Page 12 of Stay Awake
Marco looks tempted. He knows I’m a great cook. My love affair with cooking began after Mom was killed in the crash. Cooking became my therapy. I studiedcordon bleucooking part-time as a hobby. I even thought about working in the industry until I decided I preferred writing about food to working in the restaurant business. I like nothing better than to spoil my friends with a restaurant-quality meal at home. Surprisingly, instead of jumping at my invitation, Marco suggests we go out to eat.
“How about I ask Amy and Brett to join us?”
Marco’s frown is immediate.
“Come on, Marco! A double date. It will be fun.”
“With Brett?” he mocks. “Dr. God Complex? All he talks about is his patient list and how he’s single-handedly saving humanity. He has zero interest in discussing anything that isn’t about him. As for Amy, every time we meet up, we argue over politics. It totally kills the vibe.”
“There won’t be arguments,” I say, not particularly convincingly, because their political discussions can get heated. “I’ll ask Amy to tone it down.” We both know that’s unlikely to happen.
“Liv, you’re going to have to get used to the idea that Amy and I don’t get along. I know she’s your best friend and you want us to like each other, but the two of us are like oil and water. We don’t mix.”
Chapter
Eight
Wednesday 9:56A.M.
Natalie with her singsong “good morning” greeting isn’t at the reception desk as I come out of the elevator and head into the office. Instead, a receptionist with blond-tipped bangs is taking a call on her headset.
“Cultura Magazine. How can I connect your call?”
The receptionist looks up as I pass her desk. I flash a confused smile. She doesn’t smile back. Instead she asks briskly who I’m here to see.
“I’m not here to see anyone. I work here. Where’s Natalie?” My tone comes out more rudely than intended. An accusation more than a question. Natalie’s beenCultura’s receptionist for so long that it feels wrong for anyone else to be behind the reception desk.
She looks at me blankly. “Who?”
“Natalie.” My voice drops off as I realize she must be a temp. Maybe Natalie is on sick leave. “Never mind.”
I walk past the reception desk toward the main office, where Ibeeline to my cubicle, pausing at the expansive window by my desk to take in the familiar view of the street.
As I turn to sit on my black swivel chair, a leggy young woman with long red hair tosses a jacket over the back of the seat. She’s dressed like a runway model in a tartan miniskirt with thigh-high boots and a black cropped sweater. She drops her purse on the desk and leans forward to plug in a laptop.
My gaze shifts from her to a photo montage pinned to a corkboard on the cubicle wall. The strangers’ faces in the photos blur into a kaleidoscope of colors as my head spins. I put my hand on the back of the chair to stop myself from losing my balance.
“Who are you?” I think she asks me. Maybe it’s me who asked her.
“I’m Liv. Liv Reese.”
Her mouth widens into a beaming smile of recognition. “Liv! I’m Josie.” She talks as if I should know her. She opens her arms and gives me a hug. “I am thrilled to meet you. Finally.”
“It’s wonderful to meet you, too,” I respond out of politeness rather than recognition. I try to place her but I can’t. There’s nobody called Josie at the magazine.
“It’s so great to see you back atCultura,” she gushes.
I want to tell her that I never left, that I’ve been here all along, when I look around and realize the office looks different. It’s had a radical makeover.
The carpet used to be dark blue. Now it’s a textured concrete gray decorated with splotches of lime and electric blue that look faintly like hopscotch markings.
Desks are arranged in little island hubs across the open-plan floor space. Scattered under pillars are sitting areas of backless round sofas also in lime and electric blue. Jeans-clad people slouch about on the sofas like teenagers in their bedrooms, typing rapidly on their laptops as they sip from mugs of coffee.
The office is too fluorescent. Too pulsating. Too hard on the eyes. It’s alien, and yet familiar.Culturais written on the office wall in giant three-dimensional reflective silver letters in the same archetypal font used on the cover of the magazine. I’m definitely in the right place.
Farther along is a wall covered with glass-framedCultura Magazinecovers going back years. I’ve worked on every issue of the magazine since I started working here. I know all of the covers like the back of my hand, but I don’t recognize any of the most recent ones.
Everything is out of sync. I need to figure out why. I glance at the writing on my wrist.DON’T SLEEP! I FORGET EVERYTHING WHEN I FALL ASLEEP.I fell asleep on the park bench. What did I forget?
