Chapter Five

All in One Place

It used to be that I had to fend off companionship.

It was probably fairly high on the list of Reasons Sam Cheated on Me, if I were being honest with myself. One evening in particular, a Friday, he and some coworkers and their girlfriends and wives were meeting up at a place in the Mission that I’d been to more than once. It was mostly outside, sticky wooden tables, beer, cheap burgers; always a little too chilly, always a little too smokey, always a little too crowded. Still, I liked it better than the Marina places that were this crowd’s usual haunts, and Sam liked it when I came along, and he didn’t have to sit solo among the group of coworkers and girlfriends and wives. Lately, it felt like there were more and more of the latter.

And so I had told him I would go. Friday was usually a pretty safe bet—I wasn’t on campus Fridays that semester, so I worked from home and used the day to catch up on grading. If everything went well, and I saved some work for Sunday, I could finish by two or so. Plenty of time to wander over to the bar, maybe even hold a table if I got there first.

Only that morning, Maggie had emailed to let me know that there was an emergency funding subcommittee meeting happening bright and early the following Monday morning, funding that could impact the lab project that still wasn’t quite off the ground, and if I got her all the pertinent proposal documents by the end of the day, she’d be sure to take a look and put in a good word.

I don’t even remember which committee it was, or what funding source suddenly became available, or even whether we got it for the lab in the end. I just remember burning away a gorgeous late spring day, one of the last real city stunners that we were likely to get before June gloom descended. And so when Sam cut out of work early around four to head on over to Dolores Park, to sit in the sun on the hill with his friends and their wives, I wasn’t done in time to meet him there. 

He sounded only a little disappointed over text, or so I told myself, as I leaned into another couple of hours of what was essentially grant writing, a task both supremely boring and jealously demanding of every last bit of my mental energy. I didn’t have any bandwidth to spare to try to gauge his mood via virtual clues, and so I didn’t try. If I managed to wrap it all up by six, I could shoot it all over to Maggie in an email, calling it end-of-day in good faith, and still run on over to meet them at the second location.

I did manage to get everything done by six, though I also got a tension headache for my trouble. I attached it all to an email, hit send, popped a few ibuprofen, and drank half a glass of water, laying down, still clothed, on the bed. I closed my eyes, just for a moment, I promised a nebulous Sam, just long enough to let the drugs cut the edge off my headache so I could enjoy a glass of beer.

The sound of the key in the door startled me awake into the pitch-black bedroom.

“Katie? Katie, are you there?” Sam called, his tone pitched and worried.

“I’m here, I’m here,” I called out, still just half-conscious. I sat up quickly, and my phone and keys slid off of my chest and thunked unceremoniously onto the floor. “Shit,” I muttered, placing a hand on my forehead. My own palm was cool and soothing. At least my headache was somewhat abated.

“What are you doing in there with the lights off? Did you go to bed?” Sam called, his voice just ahead of his footsteps. “Are you sick?” he asked, flicking on the hall light, throwing my reflection in the mirror back into being. I looked vaguely haunted, pale and puffy and disheveled.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he said, coming into the room and sitting at my side. He put his hand to my forehead, displacing my own. “You don’t feel warm. I was really getting worried when you stopped answering.”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. I finished up right on time, and then I had a headache, so I took some ibuprofen, and then I guess I fell asleep.”

“And you didn’t hear your phone?”

“No,” I said, fumbling for it. “Not at all.” I found it by the pillow. Twelve texts. Five missed calls. All Sam. “Oh fuck,” I said.

“That’s about what I thought, too. I really thought that you’d managed to fall in the shower or something and crack your head open.”

“No, no, I just fell asleep. I’m so sorry to miss it.”

He tensed. Slightly, but it was there. “They’re still there,” he said. “You don’t have to miss anything else.”

