The Receptionist

by Kate Myles

“Are you sure you don’t want food?” he asks.

  Emily doesn’t answer. She moves slowly, stirring milk into her iced coffee. She reaches into her purse and unpeels two Tums from their paper tubing. The waiter raises his eyebrows at Chloe. Chloe shakes her head.

  Emily doesn’t look up until the waiter is gone. When she does, she seems defeated. “Chloe, we’re the same. We’re both in a bad situation.”

  Chloe inhales. She wishes it were more satisfying, seeing this woman just a little bit weaker.

  “Doug is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Emily says. “He’s a criminal, Chloe. He took over my life. You know, I’m actually jealous of you?”

  Chloe brings a hand to her mouth. This is her problem! Women are jealous of her. “No one ever admits that,” she says.

  “You’re young enough to start over! I know it doesn’t seem that way, but Chloe . . .” Emily looks off to the side and lets her eyes scan her surroundings, like she’s searching for a way to express herself. “You’re really fucking talented. I mean, you’re electric.”

  Chloe tilts her head to the side. What Emily’s saying, it’s like the intro to a song Chloe only half recognizes.

  “When you started bowing in front of that actress, I was thinking, this girl is fearless.”

  Sometimes Chloe forgets why she came to LA, that she wanted to dance, to be an artist. “We got kicked out.”

  Emily offers a sigh. “People are so uptight.”

  Chloe pauses. She considers. It’s a risk, what she wants to ask. “Did you know that guy?”

  “Who?”

  “The one you were talking to at the firepit.”

  Emily throws her head back with a gentle laugh. Her eyes settle on Chloe’s face. Her voice is empathetic. “You want to know if he told me about the stage manager?”

  Chloe’s muscles loosen their grip on themselves. It’s like she’s defrosting. This thing was so secret, the fact of what happened, how she lost it. The memory begins trickling through her, becoming part of her again.

  “Why did you attack that woman?” asks Emily.

  “I got mad,” Chloe says.

  Emily nods. She understands.

  “I get so mad, sometimes,” Chloe says. She brings the inside of her thumb to her mouth and chews.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re not—I was raised by my grandparents.”

  “Can you call them?”

  Call them. Emily Webb has no idea. Chloe picks up a paper napkin. She starts shredding it. Emily doesn’t seem that terrible anymore.

  “I keep thinking about this man,” Chloe says. “At Doug’s office. He was wearing a jumpsuit, like he was a maintenance guy. I’d never seen him before, but he kept walking by my desk and, like, staring me down. At one point, he pointed down the hall to Doug’s door and said, ‘Whose office is that?’ I said, ‘Doug Markham’s.’ Then he said, ‘Who? Who?’ He kept making me repeat Doug’s name.”

  Emily doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. “Doug hired him to intimidate you,” she says.

  “You know this?”

  “I know how these things work.”

  A stream of relief courses up Chloe’s body, just under the surface of her skin. Emily reaches into her tote and hands Chloe a packet of tissues. Chloe never carries tissues. Her purse is filled with junk. She wipes her eyes.

  “You can’t let people treat you like that,” says Emily.

  “But how do I do that?”

  It’s so easy for Emily, for everyone here, living their lives without predation. Why can’t Chloe be like them? She watches a muscular waitress deliver drinks across the dining room. Someone at the table says something to make her smile.

  “Look at me!” Emily bobs her head to get Chloe’s gaze back in line with her own. She taps her finger on the table with an urgent voice. “You have a moral obligation to protect yourself. You let yourself take these hits, right? And you think if you keep your eyes open, see it all happen, you think you can handle it, but it doesn’t work like that. You get twisted inside, and the worst part is that you watch that happen too. You watch yourself turn horrible.”

  Can you read my mind? Chloe searches Emily’s face. There’s a flicker of a response. A pulse. A pixilation.

  “Tell me what to do,” Chloe says.

  “Fight back.”

  “That just gets me in trouble.”

  Emily reaches across the table. She puts her hand on Chloe’s arm.

