Chapter 5 – Grant
FIVE
GRANT
Curiosity killed the billionaire. At least that’s what he’d been told.
“I wasn’t hungry...”
Those were the words that replayed on a loop in my brain from our conversation from a few weeks ago. With everything she’d said – well done by her, using logic against me - I kept landing on that.
Not the happy part. Happiness didn’t interest me.
It was that Anna, my highly efficient, hardworking assistant, had once been hungry. Only people who had once been hungry, noted it when they were no longer hungry.
It hadn’t been hyperbolic or dramatic either. Just a throwaway line.
It brought me back to her five-year goal of food and shelter. I hadn’t really thought too much about what she meant then. Other than ambition wasn’t her driving motivation.
It had only been in these past few weeks, I found myself paying closer attention. Putting more pieces of the puzzle, that was Anna Flowers, together.
It was not something I should have spent any time doing. I didn’t need to know who Anna was or where she came from. What drove her or made her happy. None of that should have been my concern. She was here to work. To do what I asked and not a single thing more.
Which I’d made perfectly clear by rejecting her bagel.
There hadn’t been anything remotely close to invading my personal space since.
Why couldn’t I forget it? I was fixating – an annoying habit I had. Which bothered me because it shook me out of the dull numbness I’d grown used to these past years. Forced me to focus on the world around me.
Once upon a time, I’d built an empire.
Then I’d lost everything that mattered.
For a time, I honestly wondered what the purpose of it all was, but my ego and my family had insisted I live.
After years of wandering aimlessly, I came back to the thing I knew best.
Money.
It wasn’t some innate sense of greed that drove me. Money was just a highly empirical metric of success. If it went up, you were right. If it went down, you were wrong. There was no subjectivity in accounting.
When I’d decided I had to do something besides filling my days with nonsense tasks, I’d started small by taking one or two meetings from home.
Then word got around in my old circles, I was doing some consulting.
Having people come to the house felt too intrusive.
I’d rented this office space in a fairly anonymous building park and put a plaque up on the side of the door.
I’d resisted the idea of an assistant for weeks, until ultimately, I got tired of my appointments having to bang on the glass door of the lobby for me to let them in.
Now, there was Anna. Who anticipated my needs. Ran the office like a well-organized naval ship. Had an innate sense of when I needed a second cup of coffee – this was most likely due to my grumpiness.
And never, ever, challenged the space I kept between us.
Anna. Who had once been hungry.
She’s starting to put on weight.
It was an aberrant thought. One I shouldn’t even have. Her weight was none of my concern. But when I’d hired her weeks ago, she’d been painfully thin. Her cheek bones resembling model-like slashes across her face. Dark circles under her eyes. Her unflattering clothes hung on her.
She’d since lost that gaunt look.
Which meant she was sleeping better. Eating better.
The benefits of a regular paycheck, I mused.
Recently, she’d added a light blue blouse and black dress pants to her wardrobe rotation, which was still very limited. All of the blouses and bottoms were interchangeable. Which told me she was more practical than she was fashionable.
Every day, she carried a large tote from a local grocery store, which held her lunch bag and a ridiculously sized water bottle that she never drank more than half of.
Why did I know that?
And a cheap pair of black heels she swapped out for sneakers. An indication she walked some distance to get to the office. Maybe from the bus stop two miles down the road?
There was an address, of course, in her personnel file, but I’d never looked at it.
Why would I? I didn’t care where she lived, only that she showed up on time every morning.
Which she did.
Except, I kept going back to what she’d said. I couldn’t let it go.
When had she been hungry? For how long? Was it part of some diet or eating disorder? Or was it a circumstance of her upbringing?
“Lunch,” Anna announced from the door of my office, startling me out of my reverie. I had to blink a few times to make sure I hadn’t imagined what she said.
But it was Anna. In her unfashionable, interchangeable clothes and barely styled brown hair she typically wore in a clip.
Unremarkable in every way except for her marvelous predictability.
She stepped into my office with a white bag in one hand and a soda can in the other. Since I’d asked her to grab me lunch, this was entirely acceptable.
“Your BLT and extra mayo, as ordered. I want you to know they threw in a bag of chips with your sandwich, which technically, you didn’t order. But just so there is no misunderstanding, I had nothing to do with it.”
“When were you hungry?”
The words exploded from my chest and I instantly regretted it. I didn’t want to hear some sob story about her teenage years when she was bullied, so she stopped eating.
Or worse, some food allergy that made eating anything unsafe.
