8. The Secret Coworker
The Secret Coworker
I’m plotting, always plotting. If you had a peephole into my head, you’ll see gears churning overtime.
I stare daggers at Rhys. He’s waiting expectantly for an explanation, studying me with naked curiosity as if I’m a fascinating new specimen he’d just unearthed from the muck.
This throws me. I expected judgement, a lecture on right and wrong, sanctimonious shaming.
Rhys does neither. He waits for my answer. He’s curious. Clinical.
Fortunately, I came to this meeting with a contingency plan.
“I have a clue. How else would I be able to bypass Focker’s Matrix?”
His lips twitch. “Foucault’s Matrix.”
“That’s what I said.”
He hesitates for a beat. “You called it ‘Focker’s Matrix.’”
“No,” I reach over the table and retrieve my lemonade. “I’m pretty sure I said ‘Foucault.’ You just didn’t hear me over the noise.” I take a triumphant gulp of my lemonade. My lips pucker. Tart. Too tart.
Rhys tips his head to the side like a chess player strategizing his next move. “I can see how you got the job,” he says at last, and then his gaze flickers to my work laptop. “But it won’t work with me.”
“What won’t work?” I ask, sitting up straighter.
“This reality distortion game,” he says, gesturing to my overall aura.
“What reality distortion?” I ask innocently.
“Very good.” He shakes his head, snorting. “Unbelievable, really. Remind me to never play poker with you.”
I bat my lashes. “But I don’t know how to play poker.” I do. I’m good, but humble. All good poker players are.
My response triggers a great big smile. His teeth are healthy and white, though his canines are snaggled and sharp, like a wolf’s.
His smile stimulates a chain-reaction, an unexpected jolt of lightning, causing the microscopic hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.
I sit up straighter, my skin suddenly sensitive to the whisper-whoosh of the AC.
“I bet you play with a handful of nothing and sweep the table,” he says.
I flip my hair cavalierly over my shoulder. “Assumptions make an ass out of you, not of me.”
“It may work with the dummies at your office,” Rhys says, the amusement dissolving from his tone, “but I actually know what I’m doing.
You don’t know the first thing about the ASSET or you would’ve knocked out your ‘directives’ in an afternoon.
This is a joke,” he holds up my print-out, “I could do this in my sleep and I don’t go around labeling myself as an ‘ASSET expert.’ How the hell did you get this job? ”
I let him fire off his mean little questions while sipping on my unpalatable lemonade. “The position that should’ve gone to you?”
He scowls, sidelined by my question. Did he think he was going to humiliate me over my incompetence with the ASSET? I’ve factored that in as part of my contingency plan. I’m aware of my own incompetence, thank you very much, which makes me more competent than he realizes.
“Yes. That’s right.” Rhys nods. “That director role should have gone to me.”
“And you’re still bitter about it?”
He sits forward, pressing his palms on the sticky tabletop. “Let me be brutally honest with you—”
“You mean you haven’t already? I should think calling me ‘ugly’ was enough brutal honesty.”
“You’re not ugly and you know it,” he cuts me off.
“You’re just fishing for compliments at this point.
” Before I could clapback, he shakes his head, his eyes downcast, muttering more to himself than to me.
“It’s a mystery how you got the job. You’re clearly incompetent and you don’t know shit about the ASSET.
I figured the hiring managers were dumb; now I know they’re idiots for hiring a bigger id—” He takes one look at my tomato-stewed face, and swallows his words.
I’m enacting violence again, dreaming of launching myself over the table and body-slamming him to the floor.
I’m usually a calm person, tranquil… like a walking meditation tape, but this guy…
This fucking guy. He’s turned me into a rage machine and switched my inner soundtrack from serene lo-fi to heavy metal.
“Go on…” My nails dig into my palm. “Finish your sentence.”
Rhys had the decency to shut up. He picks up a crumb of sourdough, left over from someone else’s lunch, and flicks it onto the floor.
“Your HR department is idiotic, but you’re not,” he says with a self-deprecating snort.
“That much is clear. You managed to steal the role of director, despite not knowing what you’re doing.
Ergo, you must know a little of what you’re doing.
You may be a liar, but you’re not an idiot. ”
Okay. I’m no longer blasting heavy metal in my head.
It’s more like early 2000s Nu Metal, which always reminds me of the Inland Empire, my new home if I don’t accomplish what I set out to do today.
I bite my tongue and try to visualize that slice of ocean outside my window and the jacaranda trees dotting my street.
