Takeover (2 page)

I tap the button on my car’s console and open a call to James, but he’s not answering. He must already be at the restaurant, waiting for me. Maybe he thinks that I’m standing him up, but why would he think that? I just need to calm down, take a deep breath and listen to the voice coming through my speakers.

When I finally arrive, I easily spot James’s car in the parking lot. I don’t know why I get so worked up over nothing. He must already be inside because, as I pull around his car with its deeply tinted windows, I can’t hear the usual soft-but-loud bass line of some rap music. I never quite understood the appeal of listening to people talk about how many “bitches” they “get with” over really lazy techno music but, like I said, I’m not well schooled when it comes to music. I’m sure I’m just missing something.

I park my car and enter the restaurant. It’s not too busy, and I’m able to spot James pretty quickly. He’s sitting at our usual table. There’s something so nice about having a “usual table,” isn’t there?

He sees me and waves, his face beaming that same smile he had when we were both seniors in high school, and it still implants that swarm of butterflies in my belly every time I see it directed at me. I blush and walk toward him. Why am I blushing?

“Hey sweetheart,” he says. “How is work going today?”

“It’s going great,” I say. James doesn’t know what kind of man my boss is, and I don’t want to become one of those suburban housewives who can’t stop complaining about everything all the time. “I actually talked to the Japanese ambassador today,” I add proudly.

“Damn,” he says, smiling. “That’s amazing.”

I want to say,
No, it’s really not, that whole thing is a nightmare,
but I don’t want to burden James. “How are things at home?”

“That’s actually why I asked you to lunch,” he says. “I mean, apart from the fact that I wanted to see you.”

I swear he says stuff like that just to see my face go red. It hasn’t stopped working yet.

“I have a surprise for you,” he says. “It’s nothing too big, but I think you’ll really like it.”

“Really?” I ask, trying not to cry. What is wrong with me?

“Yeah,” he says. “I wanted to keep it a secret, but I can’t hold it in any longer. Do you think your boss will let you come home early?”

I asked Mr. McDaniel for an early day once. I’m still surprised that I got out of his office without getting hit in the face. “It’s a really busy day,” I say. “I can’t leave him hanging like that.”

“That’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a few more hours.”

My phone starts to ring, and I know exactly who it is. I have six brothers, a mom, a dad, five aunts and uncles and two grandparents that are still living, but the only person other than James who ever gives me a call is the old lecher that I work for. “I’m so sorry,” I tell James.

“You just got here,” he says. “He can’t want you back at the office already. It’s your lunch break.”

“He’s my boss,” I say, defending a man who would sooner throw me out his office window on the fourteenth-floor than treat me like a human being.

“You know that he’s legally obligated to give you a certain amount of time for lunch,” James says.

While James is correct, he’s not taking into account that by the time I get back to the office, it will have been half an hour. “I know,” I say. “Things are just really busy at the office.” I answer the phone. “This is Rose P–”

“Where the fuck are you?” my boss shouts in my ear. God, I’m glad that I keep the volume so low. “Your lunch break ended half an hour ago!”

Actually, my lunch break began twenty minutes ago, but I’m not about to rock the boat. “I’ll be right there,” I say, and Mr. McDaniel hangs up on me. “I’m so sorry,” I tell James. “Things are so crazy right now, but I’ll be home a little after five.”

James smiles.

“What?” I ask, nervously.

“You just called my place home,” he says.

“Hey,” I tease, “it’s
our
place.”

I kiss my fiancé and quickly make my way out to the car. This is my life and, all things considered, it could be a lot worse.

Your Shadow

––––––––

I
get back to the office just in time to place a bet on whether that vein in Mr. McDaniel’s forehead is about to burst. Apparently, while I was gone on my scheduled lunch period, for which I had received my boss’s approval, he had made the egregious mistake of answering the phone. It was the secretary of the Japanese ambassador, calling back to tell him that if the meeting couldn’t happen at the original time, the ambassador will cancel it entirely.

This is somehow my fault.

