The Receptionist

by Kate Myles

  “This is some bullshit right here,” Sheralyn mutters.

  Moisture from the grass seeps into Chloe’s sock. She stops and lets the rest of the group continue. Everyone else at the party gets to keep their shoes on. It doesn’t make sense for them to be barefoot or in socks. She looks back down the path. Stan is near the driveway, leaning over a young woman about Chloe’s age. He feels like a friend. Maybe she can ask him for their shoes back. She returns to the portico and waits for Stan to break off his conversation and notice her. He doesn’t. She moves to the front door of the house and opens it. The foyer is empty and quiet except for the muffled sounds of jazz piano drifting in from the outside. She tries the closet, thinking she can quietly pass out everyone’s shoes, but the door is locked. Chloe peels off her wet socks and lays them next to the doorjamb.

  A bearded man and a brunette poke their heads in. They’re dressed almost identically in thin leather jackets and dark ripped jeans. “Are we in the right place?” asks the woman.

  Chloe checks to see if her mask is straight, and she doesn’t know why, but she gets the urge to speak in a robot voice. She goes with it. “Please take your shoes off. The tile is new.”

  “Right on,” says the guy. They keep their shoes on and walk through the house to the party.

  Chloe stays in the foyer, watching stray newcomers navigate their awkward moment of first entry: a stop, a flicker of confusion at the sight of this masked woman in front of them. Many look vaguely familiar, like former character actors or low-rent versions of Steve Jobs.

  A lanky man enters, leading with his limbs, and Chloe is suspended in time. She knows him, his shaggy brown hair, his stooping height. Chloe presses herself into the foyer wall. This man’s name is Alonso. He’s a choreographer. And he fired her two years ago from the Fefu Fornes shoot. He stops. He notices her.

  “Hi.” She barely gets the word out. Does he recognize her? She should have moved from LA right after that. She should just leave now, skip town, get out.

  “How are you?” he asks as he passes.

  She hears Doug. He’s outside. His baritone ricochets through her body. Doug is an ally. She pushes herself from the wall and shakes out her hair. She hasn’t been alone with him since that Uber ride. There’s so much she needs to tell him. She wants him to know how hard she worked to convince the other members to do this gig. She wants to warn him that Dr. Maryn reacted all weird and bitter when Stan mentioned Doug’s name earlier. She wants to lie with him and not talk at all, just listen to him breathe.

  Doug strides into the foyer. Even something as simple as entering a room, he stands out. Chloe notices someone else, though, at his side. A petite woman with streaks of honey-blonde highlights. Chloe knew about this. She knew his wife would be here tonight. It’s the first time she’s seen Emily since the woman insulted her purse. Chloe was even planning to make a joke about purses, to lighten things up, but Emily doesn’t look right. There’s something different about her body, about her stomach. Her shirt stretches like a sling around some low-hanging roundness.

  Chloe’s palms grow hot and twitchy. It always starts in her hands, the shame.

  There’ve been hints. Words like eating for two and ultrasound have occasionally floated from the direction of Doug’s office, from Harper before she left. These words, though, they lingered only a moment in some ethereal, troubling form before dissolving back to nothingness.

  “What’s this?” asks Emily, motioning to Chloe’s mask.

  “What’s this?” Chloe asks back and points to Emily’s belly.

  Doug puts his arm around his wife’s shoulders and points her in the direction of the door. “I think the party’s out back,” he says.

  “When are you due?” The question bursts from Chloe. She’s shouting. “When are you due?”

  Emily turns and lifts her chin. Her face looks haughty and confused, like she’s unaccustomed to being asked a direct question. “Excuse me?”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Okay, let’s get going,” says Doug. He grips his wife by the hips and tries pulling. She doesn’t move. She peers hard at Chloe, like she’s trying to see under her mask.

  “I know you,” she says.

  “Of course,” says Doug. “This is Chloe, my receptionist. I think she’s supposed to stay in character.”

