Nothing about us fit. I knew it. He knew it. If anything, this motel room proved that more than my cheap clothes and even cheaper shoes ever did.
It’s in the back of the bottom drawer. You should take it out.
My eyes went to the dresser unconsciously, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him, standing in the space between the two double beds. As many feet away from him as I could get in the small room without hiding in the bathroom. “Fire me? Again?” I didn’t add for real this time.
“Have you looked me up online?” he asked me.
I blinked. Then blinked again, hoping my hesitation could be explained by his sudden change in topic. “Why would I have done that?”
“Of course, you have.”
Shit. Of course I had. I just happened to be a shit liar.
“So what,” I said, trying to sound utterly unimpressed. “You, like, invented the internet. Big deal.”
“Hardly that, but you must know at one point I had a company with over a thousand employees. Do you know what some of their perks were?”
“Double-ply toilet paper? Because our office building could use some.”
“Catered breakfasts and lunch five days a week. A full-service Starbucks in the lobby. Company laptops, company phones, company cars. And rental accommodations for new employeesuntil they could save enough to afford real estate. Silicon Valley homes, where the company was based, were ridiculously over-priced.”
“Sooooo. You’ve been holding out on me,” I said.
That made his lips twist up at the corners. His version of a smile, which was oddly reminiscent of Batman’s Joker. As humorless as it was, it always felt like this weird accomplishment. Like I was pulling something from him, he was reluctant to give.
“I didn’t want all that fuss again,” he said, looking around the room instead of at me. “When I decided to return to work, I didn’t want what I had before. I wanted to keep things simple. However, my philosophy hasn’t changed. Happy workers make a happy work environment, which makes me…”
“I know you’re not going to say happy,” I said, with a laugh. “You, my friend, are not a happy person.”
“I’m notyour friendand I don’t need your judgement on my mental state,” he snapped. “I’m saying my being here isn’t out of character or habit. I’m putting you up at a Marriott Extended Stay, which is a couple of blocks from the office. You’ll stay there until you find a suitable, affordable apartment that’s convenient.”
“Dude, you haven’t been listening,” I snapped back. “I found a suitable apartment that’s convenient and I’m signing the lease on Friday.”
He looked over my shoulder, instead of directly at me. “I’ll be the judge of that. Now pack.”
I considered my options.
As a rule, I could be stubborn. It was a survival mechanism in the system. Because you needed to figure out quickly, what you weren’t going to budge on and learn to plant your feet in the ground. Hard.
Drugs. Crime. Sex.
However, I knew E.G., and he was equally stubborn and intractable. If he thought it was his obligation to see my ass into a Marriott Extended Stay, whatever the hell that was, he wasn’t going to back down.
I could fight him, but I didn’t see the point.
I was leaving in a week anyway. Of course this place did not make me feel safe. But since I couldn’t remember a time or a place in my life when that had ever been the case, it didn’t bother me as much as it obviously bothered E.G.
The man had an ego. You didn’t build the kind of empire, the one I’d learned about online which would no doubt show up in my browser history, without one. It would impugn his manliness, or whatever, to refuse this.
At least it didn’t feel like charity. Or pity.
“Fine,” I relented.
“Fine,” he repeated, and I could see his smug satisfaction having won this battle. “I’ll wait outside.”
“It’s like a hundred degrees outside. At least this place has some AC.”