I closed my eyes again, just briefly, just long enough to scan my body and take stock of its current state. Headache down to a dull roar. Neck stiff. Carpal tunnel aggravated, now that I was moving my wrists. I didn’t want to go and sit on a wooden bench and wrap my hands around a too-warm beer in a too-cold glass and smile for too long at people I didn’t really know. I wanted to curl back up in bed, order some take out, and fall asleep again, only next to Sam this time.

“You don’t want to go,” he said, before I could say anything at all. The note of concern he’d had when he first found me was well and truly gone. It was replaced by a coldness that was becoming very familiar.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“You can’t get mad at me for something I didn’t say.”

“How about for not answering your phone. Can I get mad at you for that?”

“I said I was sorry. I really am. I didn’t plan this.”

“You never do.”

I crumbled some of the blankets below me up in my fists. “That’s not fair.”

“When was the last time you came out with me?”

I sighed. “This feels like a gotcha question.”

“Asking my girlfriend when she last met me for a drink is a gotcha question now?”

“You know the answer you want.”

“Do I?” he leaned back slightly, his arms stretched out behind him. They were wiry now. They never had been before, but he’d been watching what he ate, biking thirty miles daily most weekends, and it had chiseled him out, just a bit. I realized that I didn’t know the feel of his arms now. They would be a new country to my fingertips. Once I would have eagerly explored, right then, right there, and the argument would have been over.

“Katie, I don’t ask you to meet us for drinks because I don’t want you there. It’s incredibly obvious that you don’t want to go—”

I began to protest, and he held up a hand.

“It’s incredibly obvious you don’t want to go. You don’t actually need to do whatever last minute work thing it is that comes up. You really don’t. You could just say fuck it, and walk out of the apartment, and when you showed up for work on Monday, nothing would be any different.”

“But when it’s a question of funding, I really, really can’t.”

He looked at me, quietly, for a moment, green eyes narrowed underneath his sandy eyebrows, expression beyond skeptical. “Yes, you can. They do this to you all the time, honey, and you never get anything out of it in the end. The next logical step is to just ignore it and see what happens.”

“And lose my job?”

“Might not be the worst thing.”

“Oh come on. We need to make rent.”

“Yes. I know. That’s why I work.”

I could feel my face flush at that one. “You know that I’m not going to just live off of you.”

He shrugged. “You could. For a little while, anyway. Maybe it’s time to take a break and retool. They don’t exactly treat you well over there.”

“No, no Sam. You can’t just do this. You can’t just walk in here and wake me up and tell me that you think it’d be nice if I quit my job and lived off of your salary and turned into, into I don’t even know what!”

“I’m not saying never work again! You’re taking everything three steps too far. Jesus, you always do this.”

“That’s not fair at all. I don’t always do anything. I was just trying to make a deadline, and I got a headache, and I fell asleep. That’s it. That’s all that happened. It doesn’t mean I need to bail on my students or my colleagues just because you’re pissed I missed drinks with Chad and his girlfriend what’s her name. Not everything has to have some larger significance!”

“Fine. You’ve missed the last five times I’ve tried to get you to come out because of work bullshit. No significance to that pattern at all.”

“You have to know that I’d rather be out with you.” This wasn’t a lie. I would have preferred to spend my Friday afternoon with him. Not his coworkers, but him.

“Do I? See, I don’t think I know anything like that at all.”

“Oh come on. Sam. This is how I get to where I’m going. These are the kinds of things people notice. You have to realize that.”

“I realize that you’ve been doing this kind of thing for almost two years now and nothing’s changed.”

“Nothing you can see from here, sure, but there’s so much happening just under the surface, and there’s another hiring round coming up in just a few months, and this is how I make things happen when it does.”

“Sure.” He sat up straighter, pulled his phone from his back pocket, and began to text.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” he said, still tapping.

“Cut me off. Ignore me. Act like this is all just a waste of time.”

“You said that. I didn’t.”

“But you think it.”

He locked his phone and looked back up at me. “Do you want to know what I think? Do you really want to know, or do you just want to keep telling me what I think?”

