The Receptionist

by Kate Myles

  “Emily, please,” Chloe says. “That baby, from the dumpster. You felt guilty your whole life.”

  Emily digs her nails into Chloe’s skin. “If you’re not on my side,” Emily says, “I can’t be on yours.”

  Finally. There’s the threat. It’s been lurking in Emily the whole time. There’s a small piece of Chloe that feels gratified. It’s like a gift Chloe has, the way she makes people reveal the worst of themselves.

  Chloe lowers her head. She picks up the duct tape and slivers her fingernail under the edge. She rips off a ribbon.

  “Shhh!”

  “Sorry.”

  Chloe peels more slowly. She cuts the tape with her teeth and hands Emily the pieces.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  DOUG

  Doug sits up in bed and wonders where his wife is. It’s 3:00 a.m. She’s been out all night. He walks across the hall to Grace’s room. The baby is sleeping soundly at least. He stands there a moment, listening to her breathe.

  Emily is gone all the time now. In the mornings, at night. She doesn’t even have a job. Well, not one she can go back to. The nanny is raising their daughter. Doug’s been arguing that they should let the nanny go, that they have to save money. But Emily says they may as well spend while they have it, before they’re sued for everything. She’s right. Plus, there’s all that offshore money. They’ll be okay once things die down and they can safely access the funds.

  He’s been on a buying spree himself, flying to shops in Nevada and Arizona, paying cash for watches—Rolex, Patek Phillipe—portable and with high resale values. At first he would fly them down to his parents’ house. But his dad said it made him uncomfortable, being a storehouse for his son’s loot.

  His dad. His wife. He can’t trust anyone anymore. His last client left him today.

  Doug walks down to the living room. He sits on a stool at the breakfast bar and holds his cell phone in front of his face. He takes a picture. He doesn’t look right in the photo. It’s not a question of aging, really. Something seedy has crept into his expression. Into his eyes. He first noticed it on a watch-shopping trip to Scottsdale, when he took a selfie for a local hookup app. Doug scrolls through his recent images. He’s shifty, a guilty man in all of them.

  He opens his texts. He wants to message Emily. Ask where the hell she is. But her phone is tucked under the mattress upstairs. And he needs her. He needs the money she transferred to her Nauru account.

  Doug hangs his head and covers the back of his neck with his hand. Why did he let Emily take his money? She exploited him. She caught him at a vulnerable moment. All this time, he assumed she had some humanity in her. That was where they met, he thought, at the intersection of their desires to be good people.

  He turns and gazes out the sliding glass door. It’s windy. Before, whenever he imagined getting caught, he pictured terrible scenes. Every moment filled with drama. He didn’t realize how tedious the whole thing would be. Waiting to hear his fate. He can’t sit still. He can’t move on. Maybe that’s what jail is like.

  Doug lifts his phone once more to eye level and turns the camera on. He relaxes his face into an unassuming smile and tries to clear his mind of everything but sweetness. He thinks of puppies. Innocence. He takes a picture. He looks deranged in this one.

  He shouldn’t be on a hookup app anyway. All it would take would be one screenshot. He’s had enough bad press. And Emily. She’s such an operator. She’d find a way to use it against him. He doesn’t trust her anymore. She’s planning something. The way she’s been looking at him lately. Like he’s a specimen.

  It’s not that he’s in denial. He knows what he did. He stole Dr. Maryn’s data. He sold it. Emily didn’t do that part. But she set it up for him. She tempted him, no matter how much she pretends she didn’t.

  He hears her car pull in and runs up to the bedroom. He pulls the covers to his chest.

  “You’re up,” she says when she comes in. Her face is calm. Her breath is unhurried. She takes off her puffy winter jacket and starts to hang it in the closet. But then she stops. She brings it to the laundry room. Doug hears her start the washer.

  They’ve stopped asking about each other’s whereabouts. Where were you? Why are you dressed like a Mossad agent? They don’t ask these sorts of questions anymore.

