Chapter 8
M e: Good morning, Dr. Fritz. Your mother informed me that she has sent you my phone number and forced you to program it into your phone, so I’m assuming I don’t have to explain who is texting you.
I’ve taken the liberty of setting everything up for you in our system.
Our calendars are synched, your office is in the process of undergoing redecoration, and everything should be set for you for Monday.
Kaplan: Echidna, we said Monday we’d start. Today is Wednesday and I’m stuck at a lunch that has me considering drowning myself in the bathroom sink. Now is really not the time. And what the hell do you mean you redecorated my office?
Me: If you’re at lunch then why did you take the time to text me back? And your mother gave me carte blanche to make your office more you and less her. I’ve had it done in the style of Typhon’s lair. I assumed you’d be most comfortable dwelling in the pit of a monster.
He doesn’t respond and I can’t help my laughter as it flees my lungs. Actually, his office is looking pretty great. I stare around his new space. Cool, sleek desk made of metal and glass and dark wood. Bookshelf, leather sofa, coffee table. It’s nice in here.
I’ve spent the last two days getting myself acclimated to things here. Learning their computer systems and remembering names of people and memorizing every word out of Octavia’s mouth. It’s been fun. I won’t lie and say it hasn’t. What next week will bring is another issue.
He didn’t recognize me. Even when I dropped the bunny Easter egg on him.
I’ve given up. I’ve moved past it. Our friendship ended seven years ago. I was a child, and he was an adult and clearly my childish mind that was grieving and feeling lost clung to something that wasn’t as real as I thought it was.
I read through some of our texts and emails I saved on my computer.
I couldn’t bring myself to delete them after, but gah.
One of our last exchanges was about the impermanence of life and the things in it.
Maybe he was setting me up there. I’m trying not to let it hurt or bother me. I’m trying to put it behind me. Trying.
Exiting his office, I go back to mine which is right outside his door only to have Charlie and Greta there waiting for me. “Lunch,” Greta demands. “You haven’t had lunch with us yet and we need the gossip, remember?”
“I had lunch with Octavia the last two days.”
“Right,” Charlie says. “But not today since she’s out. Come on, we eat in the kitchen on the first floor because no one ever goes down there, and we can talk without being bothered.”
“Okay. Let me just go grab my food from the fridge.”
I scoot across the room, grab the salad and soup I picked up this morning from a café on the way in, and follow Charlie and Greta down to the first floor. We take the elevator and the second the doors close, they start digging.
“So, what’s he like? I mean, what’s working for him like?”
“Yes. That. But did you really tell Jenny off by threatening her with a sexual harassment case if she continued to talk to Kaplan?”
I snicker under my breath at the memory of that. Jenny hasn’t come near me since, but then again, Kaplan hasn’t been here, and she’s been working downstairs. “Yes. I did that because sexual harassment goes both ways. It’s not just a female problem.”
They give me a who are you kidding look just as the doors to the elevator open and I take that distraction and run with it. Only they’re not having it. Both of them take the table by the window, the one that looks out onto the first floor while I go for the microwave to heat up my soup.
“Come on,” Charlie chides. “Tell us what he’s like. I heard he’s kind of surly.”
“He is. Honestly, my interactions with him have been minimal.”
“He didn’t hire you, right? That was Octavia?”
I nod at Greta, pulling the now steaming cup of soup out of the microwave and joining them at the table. Opening my salad, I debate how forthcoming I should be about things. “I met Octavia on Saturday at the hotel I’m temporarily staying in. That was after I met Kaplan.”
“What?” both of them half shriek in unison, forks full of leafy greens poised in midair.
Blowing on my soup, I take a hesitant spoonful, not wanting to burn my tongue.
“I was supposed to get married on Saturday, only I overheard my fiancé explaining to my cousin how awful marrying me is and that he loves her and yeah. Turns out they’d been having an affair the entire time he and I were together.
Obviously I didn’t take it well.” I stir my soup around with my spoon, watching the noodles and vegetables shift around the yellow broth.
“Anyway, I ran out and threw myself on a car. That car ironically belonged to Kaplan Fritz. He drove me to the hotel where he just so happened to be meeting his mother for lunch and I met her in the ladies’ room without knowing it was his mother. ”
Silence.
