Keaton
I looked around and quickly tried to calm myself, pretending I had just been looking out of the window. “Oh, Fernando. Yes, hi, how are you?”
He frowned at me a little, but if he suspected I actually wasn’t fine, he didn’t say it. His expression cleared. “I haven’t seen you since you got the job. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks!” I said, but my enthusiasm quickly tapered out.
Who knew how much longer I would have the job for.
Mr. Harvey had summarily sent me away, and he hadn’t even tried to hide how angry he was with me.
I realized my hands were still shaking and quickly clasped them behind my back.
“I’m just on my way out to get some co- some snacks.
Do you know what kind of pastries he likes? He wasn’t specific.”
Fernando gave me a long, slanted look. “Harvey doesn’t eat pastries.”
“Right.” I let my head droop on my shoulders. I should have figured that out for myself. “It must be for guests. I’ll just get a selection.”
Of course, I wasn’t going to get any pastries at all. I just didn’t want Fernando to know that I was going out to get coffee because that would invite the inevitable question: why I was going all the way across town when there were multiple coffee machines within this very building.
“Okay, well,” Fernando said. “See you later.”
He headed off back down the hall in the direction he had been going, one hand in his pocket and the other loosely holding a printed document, whistling as he moved away from me.
I didn’t want him to ask too many questions about why I was shaking, why I had been standing in the hallway alone, and why I had very obviously been blinking back tears when I first turned around – but, still. It would have been nice if he’d noticed.
I shook it off as best as I could and headed to the elevator, riding it quickly down to the lobby. I was about to walk smartly across the marble floor and leave, but someone called out my name before I could take so much as two steps.
I looked up at the clerk at the front desk – a pretty young woman who was sharper than she looked.
She was watching me expectantly, and an older woman stood in front of her.
She was perfectly made-up, with greying hair dressed up in a bun on top of her head that swirled like something a film star would wear, a chic beige overcoat, and a very prim expression.
“Hi,” I said expectantly, looking between the clerk and the woman, waiting for someone to explain to me what was going on.
“This is Helen,” the clerk supplied meaningfully. Seeing that I wasn’t there yet, she added: “Helen Alcori.”
Oh! Mr. Harvey’s last secretary – the one whose phone stand I had found. She looked a little on the older side to have been using a phone stand, but what did I know?
“Helen,” I greeted her, trying my best warm smile. I stuck out a hand which she shook reluctantly as if she was touching something distasteful. “It’s nice to meet you. Did we miss something of yours that we should have sent along?”
Helen glared at me and pursed her wine-colored lips. “You should not have sent along anything,” she said in clipped tones, her voice at least two income brackets more correct and precise than mine. “How rude of you to simply dispense of my items without so much as a phone call.”
I blinked, taken aback by how furious she was. “I… I’m sorry,” I said. Was she seriously that old-fashioned? “I thought it best to make sure you had your things as soon as possible. I would have called, but it was very late when we found the stand, and I wouldn’t have liked to have disturbed you.”
“Sent it along as soon as you found it, did you?” she scoffed. “You didn’t stop to use it at all?”
I felt myself flush red. It was true – I had used it without knowing whose it was. A second later, though, realization struck. “How did you know I had used it?”
“It was scuffed,” she said, pronouncing the word as if it was really the word dead and the object in question was her beloved pet dog, not a phone stand.
I coughed. “I’m sorry about that,” I said. Had I scuffed it? Really? I couldn’t remember doing anything so strenuous. But maybe it had gotten roughed up in the mail.
She sniffed and turned up her nose a little towards me.
I couldn’t believe I’d just witnessed someone doing that in real life.
I’d always thought it was just a turn of phrase.
“Well, thankfully, I am not missing the good breeding that you lack,” she said.
“I came to thank you for couriering it to my door. Very kind of you. Though a waste of company resources, I should think.”
I almost choked. First, it was rude of me to send the item on without warning, and now it was also a waste of company resources to politely make sure she had it as soon as possible?
