11AshWhat About Bob
Ash
What About Bob
Ash stared around the trashed front lobby and felt the warm glow of his Friday night with Harper evaporating faster than the snowpack in summer.
His space was large, airy, and modern, but at the end of the day, it was a lobby attached to three offices, a conference room, a breakroom, and a bathroom.
When he rented the suite, he’d hired Rowan’s crew to add additional security.
They had been gleeful about their unlimited budget and promptly installed biometric locks and steel-reinforced office doors.
The lobby was the only portion that used the standard building security.
It was also the only part that was a disaster.
The office doors all showed signs of being kicked, and the front desk computer monitor was flickering sadly from the floor among the debris and dirt from the smashed office plant.
“Yeah,” said Mel, agreeing with Ash’s expression since he hadn’t said anything.
Mel was his IT guy. Mel had short, spiky hair and a master’s in computer science.
They spent their weekends catfishing the scammers who emailed their grandmother’s retirement home friends.
Ash had Mel them during one of his professional development chats at the UW.
Post college, Mel had made it one year in corporate America before showing up on Ash’s doorstep and asking to be part of Team Ash’s adventure party.
The twenty-four-year-old was happily out of the rat race, and Ash was happy not to be outsourcing his computer work anymore.
“What does the front desk computer have access to?” asked Ash.
“I’ll confirm in a minute, but it’s not connected to the network. It only has the shared office account. So, the calendar and maybe a contact list.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ash, looking around. “Was someone looking for cash? Did they break into any of the other businesses?”
“Nope,” said Mel. “I checked after I called you. It’s just us.
I called the building security number, but they said they hadn’t received any alerts for our office.
I told them to pull the video feed but to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure they could find their ass with both hands and a map, let alone the correct security feed. ”
Ash looked at the front door to the office suite. It was the only thing that didn’t look broken. Whoever had broken in had even smashed the office bamboo plant.
“So they had a key to the door? But the thumbprint locks kept them out of our actual offices.”
“That’s how I’m reading it,” said Mel. “And then someone threw a little temper tantrum and smashed up the computer and everything else. Do we call the cops?”
“I guess,” said Ash, reluctantly taking out his phone.
He dialed the non-emergency number and waded through the punch-this-number menu.
“I want to clean up so bad,” muttered Mel. “This is kind of hitting me in my OCD.”
“I don’t even have OCD, and it’s bugging the crap out of me,” said Ash, still punching numbers to get to home invasion reporting. On the final selection to speak to a real person, Ash hurriedly hung up.
“We’re not reporting it?” asked Mel, looking startled.
“The front door isn’t busted. The cops will say it’s an employee.”
And Ash only had two employees.
“And then they’ll harass Romeo.” Mel looked sour at the very idea.
“And you know his paperwork is still in limbo,” said Ash.
Romeo was his executive assistant, who, as far as Ash could tell, was a genius of organization and had lived in the States since he was two.
He was making his way through the immigration process, but Ash knew that even though Seattle was a sanctuary city, Romeo lived in fear of being deported to a country he didn’t even remember.
Legal policies and police opinions didn’t always match up.
“So what do we do?” asked Mel.
What Ash wanted to do was go home to Harper, but that probably wasn’t an option.
“Make sure nothing’s missing and nothing’s been hacked, and then I will call Rowan in the morning. Maybe he’ll know how to push the security company to get the video footage.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Mel.
Ash checked his watch. It was nearly two. And despite it only being the front lobby, he suspected it would take longer to clean than it looked.
“You do realize that if I hadn’t decided to come in to grab my crossbow dice roller that we wouldn’t have found this until Monday? The security company says they recycle the video after forty-eight hours. By Monday, we’d have no shot at finding out who did this.”
Ash let that sink in. He wasn’t a cop, but his instincts said that whoever had broken in was, at minimum, familiar with the building.
“I’m going to take a bunch of photos. Then we can start cleaning up,” said Ash.
Mel nodded and went to their office door. Ash heard the click of the biometric lock unlatching as he began to take photos. Once he’d taken every angle he could think of, he went into his office to text Harper.
Sighing, he sank into his desk chair and contemplated his phone.
His office was another example of his open-shelving philosophy.
All his toys were on display, and any paper he had to have was filed in open racks with labels on the bins.
Ash knew that he was brilliant at his job, but he also knew that he would never be able to do it without Romeo’s help in keeping him organized.
His life was a team sport, and there was no way he’d expose Romeo to the kind of risk that came with a phone call to the police.
But Ash didn’t know how to explain any of that to Harper.
After starting and erasing multiple messages, he finally settled on something factual.
Sorry. The office was broken into. I think this is going to take a while.
He hesitated before hitting send. He felt like he ought to say something about that kiss.
What an amazing kiss. She had been soooooo...
He didn’t have actual words for what Harper was.
Harper was the delicious center of a pastry, warm sheets on a cold night, the sound of rain outside a window.
But what had he been thinking? Harper had been three glasses of wine in and clearly in love with her new clothes.
He couldn’t think of a more manipulative moment to plant a kiss on her.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she had liked it as much as he did.
Ash dug in his desk drawer and found a hair tie. He pulled his hair out of his face and got to work. He found a cereal bowl he’d forgotten in the conference room, then brought it back to the lobby and attempted to rehome the bamboo plant into it.
“That’s a good idea,” said Mel, looking out from their office. “I’m really worried about Bob.”
The bamboo plant’s name was Bob. It had been a group decision based on Ash’s late-night viewing of a Bill Murray movie.
A lot of Bob’s dirt was scattered and ground into the carpet, and Ash felt angry as he settled the plant back on the desk.
He, Mel, Romeo, and Gary, the accountant who came in once a quarter for tax prep, had all been trying their best to keep Bob alive.
Gary even brought in plant food on his quarterly visits.
Keeping a plant alive had been a triumph for their little community.
And someone had smashed the plant as if Bob had committed a personal offense.
“Let me set up a system scan, and then I’ll be out to help,” said Mel.
But by the time they finished, it was nearly four. Ash collapsed back onto the couch in his office and tried to decide whether to text Harper. Probably not. Hopefully, she was sound asleep back at home.
“Or she went to her home,” Ash muttered, kicking off his shoes.
He didn’t want Harper to go home. He wanted her where he could talk to her all the time.
He tipped over onto his side and smushed his face into a pillow.
He’d get up in a minute and go home and find out where things stood with Harper, but for the next few minutes, he was going to lie here and try not to think.