In Service To The Billionaire (2 page)

For her first day, she decided to dress professionally, wearing a tight dark sweater over a white blouse, the collars gliding against her neck, with a conservative pair of dark pants. Brief, black heels were on her feet.

It was, she hoped, a good outfit for a young professional like herself—just twenty-two and fresh out of college—and a good outfit for someone who didn’t want to be a personal assistant for the rest of her life.

“I’m already good at this, so promote me to do something better.” This was the message she hoped to send.

Her car was in the shop, and had been for two weeks now. They kept finding new pieces to fix—or, as she suspected, kept inventing new problems to solve.

So she took the bus.

It was deep into fall outside, the weather still deciding whether it wanted to be sunny and cool or cloudy and chilly.

She noticed that her form, even as professionally dressed as she was, drew a lot of long looks from the men on the bus. Sophia was mostly aware of the effect she seemed to have on men, and did her best to try and downplay it.

Men always thought she had it so easy, being a woman and being attractive, but it wasn’t like that at all. Her fiancé (or was it ex-fiancé? God, if she only knew) certainly gave her shit about it often enough. Mostly, he seemed to think that her ability to occasionally get free drinks meant a free ride through life. That was hardly the case.

Men took her less seriously because she was so eminently fuckable and all they thought of when she was around were her tanned legs, or her tits, or the dark coiled mass of her hair. Women thought either she was a ditz, or had slept her way up, or was expecting to receive special favors because she was attractive.

At least, that’s how it had been at college. It took four long years to dispel that myth from her colleagues and her professors through her dogged determination to get the best grades she could, and now all that progress might as well have been sucked into a black hole.

This all wasn't to say that she thought it was any better for any other type of woman, really. A less attractive woman would have to fight past most men’s barriers of thinking less attractive ladies were worth less of their attention. A plain woman would be thought of as boring and not worth paying attention to. A woman's way was, too often, a bit of a rocky ride no matter what.

Of course, being desirable had its advantages. There was no disputing that, especially not in the business world where everything was about presentation.

The entire divide between “attractive” and “not” had never made sense to Sophia, very much. What attracted her to someone was typically not physical at all, but mental. A state of mind that said, “Yes. I own this situation. I own you.”

She let herself daydream about someone with such a state of mind as the bus went on its way. She imagined a man having it—though she certainly had her bisexual proclivities—a strong man, tall and handsome, perhaps, who commanded entire stadiums with his presence.

Her sweetheart Todd was such a man, in many ways. He was commanding and strong, and always knew what he wanted to do next. It was rapturous at times to be caught up in the waves of decisions he laid out—decisions that came as easily to him as breathing.

Everything about making decisions made Sophia sick, most of the time.

But, for whatever reason, Todd wasn't the same way in the bedroom. When she had brought up, hesitantly and full of doubt, her needs in the bedroom, he had been...cruel afterward.

Once, when his friends were over at their tiny apartment, she had offered to go and grab everyone some sandwiches.

“Be careful you don't give her too many orders, guys,” he had said, after one too many beers. “She might fall in love with you.”

Of course, he apologized later. He was just drunk, he said. But still...it nagged at Sophia. That was hardly the only snide comment she had received.

But still, Todd was generally a sweetheart—always he was bringing her small cards and presents for little anniversaries they had. And, he was just desperately cute—with his scraggly, curly brown hair and soft hazel eyes, and she loved him dearly. Every day he was gone chipped away at her heart—after forty-five days of no communication, it would still be another month and a half to go before he would let her know if he had made up his mind about their marriage.

The marriage
he
had proposed to her for, a small part of her mind brought up bitterly.

She took a deep breath, clearing her head. The bus stopped at Sixth and Post, where she stepped off. Her office was inside the tallest building in the city, the Johnson Chrome Building, on the top floor.

She did not know much about the business of Sand Enterprises. It had something to do with oil and investments and software. It was sort of a combination of many things, with its tendrils in several lucrative pots all at once.

