Page 12 of Cuts like a Knife
He knows every member of my family.
He’s a flirt and an ego maniac.
He works in advertising, which basically means he is completely and fundamentally evil and doesn’t even care about pretending not to be.
And worst of all, he’s my … baby brother’s best friend29.
He’s Andrew Fox, now known as Drew. Drew Fox. And I’ve been sleeping with him periodically for … well, awhile. More than a year, even if you don’t count our various teenage encounters.
Because I am the world’s worst person.
“These apples look particularly delicious. Just saying,” crackles the speaker in my desk phone.
For once I’m grateful for one of Lars’ lame interruptions because I can’t text Drew back right now.
What a mess the whole Drew situation is. I shouldn’t respond. The thing with him needs to end.
Drew and I are in a bit of a stalemate at the moment. He knows I don’t think we should ever be together publicly. I mean, I think he knows. I’ve told him. But he recently come out and said that he wants to be a real couple. He wants to tell our families. He wants to … like, hold hands and go out in public and be together together30.
And I just can’t. For all the reasons. So I told him I wasn’t into the idea, but then … okay, fine, I may have made the mistake of sleeping with him again a bunch of times and giving him the impression that I was considering it31.
Anyway, for the moment, I’m at work. Need to focus on work. No more Drew. Only work. For as ever long as it lasts, which, granted, probably won’t be much longer, work needs to be my focus.
I decide I won’t text Claire just yet. I’ll hip pocket her until I need her. Just in case32.
“Did you hear that, Madison? Particularly delicious.” Callum saunters across the aisle to my cube. I turn and he makes eye contact with me and enunciates each syllable while pointedly looking me up and down. He makes everything sexual. He could make a car accident sexual.
Wait… someone did that already. There was a movie. Crash? I can’t remember. I’ll ask Claire later. She’ll know.
Not-so-fun fun fact: I once caught Callum watching porn on his computer. Here. Right here in the office. In the middle of the day.
Ugh.
Ugh ugh ugh. I can’t believe I let that slime ball see me naked. I’ll never live it down. I can’t believe this is the job I’m so desperate to keep.
“Charming,” I respond, turning back to my screen33.
You’re probably wondering about the whole apple thing. To understand the whole apple thing — so freaking weird, btw — I need to paint for you a mental picture. It is a picture of my current boss. Not greasy Callum, but our real boss, the owner of Citidaze magazine, one Lars Landon. His is the lisping voice so fond of apples and of assaulting our eardrums over the all-office PA system, which he insists on misusing. Regularly.
Why? Why, you ask? Oh, I’ll tell you. It won’t make a whole lot more sense, but I’ll tell you.
Lars is obsessed with apples — like the actual fruit — and makes this dreadfully important announcement over the phone PA system at least once a week.
There really are apples in his office right now — green, yes, but delicious? Debatable. If you like underripe granny smith I suppose an argument could be made, but I digress.
Lars has a three pound bag of these ostensibly delicious fruits delivery by courier every single week. When a new batch arrives, he hops on the PA to announce their presence.
Every. Single. Week.
But the point is not the apples. Oh no! Lars will eat the apples himself. He’ll have one a day until the next bag arrives. The point of the apple announcement is to lure us — unsuspecting staff members — to his office. Because Lars is bored and lonely in there. Because he doesn’t actually do anything. He owns the whole company, but he never works. Never. He’s like Michael Scott in the American version of The Office. Except without any of Steve Carrell’s innate charm. He’s more like Ricky Gervais, in other words. But not funny and worse. So much worse.
I enjoy slacking off as much as the next person, but what Lars will do with this whole apple scam is trap you in his office for hours, completely derail your workday, and then — and then — he will scream at you (actually, full-throated, top-volume screaming) for not completing your work. He’ll scream and berate you in front of his entire workforce.
It is truly madly deeply bizarre.
Lars loves that he gets to call himself a publisher, and adores the fact that he’s assembled a staff of relatively young and “cool” people as his writers and editors. (Myself, Callum, and Dani making up the entirety of the editorial team. Super-cool winners, all.) He calls the little corner where we sit, the bullpen. It’s pathetic.
At Citidaze, there are at least ten people working in advertising sales and a few more in accounting. HR consists only of Susan Landon, who again, is really in ad sales, and then there’s the one IT person. Plus a custodian/maintenance guy for the building, which Lars owns. But Lars doesn’t care about any of them. not really. He cares only about us. Editorial. He treats us like we’re the popular kids who ignored him in high school, but now he’s our boss so we have to hang out with him. Then he screams at us — or rather, at Dani and I. He never screams at Callum34.
