Chapter 12 – Anna
TWELVE
ANNA
The colors caught her attention first. It was a toy for E.G. He would hate it. And love it.
November
“What the hell is that?”
I was so focused on my task, I didn’t hear E.G come up behind me. I jumped at the sound of his bark and hated the fact that I startled so easily.
“Must you do that?” I snapped. I was convinced, sometimes, he did this on purpose.
“Do what?” he asked, as he came around his desk to sit down.
“Sneak up on me.”
“I do not sneak.”
I turned around and crossed my arms over my chest. “You sneak. You’re a sneaker.”
He shrugged. “You look like a cartoon character when you jump. It’s amusing. Let me re-state my question. What the hell is that?”
I put the lid on the twelve-inch dispenser that I’d carefully placed on the edge of his desk for easy access for guests.
And me.
“It occurred to me you used to give your employees all these perks, like the food and the Starbucks and stuff, so I thought you needed to step up your game. This, my friend, is an electric M&M dispenser. Watch.”
I put my hand under the flap, heard the buzz as it opened, and voila, about seven M&Ms of varying flavors dropped into my palm.
Magic. And because they were in my hand, I immediately began eating them one at a time.
He said nothing. Just walked past me, around his desk and turned his monitors back on.
“Come on,” I said encouragingly. “This is great. It’s endless M&Ms. I’ve got peanut in there. Plus, peanut butter and pretzel. Milk chocolate. Dark chocolate. You’ll never know what you’re getting. Well, you will by the size, but still, it will be an M&M adventure.”
“Remove it from my desk,” he said in that voice. It was his intimidating, I don’t have time for your silly games voice. There was a time that voice actually worked on me. Not anymore.
I pouted purposefully. “Why?”
“Because it’s frivolous and you know I don’t do frivolous.”
“E.G.,” I whined. “It’s M&Ms.”
“I’m not saying you can’t have it. I’m saying it can’t be on my desk. Put it on yours.”
“I can’t do that!” I shouted.
He looked up at me as he leaned back in his chair. “Why not?”
“Because if I have an M&M dispenser on my desk, I’ll spend my day eating M&Ms.”
“Control yourself,” he said. He was being serious too.
I shook my head. “I don’t have that kind of willpower.”
He sighed and looked down at his wrist.
There was something sleek and silver attached to it.
“What is that?” I asked him, pointing at his wrist.
“Smart Watch,” he said, looking down at it with a scowl. “Some new prototype a friend at Apple wanted me to try out. It tells me I didn’t sleep well the night before, which is entirely unhelpful.”
“I’ve never seen you wear a watch.”
“I had one I wore for years, but I…lost it,” he said absently. “This one is already annoying me, so it’s unlikely I’ll wear it much longer. However, it is telling me it’s getting perilously close to nine am. And here I sit, without my coffee and my newspapers.”
“Yes,” I smiled. “But you have M&Ms.”
I waved my hand under the dispenser again, heard the buzz, and five M&Ms dropped out. Except one bounced off my hand and on to the floor. I bent down to pick it up and popped it into my mouth.
The look of utter horror on E.G.’s face was hysterical.
“What?” I asked. “Five second rule.”
“Five second what?”
“It’s the rule. As long as it doesn’t spend more than five seconds on the floor, then it’s still good.”
“Is that some sort of…homeless rule?”
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing in his face.
“Yes, yes, it is. You’re not aware of the Homeless Association Board?
It sets the rules for these sort of things.
How long food is good even after it’s been tossed in the dumpster.
Holiday tent decorations. You really have to monitor that stuff.
You do too much and it’s just tacky. Brings down the whole homeless neighborhood. ”
“You’ve made your point,” he sneered, trying to dismiss me.
“They asked me to run for the board, but the politics! You would be amazed. The drunks can’t get along with the meth-heads-”
“I get it,” he said, cutting me off. “Call me ridiculous, but I see no need to eat food off a space where my shoe has stepped.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it does sound a little gross,” I mused.
“Flowers!” he barked. “Is there a point to all of this? To that?” he asked, pointing at my red and green battery-operated M&M dispenser.
“I thought it would be fun for the office.”
It had been a silly impulse, really. I don’t even know what made me think of it. I’d been walking through the aisles of Costco, humming:
Check my Costco ID. Check it real good.
When I stopped at an end of the aisle display because the color caught my attention. It was fun and whimsical, and I had room in my life now for fun and whimsy.
