The Boss (3 page)

Jake frowned. "He didn't say. I don't think
we'll ever know the whole story."

No, we probably wouldn't. But that was no
excuse for me to start thinking well of Neil Elwood. "Canceling the
shoot is bullshit. That spread was your baby, and now this guy just
comes along and stabs it in the throat?"

Jake's frown deepened. "Ew."

Okay, maybe I should have left out the baby
stabbing. But I couldn't stand it if Jake turned Team Neil in one
day. I'd seen how everyone had gone from nervous about the fates of
their jobs to being charmed by their charismatic new boss within
seconds. It seemed unfair, and I was totally taking it
personally.

"I am leaving!" Cassidy, one of the copy
writers, pushed past us carrying a carton that appeared to hold her
entire desk.

"Whoa, Cass, what's wrong?" Jake caught her
as she stalked by, and she whirled on us. I can only assume she was
so full of venom that it had to go somewhere. The fact that we were
the ones who milked her fangs was just bad luck.

"I am not going to work for him! I came here
to work for Gabriella Winters." She lifted her chin a bit when she
said that holy name. "Where's the prestige in working for a
magazine owned by the same people who publish three major tabloids
and
All Woman Weekly
? That's a fat people magazine!"

Cassidy could drag "fat people" into several
syllables by extending the consonants. She said it like, "fffffffat
peopllllle," as though her rage over their very existence caused a
chronic speech impediment.

I thought of all the size twenty-eight
dresses hanging in my mom's closet at home, and I realized I
wouldn't miss Cassidy all that much.

But she did have one good point.
Porteras
wasn't just
a
fashion magazine, it was
the
fashion magazine. It
was
fashion, and what got
printed in its revered pages dictated what was worn by the Western
world. Would it still be respected and admired by the people who
mattered if it shared a parent company with magazines that paid top
dollar for paparazzi shots of pregnant celebrities in bikinis?

I went back to my desk and checked my
itinerary for the day. A lot of stuff got crossed off by virtue of
my boss not being my boss anymore. I wouldn't be driving
Gabriella's dog, Empress Catherine, to her pedicure. I wouldn't be
attending a luncheon meeting with the Calvin Klein advertising
people either, which was a shame. I leaned my elbows on my desk and
contemplated Penelope's empty one across from mine. Where the hell
was she?

My iPhone alerted me to a new text. I didn't
recognize the number, but I could guess who it came from when it
said:
May I see you in my office?

I rose and took a deep breath. I hadn't even
realized Neil was behind the closed door. Probably in there with
the testosterone brigade, still.

When I knocked, Neil called, "Come in."

I stepped into the office, and my mood
flipped from relieved that his goon squad wasn't with him to dread
that I was in his office with him, alone. As nerve-wracking as it
was to speak to him in front of people, it was even worse on my
own. He didn't appear to be uncomfortable at all. His jacket was
off, his sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up, and he smiled at me
with genuine warmth as I stood in front of him.

Well, of course he wouldn't be uncomfortable.
He didn't remember having sex with me. Or he did. I'd decided that
him knowing my name was definitive proof, but it really wasn't. He
could have just asked someone while I was out getting bagels.

He gestured at the sophisticated white chair
in front of Gabriella's desk. "Have a seat; there are some things
we need to discuss."

I held my breath. He did remember me, after
all, and he was just waiting for the right time to bring it up. Now
he was going to fire me.

"First of all, lunch." He leaned back in
Gabriella's chair. I never realized it tilted, because she had
always sat up so ramrod straight. "No red meat, no MSG."

I almost sighed in relief. Not fired yet, and
as a bonus, he’d given me a somewhat specific request. I reached
for the notepad beside the blotter and gestured to the pen beside
it. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." He watched me as I wrote down
"No red meat. No MSG," on the top line, then continued, "I'll
usually have breakfast at home, so you don't have to worry about
that. I will be having lunch in today, though, and I need this - "
he pushed a manila envelope across the desk, "- to the clerk's
office at City Hall before closing."

I took the envelope and dutifully wrote
"Clerk" in my notes, my pen hovering over the paper as I awaited
his next instruction.

