Page 13 of Cuts like a Knife
When I first started working at Citidaze, I fell for the apple thing. Lars’ voice boomed out from the tinny speaker in my desk phone and like the rube I was, I thought, How cute. How quirky. This must be this company’s hipster version of a pizza party or a. fro-yo social.
I want to be a team player and I was fresh off my humiliation at Flash, so decided to pop over to Lars’ office to participate like a good little eager beaver.
Danger. Danger Will Robinson. He got me good.
Big mistake. Huge.
Were she here right now, Claire would interrupt to say that I’d just made a Pretty Woman reference. Which by the way, I am aware of, seeing as how I am the person making said reference, but Claire thinks she’s the only person in our family clued in enough to make references.
If Diana was here, she might say something awkward and clueless like “Is that the movie about the sex worker?” while barely looking up from her Blackberry. (Yes, I said Blackberry. That was sort of a vaguely mean joke at Diana’s expense. It’s fine. She’s not a joke-getting person and talks all the time about how she misses her Blackberry. She like, brings it up without a hunt of irony. Bless her.)
Anyway, back to Lars.
Picture the man — all 5’6” of him35. He’s about 55 years old, but has a boyish face gone to seed. Wispy, thinning, no-color hair. And he dresses exactly like Ellen Degeneres. Exactly like. He favors sneaks, sweater vests, and blazers over overpriced jeans that skim his somewhat womanly hips.
Recently, Callum has started dressing a lot like Lars too. He’s acquired scruffy sneaks, jeans, and comes in wearing an untucked shirt with the top buttons open, under an ill-fitting blazer. Deliberately mirroring. It’s probably smart, professionally speaking. Callum is better looking, and his hips aren’t womanly, so that helps, but both of them are vile. Barf. But again, Lars is the man who pays the bills. And Callum is the one who gives me inane assignments and regularly takes credit for my work36.
I love my job.
No. I need my job.
“Are you done?” Dani’s head has reappeared over the cube wall.
“Yes, thank goodness,” I say. “I couldn’t take much more of the great Emily-and-Troy love story.” I think my voice sounds relatively normal. The email’s gone. It’s in my spam folder. Nothing’s actually happened37.
“Not going over for an apple today?” She’s smirking.
This is what I mean about Dani. She’s referencing the fact that I fell for the apple trick before, like I already explained. But it was when I first started, and only once. One time! But she and Callum think it’s hilarious and never let me forget it.
She’s still grinning at me over the wall of the cube, so I smile wanly and reply.
“Fool me once, haha.” Deadpan.
She drops her voice, “Want to do a lap?”
She senses something. I can tell.
A lap is something we do sometimes when we need a coffee break. We fill our cups and then slip out the fire door and prop it open with a wedge, then walk around the perimeter of the building a few times, sticking close to the wall, where Lars can’t see us from his office window. He never knows we’re gone.
Sometimes it’s nice. Dani sort of inspires a free flow of conversation, as I’ve already explained. I actually like talking to her. She lulls people into what I now know is a false sense of security. Then she writes about us or uses the things you say against you. She’s pretty good at her job as a result.
Maybe I gasped when I opened the email? Maybe her creepy reporter antenna wobbled when my heart started pounding? Can’t risk it. There’s no way I’m doing a lap with her. Not today.
I wish it wasn’t like this. I would love to talk to someone about this. Someone who would understand. But I’ve had a work friend I’ve confided in before. Another fellow writer. Another journalist. Just like Dani. And I will never make that mistake again.
But it sucks. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t suck.
“Not right now,” I say. She shrugs and disappears back below the cube wall.
Since my dumb How They Met article is done and filed, I grab my cell and flip it over to see a series of new texts rolling in from my family.
It never stops.
But another message from Drew stands out in the flood of texts from the Madisons.
DW: We could meet and head over together if you want? Maybe check out the reno to the barn? ;)
Oh god. I’d forgotten he was going to be there tonight. And here he is making extremely heavy-handed references (that no one else would get, thank Jebus) to a very hot time we may or may not have had in my sister’s barn.
