Chapter 8
EIGHT
My overzealous, impatient, heavy-handed briber of an employer can’t even let me take advantage of him properly!
For the next day, I spot another gift, and immediately feel more weighed down by the one in my purse, and now this third one sitting on the counter.
It’s an embossed voucher printed on thick stock paper, the text shining in twinkling gold, cursively inviting me to visit Barcelona’s foremost luxury spa for an experience that is pure pleasure for all the senses.
I search for it on the internet.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say to the costs of the treatments.
There are far too many zeros.
When will it stop? What if it never does?
Getting two free (stunning) meals is one thing.
Getting whisked away to an exotic location to be massaged in a way that draws inspiration from Buddhist tantric deities is another!
It feels stringy to me in a more corporeal way. As in, if I accept this, there will come a time later when its use could more robustly rope in my cooperation to whatever secretive white whale conference business Luke is cooking up for his company.
Yes, Judge, I didn’t know I’d been bought.
Yes, there was a pool massage. Yes, I was cradled in the water, my body gently stretched and positioned by my very own attendant on silks.
Yes, the grapes were floated on a platter with gold leaf-dusted caviar.
Yes, I was bullied into contributing to shady business practices afterward as recompense; you know, I had no other choice.
No.
Alas, I have to be strong and cut this off before it sprouts dire consequences.
With great reluctance, I send him a text.
ME
If unaccustomed to the strange concept of friendship, one might not realize that basing its entire foundation on excessive gift-giving while pleasing to the recipient is unfortunately not conducive to thinking the giver is a good person.
That still is your intent, is it not?
In either case, I would not want to take advantage of your inexperience.
Therefore I must, in good conscience, return your bribe thoughtful gesture as it is not fair for me to take undue advantage of the situation.
As much as I would love to. Blindly. With little regard or care for your true purpose.
Attached is additional research I think you will find most helpful.
Lest anyone accuse me of actually wanting to help my employer manipulate my feelings into thinking he is a good person, my “research” is a link to a dictionary definition that very uselessly states:
Friendship ( noun)
the state of being a friend; association as friends: to value a person’s friendship.
An hour later, he responds.
LUKE
Rita - you are the pithiest meal-prep chef I’ve ever met.
Also, it makes me deeply uncomfortable that I laughed out loud at your so-called research. I think my assistant believes me possessed.
Therefore, I had to fire someone and make them cry to maintain my reputation.
P.S. Keep the bribe. Consider it a folly that shouldn’t go to waste.
ME
You are kidding about the firing, aren’t you?
LUKE
Why?
ME
What do you mean by why? Why what?
LUKE
Why do you care? While you may have never said this outright, I am under no illusion that you don’t find my company and everybody involved in it disdainful.
Is he trying to trap me into agreeing with him? Once again, I’ve got no clue about his motives. Is it crass to reply with YES, I THINK YOU MAY BE THE WORST?
Instead, I settle for:
ME
That specific person might be innocent.
LUKE
How na?ve of you.
I release a frustrated noise whilst mixing greens up for a plain, boring, dressing-less salad, unable to stop thinking about the fired employee. Did he really have no other reason to fire him? If so, am I similarly at risk to the whims of my employer’s unreliable mood?
ME
Please don’t patronize me. Also, are you capable of any decent human feeling? Asking as someone who is forced to play this strange friendship challenge with you. Did you really fire someone for no real reason?
LUKE
If it helps your misplaced concern, he was falsifying business records, and tried to get out of it by bullying another member of my staff. He’s fortunate he only got fired and cried.
If I weren’t so busy, I would have made his life infinitely worse.
Truly, the differences between Luke and I could fill oceans. He’s able to hire or fire anyone, and I come from a run-down dot on the map in Mumbai. Even these gifts he’s been giving me don’t make a dent for him, but are once-in-a-lifetime experiences for me.
Part of me wants to yell thank you.
And though well aware of Luke’s self-servicing motives, I also can’t help but think how these gifts have already impacted our working relationship. Emails flow a little easier between us, and the sarcasm we lob less loosely resembles white-knuckled expressions of anger.
Have I softened?
And, more importantly, is my employer softening around me?
I receive another text from him later that night.
LUKE
Start work an hour earlier from now on.
No, he has not .
This is inexplicably an order, not a request.
On the positive side, at least I have no need to rebuild any defenses against him, for his own actions do the work of barricading even the smallest drops of good will accumulated.
I go to sleep feeling confident that there is no way I’ll get caught unaware thinking he’s a good person, or to take it even further, my friend, when it’s clear Luke Abbot’s true nature is like a damn slingshot.
It ricochets between pretend-good and not-so-pretend bossy.