“Of course I want to know.”

He put a hand on my knee. “I think you’re a brilliant teacher who connects with students and changes lives, and I also think they’re going to take you for every unpaid hour of work you’re willing to give them, regardless of whether they ever give you a full time job. I think it’s a shitty gamble, and I don’t think it’s one you need to make. I think you could have a tech writing job in about five minutes if you want to make a certain dollar amount, get a 401k, have some level of financial independence, if you care about that, and bank some family leave, in case that’s something we ever decide we want. I think you’re making a crappy decision based on sunk cost, and I don’t think that you are going to be able to work your way upsingle-handedly in a system that you always tell me is broken .”

That was the moment when I realized that I was fighting mostly on autopilot. I wasn’t fully awake. My headache wasn’t fully gone. I wasn’t in any sort of state of mind to follow this train of logic to where Sam had taken it, beyond the usual station of Is Katie a Good Girlfriend at Friday Drinks and into the realm of The Next Five Years, The Next Ten Years, Marriage, Kids, The Whole Thing.

“Sam, I can’t do this right now. I can’t have this conversation. My head is still killing me.” It was, too.

He sighed. “I get that, Katie. I do. It’s really hard to pull a U-turn.”

“I don’t need to pull a U-turn.”

“Right. I hear you. This time will be different,” he said, standing. “Maddie will pull some strings, and you’ll get the job you wanted, and you’ll be chasing tenure for the next five years, best case scenario.”

“Seriously? Maddie? Her name’s Maggie. I’ve only said that a thousand times. Do you even listen when I tell you about my job?”

“I listen. That’s how I know about the tenure part.”

“So we’re going to just keep doing this?”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m going to go back out, now that I know you’re okay. Turns out Jenny’s pregnant, and since she can’t get drinks, she really wants to try this new ice cream place. So do I.”

I managed a wan smile. “That’s great news!”

“Want to come? I happen to know that they have salted caramel strawberry.” He leaned on the doorway as he asked, held out a hand. “You don’t have to change. Just come. Have some ice cream. You’ll feel better.”

Maybe I would have. Maybe if I’d gone, everything else would have slotted into place. Maybe he set up the dating profile that very night; it could have been. But he didn’t say please, and in my headaching state, that was all I could fixate on. He hadn’t bothered to say please. I love you, Katie. Come with me.

“Tell Jenny congratulations for me. I need to try some Tylenol next and stay in the dark until this is done.”

He pulled his mouth to the side. Just that. Just the flicker of a movement. And then he was his old self, and he got the Tylenol bottle from the bathroom, brought me a glass of water, and turned the light back out. I chose to read it as tender, in the moments before I fell back asleep, as the click of the key in the lock echoed through the apartment. But really, now, I see nothing but resignation.

*

The next morning, the second morning of the spring semester, it poured.

It was so dark when I woke to my phone alarm that I was convinced I’d accidentally set it for 7 pm and slept for 36 hours or so. And Kierkegaard hadn’t woken me up, I realized groggily. Maybe he was dead from starvation.

But when I staggered out into the kitchen, there he was, as per usual, sitting by his food dish and glaring up at me.

“Good morning to you too,” I told him, raising my voice over the rain banging away against the downspout outside.

*

My developmental writing class wrapped up at 11:00am that morning. It was mostly unremarkable, as second classes often are. I’d handed out a few add codes to new students who’d bothered to come back after the first meeting. As usual, the ones who had seemed most desperate at first, claiming frantically that their GPA and transfers were on the line, etc., weren’t anywhere to be seen.

The class after mine was canceled, and I sat in the empty room for nearly an hour, reviewing the first homework assignment with way more attention than I usually gave to such early work. I even came up with a couple new phrases of encouragement, substituting “Nice analytical thinking” and “Worth the paper” for my usual “Good work” and “Well done—curious to hear more.” When I’d reviewed it all, outlined my next class, and even checked online to see whether the late adds had registered yet, I finally couldn’t justify staying put any longer.  Shrugging my sweater back up over my shoulders and tightening my scarf, I headed out to meet Lucy.