  Emily looks at Chloe’s top, the beautiful black suede blouse with the three-quarter chiffon sleeves. Chloe can feel Emily expand, like she’s outraged and it’s making her grow in size. Emily looks from Chloe to Doug, from Doug back to Chloe. She points at Chloe’s shirt. “That’s Prada, isn’t it?”

  Doug gives an awkward chuckle. They’re all silent until Dr. Maryn appears in the doorway. She grimaces at the sight of Chloe and claps twice. “Performers in the backyard, please. What are those socks doing there?” She notices Doug’s wife and changes her tone back to gregarious. “Emily!”

  “Maryn!” says Doug’s wife. The two women hug. Dr. Maryn touches her belly.

  “Oh boy, you’re getting there!”

  Chloe can’t move. If she moves, she might dislodge whatever is holding back the churn and froth of her humiliation. You knew he was married, she says to herself. You knew he was married.

  Dr. Maryn turns to Chloe with a combination of glare and smile and speaks in elongated vowels. “Pick up those socks please, thank you.”

  Chloe glances to Doug for support. He pulls out his phone with a sudden industriousness. “Hold on; I have to deal with this,” he says and walks out the door. Chloe is now alone with the two older women. Dr. Maryn crosses her arms and edges closer to Doug’s wife. Chloe feels their eyes on her as she makes her way to the socks, as she bends to pick them up.

  “Here,” says Emily, coming toward her. “Let me help you with that.”

  It’s a trick. It has to be.

  “I got it,” Chloe says.

  She shoves past them to the outside. Doug is far away, on the other side of the driveway. She starts toward the backyard. The socks are in her hand. She tucks them under a rosemary bush, delighting at the thought of Dr. Maryn discovering them later. But then she realizes it’ll be the poor gardener, not that awful woman, who sees them. She scoops up the socks and tosses them high into an avocado tree. One lands on a branch. The other drops to the ground. She balls it up and throws it at a window.

  “What are you doing?”

  It’s Doug. He’s come up behind her. Chloe raises her arms and lets an old sense of mischief overtake her. “Unbound,” she says. “I am unbound.”

  Doug moves in close and speaks in a murmur. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t think about how hard this would be for you.”

  “You knew he was married,” she says in the same robot voice she used earlier.

  “What?”

  “You knew he was married.”

  “Are you performing right now?”

  Her life always comes back to this, this playing on a knife edge of terrible impulses. It used to scare her when she was a kid, the urge to grab the marker from the teacher and scribble profanities all over the dry-erase board. There was nothing stopping her, really, just another part of her same self: a flimsy force field forever threatening to give way.

  You knew he was married. Chloe stands on her tiptoes. You knew he was married.

  She steps up to Doug like she’s about to kiss him. She moves her mouth to his shoulder. She bites down. Hard. Doug hesitates at first. She feels him take a millisecond to understand what’s happening before his hands are on her throat, her chest. He shoves her. She lands on the ground. A thread of fabric is stuck in her teeth.

  “What the fuck!” He looks behind him to see if anyone is in view. “What the fuck!” He lifts his collar and moves his hand under his shirt. “I’m bleeding!” Chloe stays where she’s fallen. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He holds his shoulder as he steps over her.

  Chloe waits on the path. She doesn’t think of counting. She doesn’t think of breathing deeply. She hear
s laughter ahead of her. There’s a party happening. She moves toward it.

  The backyard is magic. There are so many lights, in all different styles, strung up between the trees: paper lanterns, stained glass, bent copper, and crystal chandeliers. They hover above like a thousand Tinkerbells, waiting for their cue. Waiting to spring to life.

  Chloe walks deeper into the party. Emily is to her left. She is standing near a firepit with several people, including Alonso, the choreographer. Chloe turns her back to them. They’re talking about her. They must be. Chloe’s life is over.

  She keeps walking. On her right, behind the bar, is Dylan, in a plague mask. He cuts up lemon slices. Sheralyn stands near an empty section of lounge chairs, in a spangled butterfly mask. She poses in a series of Hollywood affectations—fish lips, shoulder popped forward. Sheralyn then brings her hands to her head and hip like a pinup from the 1950s.