“Pearson!” he screams as soon as I get within his line of sight. “What the fuck do I pay you for? I had to talk to the
secretary
of the ambassador fifteen minutes ago. Do you know what that feels like? Having to field a call from someone’s secretary? Bloody hell, now I have to miss happy hour with the wife to meet with this fuck. Get your fucking ass back in that goddamned chair and get back to work!”

I would answer that speaking to other secretaries is about eighty percent of my job description, but he slams the door before I can take the required amount of air into my lungs to begin to make such a statement.

This leads to a curious phenomenon that I can only assume occurs in every office which houses a temperamental boss: all of the people, who had somehow been hidden at the first sign of my boss’s eruption, start slowly peeking their heads out from their cover. A couple of them timidly make their way toward me, apologizing for the way that he talks to me. A couple of them even tell me that I should just scream right back at him. This is coming from the people who were too scared of the man to even be present during my reaming. For some reason, I can’t help but think of antelope on the Serengeti after a lion has just left the area.

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I should really just get back to work.”

The antelope sense danger again through some unknown mechanism and quickly retreat back to their own workstations. I would laugh, but I have that same feeling building in my chest, too.

Mr. McDaniel opens his door and says, “Pearson?”

His voice is soft, almost comforting. He must have just reached that stage of midday drunkenness where he’s about to tell me how sorry he is for being so mean to me, but justifying himself at the same time by blaming me. If that sounds convoluted, that’s because it is.

“Listen,” he says, “I’m sorry that I yelled at you. It wasn’t your fault. You were just on your lunch break. I shouldn’t have answered the phone. I should know better than this by now, but when you’re not here, I sometimes forget what I’m doing.”

Now he’s going to make sure I know that it’s still my fault, but that he’s so generous, he’s going to let it slide.

“Yes, you should have been here to take the call—I mean, it is
your
job after all—but I understand that you’ve got a lot going on right now, so no hard feelings, right?”

“Thank you, sir,” I respond. He doesn’t have the first clue as to what’s going on in my life right now, but he’s still only half a breath away from going back to angry-drunk, so I don’t bother to inform him.

“Good talk,” he says. “Why don’t you head on home, I’ll have Cynthia fill in for you.”

This would be a generous offer, but I remember Cynthia’s disheveled hair as she’s walked out of Mr. McDaniel’s office after more than a few of my Monday afternoon lunch breaks.

“Thank you, sir,” I say again, and collect my things. If I don’t get out of here quickly enough, he’s going to forget his “generosity” and make me stay late. You know, I might be more willing to quit this job if I hadn’t spent so much time and energy into reading every signal from Mr. McDaniel. It’s kind of like Marie Curie dying of radiation poisoning after her work as a chemist. My hair is already falling out, so I may as well stick with what I know.

I’m on the elevator within a minute of thanking my boss for benevolently allowing me to go home early so he can plug Cynthia from accounting in his office without an audience. Wow, that’s a mouthful. And now I’m trying to erase the image that comes into my head due to the juxtaposition of the words “plug Cynthia” and “mouthful.” Eww.

The elevator gets to the ground floor, and I’m already pulling up James’s number.

“Hey sweetheart,” he answers, “is everything okay at the office?”

“Yeah,” I say, “my boss actually let me off early. He apologized for calling me back in so abruptly and told me that I could go home.”

“That’s wonderful,” he says, “your surprise should be about ready when you get here.”

“You didn’t have to do anything,” I say, welling up with tears. You know, at some point, I’m going to have to get over my schoolgirl disbelief and proneness to tears.

“I wanted to,” he says. “I know what a big deal it is for you to move in with me, and I want to make sure that you feel just at home here as you did at your apartment.”

I make my way into the parking structure and try to hide the quiver in my voice as I answer, “Anywhere with you is home.” Maybe I’ve been overdosing on chick flicks.

“I’ll see you soon then?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” I say. “See you in a few.”

“I love you.”

I smile. “I love you too.”

