Page 60 of Cuts like a Knife
“Oh I don’t. Not at all. Today was the first time I ever met him.”
“Really?” Her reporter’s eyes gleamed. “So … how come you went to lunch?”
“Oh, Keslang asked me.” I sipped at my coffee. I thought Adele and I were friends. I thought we were gossiping. “Honestly, it was a bit weird,” I went on, understanding that she might be a little jealous and wanting to reassure her. “They bro-ed out the whole time and barely spoke to me.”
At that, Adele laughed.
“Tell me about it,” she said, “This whole place is a sausage fest. That’s why we have to stick together.”
I’d nodded. She wasn’t wrong. But something seemed to be nagging at her.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you how you know Kelsang, actually,” she said, blowing a long stream of smoke off over her shoulder.
“I don’t! Or I didn’t. We met on Twitter actually, which seems really funny when I say it out loud.”
“Twitter?”
“Yeah. Kelsang recruited me after some tweets I made went viral.”
Adele’s eyes bulged and I laughed.
“I know. Ridiculous, right?”
“Indeed,” she said, in a soft voice201.
“You didn’t go to the same college as Owen or anything? I know they’re big on alumni helping each other.”
I snorted.
“Um, definitely not. I went to Harken. You may not have even heard of it. It’s small. Also, I just turned twenty-five, so even if we’d gone to the same school, we wouldn’t have like, crossed paths.”
“You’re only twenty-five?”
“Yeah, why? How old did you think I was?”
“Thirty at least. Same as me. Or maybe even older.”
I laughed. “Sorry. I guess I need to buy some moisturizer or something.”
Adele took another deep drag on her cigarette. “Well, good for you. I mean, you really managed to skip a lot of the bulls—. Which is not to say you didn’t pay your dues. Just, you know how it is.”
I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. Adele went on.
“So … Harken, you said? For J-School?”
“No, Sociology.”
“Huh.” Adele didn’t really react. She was and is a consummate reporter. “Well, you’ll get no judgement from me,” she said202. “Kelsang didn’t got to college at all.”
“Oh, I know,” I said. “But he worked at Time Out203, so I guess he had a hands-on sort of education.”
“He does love his advertorials,” Adele replied. I didn’t hear the inherent criticism in her voice.“Come on, we should head back in to the mines.”
And that was that. I’m 100% sure now that this conversation with Adele was where all my troubles at Flash began, but at the time, Adele just seemed nice. Between her and Kelsang, I felt surrounded by pals.
Rian was a different story. He ran the morning meeting. The office was supposedly progressive, so we all sat on beanbag chairs, but not Rian. He always stood during the meeting. Lording over us. Dominating. He’s 6’5”, with gingerish hair that always looks dirty, perpetually sticking up in all directions, a result of his signature move — screwing one fist into an eye, then frustratedly running his hand through his hair, as though every word we said, every suggestion we made, was giving him a migraine. His work uniform was ill-fitting jeans that sometimes revealed his a— crack, and band tees. To me, he seemed really focussed on appearing young, enough through he was at least 35 at the time.
From the moment we met, Rian seemed to hate me. He clearly resented that I was friends with Kelsang, and he knew I didn’t have a proper background in journalism and seemed keen to make everything exceedingly difficult for me as a result.