If E.G. needed anything in his life…it was more fun and whimsy.
It had been over a month since he showed up at my apartment. Drunk and trying to escape his grief. I didn’t think about it too much, because, like we both agreed, we pretended it never happened.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder who’s couch he’d slept on before he’d met me.
“I’m also certain I’ve made the point, on several occasions, I don’t do fun. And haven’t I explained how sugar, especially in the morning, is poison?”
But he was changing, I thought to myself. He relaxed more. Smiled more, even when he didn’t want to.
The other day I’d bought a box of donuts for us and there was zero freak out from him.
When I’d offered him one, he man-splained how sugar in general was terrible for our overall health and starting the day with a sugary breakfast was a sure way to crash mid-afternoon.
But when he bit into the chocolate frosted and groaned, I felt this massive sense of satisfaction.
He was changing. I was changing, of course I was changing. My whole life had gone from one of constant fear and uncertainty to routine and normalcy.
It had been like falling through some black hole into a parallel universe where you realized this was how other people lived.
Fresh sheets and pillows whenever I wanted them, simply by doing the laundry.
New clothes if I saw something I liked because there was money in my checking account to afford it.
I was starting to discover things I liked. Cheese. And things I hated. Kiwis.
I had a person in my life. Someone who relied on me, which brought its own kind of power.
If he knew I thought that about him, he wouldn’t be pleased. If he knew I considered him important, he would tell me I was wrong. That he was just an employer.
Except, we’d crisscrossed personal lines so many times over, it was hard to even see where they were anymore.
“Hello? Did I lose you?”
He jerked me out of my thoughts. Pretty sure he’d been ranting about the evils of sugar again.
“I’ll take it to my office. You’re right. Makes more sense there. I’m full of fun. If I get fat though, that’s on you.”
“I doubt a few M&Ms will make you fat,” he said, dismissing me as he turned back to his monitors.
“Aw, E.G. you say the nicest things sometimes.”
“Coffee! Papers! You know, the reason I pay you.”
“On it.”
I took my dispenser and tucked it under my arm as I left his office to walk over to mine. I set the dispenser down.
Face out, because that was going to stop me from eating M&Ms all day.
He needed his coffee, he needed his papers. We needed to start the day, but I found myself wincing in some kind of pain I couldn’t put a name to. Like something in my chest made it difficult to breathe.
I had to admit some basic facts.
I’d bought the M&M dispenser because I wanted to make E.G. smile. That wasn’t entirely accurate. I’d bought the M&M dispenser because I had a hunch watching him be grumpy about it would be fun for me.
This was my workplace, but I’d been thinking about…fun.
I’d been thinking about bringing fun to him.
That wasn’t weird, wasn’t it? I did an inner self check and decided, no, it was fine. We’d worked well together these last few months. We’d gotten to know each other. It was okay if I bought him donuts sometimes, and occasionally a toy to see if he would laugh.
That’s what all good assistants did for their bosses to keep them loose. Help them balance all that intensity.
Wasn’t it?
How the fuck do you know, you’ve never been an assistant before?
Maybe I needed some perspective. Maybe I needed to meet and talk with other assistants. Surely there had to be several throughout the building complex where we were located.
There was Claire, who worked as the receptionist in the marketing firm on this office floor.
Ironically, the job I thought I’d come to apply for.
We’d met in the lobby and she’d introduced herself.
We were about the same age, started our respective jobs at the same time.
She’d probably been trying to make a new friend, and I…
well, I didn’t do the whole friend thing easily.
Putting on a smile for people who showed up for meetings…that was performative.
Actually, getting to know someone, that required less defensive armor where I tended to be prickly.
Much like E. G. was.
We were a prickly match made in heaven.
Not a match!
No, of course not. We weren’t a match. We weren’t even real friends. He was my boss, I was his assistant. That was it. We could cross a thousand lines, a million, and it wouldn’t matter. That’s all it would ever be between us.
I was mostly sure of it.
“Flowers!”
I jumped again, clearly lost in my thoughts. “Stop doing that!” I yelled at him.
He stood in my doorway, shoved his hands in his pockets and snickered. Literally snickered. “I’m sorry, it’s too much fun. I’m pretty sure green M&M’s don’t have the same sugar content as the others,” he said, as he moved up behind me and stuck his hand under the dispenser.
The toy dropped seven M&M’s into his hands and he handed me four of them.
He popped the three green ones in his mouth, flashed me a smile and left.
My heart thudded hard against my rib cage.