I get in my car, and I’m in the mood for something bouncy and stupid, so I forego the next installment of my self-read audiobook of Kafka short stories and flip the radio to a nineties pop station. My voice is nearly hoarse by the time I pull up in front of the house, but it’s not my fault they make that crappy music so darned catchy.

James’s house—well, I guess it’s
our
house now—was left to him by his parents in their will. They died when he was still sixteen but, being an only child whose coffers had just been filled to overflowing by his parents’ life insurance, he was able to be declared an emancipated minor. I still remember being a junior in high school and driving by his house, seeing dozens of people so much cooler than I was partying there almost every night.

Now it’s my home.

I park the car on the side of the curb, my usual spot, and get out, reveling in the adrenaline as it makes this moment finally seem real. I get to the front walk and James opens the door.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“Your surprise, silly.”

I close my eyes, and I can’t help but feel vindicated for all the torment that is still too much on my mind from ten years ago. I feel James’s strong hands come to rest on my shoulders and he slowly guides me forward.

“All right, now step up,” he says, making sure that I don’t take a bad stride. “One more,” he says, and I get to the landing just before the door. “Now, keep your eyes closed,” he says, and he leaves my side to open the door. His hands are back on my shoulders in a moment, and he’s guiding me the rest of the way into the house.

I’ve never been much for surprises. Either I figure out what the surprise is beforehand, or I build it up so much in my mind that, no matter what it is, I’m disappointed. It’s been all I could do to try and keep the possibilities out of my head since I saw James an hour ago.

He positions me in what must be the living room and says, “All right, open your eyes.”

I do, and what I see in front of me takes my breath away. It’s a bookcase. It’s gorgeous, and he’s already filled it with my books. “Oh my god,” I say, starting to cry for what feels like the tenth time today.

“Do you like it?” he asks. “I couldn’t get all of your books on it, so I just put up the ones that looked like they were the most worn. I figured those were your favorites. I put the rest in the bookcase in our room.”

“I love it,” I say and wrap my arms around the high school jock who turned out to be the sweetest man I’ve ever known.

He chuckles a little bit, well, about as much as my way-too-tight grip will allow him to, and he puts his arms around me. “Welcome home,” he says.

I don’t even know what to say except for the words, “I don’t even know what to say.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he says. “I talked to this guy who runs an antique shop in town, and he said that this is Japanese, and it’s made from a special kind of wood—”

“Cocobolo,” I answer. “I’ve always loved the smell of it.”

“Why am I not surprised that you know that?” he chuckles. “He said that, even though this particular bookcase is very old and has been treated with some special varnish, that the wood can be oily, and can actually stain things, so I put some thick paper under the books. I hope that doesn’t take away its atsthetic”—he stumbles—“atsthetic,” he says again, frustrated.

“Aesthetic value?” I chuckle, “not at all.” I squeeze him again and say, “It is absolutely perfect.”

“I promise, I know the word, that’s just a rough transition,” he says. “Try it. Put the words ‘its’ and ‘aesthetic’ together a few times.”

We spend the next minute or so repeating “its aesthetic” until we both can’t say the phrase without laughing, and I am so in love with this man.

“That’s not all though,” he says. “I have another surprise for you. Let me go get it, I’ll be right back.”

He rushes off through the hallway to the kitchen on the other side of the house, and I take a minute to look at the bookcase. All but the faces of the drawers are a very dark, very rich tone with absolutely stunning striations, giving an incredible contrast between the wood and the books sitting on its shelves.

I barely feel comfortable approaching it, it’s so beautiful; but if this is mine, I may as well acquaint myself with it better. Who am I kidding, I just want to bask in the one area of my life that not only makes sense, but actually makes me happy that I’m alive.

I can hear the rattling of pots and pans in the kitchen. James isn’t—well, James can be a great cook or an awful cook. There’s not much in-between with him when it comes to food. He’s wonderful with steak and potatoes, but just thinking about that time he tried to make pasta still makes me a little queasy. I’m not sure how he burned the noodles; they were in water for god’s sake.