Lena
ELEVEN
I’ve thought about Dario’s busted knuckles more than I want to. I can’t stop thinking about what he did for me. Looking away never makes anything easier. It just makes it take longer.
By any reasonable measure, I should be more disturbed than I am. The man I’m sleeping with beat up my boss on my behalf. Disturbed is the proportionate response. I know this.
And then I think about Reggie’s hand on my jaw. Two reports that went nowhere. The look of a man who has decided the rules don’t apply to him because nobody has ever made them apply.
When I think of him and what he did and how HR screwed me over, I’m not disturbed anymore.
What I actually feel is relieved, and—this is the part I’m sitting with honestly—a little lit up.
Not proud of the lit-up thing. But there’s a part of me that has been navigating the world alone for five years, and that part is profoundly grateful to have been shown that I don’t have to manage this one alone.
Someone enforced the rules. I’m going to let that be what it is.
I’ve decided what that says about me is that I’m human. Or a cavewoman, since I couldn’t stop thinking about Dario beating the shit out of Reggie, and I got so turned on that I went to him, unprompted, to show my gratitude.
There’s another piece of this that I can’t stop thinking about over my morning coffee. The version of Dario I first met and the version with the bruised knuckles are not different people.
One person, one center of gravity. The ice pops for a sick child and the knuckles busting on Reggie’s face reside in the same man.
I find that more interesting than I should.
I’m also working out the fact that I find it attractive, and I want to be honest with myself about that.
I’ve been making decisions based on math for five years—what Opal needs, what I can provide, what the numbers allow—and if I’m going to make a decision that involves something as inconvenient as actual feeling, I want to do it with my eyes open.
I know what he is and roughly what his life contains, even if I don’t have all the details. I know the arrangement has a built-in end. I know all of this.
And I’m still here, in this apartment that isn’t mine, and it’s starting to fit anyway.
That’s the thing I’m least sure what to do with.
The fitting. The way I stopped having to think about where the mugs are.
The way Opal and I have a routine in this space now that doesn’t feel provisional, even though it is.
The way I’ve started doing my job hunt at the kitchen counter because the light is better there, which is a very small thing to notice, and somehow the thing I keep noticing.
I’ve wedged into Dario’s life more comfortably than I ever expected to.
He’s done so much for me in the short time I’ve known him.
Even him beating someone up for me… I’m starting to feel a little like a gangster’s moll, and even though I roll my eyes at myself for the dramatic thought, it’s still there.
A letter of recommendation arrives on Friday morning. I read it at the kitchen table with my coffee, then again, and a third time, because it’s so genuinely good that I keep thinking I must be misreading it.
Reggie has apparently spent years watching me work—my resolution rate, my escalation percentage, the feedback loop I built for difficult calls, the informal coaching I’ve been doing with newer staff.
He writes about leadership in a way that’s concrete and nothing like what you’d get from someone going through the motions.
He says I should have been promoted eighteen months ago and that the delay reflects a failure of management judgment, not capability.
I sit with that sentence for a while. I’m utterly speechless. When I tell Dario about it, he coolly says, “Took him long enough.” Then he walks away. I have no idea what that was about.
HR calls on Monday. They’d like to discuss a settlement, Judy says, in the careful neutral tone of a department in containment mode.
I say yes, I’d like to discuss that too.
We schedule a call for Wednesday. When I hang up, I stay at the table and feel something shift—that particular chapter closing.
Wednesday’s call goes well. The offer is more than reasonable given the circumstances.
“That’s generous. But I’ve been told I’m entitled to more compensation than that for the hell I experienced at his hands, and the breach of HR’s policies.” Truth is, I’m the one telling me that. But I’m happy to let them think I’ve seen a lawyer.
Judy clears her throat. “I am authorized to add another ten on top of the package. Along with full medical insurance paid for six months after your date of job abandonment.”
I laugh once. “I didn’t abandon anything. I left a very unsafe work environment.”
“Yes, of course. Merely stating what the paperwork says.”
“Then you will change the paperwork to reflect the actual situation, or this matter will be escalated.”
A pause. “I find your terms agreeable.”
Can’t believe that worked. “Either my lawyer or I will respond to your meager offer by Friday.” I hang up, and I’m shaking.
I hear a popping sound behind me and spin around.