I felt like I was being thrown from one side of the ropes to the other.
“Right, well, my apologies for that,” I said.
My head was reeling. What else? “Oh, and thank you for coming all this way. Was there anything else I could help you with?”
She glanced me up and down and sniffed slightly. “Just make sure you keep my details on file, dear,” she said.
“Why is that?” I asked, immediately getting the feeling I was going to regret it.
“So that when you are fired, you can easily call me to come back in and take up my position again,” she said imperiously.
Somehow she managed to come off as both commanding and supercilious and humble, as if she was doing me a great favor by offering her help in the eventuality of my failure.
“A powerful and important man like Mr. Harvey should not be left without a competent secretary.”
“Right,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to give her any kind of formal send-off. She’d made her position clear.
She swept away from me as if she was an old duchess in a fur coat, not an out-of-work secretary, and I watched her go with complete incredulity.
What a bitch.
It wasn’t a word I liked to use often, but there were situations now and then where it was called for.
I glanced at the clerk, who was suddenly very interested in her computer screen and the visitors’ book.
No help there, apparently. I sighed and squared my shoulders.
As demoralizing as literally all of this was, I had to go outside now, and I at least needed to look a little bit like I wasn’t about to have a nervous breakdown.
I tried to keep that confidence on my face as I walked across the marble at last, taking my phone out of my pocket and quickly checking the map. The café at the furthest to the other side of town was…
Huh. Exactly the same brand as the one right opposite the office.
I walked across the street, looked up to check that I couldn’t see the giant silhouette of a certain former football player framed in the window of an office up there, and then quickly ducked inside.
It would have taken me twenty minutes to get to the other branch.
I could get a pastry for myself and spend forty minutes sitting in a warm spot instead.
Maybe it wasn’t quite the letter of the law that had been handed down to me, but it definitely felt like it was in the spirit. Mr. Harvey just wanted me out. He didn’t genuinely care where.
I ordered the sweetest, fluffiest pastry I could find – a raspberry-filled Danish – and a hot chocolate to go with it, then sat and nursed them both as well as my head.
How was I going to fix this? Mr. Harvey clearly didn’t care about being rude to me, which meant he probably wasn’t worried about keeping me on as his secretary.
I was beginning to see the edges of that legendary temper that had driven so many of his secretaries away, no doubt.
It was probably going to get worse from here.
I sighed. I’d only recorded one evening’s worth of footage. I was exhausted and shaken. And this was all I had to show for it?
At least if things got worse, I could film more.
But cold rage wasn’t really enough of a show.
I should have had my camera on when he sent me out of the office – that was the closest to the real thing I’d seen yet.
Damnit. I needed to sort out my setup and get something installed on my desk somewhere.
Thinking of the footage, I scrolled through my phone’s camera roll until I found the videos from last night. The video I’d taken in the office, and…
After.
Once Mr. Harvey told me to go home, I’d left the office – but I hadn’t gone home. Not when I had the knowledge that Ridley Angus, and a lot of the other players, were going to be at O’Finlays.
I’d gone to O’Finlays.
It was the perfect time to try and get some more footage that I could use.
I wasn’t really thinking about what would come up, exactly; more just scouting for any opportunity.
Again, I only had my phone camera, but it wasn’t like these undercover shots had to be perfect.
I figured there was an outside chance Mr. Harvey would show up too, or I’d catch one of the players doing something shady.
I scrolled to the first video I’d taken at the bar and opened it.
I’d found a spot a short distance away from where the players hung out, but significantly lower-rent – outside of their roped-off VIP area.
There was a curtain hung between us and a security guard standing in the way, so I couldn’t always see a lot, but I could see some.
Whenever the curtain wasn’t quite pulled back across or it swayed out of the way in the breeze from a passing body, I could spot something on the other side.
Every glimpse of Ridley was tantalizing. I’d managed to score footage of him drinking from a glass of pale liquid, joking around with one of the other players on his team, and talking to a few scantily-dressed women who had slipped behind the rope.