Chapter 14 In Which I Educate Sahir About Wordplay #2
“Aren’t you in the LGBTQ interest group at work?”
“Yes.” He squeezed my hand. His palm was soft against mine.
“What does it stand for?” I started tracing a pattern over his knuckles with my other fingertip. The contact felt safe, lazy and hazy but still charged with some undercurrent.
“Lesbian, gay, biracial, transmutated, and quantified,” he said.
I pulled my hand away and stared at him. “Who do you think that interest group is for?”
He shrugged. “Shapeshifters, like me. And lesbians.”
“Okay.” It probably wasn’t worth addressing that any further.
We sat there. I fidgeted with the gold ring on my pointer finger. He put his hands in his lap.
“Um, just so you know, it’s actually lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, meaning anyone who isn’t cisgender or heterosexual, which means they like people of the opposite gender.”
Sahir and I looked at each other. He looked unimpressed.
“Sorry, what would ‘quantified’ even mean in that context?” I brought my hand to my mouth and started gnawing on the tip of my thumb.
He frowned. “I thought perhaps it meant mathematicians.”
“A support group for gay people, shapeshifters, and mathematicians?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I signed up to get out of a weekly assignment I did not like,” he admitted, sounding like a frat boy and not a faerie.
This was simultaneously endearing and rage-inducing.
“Right. Well, to level set, thank you for telling me. I did not have sex with her. I’m not sure how she said that sentence since she cannot lie.” I patted his thigh. “I will probably survive, though, and I am bisexual, which means I like both men and women.”
“We do not have all of these descriptors,” Sahir said, sounding quite condescending for a man who thought T stood for transmutation. “We do not use labels here.”
I sighed and made a conscious choice to disengage.
But Sahir wasn’t done. “She said you lay with her.”
My irritation bubbled over and I flung my hands into the air. “I didn’t—” I stopped midoutburst, realization hitting me like a rotten tomato. My hand dropped to my knee. “I did lie with her. I lay down with her. On the ground. We lay down. And I slept with her. I fell asleep.”
Sahir’s mouth dropped open. His face looked like a birdhouse.
“Sahir, you handsome, unnecessary alarm clock. Not to be rude, but aren’t you a faerie? Isn’t wordplay, like, your thing?”
He stood up so quickly I unbalanced, sliding sideways like a seven-layered cake. “Apologies,” he said, “and good night.”
He left the room like he’d just remembered he left the stove on in another country.
But I lay in bed, remembering the spinning silver sky she’d built for me. It took me a long time to fall asleep; when I did, I dreamed of Gaheris creating a portal in the kitchen that let swarms of cockroaches come inside.
In the morning, my phone buzzed.
“Hi, Jeff,” I answered on the first ring.
“Miri,” he said. “Be quick, I have a lot going on today.”
“Be quick?” I asked. “Jeff, you called me.”
He grunted. “Tell me what you think of Kayla,” he said, reminding me that we had a new analyst who I’d barely spoken to.
“I like her,” I started.
Jeff cut me off. “Miri, never start a human resources conversation with the fact that you like someone.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“She’s slow. She doesn’t take initiative, and she doesn’t talk to anyone.”
I tapped my fingers on my desk, not sure why I was involved in this conversation.
“Maybe she’s just overwhelmed,” I said, “being the only woman left in the office.”
“Corey said she does bad work.”
I felt a flicker of frustration. “Corey has high expectations. She just started.”
“We can send her back now, but we won’t be able to later.”
“Does she want to be on our team?” God knew I didn’t want to be on our team any longer.
“She asked to be here.”
I stared at my computer screen. The poor girl. “Give her a chance,” I said.
“Fine. I’ll give her a task to work on under you.”
My stomach dropped. This was a suboptimal outcome.
“Don’t you think it would be better if she worked with someone in the office?”
“No,” he said, and hung up.
I sighed and sent her a quick email.
Hi Kayla, Jeff might be sending us a project to work through together. Let me know if you want to chat about it.
A few minutes later, the email came in from Jeff, titled Valuation.
Kayla, Miri, research six competitors for the Faerie Trade Goods endeavor and value each of them. Will expect your analysis as soon as possible.
I groaned and called Kayla.
“Hi?” she said.
“It’s Miri. Let’s talk about Jeff’s email,” I said. “Have you ever done a valuation before?”
Someone knocked on my door. I glanced at it.
“No, I’ve never done a valuation, but I’m excited to learn!” She sounded too chipper.