She set the bag and soda down on my desk. Slowly, as if she was being careful not to trigger an explosion.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“A few weeks ago you said you were happy because you weren’t hungry. That implied you were. Hungry. At some point. I’m curious enough to ask.”
She crossed her arms around her middle. “Doesn’t that break our rules?”
The unwritten rule of nothing personal. Just business.
“Just answer it,” I said stiffly. Yes, technically, I was breaking the rules, but since I was the rule maker, it was my prerogative.
She pursed her lips as if to consider her options. Some half-truth or sanitized version that would get her out of this conversation quickly. I did that thing with my eyes, where I communicated non-verbally she didn’t really have any options. I’d have my answers.
Her shoulders fell in defeat. “I was a foster kid. When I aged out of the system, things were tight for a while. But now I’ve got this plush gig. So everything’s cool.”
She smiled in a way that took up her whole face and I was learning it was a distraction tactic. Which, actually worked, because I was distracted. There was something engaging about her smile. It was the ways her eyes crinkled up like you were in on some joke she was sharing.
Wait? Was I letting her distract me with smiles? Impossible.
“Speaking of…would it be possible to take a late lunch on Friday of this week? I found an apartment and I can sign the lease on Friday. Except the only appointment available is at 4:30. Otherwise, I would have to wait until the following Tuesday.”
“You found an apartment?”
“Yep.”
“If you’re not currently in an apartment, where are you living now?”
She hesitated for a second.
“I could look it up in your employee profile,” I told her. Proving I was both all-knowing and all powerful in her world.
She frowned. “I’ve been renting a motel room.”
“For how long?”
“Jesus,” she huffed. “What’s with the twenty questions all of a sudden?”
“I told you. I’m curious,” I said honestly.
Although it really didn’t make any sense to me either. She was right, I was crossing a line, breaking our rules, inviting curiosity on her part into my life, which I had no intention of satisfying.
What’s mine was mine. But what’s hers was mine. Unfair, of course. But I didn’t care about anything, least of all rules.
“But, why now? I’ve been here for over a month.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You said some things. It made me-”
“Nosey?” she cut me off.
“Inquisitive,” I corrected. “I’m asking questions. There is nothing abnormal about any of this.”
“Oh yeah, you’re about as normal as a boss gets,” she snorted.
“I’m hearing sarcasm. Is that sarcasm?”
She huffed like a reluctant child. “I’ve been renting a motel room off and on since I got to Houston.
It’s all part of the same story. I was in a state home in New Jersey.
I aged out. I couldn’t find a job that covered expenses there.
I heard there was work in the Houston area and the cost of living was cheaper.
I came down here to check it out. With a high school diploma, there are only so many jobs available.
I’m pretty sure I did all of them at one point.
I could afford a room, but not enough to save for first and last months’ rent on an apartment. Until now. Happy?”
“Pretty much never. I want to see this apartment you’re signing a lease for.”
She rolled her eyes at me.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“E.G., please don’t do this. Please don’t be one of those guys.”
“What guy?” I asked.
“I tell you I’m a foster and now you need to rush in and play dad, or hero, or whatever role you think you need to play to make yourself feel good. I don’t need your help. I’ve been on my own for years. I don’t need you to come look at the apartment with me and I definitely don’t need your pity.”
“Flowers, look at me,” I told her. “Do I strike you as someone who does anything out of pity? I give zero shits how you grew up. You’ve proven yourself to be a competent employee.
As such, I want to see where you’ll be living, what the commute entails, and if it makes the most sense for you to be in that location related to my needs, not yours. ”
“Okay. That sort of makes you an asshole.”
“A much more accurate assessment of my personality. I asked about your past simply because it raised an eyebrow. Which you have to acknowledge is unusual. It was a question. I wanted it answered. The end.”
She smirked. “Just so you know, I’m fine with having an asshole for a boss.”
“Just you so you know, I’m barely tolerating having a smart ass as an employee. But it seems I’m stuck for now. Don’t book any appointments for me for Friday afternoon. We’ll check out the place, and if it works for me, then it will be your decision.”
“Is this the only way I’m going to get Friday afternoon off?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” She hesitated then, as if she wanted to say something else, but then clearly thought better of it and left my office.
The second she shut the door, I turned back to my monitors and opened the human resource application on my computer.
As my only current employee, her information popped up on the first screen. I took note of the address and looked it up online. It was midtown Houston, near Travis Street.
She was living in a rent-by-the week, no-tell motel. It was likely her neighbors were drug dealers, drug users, hookers, or all three.
I closed the app and went back to work.
It really wasn’t any of my business.