3. Laura
LAURA
“Please,” I mutter the word under my breath as I make my way back to my desk. “The word you were searching for, the one you never remember to say, Mr. Dixon, was please.”
When I get back to my desk, I take a deep breath. My therapist and I have been working on my so-called strategy for working through the difficult emotions that this job brings up for me. The strategy is to take five deep breaths before acting on any of my emotions.
Usually by deep breath number four, I stop wanting to throw my stapler through the glass window into my boss’s office.
But today it’s not working. I do another set of five deep breaths before I open my laptop and return to my emails.
Opening a new tab to the side, I check my personal email account.
The one that I probably shouldn’t be checking on company time, because if my boss took a look over my shoulder for one second, he would immediately surmise that I’m planning to quit my job.
My inbox is filled with job application related things. Mostly automated rejection emails.
“This job market is tough,” sneered my older sister at dinner last month. “Even tougher when you drop out of college.”
She’d brought her boyfriend, a boring banker named Doug, along with a host of dramatic stories about her week, which always conveniently ended in the same way – with her being the hero.
Then again, an ER doctor is sort of a hero every day. Treating concussions and bullet wounds and everything in between. Allison saves lives on a regular basis. Meanwhile, what do I do?
I fetch scones that nobody eats, that’s what I do.
But maybe not for long.
An email subject line catches my eye among the sea of rejections.
Earn your teaching degree while working! Tuition reimbursement for early childhood educators.
I open the email and scan the contents, vaguely recalling my application to a pre-school that I sent in weeks ago.
Tuition reimbursement?
I could finally finish my degree. Without my parents’ help, without them trying to dictate what I study.
Most nearly-thirty year old women already know what they want to do with their lives. Most of my friends had it figured out by the time they were twenty-five. But it’s taken me a bit longer. I blame the fact that for most of my life, my parents relentlessly pushed me down the path of medicine.
Did it matter that needles make me feel faint and that hospitals give me the creeps?
No.
To my family, it was about legacy. Allison did the right thing. Went to school, did residency, and is now working at an ER and paying her dues.
She’s on the fast path to making half a million dollars per year, and my equally accomplished parents couldn’t be prouder.
And I’m…the screw up. The two-time college drop out that everyone gave up on.
I look at the salary attached to the education job. It’s not much. Nothing that my family would respect, but after years of working on my people-pleasing habits, I’ve finally begun to let go of my family’s expectations.
I don’t need to make half a million dollars a year.
I only need to make enough to keep myself in thrifted clothes and keep buying food, treats, and toys for the rescue animals that I foster.
Beyond that? Sure, there are some luxuries I wouldn’t mind trying. Who wouldn’t? But I’m not willing to work my life away doing something that I hate in order to get those luxuries.
My eyes wander through the glass at Troy.
The blinds are open now. I wonder why they’d been closed at all, before.
He never closes the blinds. I don’t know why.
If I had my own office, I’d want privacy.
Not glass walls where everyone can see me scratch my nose or make funny faces while I read my emails.
It’s probably sort of power trip. Troy doesn’t mind being watched because he enjoys doing the watching. From his glass-encased throne, he can see me as well as all of the other staff that work on the top floor.
Today it’s only me, though; most of the finance crew are away on a team offsite, and Julian – Troy’s right hand for everything that he thinks his ditzy scone-fetching assistant isn’t capable of doing – is out sick.
So it’s just us.
Him in his aquarium office, and me on the other side, where he can see every move that I make. Everything except my screen, which thankfully is facing away from him.
Troy’s eyes dart up suddenly, catching mine. At first, he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to look like he hates me, and I see the look in the eyes that I so often mistake for something else. Something like lust and longing.
Quicker than a flash, that expression is gone. Replaced with the usual disdain.
His large hand wraps around his Starbucks coffee cup. He holds it aloft, pointing to it with his other hand and mouthing “another one” at me.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes as I stand and put on my coat. At least I can stretch my legs and get out of this sterile, corporate environment for a while. Too many hours in a row inside this skyscraper, and I begin to feel just as robotic and soulless as the man I work for.
I don’t need to ask him for his coffee order.
I already know his usual by heart. I also don’t need to ask to borrow his corporate credit card, because months ago he issued me my very own company black card.
It’s nestled inside my thrifted leather bag, inside the frayed wallet where the only other items are my driver’s license, my personal bank card (which is not black and not made of steel), and a couple of twenty dollar bills that my grandfather insisted on shoving into my hand last time I visited him in the nursing hand.
Without saying goodbye, I exit the top floor through the elevator. My stomach flips a little on the descent down. I prefer the rickety old elevator in my apartment building to the one at Dixon HQ. Older elevators have texture, have bumps along the ride that let you know where you are in the air.
Some people think an old elevator is scary, but it’s the new ones that frighten me. Sleek and shiny, smooth gliding up and down dozens of floors at twice the speed of an old one, so quick that I can hardly make sense of how high in the air I actually am.
