“Great,” I say. “It’s always great.”
“Did you meet our newest hire yet?”
“Only in passing,” I say.
He turns around. “Zandra!” he calls out. “Could you come here for a moment?”
The smile on her face falters. She walks over, her arms cradled in front of her waist.
“Zandra, this is Mark Acorsi. He’s the owner of 2Resonance. He’s a good boss. You’ll like him. You likely won’t see him much, but if he asks you to do anything, he’s on the top of the chain of command.”
“That’s not exactly true,” I say as Zandra focuses on the sleeves of her blouse. “There’s three of us. I created the idea behind the app, but there’s also Rick and Keegan. They helped fund the platform.”
“Oh?” she says. “That’s not what you originally told me. You just told me you owned it.”
John claps his hands, forcing out a laugh. “She’s a little unique in the way she communicates sometimes. I’m sure she doesn’t mean that in a rude way.”
“Of course not,” Zandra says. There’s no sincerity in her voice, but what bothers me more is the listlessness in her tone. When we’d met, she’d been full of life, and I can’t imagine what happened to her that would kill off all that vitality. I can understand her acting professional. I can also understand her anger toward me. I deserve all the blame for what happened with the police, though she doesn’t know that it’s even worse than it seems because I needed to rely on my parents to save our skin.
She never will know the truth. After all this time, I still don’t want to break her illusion of me. She believed I was this highly sophisticated and cultured gentleman, but the truth was, I couldn’t even fight my own battles.
“I can’t imagine why you needed other people’s money though,” Zandra says, glancing at me before focusing on her sleeves again. “I’d heard that you were rich.”
“My parents are rich,” I say. “I only had a moderate amount of money. I pitched the idea to some people who were more financially stable.”
“Friends of your parents?” she asks. Her voice has taken on a vicious tone, but it’s covered by her innocent expression.
“No,” I state. “I met them through other avenues.”
John clears his throat. “Zandra, could you walk the terrier? It looks like it might need to do its business.”
She walks away without looking at me again.
John gives me a sheepish smile. “I’m sure she’s just nervous,” he says to me. “I don’t think she meant to come across as rude.”
“No, I don’t think so either,” I say. I glance over at her. Seeing her again reminds me of being eighteen again, running around wild like kids that didn’t understand consequences, but we did understand passion. It was easy back then to say it was because of our age, it was the romantic city, and it was tasting true freedom, but as I look at her now, I know it was all her. All those emotions flood back into my chest but are compounded by guilt and regret now. I don’t like it. Those emotions have no place in a business. They’re emotions for children who can’t move on from their past. And I’m moving on.
I have to fire her.
It’s clear that she wants to quit anyway, but if she quits, she’ll appear flaky. If I control the narrative, I can tell any future employers that we weren’t in a financial position to hire a graphic designer full-time. She’s brilliant enough to pick up another job quickly, so San Franciscan rent won’t be a problem for her. If she wants to, I can get my parent’s company to hire her. My father is the CEO and my mother is the COO of Trident Bank, which is a more prestigious company, so she should get paid nearly double what she earns here and get better benefits.
If she doesn’t want to work with me, I’m not going to force her to. And if I’m honest with myself, feeling this way around her for the next month, year or decade is a torture I’m not interested in. I won’t punish us both for my past shortcomings.
******
6 years ago
“The Winged Victory of Samothrace. OrThe Coronation of Napoleon.OrThe Raft of the Medusaby Géricault. I’ve heard theBronze Sphinx of Thutmose IIIis also stunning. Oh, theMona Lisa,of course.”
With each piece of art, Zandra raised one of her fingers, listing them off until she was staring at her opened palm like it’s a map of the Louvre.
“Would it be an easier question if I asked you what you didn’t want to see at the Louvre?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t think I’d have an answer for that. The bathroom, maybe? I’d read in this magazine article that it would take sixty-four days to look at everything if you only took a minute to look at each piece. I only have a few days and I know I’m going to want to look at some of them for more than a minute.”
“It sounds like we’re going to need to camp there,” I said.
“That would the best night of my life.”