  Chloe turns from Sheralyn. She watches the partygoers. It’s grotesque, the scene around her. The people here are sharp, so sharp. They’ll cut you with their sharpness for the crime of stumbling into their territory.

  She notices a famous actress dead ahead, next to the pool, in an off-the-shoulder shirt and skintight, patterned pants. The woman is surrounded, protected by a semicircle of revelers. And she exudes no vanity, no self-regard. That’s what Sheralyn’s act is getting wrong. The celebrity in front of her is all about power.

  Chloe heads toward them. The members of the star’s entourage give Chloe the once-over and look to the actress, to see if they should let her come close. The movie star lifts her face to Chloe with a polite smile and says, “Hello.”

  Chloe doesn’t respond. Instead, she kneels. She sinks down to the woman’s feet and starts bowing in a cartoon version of prayerful devotion. This. This is what’s really going on. Chloe’s showing them all what they look like. And she forgets about biting Doug, forgets about his wife being pregnant, forgets about Alonso. Chloe focuses only on her play worship of this idol in front of her. She toys with the irony of it, letting in just enough emotion to make her supplication feel dangerous. Nonsense words come chanting out of her in a torrent of euphoria. This truth, this expression of it, it’s the only thing she’s ever wanted.

  The movie star lets out a bark of a laugh. “I get it,” she says in a dry tone. “Very funny.”

  There’s a splash in the pool behind the actress. The guests lift their heads in unison, like a herd of worried gazelle. Howie has stripped to his boxers and is shouting from the deep end, “Common Parlance proudly presents: synchronized swimming!” He raises both arms above his head in ballerina fifth position and sinks down.

  “Who is that?” the movie star asks her companions.

  A woman in a sequined Nehru collar motions to Chloe. “He’s with her.” The actress straightens her shoulders and sighs. Everyone goes quiet. Howie thrusts his legs above the water and points his toes before slapping them into a dolphin kick.

  “Maryn?” the actress calls across the yard. She darts her eyes in Chloe’s direction.

  Dr. Maryn speeds over and guides Chloe to her feet with a sweep of her arm. “Come with me, dear. Actually, let’s get all of you together. Would you mind gathering your friends at the front?”

  Chloe looks to the lounge chairs. Sheralyn is sprawled across a glass table, pretending to be passed out. Dylan is deep in conversation with a guy in a hoodie. Chloe tells Howie to get out of the pool.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “They’re kicking us out,” she says.

  Teresa, the maid, is waiting at the top of the driveway with their shoes. Chloe slips on her sandals and watches the valet guys sprinting up and down the street. She wishes she could trade places with them.

  “I told you it would be a disaster,” says Sheralyn.

  A valet pulls up with Dylan’s Honda. Dylan starts toward it but then stops. He scratches his beard. “Tonight was a message,” he says. “It’s working. We’re doing something right.”

  A round of laughter reaches them from the party, the place where they’re no longer welcome. Nothing is “working.” The people in there aren’t thinking about them at all.

  She hears a scream, a howl, from right next to her. It’s Howie. “Thirty-five!” he yells. He raises an arm and slaps the roof of Dylan’s car. “I’m thirty-five! And I have nothing!”

  The valet guys stop moving. Scattered partygoers stare. A valet pulls up with Howie’s car and parks behind Dylan’s.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Howie says.

  Dylan rushes to his side. “Get a drink with us. Let’s talk it out.”

  “Not now.” Howie hustles to his car and speeds away, fast and reckless.

  Chloe texts Doug:

  We got kicked out.

  She’s almost forgotten that she bit him. Her insides jumble and twist. She’s never seen him mad like that before. It feels like their first fight. It feels like a milestone. She texts him again.

  Sorry about earlier.

  The parking guy brings her car.

  “Will you come for a drink?” Dylan asks her.

  “I can’t,” says Chloe. She looks back at Sheralyn, who jerks her face away.