What’s the rush? What are we in such a hurry for that we have to ascend and descend twenty-five floors at a breakneck pace?
When the elevator pauses at floor sixteen, my hand lifts to my belly and take a deep, open-mouthed breath.
No wonder I couldn’t handle dissections in my college anatomy course. I don’t even have the stomach for a one-minute elevator ride.
“Feeling hungry?”
I look up as Isaac enters the elevator, that crooked boyish grin on his face. Through my nausea, I still notice his teeth. White and straight and perfect. The teeth of a person who grew up with money for regular cleanings and orthodontia.
“A little,” I fib, noting the abnormally high number of lies I’ve told at work today before ten in the morning.
He glances at the expensive looking watch on his wrist and then back to me as the elevator doors close and we begin to fall downwards again.
“It’s a little earlier than I usually take my lunch break,” he says. “But I’d be willing to make an exception for you. What are you in the mood for?”
The elevator lands soundlessly on the ground floor and the doors open out. He gestures for me to exit first, then follows me. I rush out of the lobby and into the sun, taking big gulps of the fresh air.
“There’s a great little sandwich place down the road,” Isaac is saying next to me. “They can do anything. Philly cheesesteak, meatball sub, salami and pepperjack…”
Oh god, stop naming sandwiches.
“No thanks,” I say quickly. “I actually can’t take my lunch right now anyways. I’m just on a coffee run for Mr. Dixon. Then it’s back to work.”
Isaac snorts.
“He makes you call him Mr. Dixon?” he says derisively.
“That’s his name,” I say weakly. I’m feeling good enough to stand up straight again, my breathing returning to normal.
Maybe I’m sick. Maybe whatever Julian is out sick with, he passed onto me before he left on Friday afternoon.
Maybe I should sneeze on Troy’s coffee on my way back to the office. Overt biological warfare seems like fair game to his covert psychological warfare.
Better yet, maybe I could just “accidentally” drop the scalding hot liquid onto his lap.
He’d never make me run a coffee errand again.
“If I were your boss,” Isaac says next to me. “I’d let you call me by my first name. I mean, you already do. But you still would.”
He winks and I look at him with a smile.
“Well, between you and me, I wish you were my boss,” I say.
He lifts a brow and I realize I definitely shouldn’t have said that to him. He works closely with Troy and though he’s being friendly to me right now, there’s nothing stopping him from relaying what I say to my boss later.
“Relax,” Isaac seems to read my mind, leaning forward conspiratorily. “You think you’re the only one to think your boss is a dick?”
“I didn’t call him a dick!” I exclaim, panicking. Did I accidentally black out and call my boss a dick just now? It seems plausible.
“Woah,” Isaac’s eyes widen in concern and he puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Relax. I wasn’t saying you said that. Laura, I’m saying that.
He is a dick, alright? I see the way he treats you.
We all see it. And you’re not the only assistant he’s mistreated.
I’ve seen them come and go. It was a revolving door before you came along.
We’re all surprised you’re still here and haven’t jumped ship. ”
I think of my inbox, of the email from the preschool that’s awaiting my reply. I nearly tell Isaac that jumping ship is exactly what I’m planning to do, but think better of it. Something about Isaac gives me a bad feeling, even if I can’t put my finger on what it is.
“Personally, I try to treat my assistants with the utmost respect,” Isaac continues solemnly, his hand still on my shoulder.
I feel his eyes taking me in, and even though they hold no malice in them, somehow they still make me more uncomfortable than the long lingering gaze of my asshole boss upstairs.
“Assistants are underestimated. People like Troy think that he can take assistants for granted…like your work isn’t necessary.
But look at you. Your boss can’t even get his own coffee without you. ”
“I mean, I’m sure he could,” I mutter with a frown. “He’s just got a lot on his plate.”
“Right,” Isaac nods. “More important things to do. While he lets the little people do the grunt work that doesn’t really matter.”
I feel woozy. The fact that I was running late this morning and didn’t eat any breakfast is catching up with me. Between the low blood sugar and the elevator nausea, I need to sit down.
But first, I’ve got to get some coffee.
“Look, Isaac,” I say, stepping away from him so that his hand falls from my shoulder. “Thank you for the chat, but I really have to run now. Mr. Dixon is expecting his coffee and he doesn’t like it when I’m late.”
Isaac gives me another pitying look. The nausea that had been fading before, seems to be returning with a vengeance the longer I stand across from this man. I’ll have to ask Julian if what he has is a stomach flu. I’d rather be prepared than caught off guard.
“I’ll see you at the social mixer,” Isaac promises. “This Friday. Remember?”
Ugh. Of course. Because it’s not enough that I spend half my life in this office building, Monday through Friday. They also want me here after hours to socialize and bond.
Meanwhile, all I really want to do is stay at home and bond with the german shepherd mix that was placed with me this week.
“Yeah,” I nod. Anything to exit this conversation. “I’ll see you there.”