I stood up and went to my door. “Okay, give me a second,” I said, and went on mute. I opened the door. The Gray Knight was outside.
I felt a flash of rage: She’d told people we’d lain together. “Yes?” I said.
“We need to go over the model now.”
“One second.” I went off mute and said, “Kayla, I need to hang up. Look through some old valuations on our server and see what you can learn. I’ll reach back out as soon as I’m done.”
She started talking, but I hung up on her midsentence. I stepped back and let the Gray Knight in.
“Are you working on another deal?” the Gray Knight asked. Something flashed in her eyes.
“No,” I said. “We’re looking up some comparable transactions for the faerie deal.”
She pulled out her acorn and sized it up to a chair again. Doctor Kitten hopped up onto the windowsill and stared at her, his tail flicking. I sat in my own chair.
“Did something happen with the model?” I asked.
She shook her head. “We just need to update it and send it out to buyers today.”
“Today?” I frowned. “We haven’t even finished the presentation—”
“Yes, I edited that last night. We will be ready to send it out with the model in a few hours.”
“I think I need to tell Jeff,” I said.
She shrugged. “The Princeling has sent him an email.”
I checked my own email. Nothing had come through. But I reopened the model and sized it up to fill the screen.
She pulled a crinkled piece of paper from some pocket, full of incomprehensible scribbles.
“These are our new assumptions for expenses,” she said.
“Your human values were far too high. We can reduce many of the costs in the model, because the Builder can create the equipment more efficiently and for far less money.”
“Okay.” I hit CTRL+Page Down until I reached the Inputs tab and looked at her expectantly.
She cleared her throat, scanning her page. “First, the initial capital expenditures for the project. We’re bringing that down to sixteen million dollars.”
I changed the assumed hardcode and looked at her again.
“The materials costs,” she said. “We can scavenge cobwebs and acorns easily. We are more concerned about ensuring we do not have an adverse effect on mortal habitats as we source our materials. So the cost will be primarily for an environmental study.”
This had me raising an eyebrow. “Who will do this environmental study?”
“We will need to find a consulting company. Your team can help us interview them.”
Doctor Kitten jumped down from the windowsill and onto the desk. I held up an arm to keep him off the keyboard. He rubbed his face against my hand, looking irritated.
“Fine. I’ll put a plug in for now.” I typed $1,000,000, just for fun, and then looked at her. “Do you want to separate out labor? Will you be paying your scavengers?”
“For now, we will not concern ourselves with wages for the faerie teams.” She shook out her paper and ran a finger down the page. “Many of these will still require more information.”
Doctor Kitten made another attempt at the keyboard, but I caught him before he started editing my Excel.
“It’s better for us to write down what we can, at least,” I said. “That way maybe the returns won’t shift as much when we get better numbers.”
She shifted in her chair. “We expect very high returns, lady. Our labor costs will be low.”
I shrugged. “People might worry about exploitation. We need to be careful about things like that.”
As I said it, I CTRL+Page Up’ed into the Control tab of the model.
“I will concern myself with the assumptions,” she said.
An email came in from Kayla, popping up in the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen. The subject line read A Few Questions.
I glanced at the preview. Hi Miri, I am having trouble—
“My lady, Jeff has requested that I work with our new analyst on a valuation assignment for your company. It would be helpful if I could take a half hour to give her instructions.”
The Gray Knight frowned at me. “The model updates are our priority, Lady of the True Dreams.”
I glared at the sharp slope of her nose, intending to melt it off her face with the heat of my anger. But her nose stayed fixed firmly in place while my gaze melted into an appreciative stare.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I just need to—”
“This task is urgent. Continue along the Inputs tab.”
I did as directed, following her line by line down the Excel sheet.
Several minutes passed. Another email popped up from Kayla. Subject line: Am Concerned.
The Gray Knight caught me looking and tsked.
“Sorry,” I said, out of habit, and immediately felt irritated with myself. It wasn’t a crime to look at my own emails on my own computer.
She sighed and shifted in her chair. “As I was saying, please look at row 97. Our debt module assumptions require some refining.”
A third email from Kayla entered my periphery. Subject line: Please Help. I made a mental note to explain to her the vastness and understated grandeur of our compliance department, who read every single email sent on our servers.
I looked around the room, shaky and a little desperate, and saw the toilet. “Um, I need to use the bathroom,” I said.
She jerked her chin toward that corner. “You may,” she said, very graciously.
“Humans prefer privacy,” I said, fiddling with the mouse.