"That's all," he said, and I looked up to
meet his amused expression. "I'm not a demanding boss. I may need
you to bring me coffee or mail something occasionally, all the
usual assistant's duties, but I'm not going to send you all over
town caring for my dog."

"Do you..." I cleared my throat. Someone had
told him about Empress Catherine's frequent trips to the holistic
vet. "Do you not have a dog?"

His lips quirked. I remembered that
half-smile so well. Just like six years ago, I couldn't tell if he
was smiling because he thought me utterly ridiculous, or if he
liked me.

He'd smiled like that when I'd finally gotten
up the courage to cross the seating area by the gate. I'd felt so
gross and unattractive after my first flight of the day, wearing a
faded pair of comfortable jeans and a black "To Write Love On Her
Arms" t-shirt. I hadn't straightened my hair, just pulled it into a
sloppy ponytail. I'd wanted so badly to sound grown up and world-
weary. I'd gestured to the gate and said, "First time going to
Tokyo?"

And he'd smiled that mysterious half-smile
and replied, "No. But I bet it's yours."

The man before me now was six years older,
with a few more lines on his face and little more gray in his hair.
But he still made my traitorous knees weak. I was caught between
hating him, and wanting to jump into his lap. Not my finest working
girl moment.

"No," he replied, the tilt to his lips never
fading. "I do not have a dog. Do you have any other questions?"

Was he playing with me? I couldn't tell. But
the way I saw it in that moment, I had nothing to lose.

"Yes, I do." I envisioned myself saying, “Did
you once pick up a girl at LAX, fuck her brains out, and take her
plane ticket?" But my mouth seemed to be, wisely, in agreement with
the part of my brain screaming,
No! No!
Instead, I asked,
"Do you know when Penelope is going to be back?"

"Penelope?" He frowned a moment. "The other
assistant, right. No, I believe, um, Ms. Winters has retained her
services outside of the company. Or so Human Resources has informed
me. One of my staff will take over for her."

I wondered if he could hear the rage building
up inside me, like steam in a tea kettle. My vivid imagination
conjured up a caricature of my head morphing into an angry cartoon
boiler whistle. "Gabriella..." My throat stuck closed. I had to
stop to clear it.

Neil jumped directly in. "Took her along." He
paused, understanding transforming his puzzled expression to one of
concern. "She... didn't offer?"

"No." I pulled down the front of my
coffee-stained jacket. "No, she did not 'offer.' Will that be
all?"

He seemed momentarily perplexed at my
curtness, like he'd never seen actual human emotion before. Very
quickly, he said, "Yes, I believe it will, Sarah, thank you."

Sarah
? That was it. The cherry on the
shit sundae that was my day. My career. Hell, my entire adult life.
The woman I had thought of as a mentor apparently thought of me as
office furniture. The man I'd compared every potential lover to for
the past six years didn't remember having sex with me. And judging
by the fact that he couldn't even remember my name, my job was
looking more temporary by the second.

"Are you quite well?" Neil asked,
alarmed.

I wasn't well at all. I was going to do the
most dreaded, horrible, career killing thing it was possible to do
at
Porteras
. See, I have the bad luck to be one of those
people who cries when they're angry. And right then, I was
furious.

When I'd first started working for Gabriella,
I'd been second assistant. The girl who had been first assistant
got left at the altar, and returned to work the same week they
started shooting for a June bridal feature. She had dabbed her eyes
a little too obviously, and within a week, everyone was talking
about "Miss Havisham" the jilted spinster who'd had a total mental
breakdown at work. I could not cry, especially not in front of
Neil.

I got to my feet, and he rose as well. I
backed away with a hand at my throat, desperately afraid he would
try to touch me, comfort me. There was no way I could take that.
"I'm fine. I just... choked on my own spit."

Smooth
.

I turned and hurried to the door. How dare
Gabriella choose Penelope over me? She could have offered me the
job. Hadn't I been a good assistant? At least good enough that she
could have given me a heads up before I'd been ambushed by the new
regime.

