The instant the door swung shut behind him, I collapsed back into my chair, the wheels spinning into the wall behind me as I gushed all the air in my lungs.
Courage, I realized, took a fair amount of energy.
Quickly, I gathered myself, printed his schedule, which I’d already committed to memory, but he liked a paper copy of that too, and got ready to start the day all over again.
FIVE
GRANT
Curiosity killed the billionaire. At least that’s what he’d been told.
“I wasn’t hungry...”
Those were the words that replayed on a loop in my brain from our conversation from a few weeks ago. With everything she’d said – well done by her, using logic against me - I kept landing on that.
Not thehappypart. Happiness didn’t interest me.
It was that Anna, my highly efficient, hardworking assistant, had once been hungry. Only people who had once been hungry, noted it when they were no longer hungry.
It hadn’t been hyperbolic or dramatic either. Just a throwaway line.
It brought me back to her five-year goal of food and shelter. I hadn’t really thought too much about what she meant then. Other than ambition wasn’t her driving motivation.
It had only been in these past few weeks, I found myself paying closer attention. Putting more pieces of the puzzle, that was Anna Flowers, together.
It was not something I should have spent any time doing. I didn’t need to know who Anna was or where she came from. What drove her or made her happy. None of that should have been my concern. She was here to work. To do what I asked and not a single thing more.
Which I’d made perfectly clear by rejecting her bagel.
There hadn’t been anything remotely close to invading my personal space since.
Why couldn’t I forget it? I was fixating – an annoying habit I had. Which bothered me because it shook me out of the dull numbness I’d grown used to these past years. Forced me to focus on the world around me.
Once upon a time, I’d built an empire.
Then I’d lost everything that mattered.
For a time, I honestly wondered what the purpose of it all was, but my ego and my family had insisted I live.
After years of wandering aimlessly, I came back to the thing I knew best.
Money.
It wasn’t some innate sense of greed that drove me. Money was just a highly empirical metric of success. If it went up, you were right. If it went down, you were wrong. There was no subjectivity in accounting.
When I’d decided I had to do something besides filling my days with nonsense tasks, I’d started small by taking one or two meetings from home. Then word got around in my old circles, I was doing some consulting. Having people come to the house felt too intrusive. I’d rented this office space in a fairly anonymous building park and put a plaque up on the side of the door.
I’d resisted the idea of an assistant for weeks, until ultimately, I got tired of my appointments having to bang on the glass door of the lobby for me to let them in.
Now, there was Anna. Who anticipated my needs. Ran the office like a well-organized naval ship. Had an innate sense of when I needed a second cup of coffee – this was most likely due to my grumpiness.
And never, ever, challenged the space I kept between us.
Anna. Who had once been hungry.
She’s starting to put on weight.
It was an aberrant thought. One I shouldn’t even have. Her weight was none of my concern. But when I’d hired her weeks ago, she’d been painfully thin. Her cheek bones resembling model-like slashes across her face. Dark circles under her eyes. Her unflattering clothes hung on her.
