5. Professional Amnesia
PROFESSIONAL AMNESIA
Lani
I have a plan.
The plan is simple: be so good at this job that there's no room for anything else. No tension. No history. No Maui. Work. Competence. Leilani Torres doing what she does best and getting out clean on the other side.
I start with his inbox.
It's a disaster. Not chaotic. Neglected.
Like someone was managing it enough to keep it from exploding but never thinking.
I sort by sender, flag by urgency, archive the noise.
Three emails need same-day responses. One has been sitting unanswered for four days and the sender is a board member who does not strike me as patient.
I draft the responses. Don't send them. Leave them ready for his review.
Then I find the scheduling conflict. Tuesday's 11 a.m. runs into a standing investor call that his previous assistant never cross-referenced. I fix it. Leave a note. Two more conflicts in the same week. I fix those too.
By the time I'm done, I've touched every corner of his calendar for the next ten days. I know where he's supposed to be, when, and with whom. I know which meetings have prep materials, and which ones are flying blind.
I also notice something. A recurring 5 p.m. block every weekday labeled Home. Not a meeting. Not a conference call. Protected. Anyone who tries to schedule into that window gets bounced.
I don't think much about it at first. Plenty of executives block off time.
Then I see the pattern. 6 a.m. blocked. 5 p.m. blocked.
Weekends blocked, unless he overrides them himself.
Whoever Ethan Mercer is in the rest of his life, he goes there twice a day and protects those hours with a system.
Someone has built fences around his calendar.
I note it and keep working.
By the time Ethan walks in at 8:50 a.m., coffee in hand, I have the three priority documents on his desk in the order he'll need them, and his 9 a.m. queued up on the conference line.
He stops in the doorway.
Looks at his desk.
Looks at me.
I'm back at my screen. “Good morning.”
He says nothing. Goes into his office. I hear him pick up the first document.
I keep my face neutral and take a long sip of my own coffee.
That's one.
The list arrives at 9:45 a.m.
Twelve tasks. Noon deadline. I read through it once, then again, and on the second pass, I find the contradiction.
Task four wants the Harlow contract drafted with the original terms. Task nine wants a revision summary that assumes the terms have changed.
They can't both be done. Not by the same person, without a decision from above.
I don't go ask him.
I do eleven of the twelve and at 11:43 a.m. I send him a single line.
Task nine requires confirmation on revised vs. original Harlow terms before I can proceed. Everything else is in your shared folder.
I hit send and go back to work.
Two minutes later I hear his chair move.
He doesn't come out. But a minute later I see the notification on my screen. He's opened the shared folder. Then he opens it again.
“You've been here before?”
I look up. The woman in the doorway is quick-moving, a lanyard full of badges around her neck, and a coffee in each hand. She's looking at me like she's trying to figure out if I'm worth the energy.
“First week,” I say.
“Nia Brooks.” She holds out one of the coffees. “Senior assistant. I sit two floors down, but I run things up here too, since the last three people Mercer hired couldn't find the printer.”
I take the coffee. “Leilani Torres. Lani.”
“I know.” She leans against the wall. “You drafted the Castellan response this morning. I saw it in the shared queue. That email has been sitting there since Thursday.”
“It needed answering.”
“It needed answering four days ago.” She looks at me. “You're either very good or very brave.”
“Can't it be both?”
She studies me for a second. Then nods.
“Most people last two weeks,” she says. “The smart ones figure out on day one that this isn't the job for them. The stubborn ones stick around until he breaks them.” She tilts her head. “Which one are you?”
“Still figuring that out.”
“Fair enough.” She pushes off the wall. “Maybe,” she says. Then she's gone, lanyard swinging, onto the next thing.
I look down at the coffee. It's how I take it.
I have no idea how she knew that.
Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., Ethan walks past my desk on his way out.
That's the surprise. Not that he leaves. That he leaves at 4:30 p.m.
He's wearing his coat. Briefcase in hand. He says nothing to me, but he pauses long enough to glance at the screen I'm working on, nods once, and keeps walking.
I check the calendar after he's gone.
The 5 p.m. Home block is right there. He's leaving early to make it on time.
I think about it for the rest of the afternoon.
The man I met in Maui didn't seem like someone who left work at 4:30 p.m. for anything.
The man who hired me doesn't either. But here, on Wednesday, he walked out without explaining himself to anyone because somewhere in his life there is something he refuses to be late for.
Another piece of the puzzle that is Ethan Mercer.
Thursday afternoon, I'm on hold with a vendor who has put me on hold three times in twenty minutes. I hear Ethan's voice in the hallway. Low, clipped, whatever meeting he came from still in his shoulders.
He passes the open doorway.
Pauses.
I'm making a face at the phone because the hold music is aggressive and I've lost track of how long I've been listening to it.
He watches me for two seconds.
I catch him. He doesn't look away. He looks away at his own pace, like he was never concerned about being caught, and continues down the hall.
My stomach tightens. I ignore it.
The vendor comes back on the line. I handle it. Get the delivery date moved up by two days, the pricing adjusted, and the paperwork promised by end of business. I add it to the shared folder with a one-line summary.
Friday afternoon. I'm shutting down my computer, jacket on, thinking about takeout, when I hear him behind me.
The office has cleared out. I stayed to finish the monthly report he didn't ask for but will need on Monday.
I turn.
Ethan is leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, looking at a point past my shoulder. Like he rehearsed walking over here and forgot the ending.
“The Donovan file,” he says.
I wait.
“It was handled. The previous assistant tried three times.” He pauses. “Didn't get it right once.”
Then he pushes off the doorframe and walks back into his office.
I stare at the empty doorway.
No good job. No well done. A statement of fact delivered to a spot three inches to my left.
I pick up my bag.
That counts. I decide it counts.
Maya picks up on the second ring.
“Tell me everything,” she says, which is how she answers the phone when she knows something happened.
“The job is fine.”
“Fine like boring or fine like you've got it handled?”
“Fine like I've got it handled.” I'm on the subway, one hand on the pole, the city sliding past the window in the dark. “Your brother is difficult.”
“I told you.”
“You said difficult. You didn't say impossible.”
She laughs. “But you're still there.”
“I'm still there.”
“I knew you could handle Ace.” There's warmth in it. Real warmth. Like she believed it before I did.
“Why do you call him that?” I ask. “Ace.”
“Family thing. He hates it.” A beat, bright with satisfaction. “Which is why I do it.”
I smile at the window. Try to picture him as someone's older brother. Can't get there.
“He doesn't seem like someone who had a childhood,” I say.
“He had one. He powered through it with great efficiency.” She pauses. “He's not as bad as he seems, you know.”
“A lot.”
“A lot,” she agrees. “But he's got reasons.”
I think about the 5 p.m. Home block. The Wednesday coat-and-briefcase. The protected windows in his calendar that nobody else touches.
I don't ask Maya about it. Whatever's on the other side of those blocks is the thing she's not allowed to tell me.
“Maya,” I say. “He's protective of his evenings. Is everything okay with him? The privacy stuff. Should I be worried?”
A long pause.
“He's okay,” she says. “Be patient with him. He doesn't let people get close. It's not personal.”
I let it go. That's the rule. I always let it go.
“Okay,” Maya says, and I can hear her shifting gears. “So, Saturday. I'm doing dinner. Nothing big. My place. You're coming.”
“Sure.”
“And Ace will be there.”
I close my eyes.
The subway rattles around a curve.
“Can't wait,” I say.
She laughs like she knows what that means. “See you Saturday.”
The line goes dead. I put my phone in my pocket and stare at the dark tunnel rushing past.
One week down. Dinner with my boss on Saturday.