  “You won’t get into trouble if you’re calm,” says Emily.

  Chloe nods.

  “I can’t be your friend unless you’re calm. You understand?”

  “I think so.”

  Emily’s eyes crinkle. It’s the first time Chloe’s seen anything resembling happiness on the woman’s face. And the part of Chloe that once would have said, Don’t trust this woman. Get away from this woman, it sounds only the faintest warning, a light pluck on some faraway string Chloe barely picks up over her ache and loneliness. “Did you hear that?” she wants to ask, but she doesn’t. It’s not something a calm person would say.

  “Emily, can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you ever have a dog?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  EMILY

  I wanted Doug tortured. I wanted him pinned to the wall with a pitchfork. Whatever reservations I’d had were gone. Doug deserved to die.

  My upper lip curled, involuntarily, as Chloe searched my face. She sat back with a satisfied smile. She was sharper than I’d realized. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said, her tone innocent and caring. “It’s just that when he told me about sending it back, it was weird. It didn’t feel right.”

  I reached for my phone. Bella was back from the dead. I wanted to call the breeder immediately, find out where she was. But I stopped myself. I dug into my purse for more Tums, giving myself a moment to think, to recognize the opportunity Chloe had just handed me. I was so close to earning her trust.

  “Her name is Bella,” I said, my voice breaking.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He made me think I’d killed her.” I kept wincing, tasting bitterness. I looked Chloe in the eye, in a careful display of my pain. “He helped me put up posters.”

  “He’s a bastard,” she said.

  “It’s the lies,” I said. “If someone can lie like he does, what else is he capable of?”

  “Do you think he really stole all that data? Like Dr. Maryn said?”

  I sat back and shook my head, closing in on myself. “I can’t talk about it.” She leaned forward. I glanced around, assessing the other people in the diner, and lowered my voice. “You know Doug. He acts like this fun-loving, laid-back guy, right? But he’s not. When it comes to his business, he’s deadly fucking serious.”

  Chloe gave a slow, glassy-eyed nod. “I know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her face was losing some of its color. “Have you ever stared power in the face?”

  I held my breath and kept still.

  “The strangest things happen when you bump up against it,” she said. “You become desperate. Like you want to escape or fight back, but there’s nowhere to go. I mean, the people in the office. They would say the worst, sneakiest things, or they’d ignore me or look at me so mean, and I just had to take it. I couldn’t defend myself.” Her eyes filled. She pressed her fingers flat against her lips and whispered, “It felt like they were going to kill me.”

  “Doug did that to you,” I said.

  The waiter sauntered up to the table. “You ladies want anything else?” His voice was loud and smug, taking pleasure in interrupting our intimate moment. The gnat. The fly. I pointed behind the counter and spoke firmly. “Go over there and come back when we call you.”

  Chloe watched the waiter walk away and turned to me, beaming. “How did you do that?”

  “You’ll see,” I said. I pulled the two burner phones I’d bought from my purse. They were flip phones, with no GPS trac
king. “Do you know how to text on a numeric keyboard?”

  “You’re giving me a phone?”

  “Doug and I share a Verizon account. He checks who’s calling me.”

  She opened one of the phones. “You want to stay in touch with me?”

  “Of course!” I touched her arm again. I wrapped my fingers around it. She put her hand on top of mine.

  “My God, you’re so skinny,” I said. “When was the last time you ate?” I raised my other hand for the waiter to come back.

  I waited until Chloe started in on her burger before excusing myself to make a phone call. I stepped out to the sidewalk and called the breeder. She answered in a sleepy voice. It was after 10:00 p.m. I didn’t care that I’d woken her.

  “This is Emily Webb,” I said. “You sold me a Doberman about two years ago?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The dog, Bella. I just learned that she was returned to you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Emily Webb. I think my husband gave you back my dog.”

  There was silence on the line. The breeder spoke in hushed tones with someone else, another woman.