  She pauses in the bedroom door and watches him with a spark in her eyes, a burst of animosity, before her expression goes back to opaque.

  “I was just with Chloe,” she says.

  He studies her. Her skin. Her eyes. It’s clear now. He’s never known her. She’s only given him access to a set of honed behaviors. Maybe that’s all she is.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  EMILY

  If Doug hadn’t been awake at that moment, I’d have let it go, let him die in his plane thinking his death was random, an accident. But I wanted him to know, when it happened, that it was me.

  I moved to the foot of the bed and crossed my arms. “What did you do to my dog?”

  I saw fear on his face. It was all I wanted at this point, to be the cause of one small piece of his downfall, take some credit from Dr. Maryn.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Liar.”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You told the breeder I was dead.”

  He looked away.

  “You staged the scene.” He covered his face with his hands. “You left the gate open.” I kept on. I started pointing, accusing, screaming. “You made me think it was my fault! I thought I killed her!”

  He said nothing.

  “You’re a fucking monster.”

  “Jesus Christ!” He punched the comforter and swung his feet to the floor. “I’m a human being!” The tendons of his neck were bulging. He slapped the backs of his fingers against his palm. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? I had a business! I had hundreds of people depending on me. You, Grace, my employees. And their families and their fucking holidays, and all it took was five minutes. That bitch, your doctor, took five minutes to ruin everything! It’s like they couldn’t take that I wasn’t perfect. And they left. Do you know how much work that was? Being that guy that everyone wants to be, and I had to be that guy all the time. Convince everyone over and over again that I’m special because that’s all that’s allowed at the top. And I didn’t even want it! I didn’t!”

  He chopped the air with his hands like a conductor ending a symphony, the last of his cry reverberating into silence. I couldn’t help it. I smirked.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about being on top anymore,” I said.

  He whimpered and stretched his torso away from me, straining, uncomfortable. “What are we going to do about Grace?”

  I shrugged. Grace was better off, losing him before she formed any real memories. “So we’re breaking up?” I asked.

  “We hate each other,” he said.

  I nodded, conceding his point. He pulled a suitcase from the top shelf of the closet. I moved to the bed and watched him pack. He counted out seven T-shirts and seven pairs of underwear. Before he left, he sat next to me on the bed. He took my hand. I jerked it back, refusing him a parting ceremony.

  “Do you want to know where I’m going?”

  “Not really.”

  He reached for my hair then. I tried to move away, but he gripped a handful of it, immobilizing me. He pulled my head down and brought his face close. “If you steal my money, I’ll kill you.”

  I smiled at him.

  And then he was gone. I lay back on the bed fully clothed. I didn’t sleep. Grace woke at six thirty. The nanny arrived at eight.

  I pulled my phone out from under the corner of the mattress. There was a notification on the home screen, from my work calendar. In two hours, I was supposed to be on a conference call. It was Monday. My maternity leave was officially over.

  I texted Ron Faulman, the managing partner.

  Should I come in?

  You work here, don’t you?

  They were
going to inflict as much pain as possible, move me out of my office, to a cubicle probably, maybe a desk in the hallway. I’d have nothing to do: no clients, no assistant, no one speaking to me for as long as I could take it. I’d orchestrated one of these demotions years ago. I’d instructed the staff not to give the guy so much as a pen. I texted back:

  You win.

  I win?

  I give up.

  Give up what?

  I won’t make trouble.

  Call me.

  They put me right through. Ron was conciliatory. He didn’t want to be “punitive,” but they’d divvied up my clients. Dr. Maryn was staying with him. He offered a settlement, a lump sum for my current and future commissions, on the condition I never defend Doug in public, never write a book, never discuss Dr. Maryn with anyone. He offered less than I was worth, but it was still a ton of money. We made arrangements for our lawyers to start talking.

