Page 68 of A Light in the Dark
“Are you sure? The first bonus about floored me. The second bonus has an extra zero and some other key adjustments.”
“The Sampson Sigils contract is going to bring in an easy hundred thousand a month. That alone justifies the bonus.”
My eyes widened at the amount the contract would be earning the company. “I’m sorry, but can you repeat that?”
“The contract terms will bring us in a hundred thousand a month.”
“To do their taxes?” I blurted.
“We’ll be handling their taxes, running test audits on their corporation, their real estate efforts, and old contracts, opening their lawyers to work with new contracts. It’s a lot of good work.”
“We do real estate and contracts?” I blurted.
“We do, but our specific office only handles tax work. You’ll be getting their contracts, but all you’ll have to do is organize the files by contract number to pass over to our legal department. We usually don’t need someone to organize our files like that except for onboarding, so someone from our other office will handle that once we have the files situated.”
“Maybe I should take two weeks,” I muttered.
“Two weeks after onboarding is completed is more than reasonable,” he assured me. “We’ll talk more about it at work. And honestly? After seeing this job fair, I might want to request two weeks off for some rest and relaxation, too. Going through all these resumes might do me in, especially if there are hundreds of refugee files as I fear there are.”
I checked my photo gallery and counted images. “A hundred and twelve so far.”
“How did you manage to handle talking with so many at one time? Are you a living, breathing miracle?”
I shook my head. “I’m stubborn and made certain I asked everyone the same questions, which meant some of themcame armed with the answers before I even asked. I’m grateful for those people, by the way.”
“I’m stealing that method when we go back there. Also, I have a few tote bags in the back so we can carry more resumes before we have to return here. For some reason, I think we’re going to need them.”
Accordingto the pamphlets and flyers, the job fair should have ended at the same time most businesses closed. With zero regard for time, it remained open, the vendors opted to stay, and the hopefuls prowled and locked onto anyone who remotely appeared to be hiring. Three hours after our work day had ended, I hauled Mr. Accor back to his vehicle, panting over the ridiculous number of resumes we’d packed into the four totes he’d had and the six others we’d scooped up from vendor stalls.
At least half of them belonged to refugees.
I went to work photographing them, muttering profanities under my breath until done. I separated the refugee resumes from the rest, packing them into five of the totes. The number of them staggered me, especially with the understanding that hundreds of men and women hadn’t survived the floods, likely as part of some effort to thin the populations.
Was employment one of the criteria for refugees to survive?
Then, a darker thought crept in.
What if those behind the killings wanted to bleed therefugees dry and earn the bonuses for housing them before solving the problem in a rather permanent fashion? The idea someone would even think of such a thing horrified me. But the truth remained: there were hundreds of corpses proving someone would.
“We will not be coming back tomorrow,” my boss informed me in a solemn tone. “I will dump these resumes in my office, and we will spend half of Monday digging through these. The other half will be spent onboarding Sampson Sigils and the other new contracts. We will do this until we’ve gone through all the resumes. I will do a pass tomorrow to prioritize the ones I think might be the most promising, that way you’re going through less chaff.”
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” I replied, pausing in my work long enough to grin at him. “I hope I don’t seem too angry.”
“You seem tired and ready to go home. I’m tired and ready to go home. I’ll drive you to your place before heading to the office to dump the resumes. I’m also going to propose we give you three extra bonus days off for having subjected you to that job fair. You, apparently, are approachable. The unemployed targeted you. They saw you, and it was as if they somehow knew you were someone to talk to. I checked for a sign that stated you were hiring, but I didn’t see one.”
I regarded my clothes and heaved a sigh. “I look like someone from HR, don’t I?”
“You look more like an attorney about to go to court for the day. Do you think that’s comparable?”
Aware the company had policies about having people dress in comfort while in attire suitable for their position, I said, “In case it matters, I do actually like dressing like this.”
“I’d figured that out early on. The instant we moved you out of janitorial, which has our laxest dress code, and bumped you to your current domain, you came in with one of your court outfits and floated through your first day. Obviously, we need to change the dress code for the janitors to be anything comfortable but a minimum attire rather than insist on casual clothes. Of course, you would have confused everyone opting to come in as you usually dress.”
“I would wear slacks instead of skirts, but that would have been the only change.” I wore skirts half the time, as I sometimes wanted to wear heels. The days I wore heels, I wanted to feel invincible, something the pretty shoes managed to accomplish more often than not.
In my infinite wisdom, I’d gone with flats and slacks. I lifted a leg and regarded my shoe with open suspicion. “It had to be my shoes. If I’d worn heels and a skirt, they would have congregated on you, as I would have come across more as a secretary than the leading lady.”
My boss joined me in eyeing my footwear. “That is disturbingly plausible. I had no idea shoes had so much power.”