It was a clear, but brisk, as I walked across campus towards the departmental office; another storm was apparently lining up out over the bay, or so the radio had said that morning on my drive in, and the wind cut through my cotton scarf. It was blue plaid, and it had probably, way back in time, started as Sam’s. I honestly don’t remember. It didn’t really help either way. Damn California scarves that don’t block the wind. Waterproof jackets that leak at the zippers. Sheepskin boots that soak up the rain like parched ewes. I shivered as I pushed the door open, and it might actually have only been due to weather.

There was no one in the office, at least no one who was immediately apparent. I stood in the entryway for a moment, rubbing my arms. The light was on underneath the dean’s closed door. There was faint tapping coming from the administrative workroom. And I could feel Lucy even without seeing her, could practically see her staring at the conference room clock, watching the minutes tick away, as she waited for me.

But that wasn’t fair. It was completely possible that instead she was blazing through the thankless task we were supposed to be doing in the name of being noticed. Maybe she was even mostly done.

I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time. Four and a half minutes late. I could see the closed door to the conference room from where I stood. Institutional gray-blue. Ordinary metal handle. A handwritten sign made out of three lined up yellow sticky notes that read “Re-ser-ved” taped up on the front, nothing like the official sign that had been up the afternoon before. But I still couldn’t make myself take another step.

And then the door opened, and Lucy’s head poked out, purple reading glasses slightly askew. When she saw me, she smiled. “Katie!” she whispered, waving a hand frantically. “Come on in!”

As soon as I was through the door, she immediately pulled it shut. “Thank god you’re here. I don’t think I could have stood being alone in this room for another second.”

The room looked as it always looked—a conference room with a large meeting table and chairs, walls lined with waist-high, rickety bookshelves that likely stood up only due to the structural integrity of the sample textbooks they held, and old certificates and awards in smudged dollar store frames. It smelled like it always smelled, too—a little musty, a little bit like stale coffee. Lucy had stacked files on the table, sorting them and labeling them with color-coded sticky notes. And yet, there was definitely something off. I couldn’t pinpoint it. But it was there. 

“I would have waited in the break room,” I told her, pulling out a chair.

“Honestly, I thought about it, but I was afraid someone would take the space. But now that you’re here, we can get started and distract ourselves from…”

She trailed off, then pointed to where my chair had been. I stepped quickly to the side, and we both looked, silently, at a darker spot on the gray-green institutional carpet, a spot about eight inches in diameter. That’s what it was then.

“They have to clean right away after things like that, right?” I said. “I mean, legally. OSHA or something. Work environment.”

Lucy just shook her head and sighed.

“I’ll use another chair,” I said, nearly tripping over the first as I made my way around the table. “So what is that we’re doing here, exactly?”

“Learning standards have to be filed. Deadline’s next week, and no one wants to do them, so everyone waited until the last minute to return what they’re responsible for. You know,” she said, shoving a stack of files across the table to me, “the usual chaos.”

“So which are these? And why isn’t this digital?”

“That’s the thankless part. These are all about five years old. Someone did this work already, the last time the administration started making noise about standards, but it got dropped. Harvey dug it up and passed it on to the people in charge of each level, and they essentially just reviewed it and passed it on to us.”

“And then we do what?”

“I’ll log into the system. We check to make sure everything is present and accounted for, look for any last-minute edits, and then check the boxes. You flip through and tell me whether it’s all there. Then we make sure it’s all filed with some semblance of sanity in case someone wants to come audit. I’ve done most of that part already, so hopefully it’s not too confusing at this point.”

“Could be worse,” I said, and I meant it. I’d seen projects like this go on for weeks. But then I opened the first, yellowing, manila folder, and there it was. On the line for instructor, “Magdalena Gerson,” in her very own, large and florid, handwriting.