Reluctantly, I peek up to find both of them impersonating a goldfish. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
Charlie is the first to blink. “You’re telling us you met Kaplan by running into his car after you fled your wedding and then met Octavia after that in the hotel where she offered you a job?”
I nod, digging into my salad with gusto. “Crazy, right?” I garble around my food before chewing and swallowing it all down. “So yep, that’s how I got here.”
“Because they didn’t want Jenny to be his assistant,” Greta states.
I shrug up a miserable shoulder, still feeling not so great about that though Octavia swore it was because she liked me instantly and thinks I’ll be perfect for the role.
Whatever. I’m trying not to think about that either.
The notion that I’m here because I’m the fat, ugly girl wrecks me.
It’s what I overheard both Tod and Ava talking about and my mother has never been shy about telling me I need to lose weight.
And now I’m working for Kaplan instead of Jenny working for him.
My insides twist and my heart clenches painfully in my chest. I never saw myself that way. The way others seem to.
So I’m trying to put on a brave face and muster through when the desire to start a vicious self-loathing cycle is real.
I don’t need someone to validate that I’m beautiful because that’s how I already see myself.
I may not be what society and convention consider beautiful but fuck them.
I’ve always been different, and I like that about myself.
I just have to remember that when the words and actions of others try to get me down.
“Guess so,” I mumble, staring down at my food and trying not to frown, or worse, cry.
“Huh. Wow.” Charlie is flummoxed, her lunch all but forgotten.
“Right?” Greta nods. “Just wow. I mean, kinda cool. Fun story to tell and all. Still, I think Octavia was right in hiring you. Especially after what the papers and tabloids have been printing about him. Must be hard to have your life so open and public like that. Have women like Jenny all over you.”
I go back to my soup, still frowning. “I’m sure it is.”
“You know, I heard, oh, holy, look.” Charlie points over my shoulder and both Greta and I swivel around to see what she’s gawking at. “That’s Kaplan. Right there. With Octavia and… Who is that?”
Greta flies out of her chair and races to the edge of the kitchen, half hiding behind the wall so she’s not seen, as she watches Kaplan speaking with two other women plus his mother. One of them is older, the same age as Octavia is my guess, while the other appears somewhere closer to Kaplan’s.
“It’s Millie Van Der Heusen,” she hisses, looking at Charlie with wide eyes.
“Who?” I squawk, but the name tickles my memory. “You mean as in Senator Van Der Heusen?”
“Yes,” Charlie cries, getting to her feet and joining Greta for a better view. “Oh my god. I wonder if they’re dating.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that anywhere.”
“Me neither. But can you imagine? Talk about a power couple. Whoa.”
“She’s so pretty too. Like so pretty. And I hear she’s the nicest person ever.”
The two of them keep going back and forth and against my better judgment, I rise out of my chair and make a slow stroll over to the edge of the kitchen.
And sure enough. There is Kaplan Fritz talking with a model-gorgeous woman who is every bit as tall and thin as Greta and Jenny are.
She’s wearing a pale-pink shift dress and a sparkling smile, her eyes fixed on his.
He says something to her that makes her laugh, her hand slips to his arm, and so what?
Good for him.
Let all the beautiful, skinny people take over the world and marry and make babies. Blah. Boring. Maybe if they’re together, I’ll stop feeling this weird sensation in my stomach every time I look at him.
Millie Van Der Heusen gets up on her tippy-toes and places a kiss on Kaplan’s cheek, and now that weird sensation is doing even weirder things inside me. Or maybe my salad was bad. You can get listeria or salmonella from spinach. Happens all the time. That’s what this nausea is. Food poisoning.
“So cute. Look at them. Talk about being jealous.” Greta laughs. “I wonder if his jaw is smooth or if it feels like the chiseled stone it looks to be made from.”
More giggling from Charlie. “I hear they call him baby face. I mean, he does look young compared to his brothers, but damn, I think he’s the hottest of them.”
“Meh. He’s not my type,” I throw out just as he turns in our direction, looking in through the glass only to squint when he catches us standing here.
“Oh shit.” Greta and Charlie flee the scene of the crime, but I can’t manage to make myself move. He stares at me, into me with a burning intensity that has my knees weak and my breasts feeling heavy.