Chapter 1 - Manuela
MANUELA
MONDAY
Present day
The elevator jolts just enough to make me wonder if today’s the day it finally gives up on me. A fitting metaphor for this dreary Monday, honestly.
By the time I reach the seventh floor, my canvas tote bag is digging into my shoulder, my hair is frizzing from the late summer humidity, and I’ve mentally drafted three different versions of my resignation letter—all of which I won’t—can’t—actually send, because this job is the reason my permanent residency is still in progress. Toxic boss and all.
I swipe into the floor’s modern turnstiles, past the wall of glass awards our creative agency likes to brag about, and head straight for my desk.
April from strategy gives me an exhausted smile, and I nod in return.
She used to be friendly with me, even inviting me to brunch with her friends on the weekends and the occasional post-work happy hour, before I got moved onto the Horizon account and jumped from the strategy team into managing accounts.
Now she simply winces sympathetically when I’m in her vicinity, like someone watching a car wreck happen in slow motion right before their eyes.
“I swear to god, this week is testing me,” Elle Winslowe, my friend and coworker, says.
She’s been repeating the same combination of words once a week since she got engaged a little over two years ago.
She sets her large designer purse on the desk next to mine and takes a sip of whatever drink she’s enjoying on this balmy fall morning, ice shaking as she moves around the space.
“What happened?” I say, just as my phone pings consecutively at least eight times.
I place my bag under my desk in the only small space my tiny cubicle can accommodate.
Elle’s desk is sandwiched between mine and a large window overlooking the Hudson River and, if you squint and do some Olympic-style gymnastics, the Statue of Liberty.
“The wedding is in three weeks,” she says with an exhale, hooking up her laptop to the monitors in front of her and clicking her mouse an exorbitant amount of times.
I open my mouth to say something, but she interrupts, continuing with her venting session that is so common at this hour, no matter the day.
“Mind you, I’m leaving Wednesday,” she emphasizes, her eyes widening for dramatic effect. “Wednesday.”
“Is there something I can do to help with wedding stuff?”
“Oh, no thanks, babe,” she says while she glances at her buzzing phone on her desk. “I already added them to the list.”
I laugh, shaking my iced coffee to get the last few sips out from the bottom.
New York City in the late summer is muggy and overwhelming.
And although Buenos Aires was very similar, the pace in this city and the sheer number of tourists add an additional layer of anxiety that has me on edge the majority of the time.
“How was your weekend?” I ask, moving in a similar way to what she’s doing.
This has been our routine for the past year or so since I got promoted into a new role and our boss, James Jameson, decided it would be better suited if Elle and I sat right outside his office.
Sometimes, when we are at work way past closing time, Elle and I like to theorize about why he’s such an anal-retentive prick.
Other times, we go inside his office and move his sticky notes a fraction of an inch towards the edge of the desk.
It’s highly unprofessional but also a very good way to unwind and destress, even though our jobs are anything but. We work at a creative agency that caters to non-profits specifically, so the work is low stakes and low urgency but highly rewarding.
“I got my nails done,” she says, wiggling her fingers in my direction, “and touched up the tox on my forehead and crow’s feet, you know, just in case.” She does something weird with her face, trying to show me the unnatural ways the muscles of her face don’t move at all.
“That’s nice,” I say, although I can’t really relate.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my nails done since I moved here, choosing instead for a more do-it-yourself approach since everything is so expensive in this city.
And Botox? Yeah, that’s just a pipe dream at this point and something I should be saving for, just like I should be saving for a down payment for a house. “Are you all packed?”
“Yeah, Jack’s parents flew out yesterday, so they took a suitcase with them,” she says absently, moving her mouse and opening her email app.
The new messages load fast, hundreds and hundreds of them populating the screen in front of her.
“My dress is being delivered tonight to the house, and the shoes should be, fingers crossed, in by Wednesday at the latest.”
I smile and nod, just like I do most of the time Elle talks about things I can’t, quite frankly, understand.
The way some of these people talk about their lives and their money just astounds me at times, and it’s nothing like what I’m used to.
I come from a small town in the mountains in Argentina, where the majority of the people are middle or working class.
I’m a first-generation college graduate and worked very hard to get where I am, and it’s a shock to hear these things sometimes.