  “This was the nervous pup, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, my chest tightening. I wanted to scream, Tell me where she is! “Bella. You took her back?”

  The woman blew out a long stream of air. It felt like she was blowing right into my ear. “I took her back,” she said. “And then I couldn’t get rid of her.”

  I covered my mouth, suppressing a moan, and doubled over. I could barely get the next words out. “Is she dead?”

  “Oh Lord, no,” said the breeder. “What kind of operation do you think I’m running? She’s out at the ranch. My daughter’s fostering the rejects.”

  I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I started crying. “I want her back,” I said. “I’ll pay you anything.”

  “All right,” said the breeder. “Take it easy. Just tell me when you want to come get her.”

  I swallowed. I couldn’t do it, not right away. I couldn’t let Doug know that I knew. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Can you hold on to her? For a few weeks?”

  “Okay, wait a minute.” The breeder started talking again to the woman in the room with her. She came back on. “We can do that.”

  “I’ll pay for her food in the meantime.”

  “Hold on a second.”

  The woman in the room with the breeder spoke louder, more insistently. I heard her say, “You have to tell her.”

  “Okay . . . okay,” said the breeder. Her tone was strained and polite. She was hiding something. “Hold for just one more second.”

  The phone went mute. I watched the traffic on Sunset, there was confusion at the spot where the lanes split, half of them leading to the southbound freeway, the other half going straight ahead. Every minute or so a random driver would find themselves stuck in the wrong lane and block traffic as they tried to right their error.

  The phone unmuted. A different voice came on, a deeper, more confident one. “Emily? That’s your name?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Your husband is Doug?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re still married?”

  I gave a laugh. “Let me guess,” I said. “He had an affair?”

  The woman didn’t speak for a moment. “You should know we don’t normally let people return dogs,” she said. “We made an exception because he told us you were dead.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  DOUG

  Doug dims the lights in the living room. Grace is asleep in her swing. He wanders into the kitchen and opens the cabinet again. He stares at the baking powder. Just one more hit of coke. But it’s late. He’ll be up all night if he does that. There’s a couple of Vicodin in the medicine cabinet, but he doesn’t trust himself with that either. Not while he’s in charge of Grace.

  He pulls a Lalique rocks glass out of the lower cabinet. It’s heavy and reassuring, carved to resemble a Grecian urn. He pours himself three fingers of Blanton’s and brings his drink to the balcony.

  What is the point of you? That’s what Emily said.

  Sometimes the point is just this. A drink on a back deck with a nice ocean view. There are worse things to organize a life around. He sits on the lounger and stretches out. The ocean gives him a hint, a sizzle, of stillness. He puts his drink down and listens. That was such a strange thing that happened to him, all those years ago when he was about to get kicked out of college. Like the sea was talking to him.

  He hears a chirp. Then a chime. He sits up. He looks out into the darkness, confused. What kind of bird or being would make such a noise? He hears them again. He can’t place the sounds, until he realizes they’re not from the natural world. They’re coming from inside the house. Two different devices, his phone and laptop, are sounding the same alarm. He looks back. His laptop is open on the breakfast bar, push notification after push notification rolling down his screen. He picks up his bourbon and sips.

  There’s only one app allowed to chime on his laptop. Google Alerts. The tones mean his name has appeared somewhere on the internet. He hears them again. His name is popping up all over. He sips his drink.

  The garage gate rumbles above. He puts his hands over his ears. But he can still hear Emily’s car pull in. The thud of her door slamming. He can’t hear her footsteps over the waves, but he knows she’s checking the baby’s room and wondering at the empty crib.

  His phone and computer sound off again.

  “Doug?” she calls from the top of the stairs. He reflexively starts responding, Down here, but stops himself. He has fifteen, maybe twenty seconds before she comes down. He wants those moments to himself.

  “Doug,” she says. She’s leaning out the sliding glass door with her feet still in the living room. She waves her phone at him. “Have you seen it yet?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  EMILY

  Doug acted like he couldn’t hear me, like he was in a trance. His phone was vibrating on the counter. “Doug,” I repeated, louder. “Come inside.”

