The Other Black Girl(40)

“A weird note?”

“Yep.”

“Who from?”

“That’s what’s really strange about it. I don’t know. It was anonymous. But it was in this envelope with my name on it, and the note said ‘Leave Wagner. Now.’?”

“The hell? You’re fucking with me.”

“I wish I was, because I’m pretty freaked out. That’s why I’m here so early.”

“Why? So you can fight whoever left it for you by yourself?” C. J. joked, but the light air of humor he’d been reaching for hadn’t quite reached his eyes. He looked straight-up concerned, reminding her why she had shown up so early: to search for clues that she might have missed the night before. To find a smoking gun—that damn purple pen—on Hazel’s desk.

But while she trusted C. J., she wasn’t ready to tell him that part yet, so she just shrugged. “I don’t know what I thought I’d do, Ceej. I don’t know.”

C. J. nodded. “Have you thought long and hard about whether or not someone here’s trying to mess with you?”

“I have. But why would they start now, after two years? The time to do that would have been when I first started, if we think it’s some white supremacist kind of thing. Or when I was trying to do all that diversity stuff way back when.”

“It’s mostly you guys in the office this time of the summer, though, right? Assistants? So, if it was someone who worked here, that means…”

C. J. trailed off, but he was still giving her that scary, worried look. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t said anything about it—not to him. Not before she’d overcome her hangover; not before she’d drummed up a likely narrative that she felt comfortable with.

“I don’t know why you’re so cool about this,” he said finally. “This isn’t something you can just ignore and then it’ll just… go away. Have you told anyone here about it?”

“Not yet. I got it last night, after almost everyone had left.”

“Almost?”

“Donald was still here, but as far as I know, that’s it.”

“Ah, Walk-Man,” C. J. said. Nella could practically see the gears turning in his eyes as he considered Richard’s assistant exactly the way she had twelve hours earlier. “And this note came through the mail?”

“No,” said Nella, shaking her head. “Someone dropped it on my desk at some point.”

“Anyone could have done that. Damn. Maybe you should talk to Natalie about it. She’s real chill.”

“Eh. If I get another one, I will. But I think I’m just going to ignore it for now. Too much going on.” Nella paused. She thought about mentioning the Colin thing, but C. J.’s furrowed brow told her that probably wasn’t a good idea.

“Just lemme know if you need anything, aight? I haven’t broken up any Midtown office scrimmages yet, but I wouldn’t mind being here when the staplers start flying.”

Nella chuckled as he backed away slowly from her cube, throwing a few punches into the air above his head. “Thanks, Ceej.”

“Anytime. Good seeing you, Nella.”

“You, too. Actually, wait! I forgot one more thing.” When C. J. reappeared, Nella pointed at Hazel’s empty chair. “Maybe even bigger news: A Black girl started working here a few weeks ago!”

C. J.’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, yeah! You know, I just met her. She seems pretty cool.”

“You just met her? As in… today?”

“Yeah, she’s floating around here somewhere. I ran into her in the copy room.” He nodded at her cube. “Funny that you two happen to be together, ain’t it? It’s like we always have a way of finding one another. No matter where we are.”

Nella looked over at Hazel’s station again, speechless. She had to bend down to see it, but sure enough, there was Hazel’s tote bag, stowed neatly under her desk like luggage on a plane. It was easy to miss unless you were checking for it. What wasn’t easy to miss, not usually, was that sweet smell Hazel always carried around with her—although now that Nella thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time she had smelled it. Probably because she’d gotten so used to it. “I didn’t realize she was here already.”

“And they say we don’t work hard. Shoot, look at you and her, both here at the crack of dawn.”

It was a compliment, but Nella was too busy mourning the alone time she’d been hoping to have at her desk to appreciate it. “I wonder why she’s here so early.”

“She said something about wanting to get a jump on a manuscript she has to read? Or edit? I can’t remember which.”

“Hm. I’m not sure what she’d have to get a ‘jump on’ editing. She just started working here, like, a couple weeks ago.” And I’m not even editing yet, she added, just to herself.

Nella had tried to keep her tone as neutral as possible, but the deep shrug of C. J.’s shoulders suggested she’d been unsuccessful. “No idea how it works here. I just keep the packages moving. I will say, though, that it seems like she’s as hardworking as you.”

“Well, we know how it goes: We gotta work twice as hard to get what we want.” Nella recited the mantra, but realized the second it left her mouth that it was aggressively truer for C. J. than it was for Nella. Nella, whose mother had paid off half her student loans; Nella, who had no nieces or nephews to help with math homework when she got home from a long day of work.