  Dylan follows her to her car door and puts his arm in front of the opening. He looks pained. There was a time when she thought Dylan was the way forward, that art was the way forward. The first time they met, he was performing at Echo Park Lake, not long after she’d been fired from Fefu Fornes. He and Sheralyn were in their masks, picnicking on a checkered blanket. Chloe watched them for a half hour as they ate and chatted and lay back and counted the clouds. It was like they were pantomiming relaxation while simultaneously relaxing. She sat down with them, thinking, This is real life. They offered her a deviled egg.

  Dylan leans in close. She can feel his breath on her cheek. “Come,” he says in a creaky whisper. “We need you.”

  Chloe shakes her head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to want anymore.” She slips into her car and thinks briefly, with a hit of longing, of Dr. Maryn’s husband, Stan. He gave her that kind look in the foyer. She checks her phone. Doug hasn’t texted back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DOUG

  Doug runs ahead of Emily into the house when they get home from Dr. Maryn’s party. He hurries to the master bath and examines his shoulder in the mirror.

  Emily knocks on the door. “Doug?”

  “Be out in a second.” He runs his finger along the top arch of tiny bruises. The teeth marks are unmistakable.

  “Why won’t you let me see it?”

  He told her he walked into a tree branch. “Where are the Band-Aids?”

  “Look in the second drawer. My side.” She tries the door handle. “You locked it?”

  He covers the bite with three slim bandages. Emily sits up in bed as he slips from the bathroom and grabs a white T-shirt from his top drawer. Her boobs are bigger now. They rise up out the top of her maternity negligee. He crawls next to her, kisses her cleavage, and waits for her to start an argument.

  He screwed up. Chloe’s group was a fiasco.

  “You’re so great at parties,” he says. “I love that I never have to worry about you socially.”

  Emily’s top lip curls. She sips from the water glass on her nightstand. “Do you mind sleeping in the guest room?”

  He puts a hand on her thigh. It’s incredible how tight her quads are. If it weren’t for her stomach, you’d never know she was pregnant. “Of course I’d mind,” he says. She moves her leg from his grasp. She has a right to be mad. Jesus, he’s been wasting his time on Chloe: a girl with zero discipline. She doesn’t know how to behave. He reaches his arm around Emily’s waist. “You’re too big!” he says. “I can’t reach the other side!”

  Emily sighs. “I want to sleep,” she says. “I want to be alone. Who is going into the guest room, you or me?”

  If he hadn’t been assaulted earlier. If he hadn’t been unnerved by the way Chloe snarled, she actually snarled, before sinki
ng her teeth in his shoulder, he’d be cajoling his wife into a good mood right now. He’d be under the covers with her, and they’d be talking shit about everyone from the party. Their usual routine.

  “I’m sorry, Em.”

  “Okay.”

  He hugs a pillow to his chest and starts out of the room. He stops at the top of the stairs. Emily warned him about Chloe months ago, when he introduced them. Oh Jesus. He needs his wife. She’s the one who makes them work. He trots back to the bedroom. She moves quickly, hiding her phone under the covers.

  “I need you on my team, babe. Are we a team?”

  “Whatever, I’m just not feeling well.”

  The guest room is musty. Lonely. Cold. The bed looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. Doug plugs his phone charger into the open outlet and blows on the thin layer of dust covering the dresser. His phone chimes. And chimes again. He mutes the volume as a third text from Chloe comes in:

  Please tell me you’re okay.

  Please don’t be mad at me.

  I have anger issues, but I’m dealing with them!

  He rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Suggesting Chloe’s group seemed like a perfect solution after they were spotted in the Uber. It all fell into place, with Stan asking him for help finding new entertainment. Doug has always been a sucker for serendipity.

  But Chloe is an embarrassment. The whole lot of them. How could they not do a terrible job? They’re . . . he hates even to think the word because he believes that anyone can improve, that no one is hopeless.

  But Chloe and her friends are losers.

  He swipes his phone to the home screen. Another text from her.

  I’m really stressed out.

  Of course she is. She can’t manage her life. People like that are in constant misery. Still, he has an impulse to text her back. To tell her not to worry.

  But no, he thinks. No.

  You can’t go off half-cocked and start feeling sorry for everyone. You’ll get annihilated. Empathy is a tool, not a personality trait.