“Are you excited for the trip?” Elle asks without looking at me. She’s scrolling through emails, half-distracted. “I think it’s going to be so good for you.”
“Yes,” I say quickly.
But the truth is I’m feeling a little anxious about it. Two whole weeks before Elle’s wedding, stuck inside a house with the same group of people that makes me feel slightly out of place on a regular basis? Not my idea of fun.
“I mean, I love the idea of ninth-wheeling this romantic vacation in the Alps.”
“You jest,” she says with a lopsided smile and a slight glance in my direction.
Her long blonde hair is tied in a low bun like usual, a sharp, crisp line down the middle of her head and her strands pulled back with such tightness I’m surprised she can even think.
“But honestly, babe, who even cares about that? The house is amazing, and you’ll be able to relax and not think about work for two whole weeks. ”
I nod, even though she’s not looking. I’ve already made peace with the fact that I’ll be a background player in this group—the kind of person who’s in all the photos but gets cropped out when they make it to someone’s feed.
“Oh! I forgot to tell you—”
“Manuela, get in here, please,” I hear James call from his office. Except it sounds more like Man-you-elle-ah than how you would actually say my name.
“Hi, James, good morning,” I say with a smile as I enter his office. It’s the corner office on our lower floor, but he treats it as if it were the one-hundredth floor in the most prestigious building in Manhattan.
“Yes, good morning,” he says dismissively, reclining in his overpriced chair with his feet crossed on the desk. If this isn’t a power move specifically to intimidate me, then I don’t know what is. “Did you see this?”
He points at an article pulled up on his computer about an upcoming cold front.
“I did,” I say. “But the forecast doesn’t call for rain, so the installation shouldn’t be affected. And honestly, I still don’t fully understand Fahrenheit, but I don’t think it’ll be that bad.”
James drops his feet to the floor, eyes widening like I just confessed to embezzlement.
I swear I can see him foaming at the mouth with anger.
If I’ve learned anything in the months since he’s been my supervisor, it’s that he’s volatile and things with him change a lot. It’s always better to be prepared.
“Manuela,” he spits, “you live in America now. You have to get used to the way we do things here. For fuck’s sake.”
I blink up at him, trying to really understand why this is important.
The app on my phone can easily convert the temperature, so why is he berating me this way for accepting I’m having difficulty with something that is so easy to correct?
But I flush nonetheless, the heat curling up my chest, to my neck, and finally rising to the tips of my ears, where it sits and burns.
But with everything with James, it’s easier to smile and nod.
It’s not the first time he’s made somewhat derogatory comments about me and my style, as he likes to refer to some of my more…
Latin-American nuances. I overheard him once talking to our HR rep that my accent was too thick and he didn’t understand when I pronounced the word “strategy.” Another time I mentioned how it’s summer in Argentina over the holidays and I was excited for my first-ever white Christmas, and he muttered, “Classic third world country,” under his breath.
“Understood,” I say simply as I tap my foot on the carpet, waiting for the final instruction before I vent to Elle.
“Fix it.” He adjusts the bottom of his sticky notes so that they are perfectly parallel to the edge of his desk. “No one is going to emotionally engage with the exhibit’s storytelling if their hands are cold.”
It’s fruitless to argue with him for many reasons. The biggest one being that I cannot control the weather.
“You got it.” I smile despite the heaviness that lands on my chest. I don’t think I’ve had one civil conversation with him since I started in this new role.
And it infuriates me because it seems like all his common sense goes out the window when he’s talking to me.
There’s nothing we can do about the weather, even if we had all the money in the world, and the campaign with the immigration justice organization we work with is going to be amazing regardless.
He dismisses me with a wave of his hand while the other one moves his computer mouse impatiently, clicking until the log-in window for his email flashes in his eyes.
I turn on my heel, walking back, Elle looking at me with eyes wide and a subtle shake of her head.
She wants to strangle him for me, I know that.
And I agree, but I also really enjoy my job, and I’ve worked my ass off to get to where I am. So I shake my head and walk back to my cubicle and sink into my chair without a word.
The hum of the office fills the silence—keyboards clacking, phones ringing, James’s muffled voice bleeding through his door. I stare at my screen, not really seeing the blinking cursor, and Elle just sips her drink like nothing happened.
It’s our unspoken pact: she won’t push me to talk, and I won’t crumble in front of him. Not here. Not yet.