Be nice to Rumpelstiltskin. You need him to help spin your shit into gold.
I shun violence. I choose to operate like a lo-fi playlist with soothing beach vibes. I have chosen to pardon the incel even though every fiber of my being wants to commit lunchtime homicide.
With a reluctant sigh, I say, “I’m not insulted.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“But you did.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” Rhys insists.
“And yet I’m insulted,” I say.
“But you just proclaimed you weren’t.” He narrows his eyes. “Wait, are you?”
“I am!”
“Then why did you declare, ‘I’m not insulted’?”
“I was trying to forgive you!”
Rhys looks genuinely confused. “Forgive me for what? What did I do?”
“You insulted me.”
“Except I didn’t.”
“Enough!” I gulp my lemonade and slam the glass on the table. “Are you trying to get the last word?”
“No! I said you’re ‘not an idiot,’ what more do you want?
” Rhys studies me with a measure of grudging respect.
In his own strange way, he’d just complimented me.
Sure, he insulted me and my friends in HR in every possible way, but he seemed oddly curious about how a clueless woman like me could rise and rise so high.
I unfurl my fists and glance down at the red nail marks embedded in my palm. “Rhys?”
“Hm?”
“Let me be brutally honest with you.”
He sits up straighter, bracing himself for an evisceration. Fortunately, I’d already drained my lemonade and had nothing to toss in his face. “Go ahead.”
“You’re right. I’m a liar and a fraud. I don’t have a clue how to work the ASSET.
Until last week, I didn’t even know what the ASSET was, and between you and me, I still don’t.
I used to be decent enough at data analytics, but I’ve winged my way through so many jobs that I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore.
I never wanted to be a data analyst. I wanted to be a marine biologist. If it weren’t for those bloody barnacles, I wouldn’t be,” I gesture to the phantom space between us, “Director of the ASSET division, two days away from giving a presentation about a subject I know nothing about. Is that what you want to hear?”
Rhys is blindsided by my confession. Naturally, he expected me to be defensive, not bludgeon him with the truth. He’s quiet for a spell. At last, he clears his throat. “Barnacles?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a long story...”
“How did HR get the idea that you’re an ASSET expert?”
“Because I put it on my résumé,” I say matter-of-factly.
“But you’re not qualified,” he says, clearly unable to bypass the roadblock.
I shake my head in the face of such naiveté. “Everyone pads their résumé. It’s almost a crime not to do it. I presume you do it too.”
Rhys shakes his head.
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Oh dear.” I lean back. It all makes sense now.
He may be a jerk, but he’s an honest one, a man without a filter, spewing his unasked-for opinions to the world.
I’ve only just met him and he’s already implied that I looked better in my picture than in life (his comment still stings) and called me a liar.
Now it’s my turn to study him like a rare specimen.
Rhys Stiltskine can’t tell a lie, and it’s killing his career and sabotaging his social life.
He’s a Boy Scout and he’s an asshole, neither of which will help him climb the corporate ladder.
“The reason they hired me over you,” I say, “is very simple. HR liked me better. I made a better impression. I’m a team player whereas you...” I purse my lips, eyeing his scowling face and distasteful hoodie. “How did you answer when Nina asked you if you believed in company-wide synergy?”
Rhys scoffs. “Who’s Nina?”
“See! This is what I’m talking about. You didn’t even bother to learn their names.”
“I wasn’t aware I had to become best friends with my interviewers. Positions should be filled based on merit, not ass-kissing,” he grumbles.
“It doesn’t hurt to be friendly.”
“I was friendly,” he says sheepishly.
“Were you?” I press. “Because you don’t sound very synergistic to me.”
He rolls his eyes at the mention of ‘synergy.’ “Give me a break with that corporate B.S.”
I gesture to him, a hunched-up ball of cynical incel energy, and then to me, born to be everyone’s best friend with my breezy smile and padded résumé.
“I rest my case. You’re unlikable. You’re not a team player, and you scoffed at the concept of synergy.
I, on the other hand, am the very model of corporate synergy. Who would you hire?”
Rhys lets my tips sink in with an incredulous shake of his head. He wanted the truth. He can’t handle the truth. “Even though you can’t do the job?”
“It’s not like I can’t learn.”
He arches an eyebrow. “But you didn’t learn.”
“Except I’m working my butt off trying to complete my directive by having lunch with an asshole like you. If that’s not bending over backwards for my company, I don’t know what is.”