Chapter 5 Elijah
Elijah
On the second day of this new chapter of my existence–the corporate cog chapter, Dylan’s words–my Molly is in worse spirits than she was at the end of yesterday.
Her shoulders are slumped and her pink lips have been set firmly in a frown since lunch.
She’s wearing a tight black skirt (distracting) and a sleeveless purple jumper (endearing, charming, captivating even) and her yellow hair is down instead of plaited.
The grapefruit smell is stronger when she turns her head, flipping her curls over her shoulder.
She’s got Carrie Bradshaw hair, but when I said so this morning, she squinted at me like I’d said the wrong thing.
It’s been downhill since then.
Her typing speed is rivalled by her quick problem solving and memory for where to locate key information on the computer. She’s fast and thorough; a better communicator than Ryan, who speaks to me like we share secrets, though we most definitely do not.
I’m trying my best to learn, but there’s so much information and with every concept comes an expectation that I understand ten previous concepts. I feel like a fawn on new legs when I try to navigate to a new tab or review a help ticket.
My apparent slowness has worn on her, and I’ve stopped asking questions for fear her agitation will worsen.
It’s been twenty minutes since she left me to do whatever it is she does during her lunch break. Yesterday she returned smelling even better than she had when she left and had little curls sticking to her neck. Distracting, that.
I haven’t spent this much time in close proximity to a mortal in many, many years, especially not a glowing, glowering one that smells like fresh citrus. Dylan doesn’t count. Mother was right–all werewolves smell vaguely of dog.
As I sit at my desk staring unblinking at my laptop, the man with the desk next to Molly’s knocks on my open door. Kenneth, I recall. Ryan called him Kenny Boy.
‘Hey, man, how’s the second day going?’ he asks. He makes himself right at home, dropping into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Molly being nice to you?’
‘Molly is great,’ I say immediately. Kenneth dips his chin while raising his eyebrows, like he knows I’m lying. Only, I’m not lying–Molly really is great, and very smart; I am the weak link here. ‘I’ve never met someone like her.’
‘That’s one way to put it.’ Kenneth grabs a pen off my desk and clicks it four times before tossing it back where he found it. ‘Wanna grab lunch? There’s a good burrito bowl place down the street.’
I stiffen, but Dylan prepared me for this sort of invitation. We practised. Though, it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask what exactly a burrito bowl is. I clear my throat, aiming for casual and polite.
‘No, thank you,’ I say. I think this ought to be enough, but he looks expectant for me to go on. ‘I don’t usually eat lunch.’
‘Ah, you intermittent fasting or something?’ he asks.
‘Or something,’ I agree, never having heard those two words strung together before. ‘Thank you for the invitation.’
Kenneth raps his knuckles on my desk and stands. His shirt is too small, but I think it’s intentional. As if he wants people to remark on the size of his biceps and shoulders. He stops before crossing out of the office and looks back at me.
‘Don’t let Molly scare you. She can be intense, but she’s good at her job. You’re lucky she’s training you,’ he says.
‘I agree.’
‘Just don’t tell her I said so.’ He winks and heads off to lunch, stopping at Devi’s desk to ask her a question, though she only rolls her eyes and spins her chair in the opposite direction.
I’ve observed that Devi is a rare, completely affable person unless she’s interacting with Kenneth.
She was patient and gentle as she showed me how to use the copy machine this morning (though I didn’t have my notepad to take notes, thus I’ve already forgotten).
Overall, Drummond has been a welcoming place.
I haven’t had to employ my compulsion abilities on anyone–well, beyond the initial interviewing process–though I reserve the right to do so.
Only if I really, really need to. Compelling humans is an ability I’ve always been adept at, but never one I’ve felt morally sound on.
My brother Gregory used to lament my reluctance to compel humans into doing our bidding, calling me too moral, too caring of the living.
But how can you know if a relationship is real if some parts are built against their will?
I suppose that Gregory would say I shouldn’t try to form relationships with humans in the first place.
I can practically hear his voice in my head scolding me for it.
This is where we’ve always differed; he is more than content to spend the rest of his days with paranormal society, only interacting with humans when necessary.
But vampires have so seldom created anything moving or meaningful in my experience; I think that the nature of immortality makes creation difficult. The frailty of existence breeds innovation, whereas the surety that you’ll live forever creates apathy and an acute loneliness.
To put it in plain terms, a vampire could never have written Lost.
I’m halfway through my bottle of blood when I spot Molly walking back into the office, her hair now up in a clip instead of hanging over her shoulders.
Her cheeks are flushed pink and I watch her throat bob in a swallow as she takes a drink of water.
