20. Her Villain Arc
Her Villain Arc
I find a single seat at the counter by the window and try to stay out of the way. Michelle has joined Rhys at the opposite end of the cafe, and they seem to be in good spirits.
From the moment I pointed him out, she blinks exactly three times and turns to me in dismay.
“Is this the same guy?” She asks in both shock and disbelief.
“The very one.”
“Rhys Stiltskine?”
“The one and only,” I say, bursting with pride.
“Wow.” She looks her fill. “He’s really cleaned up. I barely recognize him without that nasty hoodie.”
I fight the urge to say, ‘I told you so,’ instead adding, a touch arrogantly, “I bet you’re going to stay longer than twenty minutes.”
Now, with Michelle securely planted in front of Rhys, I sip on my dragon’s blood green tea (passion fruit with strawberry popping boba) and check on their progress.
Rhys has an intense expression of concentration as he nods along to whatever Michelle is saying.
It seems like she’s doing most of the talking.
Per our rebrand, he appears both strong and purposefully silent. This is a good sign.
Having worked in the same office together for the better part of three years, I know Michelle can be standoffish with strangers and extremely talkative with the coworkers she’s comfortable with.
She has three good stories, which I know by heart as I’ve heard them every week for three years. I hope she’s opening with ‘The Car Accident,’ a story about the time a drunk driver clipped her back fender and sent her car sailing off the 91 West.
“... and then I began rolling,” Michelle’s voice rises above a break in the music. “Three times I rolled, and that’s how I got this scar,” she shows him her forearm, still bumpy from the embedded glass of her shattered windshield.
The music bumps again just as Rhys mouths his response, causing Michelle to toss her head back in laughter.
My God… Rhys told a joke. And it landed. They’re actually getting along!
I face the window once more, suppressing the urge to holler my triumph. We’ve unlocked a new achievement. This is proof that Rhys is growing and learning, firmly planted on the road to normality. Soon, he won’t need me anymore. And good riddance…
I glance down at my work laptop, my triumphant mood dampening unexpectedly.
If you were to ask me when our working relationship began, I would never have called our arrangement a ‘good thing.’ In fact, I couldn’t wait until it was over.
But now, to my surprise and consternation, I realize that I’m going to miss him after all.
It’s the bittersweet sadness of high school graduations and workplace going-away parties.
You’re overcome by a generosity of feeling and promise to keep in touch, no matter what.
But we all know what happens next. You inevitably lose touch until, ten years later, your relationship is reduced to a few faded memories and liking their social media posts.
It’s not like he’s moving to another country; we’ll keep in touch, or at least, that’s what we’ll say. But with Rhys’ future schedule packed with dates (I’m what-if-ing here) and my (almost) mastery of the ASSET, we have no reason to hang out anymore.
And that makes me sad.
Tapping listlessly, I pull up the ASSET and work my way through the program.
Usually, there’s a million distractions pulling me away from my critical work on the ASSET.
Today, I’m using the ASSET to distract me from the date happening a few feet behind my back and the unwavering sense that I’ve just lost something valuable…
This time, I really try.
For twenty minutes, I block out everything and concentrate on putting together my next presentation for the board.
I can’t explain what happened, but in the many months of trying to avoid my work and nodding along as Rhys droned on and on about the ASSET, something, somehow, miraculously, sank in.
In the same sense that Rhys, being so resistant to becoming a dateable man, managed to absorb my lessons and make it work, I know more about the ASSET than I gave myself credit for.
Now, it’s all clicking together, and I’m slamming together slide decks as if my presentation is tomorrow instead of next Wednesday. This time, I’ve curated my own presentation, and I didn’t need Rhys’ help.
Look! I did a thing!
I’ll finally know what I’m talking about instead of pretending to know what I’m talking about.
I’m locked in, navigating a labyrinth of numerical patterns. My fingers fly across my keyboard, possessed. Heck, I’m a goddamn data analytics prodigy, manic with the knowledge that I’ve finally figured out what the ASSET does, what the ASSET is...
As I put the last slide together, I sit back and examine the finished product, waiting for the moment when pride overflows and I can give myself a pat on the back.
That moment never comes.
My fingers freeze over the keys. All sense of elation vaporizes over the outcome.
A cold discomfort seeps in, banishing any possibility of feeling proud about anything.
I said I was a fast learner. For some reason, the ASSET was my blind spot.
It was something I knew I could learn if I applied myself.
Problem was, I never applied myself. I never wanted to apply myself.
Like the hare in that age-old fable, I’ve procrastinated at every opportunity to finish the race and step over the finish line.
Whenever Rhys tried to lecture me, I turned a deaf ear.
When he tried to show me anything important, I turned a blind eye.
Even I can’t explain why I’ve self-consciously avoided the ASSET for so long.
Self-sabotage? Self-preservation? A deep-seated distaste for a boring algorithmic program that lines the pockets of the obscenely wealthy yet contributes nothing to the world?
Or maybe, at the heart of my avoidance, is the simple fact that I had a feeling I was dealing with something at odds with my core values.
So I swept it under the rug, to be dealt with another day.
Well, that day is today.
Usually, I press the mute button in my head anytime Rhys wants to get on his high horse and start lecturing me about my ethical responsibilities as an ASSET expert. Today, I hear him loud and clear:
“Now that we’ve established that you understand the bare minimum of the ASSET, it’s important you know how to control the ASSET.”
“Why would I want to control the ASSET?”
“Because it’s a powerful tool that can be dangerous in the wrong hands…”
“I know what the ASSET is.” My pallid reflection blinks back at me. I glance down at my work, sick to my stomach. Rhys had tried to warn me to take my job more seriously.
And I’d dismissed his warnings, attributing them to his personality defects.
So my company buys up a few more offices around L.A.? What’s so wrong about that? Rylan is injecting money into the local economy. It just means more of my coworkers have a chance of getting a corner office like me.
Rylan Industries is bigger than you know.
It doesn’t offer a product or a service, but rather, it’s a private investment firm with a powerful data analytics arm.
A handful of shell companies live under its umbrella.
If you dig deeper into the books, you’ll find that Rylan has its hands in many cookie jars, least of which is natural oil and data mining for artificial intelligence.
Think of it as an octopus with its tentacles in every sector of the economy.
The list goes on and on:
Massive energy-sucking data centers infiltrating small towns and sticking the residents with power and water bills they can’t possibly pay.
Leveraged buyouts of some recognizable yet failing companies with the plan to lay off 70% of the employees, pick the company apart like vultures while drowning them in the very debt Rylan forced them to take on.
Rylan’s 60% controlling stake in Ackerton Oil will be supremely lucrative by next March.
That’s the gist of my last board presentation.
That’s why all the trustees clapped. My work with the ASSET has determined exactly where the new slew of oil wells will be constructed in the near future, wiping out entire neighborhoods and a large swath of my beloved tide pools.
The ASSET has made all of this possible.
I’ve made all this possible. I am just a cog in the wheel of a greedy corporation, ready and willing to chisel away at the world for short-term profit. I am an agent of an unconscionable slash and burn.
And all because I was too lazy to do my homework.
I drag my gaze away from the screen. In the window, my pallid face blinks back at me. I am a stranger to myself.
“What have I done?” I ask my reflection with something approaching dread. “My God, what have I done?”