I sighed involuntarily and leaned back in my chair. I couldn’t help it. And Lucy was quick. She looked up and over her laptop screen and her glasses and directly at the file spread out in front of me. “Oh Katie,” she said, closing her eyes briefly and tightening the corners of her mouth. “I’m so sorry. This is just going to make this harder.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I straightened up. “Don’t worry about me.”

I began flipping through the files in front of me, and for a moment, I considered that this might actually be a meditative, if inclined to paper cuts, task. Relaxation through repetition.

But then Lucy cleared her throat and said, “I heard they’re planning something for Maggie this semester.”

I kept my head down and bit my lip. A few minutes later, when I looked back up, she was halfway into a reach for another pile, but her slightly-magnified brown eyes were watching me closely.

“That would make sense.”

She smiled ruefully. “I’m really sorry. I know I said that before, but I know it must be hard to lose a mentor like that.”

“Things like that,” I said, loudly banging my pile into the table to straighten it, “usually are hard.”

I reached for my bag, hoping my phone was handy and ready to invent a voicemail, when I felt her hand on my wrist. She was stretched out across the table so far she was practically lying on it.

“Katie, it’s okay, you know. You can cry if you need to.”

Her fingernails were free of polish. They were filed neatly, though, and her cuticles were trimmed low. The skin on the back of her hand was lightly creased; her wedding ring, a simple gold band, was slightly tarnished. I wondered, idly, whether I’d ever wear a wedding band myself. Sam had wanted to get married. He didn’t say so often, and he wasn’t one to push, but I knew he had. During our last couple of years together, I made a point of not looking in his sock drawer, not ever. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be more upset if I found a small closed box or if I didn’t, and that ambiguity unsettled me.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, sliding out my own, ringless, winter-dry hand out from underneath hers.

She squirmed back off of the table and into her chair once more. “I lost my grandmother a couple years back,” she said. “It was rough, but I totally respect that you have to take your own time with it. At least Magdalena wasn’t young.”

“No,” I said. “She wasn’t.”

“And she must have been close to retirement anyway.”

I couldn’t stop myself from raising an eyebrow. “You know, I don’t really see what that has to do with anything.”

“God, just ignore me. I’m thinking out loud again. It happens whenever I have to do something rote like this. Oh, the page loaded. Let’s see…A, B, C…and, right. There we are. That’s where we’ll start inputting. Anyway, I just mean that at least she’d lived a relatively full life, or at least had a full career, at any rate.”

I narrowed my eyes, uncertain about why the qualification of Maggie’s life. “I guess you could say that.”

“But you really knew her well. She must have been thinking about leaving. Retiring, I mean, and spending some time with her family.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know if Maggie really knew what retirement meant. And I don’t actually know,” I continued, “how much of a family she had.”

“No kids?”

I really didn’t want to keep talking, but Lucy had me there. I had to think about that one. “One daughter, I think.”

“You just think?”

“She didn’t really like to talk about her personal life at work.”

“But she did have a daughter—at least, you think so.”

“I think so. But I really don’t know.”

“And she wasn’t considering retirement.”

“I know I never heard her talk about that. Can we please talk about something else?”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“From whom exactly?”

“Oh,” she said, shifting her focus back to her laptop, “people.”

“People say all kinds of things.”

“I heard,” she continued, putting down her stack of paper loudly on the table, “that she was going to be out in one, maybe two years, and that she was thinking about her replacement. Wanted to be in on any hiring decisions. She was coaching you, right? That would have been a huge help.”

“I guess so. Look, we really need to get started so we can get out of here.”

“Why? Are you in a rush? I checked your schedule. I know you don’t have another class for a few hours.”

“Jesus, Lucy! I have to meet Sasha.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” she said lightly, as though I’d only asked her to pass the stapler. “Sasha would be the next obvious step. But I would be careful there, I really would. I’m telling you this because I like you—she’s not the same as Maggie at all.”

