of her tattoos. She keeps flirting with him. Overt and raunchy.

  The elevator arrives just as Harper, his assistant, catches up. She’s wearing a white blazer with a popped collar, Miami Vice style, and has both Doug’s and her laptop bags slung over her shoulder.

  “I won’t need my computer,” Doug says as he holds the door open for her.

  Harper swipes her curls away from her face. “I’d rather bring it now than have to go back for it.”