She turns to look at me, catching me staring, and I choke on the blood, nearly spitting some out.
I avert my gaze and clear my throat, pretending that I have been working in the time she’s been gone.
My reflection in the blank computer screen stares incriminatingly back at me.
When I glance back up at Molly, she’s out of sight, likely sitting now behind the half-wall of her desk space.
Cubicle, she called it. I exhale and swipe my tongue across my teeth to make sure there’s no blood remaining there before unlocking the computer to get back to work.
Only, I’m not exactly clear on what work it is that I am supposed to be doing.
She gave me a task, I know she did… something about modules?
I don’t know how to get back to them, though.
I click to another page, the website Molly showed me with the help tickets, and it displays four new requests, but I have no clue what any of the words mean.
Best thing for me to do is to wait for Molly to return and teach me more things. With enough of this I will surely learn something and be able to provide some sort of meaningful contribution to this company.
Right?
She does eventually return, but not for another two hours.
I walked past her desk twice, and each time she was chewing on her bottom lip with her flat teeth, a crease between her eyebrows while she looked at her computer screen or at the little black notebook she keeps on her desk.
That is what working looks like. I must practise her exact look of focus.
Just when I am about to get up to walk past her desk for a third time, Molly appears in my doorway, computer closed in the crook of her arm.
‘Did you get through the videos?’ she asks.
‘Not quite,’ I say. The modules. I do not confess that I couldn’t find them.
Stupid, stupid man I am. Maybe I’ll ask Kenneth, just so I don’t have to see Molly looking at me like this again.
With her nose scrunched and lips turned down, I am wilting.
‘Kenneth wanted to show me something and I got distracted.’
‘Well, do it by tomorrow end of day and you should be fine.’
‘Wonderful.’
Molly takes a big breath and drops her shoulders in a quick exhale before returning to her seat next to mine.
Like yesterday, she smells stronger after lunch, like she’s been sweating, much like Dylan after his exercises.
Only, when Dylan sweats, the dog smell only intensifies, to negative affect. The same cannot be said for Molly.
‘I’ll show you how to format and send the phishing tests next,’ she tells me.
She starts typing with those fast fingers onto her keyboard while I try to detangle why a tech company would need to deploy tests on the art of angling.
I can think of no reason why any employee here should need to be proficient in catching marine life, or further, why we as a group would ever assess them on this.
‘You do that here?’ I ask, hoping she’ll offer more information.
‘Course,’ she says, then pauses. ‘What, you didn’t at your last company? We run at least three a quarter and assign the cyber security trainings to the ones who fail. Really standard stuff.’
I say nothing, only blink at Molly, who blinks back at me.
Then, her face changes and suddenly it’s like she’s seeing me–actually seeing me–for the first time.
It makes me squeamish, the way her brown eyes go wide, like she might have somehow intuited my supernatural identity after our hours together.
‘You don’t know what a phishing scam is,’ she says, not a question. Based on her astonishment, this discovery is maybe worse than if she found out I’m a vampire.
‘Sure I do.’ I do not.
She raises an eyebrow and waits. Fuck.
‘It’s, well, a common scam,’ I explain, hoping this is enough.
It’s not, and when I don’t go on, Molly laughs–a humourless sound. I wither beneath it.
‘All right, Elijah.’ Molly closes the various screens on her laptop until it shows just the cluttered background of icons. She slides it across the desktop to me; it’s like mine, but some of the letters on the keys are worn from use over time. ‘I need you to tell me what model this computer is.’
‘You—’ I press my lips together and look at the machine. She doesn’t wait for me to come up with something.
‘Tell me how much storage it has and how many gigabytes have already been used,’ she instructs.
When I stare blankly she goes on. ‘No can do? No worries,’ she says, but I can tell there are indeed worries.
‘What’s the difference between software and hardware?
What is RAM? Tell me how to check connection speed, or how to find an IP address. ’
My shoulders are well near my ears now, tensed from her barrage of increasingly frustrated inquiries that I have no expertise to answer. My voice is unsteady when I try to speak.
‘Molly, I—’
‘You what?’ she cuts me off again. ‘Can you even open a word document? Can you do anything?’
I blink at her undressing of me–the likes of which I haven’t received in at least a century. The last person to speak to me so directly, with such obvious exasperation, was Gregory. Vampires’ hearts do not beat, but beneath her accusing stare, I can almost imagine mine thumping again.
It’s such a rare and surprising sensation, I almost smile despite my embarrassment.
‘I have much to learn,’ I admit.
Molly closes her eyes and shakes her head. ‘That’s it.’ She slams shut her computer and slides it off the desk as she stands and exits the small office in a rush, leaving me staring after her.