I stood abruptly, sending the files in front of me skittering across the table. “I need to get something to drink. I’ll be right back.” And I got out of the conference room and shut the door behind me as quickly as I could, before I could tell Lucy to go fuck herself.

“Grab me a tea, would you?” she called from behind the door. It was legitimately possible that I hadn’t heard her, however, so I pretended that it was true.

I stood in the cramped break room without turning on the light, my hands on the counter in front of me, trying to take deep breaths and look like I was contemplating the tea selection. The mini fridge behind me clicked on, whirred, and then clicked off. The institutional clock ticked and ticked on the wall behind me. Boredom. Banality. Relaxation through repetition. I tried to let it seep in. There were no tears on my cheeks, not yet, but I could feel them pooled in my eyes, and I blinked them back as I narrated, under my breath, what was in front of me: “Earl gray. Chamomile. Constant Comment, ‘Our first and most famous blend.’ C&H Sugar. Sweet ‘n Low. Honest Stevia. Sugar in the—oh my God! John! What the hell are you doing here?”

John was suddenly standing in the doorway, like an apparition, the hood of his black raincoat still up, a puddle slowly forming around him. He was breathing hard, as though he’d been running.

“Sorry,” I said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean you can’t be here, I just didn’t hear you come in.”

He pushed his hood back and grinned. “So my invisibility cloak test is going perfectly. Didn’t mean to scare you. Just soaked through and needed a relatively free cup of coffee.”

“Relatively?”

“I pay with my pride when I drink this instant crap,” he replied. “Will you turn on the kettle for me?”

“If you hit the light. We probably shouldn’t keep standing here in the dark.” I reached out randomly and grabbed the first box of tea I could. “Should be enough water in there for us both.”

“What are you doing skulking around in here?”

“Just grabbing a drink. Working on something in the conference room with—”

“John, hi!” Lucy poked her head out from behind John. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Neither did Katie. Think I almost gave her a heart attack.”

I shuddered. “Don’t joke. I don’t need to be the next one to collapse.”

“Come on,” John said. “Can’t you take one for the team? There’ll have to be somebody. These things happen in threes.”

“Don’t say that!” Lucy snapped, and we both looked over at her.

The kettle clicked off.

“I mean,” Lucy said, with a half-laugh, “don’t tempt fate. Now you have to knock wood or something. I always get my superstitions mixed up.”

“Sounds like you take them seriously enough for all three of us,” John said, handing me a travel mug. “Pour some hot water in there, would you? And a scoop of that instant crap behind the kettle.”

I obliged. “Any sugar?”

“Nah. I try to avoid the stuff.”

“Oh, but there’s Sweet ‘n Low!” I said, feeling a nervous giggle begin somewhere down in my belly. “I can give you some sweetness and some cancer in this nice pink packet, all at once. Maybe you can be the third death, but in slow-motion.”

Lucy looked at me sideways. “Let’s get back to work. Like you said, we don’t want to be here all day.”

I followed her obediently back into the conference room, giggling at the packet of Sweet ‘n Low that I still held. I tore it open automatically, dumped it into my tea, and kept my eyes on the brown liquid as I stirred with a flimsy stir straw.

“So you’re really going to drink that?” John said, taking a seat at the head of the table.

I shrugged. “Gourmet this is not. Can’t make it worse.”

“That stuff really will kill you.”

“We have a lot to do, John,” Lucy broke in. “Want to give us a hand?”

“Nah,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t get involved in departmental shit like this.”

“But you’re applying for the position,” Lucy said. “Right?”

“Always,” he said. “Make them turn you down. And they always do. But the way things are going, if people keep dropping dead, I might actually have a chance.”

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d write yourself off too quickly,” Lucy said, eyes on her screen. “You’ve been here a long time, you have name recognition, you do your job. And I’m sure you know how to work things behind the scenes.”

