The Assistants(28)

Margie picked her head up and fastened her eyes to mine, and it occurred to me that no one else was around. The bespectacled accounting underlings who usually buzzed around Margie’s desk were nowhere to be found. Had she arranged that? If this were a movie from the late nineties, now would be the moment when some ambient, concern-inducing Radiohead music would start to play.

Margie rested her meaty hands flat upon the envelope.

“Okay?” I said.

She blinked her round eyes a few times but said nothing.

“So we’re good?” I said.

Margie leaned back in her chair, and it squeaked formidably. As much as I knew this was supposed to be the end, part of me never believed it. Whether I was conscious of it before this moment or not, I’d been afraid all along that Margie wouldn’t let us go.

“You and Emily had your fill?” she asked. “You had enough?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, out of nowhere morphing into an obedient Southerner, because maybe it made me sound more sorry?

Margie erupted with a full-belly laugh. “You’ve been spending too much time with that redneck boss of yours.” She gave a nod to the door. “Get the hell out of here; I’ve got work to do.”

I flooded with relief and bolted before she could change her mind—the music would now change to some buoyant, joy-inducing Radiohead song, whatever that would sound like.

In the elevator, I began to see spots. My hearing went underwatery and my head spun. But I was safe.

It was done.

My body felt floppy all of a sudden, loose, like a balloon let go to deflate and swirl around. And by the time I was back at my desk, I’d already begun considering possibilities for myself in a way that I hadn’t since college. I remained debt-free, after all—through all of this, that hadn’t been taken away from me. So what would I do now? How could I be a positive force in the world? What was my true life purpose? I was suddenly thinking in Oprah-speak now that I was no longer hyperventilating.

At lunchtime, Emily insisted we go to the bar down the street with the booze-lunch special to celebrate. Have you ever made a new friend who’s a vegetarian and found yourself eating more vegetables? I was beginning to wonder if Emily was an actual alcoholic and if I was gradually becoming one by proxy, so my first reaction was to suggest we put off the celebration till after the sun began to set. But Robert had a twelve p.m. lunch meeting at Marea, followed by a two p.m. lunch meeting at La Grenouille, which meant he’d be out of the office till at least four, so there was really no good reason for me to decline Emily’s offer. Even my useless fill-in could hold down the fort in a Robert-less office.

Emily and I ordered two-for-one dirty-pickle martinis with blue cheese–filled olives off the lunch-special menu, which almost qualified as real food, and hunkered into a shadowy booth in the bar’s corner.

I raised my glass. “To the end,” I said. “To this nightmare finally being over.”

Emily ignored my heartfelt toast and got right to drinking. There was something on her mind. I could tell by the way she kept glancing left and right all shifty, like she was peeking through a newspaper with eyeholes cut out.

“I heard it’s got bulletproof glass,” she said. “And a rocket-detection system. To keep him safe from all the people who want to murder him.”

I set down my cloudy glass of lunch. Emily was referring to the luxury yacht Robert had just purchased. His fifth. Because four wasn’t enough.

“I heard it’s got a helipad and a swimming pool. And an aquarium.” Emily shook her head. “An aquarium. On a boat!”

“Is there something you’re trying to tell me?” I asked.

She brought her face in close to mine. “I want a boat with an aquarium,” she whispered, as if it were a secret. “Or, at the very least, a house with an inground, temperature-controlled, saltwater swimming pool. Don’t you?”

“I thought we came here to celebrate,” I said.

Emily leaned in even closer. “I do have something to tell you. Don’t be mad.”

Just then I noticed a tall redhead approaching our table, and I knew I’d been tricked.

I recognized this bombshell of a woman from the Titan building. She always wore bold-colored skirt suits and six-inch heels, even on dress-down Fridays, which made me despise her a little. Okay, a lot.

“This is Ginger Lloyd,” Emily said. “She’s Glen Wiles’s assistant.”

“Huh,” I said, because Glen Wiles’s assistant and I e-mailed each other, like, fifty times a day. But I’d never matched the woman to the name.

Of course her name was Ginger. How did the parents of all the Gingers of the world know their little ones wouldn’t grow up to be blondes or brunettes? Or was the name itself so powerful it actually oxidized the hair follicles over time, to match the name by adulthood?

Ginger strong-armed me into a firm handshake. “We finally meet face-to-face.”

“After Robert, Glen Wiles is the company’s highest-paid executive,” Emily said, and I could see the inground, temperature-controlled, saltwater swimming pool in her eyes. “After Robert, Glen Wiles has the company’s highest-allowance expense account, and what does he even need an expense account for? Lawyers shouldn’t need expense accounts.”

I had a feeling I knew where this was headed.