Her new employer had delivered a thick packet to her on Friday, and she had skimmed through it. But, like college had been, Sophia assumed she was smart enough to sort of skate through the first few days and then supplement her knowledge with the reading material as she progressed. She had the packet in her bag, though, just in case.

The expensive, shiny-tiled lobby inside the building was all busy-busy. She noticed women dressed like herself—women with power haircuts and horn-rimmed glasses who seemed to have important jobs that needed lots of important attention—and was pleased with her wardrobe. 

Everyone was in a rush. Sophia had to take a moment to familiarize herself with the layout—there were three different sets of elevators, all going to specific ranges of floors. Her floor was the sixtieth.

Inside the golden elevator, she was alone, free to close her eyes and try not to think about how very high up she was going. Heights didn’t give her trouble, but anyone traveling more than five hundred feet up had to start considering the long fall down.

The elevator doors opened right into the office of Sand Enterprises. She stepped out and was immediately greeted by a matronly redheaded woman behind a blue, circular receptionist’s desk.

“Hello!” she said with a smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” said Sophia. “I’m starting my new job today.” She shrugged. “I’m uh, not quite sure what to do or where to go!”

She put on what she hoped was a disarming smile. The receptionist reacted warmly, standing up.

“You must be Sophia.”

“That’s me. Hi. Are you Julie?”

They had talked on the phone. Julie had been the one, in fact, to inform Sophia that she had gotten the job.

“I am!”

Sophia liked Julie immediately. From the just-put-together bun of her hair, the easily-worn lines on her face from her smiles, and the casual crocs she had on her feet, everything about her bespoke a sort of hearth-like comfort. She walked around the desk to shake Sophia’s hand. Her grip, while firm, was softened by comfortably well-moisturized hands.

“It’s so nice to meet you, dear. We’re so glad for the help. Mr. Sand is very happy to have someone besides poor old me doing all his work for him.”

“Oh, I see,” said Sophia, wanting to make sure that she actually did see. “I’m splitting your work up?”

Julie smiled and shook her head. “Not at all. He had a personal assistant a while back, but she took maternity leave, and then decided to quit to raise the child. He offered to pay for daycare and so on, he can be so generous like that, but nothing doing!” She laughed. “In any case, we’ve been scrambling around trying to find someone to fill the gap ever since.”

“So I am...I'm going to be the personal assistant to Gerald Sand?”

Pangs of anxiety suddenly attacked Sophia’s heart. No way.

“Yes, dear.”

“Gerald Sand, the billionaire Gerald Sand?”

“Of course, dear. Didn't they tell you?”

Slowly, Sophia shook her head.

“Oh my. Well,” Julie shrugged. “You know now, don't you?”

With wide eyes, Sophia nodded. “May I ask...how long ago was it? That the old personal assistant left?”

“Oh dear.” She put a finger to her mouth. “Something like six months ago, I suppose?”

Sophia raised an eyebrow in surprise as Julie beckoned for her to follow. They moved through the office at a reasonable clip, Julie calling out various segments of the office as they went—accounting, sales, site management, and so on.

What Julie wasn’t saying, Sophia got the feeling, was that Sophia was not the first personal assistant trying to do this job. Six months was too long of a time for her to be the very first person to have applied—too long for her to even be the second or third person to have been given a chance!

How long did it take Sand to decide that someone was any good or not? Weeks? Days?

Her thoughts latched on, instantly, to the barely-touched packet of information stashed in her bag that had apparently been critical for her to know.

Okay, she resolved. Read the whole packet tonight. Keep. This. Job!

She had no choice, really. She
needed
this job—to get rid of her debt, to start her in the professional world, to prove to herself that she could hang in a setting that wasn't academic—for an endless list of reasons, she needed to do well here. Her whole life needed it.

They approached steadily toward something that seemed unreal in the brisk business-oriented affairs of the office—a sort of black dome in the back-center of the whole open floor. In its front was a small door—a tall man would have to duck under the frame—and a simple nameplate, reading “Sand.”