“Let’s just say that some of us have better shots than others, even with the best campaign staff going. I’ve been here longer than you ladies, and let me tell you, it’s an unusual workplace. Most of the time when it comes to employment and advancement, it’s all about who you know. Here, that’s important, but it’s secondary. First is who you are. And I’m the wrong flavor.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Older white male? When was the last time we hired somebody like that? I know for a fact that there were at least a few extremely qualified people like me in the last couple of processes, but what do committees do? Minorities, every time. Better to be anything but white, male, straight, and of a ‘certain,’” he added air quotes “age.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Look at who we’ve gotten. I’m serious,” he continued, leaning forward onto the table. The water running off of his sleeves began to puddle close to my stack of files, and I automatically shifted them back. “Charles is the first guy in a long time. Before that? All women. Don’t get me started on the demographic numbers. It’s who you are first, and then who you know. You had an actual shot before Our Lady Magdalena bit the dust.”

I bristled, but managed a shrug. No need to let him know he’d struck home. “We’ll see,” I said.

“Oh, we will. At least your position,” he continued, pointing across the table at Lucy,
“is still unchanged. You’ll come out ahead of us all on that first qualification.”

“Let’s not discuss this right now,” Lucy said, her voice colder than I’d heard it before.

“Just because you don’t want to recognize your own inherent advantages, Ms. Alvarez, doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t see them. And it’s not just your thankless tasks.”

“You want to talk about thankless tasks? Here,” she said, shoving a stack of files at him. “The room is reserved. You can leave if you don’t want to help.”

“Hey, hey. It’s not personal. You do great work.” He ran his thumb along the edges of the files, and then pushed them back, slowly. “Your great work just matters more than mine, is all I’m saying.”

“You know,” I said, glancing pointedly at the clock, “we do have a lot to get done. If you’re not willing to take a few of these off of our hands—”

“I’m most definitely not.”

“Let us finish up.”

“Fine, fine. I get the picture. I’ll see you all coming or going to the interviews.” He grinned down at us. I raised an eyebrow back. Lucy didn’t look up from her work. “May the best, least internally-biased candidate win. God help you both if a Black lesbian who can spell shows up.”

He stepped out and pulled the door shut quietly behind him before I could say anything else.

“Wow,” I finally managed. “That was bad. I’ve never seen him quite like that.”

Lucy shrugged. “Par for the course.”

“Really?” I asked. “John? You’re joking. He’s always seemed so…” I waved a hand around, searching for the right term, “banal.”

She shrugged and kept her eyes on her work. “You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I’m just always the one in the room whenever it seems to happen.”

“Oh, god, no no no. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that I don’t believe you. I’m just shocked.”

“He’d never say something like that to just you, is what you mean.”

“I guess not. He never has before.”

“Never underestimate an asshole who’s feeling threatened, especially one who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. I mean, if he’s got the system so figured out and it’s rigged in my favor, then where’s my full time job?”

I snorted. “Have you ever asked him that? I’m kind of curious about what he’d say.”

“That would require further engagement. Look, there’s not a whole lot here to do, and you said you have to meet Sasha, right? Do you want to just get going and I’ll email you later?”

I looked up at the clock. “Actually, yeah. That would be great. Thank you.”

“No problem. I could use a little time alone.”

I paused, halfway through gathering my things, suddenly hit with a pang of guilt as I realized I hadn’t actually done any work on this task whatsoever since I’d arrived. “Are you sure? I can hang out here a little while longer if you aren’t okay. I mean, with that thing on the floor and all.”

She gave me a wry grin. “I’m almost used to it by now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll probably pack everything up and move to the library.”

“I don’t blame you,” I told her.

Just beyond the overhang were sheets of rain, coming down hard, blown nearly diagonal every few seconds, and yet stepping out of the conference room and into that mess even without an umbrella, with my bag tucked awkwardly underneath my raincoat for protection, and my boots soaking through within seconds, actually lifted my mood.