Chapter 52 Distracted #2
Richard’s head turns and I use the momentary distraction to dash for my office. Grab my messenger bag from my chair. My father walks in as I’m shoving my laptop in.
“You have this huge office, and you still can’t afford rent? Have you been lying to me?”
He wanders over to the studio side of the room, where we record the pod. “Look at all this state-of-the-art equipment. Is this all yours?” He runs a finger over one of the stands housing our personalized top-of-the-line Love Today mics.
“Please don’t—”
He pushes it over. The wire rips out the back as it smashes into our second mic, and they both fall to the floor.
“What the fuck, Dad?”
“This is the only way to get through to you, Rikki.” He glares from the other side of the room. “You don’t pick up my calls. You don’t answer texts. You lock the apartment. What was I supposed to do?”
“What did you think this was going to accomplish?” I exhale the words through the small pond’s worth of snot and liquid currently running down my face.
“I’m your father. You have to respect me.”
“I’m a grown woman. I don’t have to do anything.” I stride out of the office.
“Gimmie the key, Rikki!”
Where the fuck is security?
I sprint back across the no-man’s-land of cubicles, ducking and weaving toward the bathrooms, heart pounding in my ears.
The stairwell is two feet from the second bathroom.
I chuck it open and hightail it down the steps, whirling around the first landing as the door explodes open at the top of the flight and my sixty-two-year-old father starts hurtling down the steps after me.
I burst out of the building on the bottom floor, heaving as I sprint to the Jersey Mike’s one door down and disappear inside before my father appears on the sidewalk.
It’s lunch hour, and the place is swarmed.
There’s a huge line, and I push all the way to the back of the slim rectangular-shaped mob until I’m heaving and shaking against the wall next to the restrooms as all matters of liquid run down my face. I lower into a squat.
I need napkins. And a water.
I have to get to the apartment and get my stuff. I have to move. I have to—I don’t know. I have to call my mom. I whip out my phone and switch off “Do Not Disturb.”
The first notification that comes in is Reed. Thank the Disney gods! I stumble to my feet and tap it open.
Reed: the sunrise away bag is lost
I fall into the nearest table as a wave of nausea roils through my gut.
There are four businessmen there who holler at me as I push back up, until they realize I’m having an emotional breakdown.
To my left someone emerges from the key-padded bathroom.
I grab the handle before it locks, and catapult myself in, slamming the door behind me.
I bumble around the small space, hyperventilating as I stare at the text.
The Sunrise Away Bag is lost? Why?
What did I do to deserve this text? We just have to talk! He can’t give up without talking to me face-to-face. This is absurd!
We need to talk! And I need to be not here.
I shove my hand into my messenger bag, blindly searching until my fingers close around the journal. I slide the garter off and rip it open.
6) Where would you like to go
X _____________________________
I scribble down Reed’s address. And flip.
Write the pilot episode of Love Today.
That is all.
Have fun.
I heave in a sob. “You know I don’t have time for that!”
My phone pings. An email from Maya?
Rikki,
I don’t know what happened in there. I’m so sorry.
The board has unfortunately temporarily flagged you as an “unstable individual” arguing that you’re a potential liability to the corporation. You’ve been suspended from the premises, pending an evaluation at the end of September.
I’m on your side, and I’m going to do everything I can to fix this.
—Maya
The nausea is back. End of September? This can’t be fucking happening.
That’s—that’s after the Netflix pitch has come and gone.
They can’t do that. They can’t do that, can they?
What does this mean for my job? I need this contract renegotiation meeting to secure my raise, and I need my raise to get out of my Dad’s apartment.
I want to throw up the last twenty-four hours and extract them from my existence.
[Rikki Romona: Newly single. Newly fired.
Newly homeless. New record for world’s shortest-ever adult relationship. Exploded in bathroom of Jersey Mike’s.]
I grab the red-topped pen from the back of the journal and shove it in my bra.
There was an emergency loophole in the original teleportation directions. I flip to the front of the book.
In event of emergency, if you cannot complete the allotted task, destroying the base (this journal) will allow you a final vault.
Destroy?
“Can you change the task?”
I aggressively flip to the task page.
Write the pilot episode of Love Today.
That is all.
Have fun.
Flip again.
Blank.
I flip five more pages, rage pummeling my chest. After the sixth flip, the task appears again.
Write the pilot episode of Love Today. x
That is all.
Have fun.
A livid calm steals over me as I slam the leather shut.
If this thing and Reed are dangling off a building, and I can only save one, I’m lunging for him.
I shove my way out of the sandwich shop, averting my gaze as I bluster my way to the bodega at the end of the street. I buy a lighter, slip into the alley along the side of my building, and set the journal on the garbage barge. I light it up.
Four minutes later the pen turns green.
I clutch my clothes and bags in my fists and click.