  After I hung up the phone, I lay back, stared out at the ocean, and laughed. So that was what I’d worked so hard for. A buyout. I’d spent my career aiming in one direction, and my reward landed like a canon shot from a completely different angle.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHLOE

  Chloe drives through Hollywood to Larchmont Village. There’s a restaurant hiring waitresses. They said to come at 4:00 p.m. She called them last night, before she became an accessory to murder. “Are you still hiring?” she asked.

  She turns onto Larchmont Boulevard and squints even though she’s wearing sunglasses. The harsh sun, the pavement: these things make her think of bubble gum melting onto her tires and sticking to her shoes. It makes her queasy, the daylight, like she no longer belongs here. But she wants to be a regular, daytime kind of a person. She wants to be normal. That’s the whole point of today.

  All she has to do is follow through, go to the interview, stick to the mundane, the handshakes and the nice to meet yous. Boring. If she can keep it boring, she has a chance.

  It’s 3:45. She scans the angled parking spots on Larchmont for an empty space. There is nothing. Chloe turns onto First Street. She turns onto Gower.

  “It’s only street parking.” That’s what the restaurant manager said when she talked to him. It’s 3:48. There’s plenty of time. And there are people everywhere. Sunny people. Sunny storefronts. Sunny sidewalks. Walking and talking. Chloe can be one of these folks again.

  She hears a rip. The sound of duct tape unspooling. The ripping is so loud. It’s as if she’s hearing it live, like it’s happening not in her mind but in the passenger seat of her car. “Shhh,” she says.

  The clock on her dash turns to 3:51. She turns again onto First Street. She turns onto Gower. There’s a car in every space. She taps the steering wheel with her palm. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

  She turns onto Larchmont, and then Emily flickers through her thoughts, uninvited. She smiles at Chloe. She says, It’s done.

  No. Chloe focuses on the cars to her right. There are four of them, parallel parked. The second car’s rear lights come on. Chloe brakes. It’s 3:56. Chloe can do this. She can wait for the spot. She can run the two blocks to the restaurant. She pulls ahead. The car edges out and does a U-turn. Chloe puts her car in reverse, to back into the space, and looks over her shoulder. A red BMW noses into the spot. The driver is blonde and doesn’t make eye contact. Chloe gets out of her car.

  “Excuse me,” Chloe says.

  The woman raises her face to Chloe with a sulky look. She doesn’t roll down her window.

  “That’s my spot.”

  The woman offers a wan shake of her head. Chloe knocks on the window.

  “That’s my spot!”

  The woman motions for Chloe to move back and gets out of her car. She’s just a few feet away. Her expression is impassive. A scream rises inside Chloe, and she’s about to let it out. She’s about to kick the woman, about to slam her into the window, but she stops herself.

  Emily, Chloe thinks. Emily would wait.

  Chloe counts. By the time she gets to four, she’s calm. “Did you see my car?”

  “I’m parked here now,” says the woman.

  “I was backing up.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Chloe can feel people across the street, watching them. She can shame this woman. That’s something. She looks to the opposite sidewalk. There’s a bemused-looking tech type at a café table and an older couple who’ve paused their stroll. The couple jerk their heads forward and continue walking. The bemused guy keeps watching. Chloe points her finger an inch from the blonde driver’s face.

  “You don’t care?” she yells.

  The woman ducks away from Chloe’s hand and runs across the street. A car honks as it passes. Chloe’s driver’s side door is wide open, swinging into the road. She can still chase after the woman, knock her down, kick her in the face.

  But Emily wouldn’t do that.

  And it’s not like Chloe’s going to start acting like Emily now and meticulously planning murder in the first degree, but Emily has shown her something. Another way to be.

  Chloe composes herself and gets back into her car. It’s 4:04. She’s late. But she stays calm. She makes another loop. There’s an open spot as she turns back onto Larchmont, just a few feet away from the red BMW. It’s like that book, The Secret. The world is opening to her now that she does things like wait when she’s mad. She pays the meter with a dime and three nickels and walks toward the BMW. The café tables across the street are now empty.