"I know you must be very upset. Perhaps you'd
like to take the rest of the day - "

I turned. "You're right. I am upset." I
weighed the pros and cons of what I said next, and the meter landed
directly on
fuck it
. If I ended up working at
Cats
Monthly
, so be it. I looked him dead in the eye and said,
"Crown Plaza. Los Angeles airport. That's why I'm upset."

The color drained from his face. I took a
second of sadistic pleasure from his sudden and obvious discomfort.
If he didn't remember me before, he sure as hell remembered me
now.

And then I realized, nothing had changed. I
had just blown off my job, but Gabriella wouldn't be sitting
outside my apartment, begging me to come work for her. Life
wouldn’t magically return to the way it had been yesterday, and I
still had a latte stain down the front of my fifteen hundred dollar
jacket.

I had never so badly wanted the floor to open
up and swallow me as I did at that moment. Neil tried an apologetic
smile, and when he couldn't keep it up, he looked away, out the
huge windows I'd personally spot cleaned for smudges for the past
two years. "Yes. Well. As I was saying, perhaps you should take the
rest of the day. We'll talk tomorrow."

I left and closed the door behind me. I
hesitated beside my desk, trying to decide if I should clear it out
right then and save myself a trip. But that would require staying
in the office a moment longer, and that was something I couldn't
stand to do. I got my coat and purse and left without saying a word
to anyone.

* * * *

In times of great
crisis, I can always count on my very best friend to point out the
silver lining, to talk through the problem at hand, and to bring
some perspective to the chaos that is my world.

Also, to do all that while providing much
appreciated weed and booze.

"Whether or not he recognized you the moment
he saw you, he does at least remember you," Holli squeaked out as
she exhaled a truly impressive cloud of pale blue smoke. "And you
didn't recognize him from pictures in magazines. Face it, Soph,
it's not like you guys had some kind of lasting commitment and he
forgot you. You were a one-night stand."

"I know." I nodded miserably as I took my
next hit. "But who has anal sex with someone and forgets all about
it?"

Holli nodded enthusiastically as she
swallowed her sip of wine. "My friend Alexis! Like two days ago she
was all, 'So there I was, bent over the kitchen sink with a
vibrator in my pussy and my boyfriend fucking my ass,' and today I
mentioned it and she was like 'I have no idea what you're talking
about.'" She gingerly took the joint from my fingers and lifted it
to her lips. "But she has mad pregnancy brain right now."

I shrugged. As soon as I'd gotten home, I'd
changed out of my expensive work clothes and washed off my eye
makeup. I should have felt much more relaxed in my flannel turtle
jammies, but I still didn't know what was going to happen at the
office tomorrow. I wasn't sure there was enough cannabis in the
entire universe to overcome my anxiety.

Holli leaned forward, her huge brown eyes
going extra wide, like she had an amazing secret. "What if... I
went out and got us Chinese food? And pizza?" She raised a
triumphantly clenched fist. "And a box of cereal."

So, here's the deal with Holli. She's super
skinny, due to a metabolic disorder. Which means she has to eat
like an elephant to look like a giraffe. It might sound enviable,
and I did envy her, for about the first year I knew her. But then I
slowly started to notice how often strangers would tell her to eat
a sandwich, or assume that she was anorexic, just because she was
thin and a model. I stopped saying stuff like, "That girl should
eat,” when I saw a skinny star in a magazine. Because I had seen
Holli eat. And it was comically disturbing.

"I'm not really feeling the midnight - " I
reached across the back of the couch and pushed open the blinds.
"Oh god. Mid-almost-sunset pig out. I do have to go back to work
tomorrow, even if it is just to get fired. I think I'm going to
take a hot bath and have an early bedtime."

Holli took another deep inhale off the tiny
stub of roach that was left, then carefully put it out on the edge
of the ashtray on the coffee table before reaching up to boop my
nose with her fingertip "You got it, kid."

I peeled myself off the couch and felt some
of the depressive funk lift. It had sounded fun to wallow in my pjs
all afternoon, but now I just felt tired and bored and
unproductive. Maybe while Holli was eating her way through
Chinatown, I could update my resume.