Dario. Clapping. And smiling. Which is unsettling.
“I didn’t know you were listening.”
“You did well, Lena. I’m impressed.” Then he rounds the corner to head to his office.
Somehow, his pride feels like a bigger bonus than the settlement.
I job-hunt in the evenings after Opal’s in bed.
Laptop at the kitchen counter, Reggie’s letter attached to every application, and by the end of the week, I have two interview requests.
One from a mid-size management firm downtown.
One from a healthcare administration company whose posting mentions business development experience, which I have in the form of three semesters of business school that have been sitting on my resume, gathering dust for five years.
I stare at that one for a long time before I hit send.
When I was in business school, I was a different person, and sometimes, I miss being her.
The version of me who was going to finish the degree and do something with the courses she was actually good at.
That Lena didn’t go anywhere. She’s been in here the whole time, keeping the lights on while I dealt with everything else.
She’s been patient. Now might be her time to shine.
Dario and I don’t talk about what happens between us at night. It just happens, with a frequency and ease I’ve stopped trying to track, because tracking would mean deciding something, and I’m not ready to decide. Three months. A clear end. I know what I signed up for.
The end is getting harder to picture.
Opal makes a friend—Bea, from her class, who also likes to draw and has an eraser collection shaped like food that Opal considers the greatest achievement of modern civilization. She comes home talking about Bea at full speed, already planning a playdate.
“Let’s make it happen.”
Her eyes go wide. “Really? I thought I might still be too sick.”
I nod. “Baby, you’re healthy again. You’re going to school. You don’t sound like you swallowed a frog anymore.”
She giggles at that. “I don’t.”
“I want you to have friends, Opal. Get me her number, and I’ll set something up with her mom, okay?”
“I will!” She races to the living room to color. Lately, she likes the floor for that. Next week, it’ll probably be her desk, and then back to the countertop. She likes a change of scenery when she makes her art, as she says.
I tell Dario over dinner about Opal’s new friend.
He instantly turns to her. “What does Bea like to draw?”
“Butterflies, mostly.”
“Lunches?”
“Sandwiches and chips. The good ones.”
He looks at me. “There are bad chips?”
“The cheap ones, she means.”
He nods, still thinking. “We will have to get some of the good chips, then. That way you can trade.”
Opal smiles and nods, and I watch as he gently grills her for information about her new friend. I watch him being interested in my daughter’s social life and feel the tug in the middle of my chest. The one I actively avoid thinking about.
Two days later, I’m coming down the hall to check on Opal before bed, and I hear his voice from her room. I stop outside the doorway.
He’s reading to her. Not a children’s book.
In fact, I have no idea what he’s reading to her. I don’t know the language. As quietly as possible, I crack the door a fraction.
Opal sits on her bed, with Dario in a chair next to her so she can see the book. She yawns big then asks, “What’s that part?”
“The tibialis anterior. It lifts your toes up, among other functions.”
“My toes? I have that?”
He nods. “Just beneath the fascia cruris, attached to the tibia, sitting in front of the tibialis posterior.”
“That… there’s more parts in the picture.”
He begins to list them, and by the time he gets to the nervus peroneus something or other, I’m yawning too. Apparently, the magic of Latin is that it knocks Swan women out.
But the thought strikes me like a bell. He’s reading a medical textbook in Latin to my daughter, who must have asked for a story and got medical terminology in a dead language. He’s reading it with complete seriousness, as though this is exactly what the situation calls for.
By the time he turns the page, she’s out. He doesn’t stop reading.
He turns the page. Settles back in the chair. His voice stays low and even, which is the way his voice always sounds whether or not anyone’s paying attention. It’s either a character trait or a survival mechanism, and I think it’s probably both.
I lean against the doorframe and listen to him rattle on about leg anatomy—I figured out that’s the part he’s been talking about this whole time—and it’s almost hypnotic. He doesn’t leave until she’s snoring hard, and then he nearly catches me on his way out.
Back in my room, I lie on my back and look at the ceiling for a long time. Outside, the city does its city things. In the next room, Opal snores in and out in the easy rhythm of a kid who is healthy and safe and not worrying about anything, which is all I have ever wanted for her.
I never had that as a child, and I’m eternally grateful to Dario for helping me give that to her.
I stare at the ceiling. Sleep doesn’t come easily.