  She fingers her keys. The ignition one is longer, but her apartment key is sharper. She grips it between her thumb and forefinger, and it’s amazing how she doesn’t feel angry at all right now. She’s composed, relaxed.

  She strides toward the BMW and scrapes her key along the length of it. She keeps an even pace and continues. She rounds the corner and waits. She counts to thirty. Then she saunters back. The scratch comes into view. It’s straight, a mix of pale yellow and pink.

  She checks her watch. It’s 4:15. It’s too late to become a waitress.

  Chloe is back in her car now. She has to think, to figure out what she’s going to do with the rest of her life now that she’s not going to be a waitress. She needs a friend. Who is a friend? Emily is a friend. But Emily is trying to kill someone. Emily is death. She’ll die if she sees Emily again.

  Dylan. Dylan has a crush on her. He lives in Echo Park in a house with uneven floors. Chloe drives there. She stands on the sidewalk outside Dylan’s front fence. She listens to his roommates on the other side. They sound happy. They’re playing music. She pulls the bungee on the wooden gate and opens it. The roommates are drinking beer in the patchy front yard, volleying a badminton birdie over a Ping-Pong table. They stop their game when they see her. They group together like they want to block her. Dylan’s not there, they tell her. They don’t elaborate.

  Chloe backs up. She says, “Okay, thanks,” and gives them a thumbs-up. Even though Dylan’s roommates are being rude and weird, Chloe is being calm. She is doing everything right.

  She leaves and sees a tree with roots breaking up the sidewalk. There is a chunk of cement, broken off, about the size of a shoe. Chloe picks it up. She walks back to Dylan’s gate. She throws it over the edge and hears it hit the Ping-Pong table. The guys in the yard go quiet.

  “Psycho,” Chloe hears one of them say before she runs away.

  Chloe is back in her car. Sheralyn. Chloe knows her forwarding address. She drives there, propelled by a desire for nothing more than to reach out, to get in touch with the people she knows. It’s a rational thing to want: connection.

  She takes Sunset. Santa Monica. Highland. Fountain. Sweetzer. A parking space is open right in front of Sheralyn’s new high-rise. See? There it is again. The world is already working in her favor. Chloe stands outside the apartment building’s front door and runs her finger down the silver-plated directory. She sees Sheralyn’s last name and dials her code on the intercom.

  “Hello?” co
mes Sheralyn’s voice.

  “It’s Chloe.”

  Sheralyn pauses before saying, “No.”

  Chloe presses the talk button. She can’t think of anything to say. She releases it.

  “—you hear me?” says Sheralyn. She’s yelling. “Just go.”

  Chloe peers through the glass door of Sheralyn’s building. There’s a carpeted hallway and an elevator off to the side. A professional-looking couple comes out of it. Chloe starts to scoot in as they open the door. The woman glances at Chloe a moment before she passes her, then stops. She spends a little more time looking at her.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “Can I help you?” Chloe mimics.

  The man is behind Chloe, outside. The woman is in front of her. He says, “Do you live here?” Chloe turns back. He’s tall and muscular. All he’ll have to do is grab her shoulder to stop her. She leaves. She gets in her car.

  There’s another place she can try. She doesn’t want to do this. She hates to, actually. She never thought it would come to this.

  She dials her grandpa. She listens to his phone ringing and imagines him making his way to his wall-mounted slimline, the violet one with the curlicue cord. She knows her grandpa only uses a cell phone now, but that old phone, she picked the color herself.

  He answers with a pause and a suspicious, “Chloe?”

  “Simon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know where to go.”

  “Chloe, slow down.”

  “I was with this guy. He was my boss, actually, and when he was done with me, he, like, drove me away. He got everyone in the company to rise up against me. But then the guy’s wife, and this is the really weird part, his wife and I started hanging out.”

  “Hold on,” says her grandpa.

  “But she’s trying to kill her husband.” Chloe’s throat catches. “But I’m good, Grandpa. I’m a good person.”

  There is silence on the line. Her grandpa blows air into the receiver.

  “I know you are, Chloe,” he finally says.