“We need to talk,” I say.
The secretary grabs onto my arm again, tugging me toward the door. I shoot her a look that I inherited from decades of angry, war-stricken Polish ancestors. She backs off.
“I need to call you back, Robert,” Mark says into his phone. He lowers the phone, ending the call before setting it down on his desk. He turns to the secretary. “Elise, you can leave the two of us. She’s fine.”
The secretary doesn’t say anything, but after she leaves, the door softly clicks shut.
“You,” I seethe. “You are a cowardly son of a bitch. You try to get me fired, but you don’t even have the guts to do it to my face. You try to get other people involved. You do it all without saying a word to my face.”
“I wasn’t going to let an employee go without approval from the other co-owners.”
He remains as nonchalant as before. If he’d laughed or raged at me, it would have been better than his complete non-reaction. It would have been better than him treating me like anybody else that he wants to fire.
“I’m sorry that you found out this way,” he says. “I am interested in how you found out about it.”
“That’s irrelevant,” I say. He glances at his phone as it lights up with a news notification. He’s done with me. I’m a blip on his radar that he wants to scrub off.
He looks back at me. “I can’t see Keegan going behind my back to talk to you, so it must have been Rick. Did he try to solicit your number by bringing up his private jet?”
“Nobody talked to me,” I say. “You need to retract what you said in those emails or I’ll tell your co-owners the real reason you want me to be fired.”
“What’s the real reason?” he asks.
I bite the inside of my cheek. He wants to fire me because he’s embarrassed about how much I fell for his schtick. He’s ashamed of who he was, of how we acted, and how much of a fool I was for him. I’m evidence of his dumb, teenage mistakes.
“That you’re a coward,” I say. “And your whole plan to get me fired is going to backfire on you. When I show everyone here that I’m your best employee and prove that I’m worth far more than you ever thought I was, everyone is going to wonder why you’d want to make such a terrible decision. They’re going to question your judgment far more than they’ll question what your motive was.”
He adjusts his phone on the desk, avoiding my gaze now. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
I could pick up his phone, throw it through his glass door and let the shattered pieces fall where they may. I could grab him, I could kiss him, or I could hit him as hard as I did when we first met, and I thought he was a thief.
“I’ll tell the other co-owners that I’ve changed my mind,” he says. “I simply thought it was in both of our interests to—"
“Forget it,” I say, turning around and yanking his door open again. “Do whatever you want. It’s what you’re best at.”
As I reach the elevator, jabbing the down button, I see my mistake like a neon sign. I should have quit. Not only will I be forced to see him all the time, but he will also be my boss. He will have authority over me.
I’ve been doing great for the last few years. I stopped wondering why he never tried to contact me or answered my messages. I stopped wondering why he left me without a word. I stopped dreaming about police sirens and the regret contorting his face in the darkness.
It’s too late now. I can’t back down. I won’t be a lovesick fool again. I’ll fulfill my promise to be an outstanding employee and if he realizes what he gave up, it will be solely his grief over what didn’t happen. I’m no longer beta-version Zandra.
******
I have five large index cards propped up against my computer monitors. The first one says,identifiable as 2Resonance without reading text or searching for logo.The second one says,should make people excited.The third one:must have 2Resonance logo.The fourth one:must have a reference to going to college.The fifth one:a reference to the playlist that’s being made to inspire or energize freshman students.There’s also a sticky note that says,unique typography while still legible.I’m certain John gave me other commandments for this project aimed at incoming freshman students, but as I draw, I’m not certain I can keep all these rules in mind, much less anything else he told me.
It has to be at least 9 pm. I’ve drawn at least two dozen ideas. My best one so far is a stack of textbooks slowly transforming into sheets of music for songs that are popular right now. The 2Resonance logo replaces a G-clef on the sheet music. It’s simplistic, but I don’t think it’s terrible.
I bet John is going to tell me it’s not exciting enough.
I bet John is going to tell me that I can’t use the song names without risking getting sued straight into Hell.
I bet I get fired for not being good enough at this job and Mark will look at me and realize he didn’t make any mistakes.
My brain is tired. I’m spiraling into self-pity and that’s even more pathetic than my thoughts
I start again, erasing Mark with every line I put on my art pad. I redo the 2Resonance logo over and over, the 2 and the R hooking together, and the rest of the letters squished beside it. I make it as large as possible, shading the letters in the form of college students and instruments. I sketch two students in a college dorm, the logo on the back of a laptop and the 2Resonance desktop player is shown on another laptop. I start drawing a college student like Michelangelo’sVitruvian Man,but it reminds me too much of the Louvre, so I crumple it up and toss it into the recycling bin.
After another half hour, I rub my eyes, looking up. The office is dark now and since I’d spent so much time staring at white paper, flickers of bright whiteness cross my vision as I look toward John’s office. It makes me think of ghosts, which almost seems like a good advertisement idea until I realize that implicating that 2Resonance will cause death isn’t the best plan.