“Your desk is here,” said Julie, stopping in front of the dome.

The desk was a small thing, maybe four feet across with two feet of depth. Not room for anything but a small tablet with an even smaller keyboard—placed there already—and an in/out box that was already overflowing with papers.

“As you can see, there’s quite a bit for you to catch up on.” Julie patted her on the shoulder. “Later on, I’ll make sure to show you how to enter everything into the database properly.”

Right behind her desk was the ominous dark cloud of Mr. Sand’s office. Sophia had to take a long, slow gulp just from looking at it. Her mind was still reeling from the fact of being the personal assistant to a billionaire. It reeled even more from the eccentric nature of his office.

Sand’s office was like an enormous opaque hemisphere inside the middle of the office. Sophia quickly reasoned that he could look out at any angle, and thanks to the tint of the windows, no one could look in. And still, no one was placed behind him, exactly, as he was in the very rear. Everyone was either just to the side or in front. It was the size of an entire floor of a lesser building all by itself, almost, taking up half the space of the floor they were on now.

“Come on,” said Julie. “I’ll show you around before we meet the big man.”

She led Sophia around to meet the other members of the small office—accounting, led by Bill and Carla; filing, led by Morgan and Kerri; sales, led by Fernando and Trent.

Everyone was very friendly. Sophia began to feel some measure of confidence as the day progressed and she met more people. But still, the way that everyone held such nervous caution in their eyes when she brought up the idea of being Sand’s assistant gripped her strangely.

She heard over and over: “Oh,
you’re
going to work with him?”

Or: “He’s certainly a
particular
man.”

Or: “I do
hope
it all works out.”

Not exactly heartening messages for the new employee to take with her! She felt like a soldier thrust into the front lines, all the lieutenants and captains chuckling behind her as she was tossed out into No Man’s Land.

Julie walked Sophia back to her desk in the maze-like office, and then suddenly, the door to Sand’s office opened.

“Coffee!” he demanded.

The door slammed. Sophia barely got a look at him—a suit and a dash of blond hair, and that was all.

Putting on a warm smile, Julie led Sophia over to the break room. There was a large black refrigerator built into the wall. All the appliances were, as a matter of fact—microwave, a toaster oven, a juicer and a sink, all intricate inlaid to match the dark, futuristically shiny surface of the small room.

“You seem nervous, dear,” said Julie.

Sophia nodded, smiling. “I am a bit.”

“Try to hide it, if you can. He doesn’t...respond well, to nervousness. He takes it as a sign of incompetence.”

Sophia half-smiled, half-frowned. “I appreciate you trying to help, but...that sort of just makes me more nervous.”

Julie gave her a knowing look. “Just imagine if you heard that from him instead of me.”

“Right,” said Sophia, beginning her search through the drawers for a cup. “Good point.”

Julie leaned in and opened the shelf behind Sophia, pulling out a plain black mug.

“This is his. Wash it regularly. He takes three cups a day, four hours apart.”

“He works twelve hour days?”

“Yes, dear. And from now on, you work twelve hour days, unless he sends you home early.”

Sophia’s eyes were a bit wide. “Right.”

Sheesh, she thought. No wonder the guy was a billionaire.

Julie held up a metal pitcher with an odd plunger inside of it.

“Do you know how to work a French press?”

“No,” said Sophia quickly. “Once, I learned how to work a Russian one, but that was a long time ago and I was a bit drunk.”

Julie looked puzzled. “A Russian press?”

Sophia grimaced. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

“Ah. I’ve had my share.” Julie smiled now, laughing a bit. “’Russian press.’ Of course.”

Over the course of the next ten minutes, Julie showed her the process of adding the grind, the water, and setting the temperature just right. It was not so hard—and made much better-smelling coffee than what Sophia was used to.

“Can you take it from here?”

“Yes,” said Sophia, hands on her hips. “Yes. I can make his coffee, at least.”

Julie smiled and left her to it.

Within short order, Sophia was walking across the office with the coffee in her hand, careful not spill a drop.