  He puffed up his cheeks and let the air flap through his lips and walked to the balcony railing. He had a crystal glass in his hand, an expensive family heirloom. He lifted it over the edge and let it go, let it fall to the beach.

  “Dr. Maryn dropped the video,” I said.

  He looked back at me with one raised eyebrow. “No kidding.”

  “Come.”

  I led him to the breakfast bar and sat him on a stool. He opened his browser.

  “Go to YouTube,” I said. The thumbnail was clickbaity: a woman running away from the camera. The title read, GOTCHA! A NEW SHOW FROM DR. MARYN . . . Doug clicked on it and was met with the smash of a gong and trumpets as the video player flashed fat white lettering against a rippling blue background.

  THIS FALL . . . DR. MARYN . . . TAKES ON THE PARASITES . . . THE DEADBEATS . . . THE SWINDLERS.

  Sound effects of scraping metal and crashing cymbals punctuated clip after clip of Dr. Maryn ambushing people in business suits, pencil skirts, and hard hats. Timpani drums rolled in, tribal and unrelenting, as a lady in an evening gown escaped through a parking lot, screaming, “Shred the file! Shred the file!” A man in a yellow vest hid his face behind a traffic cone.

  Finally, Doug’s promotional video, the data animation with its swirling digital shadow humans, began playing. He leaned toward his computer, his eyes close to the screen, like he was searching the computer’s innards. Erik’s voice came in low and penitent over the footage. “I gave him a new hard drive every two weeks.”

  Doug gasped when he saw Harper, her curls filling the frame. She looked into the camera with sincere, sorrowful eyes. “He told me to delete everything.”

  “Bitch,” Doug whispered.

  The giant text was back now, propelling outward in 3D motion, each phrase given its own hit on the snare.

  THE ONE THING . . . YOU DON’T DO . . . IS MESS . . . WITH DR. MARYN.

&
nbsp; Doug covered his mouth as he watched Dr. Maryn storm his office, the video cutting to shots of his alarmed employees and then back to Dr. Maryn with an outraged hand in the air.

  “You betrayed my trust!” she shouted. “You stole my data!”

  The video cut to a close-up of Doug, his Adam’s apple pumping, his eyes darting straight into the camera lens. He shook his finger at the screen. “No,” he said. “I only looked at the camera once, right when I came into the office.” He hit the space bar, pausing the video, and looked at me, incredulous. “She rearranged the footage.”

  I stared at him, narrowing my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “They do that in television.”

  Doug hit the space bar again to reveal another shot of Dr. Maryn planting her hands on her hips, triumphant and furious. The drums beat faster. Then Doug was back on camera, panting. He was panting. The video ended with a flourish, with the word GOTCHA! spun from a small, faraway font to chunky and full screen.

  Doug jumped up, toppling the stool. “What about the part where I told them to get the fuck out of my office! Why didn’t they show that?”

  I laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “Em, this isn’t what happened.” He leaned over his laptop and typed twitter into the address bar.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The video was doctored.”

  “You’re pissed they didn’t show you swearing?”

  He ignored me and logged onto Twitter, reactivating his account and breathing hard through his nostrils. I watched him, wondering if I should let him publicly implode. I’d be able to point at him finally, turn to some shadow audience, and say, Do you see what I’ve had to put up with?

  He clicked on the What’s Happening box and started punching out the words, Totally fake video . . . I put my hands over his and squeezed his fingers.

  “Stop,” I said.

  “They edited it to make me look scared!”

  “And tweeting about it will make you look crazy. We need to hire a crisis-management firm.” Doug tried to free himself from my grip. I held his hands tighter. “No typing,” I said.

  “Fuck this!” he yelled and tore away.

  “Quiet,” I said. “You’ll wake her.” I glanced at Grace, asleep in her fuzzy swing, her little fist pressed to her ear. Every minute it was becoming clearer: I needed to save her from her father.