The Other Black Girl(50)
The sound of computer chair wheels rolling against wood shook Nella out of her paralysis. “Hello? Is someone there?” Richard called, his voice so singsongy that he must have seen the shadow Nella was unconsciously casting across his doorway. “Donald? Are you back?”
Nella didn’t stick around long enough to see if he inquired further. She sped off, rounding the corner so quickly that she nearly stepped right out of her Keds.
9
For the next few days, Nella walked around Wagner with her head down and her mouth closed. Her eyes, however, remained open. She kept her sights upon every single writing utensil her colleagues utilized. And when anyone stopped by her desk—anyone—Nella jotted down the time of the interaction and what was said.
Hazel wasn’t exempt from such surveillance. Nella took note of all of their interactions, benign as they were, and she took note of Hazel’s interactions with Vera, too—starting right after she’d accidentally snooped on Richard outside of his office. When she’d returned to her desk that day, she’d been shocked to see they were still talking about The Lie. By the time Vera’s door had finally reopened (approx. 68 min. after Hazel first went in), Nella had finished the massive bag of pretzels she kept in her emergency snack drawer. They were supposed to be that month’s Sprint Snack—the snack that got her through the last hours of the day for at least four weeks—but the occasional giggle that fluttered beneath Vera’s closed door, coupled with the panic that she might be fired, drove her to obliterate every single twist.
Nella had been poised to empty the bag into her mouth for that last bit of salt when Vera’s door finally heaved open and a cheerful Hazel gallivanted out from behind it.
“Thank you, Vera!” she said, manuscript pages askew in her hands. “That was such a wonderful conversation.”
“Oh, thank you! And thank you again for taking a look so quickly, Haze. I’d love to hear what you think when you finish—if you have the time, of course.”
Vera’s door was slightly ajar, but the way her head peeked around the edge of it, and the way she was looking at Hazel—fondly, giddily—had reminded Nella of the way a bride-to-be might look at her maid of honor in a department store dressing room. Nella had never received such a look from her boss before.
“Right. Just let me know if lunch works better for you tomorrow or Friday. Or coffee,” Hazel added, walking backward toward her desk so as not to ruin the precious moment they’d been having. “I know we’ll have even more stuff to cover then, even though we just spent… god, what time is it now, anyway?”
It had taken Nella a moment to realize this question had been directed at her. Hazel was peering over at her warmly, as though all three of them had been chatting like old friends in Vera’s office. Vera was staring intently at Nella, too, the silver Rolex watch on her right arm glinting as she braced herself against the doorframe, but that giddiness from before had hardened.
Nella looked over at the clock in the lower-right corner of her screen. “The time is ten twenty-seven,” she said stiffly.
That was all it had taken for them to scatter. Hazel shook her head and whistled in amazement as she hustled back to her seat to check her phone messages; Vera stuck her head outside of her office just far enough to ask Nella, in a more recognizable tone, to kindly ask everyone to leave her alone for the time being. An author had just delivered a manuscript that required all of her faculties to edit, she’d told Nella, and her door would be closed for the rest of the morning.
It was a fair request. Nella would have done the same thing—especially given how many times Wagner employees saw open doors as green lights, and how many times she herself had wished for a barrier to protect her cube. A more solid barrier, like a big glass floor-to-ceiling wall that she could control with her keyboard. Then, at least, she wouldn’t have to feign a phone call or pretend to have to go to the bathroom to escape awkward, drawn-out conversations she didn’t want to have. It would be the second-best thing to having an assistant. Maybe even better.
So, although Nella wanted some of her own time with her boss, she was patient as she waited for Vera’s office door to open once more, all the while taking her messages and printing out emails she worried her boss might miss in her inbox.
But Vera’s door never opened. Not that morning and not that afternoon, after lunch. She hadn’t emerged a minute before four thirty, and when she did, she was wearing her raincoat and had her quilted bag slung over her shoulder.
“Oy, what a day. Nella, I’m off to an appointment. Thanks for today! See you tomorrow.”
In between bites of leftover honeydew she’d found in the kitchen, Nella had no choice but to say, in what was surely the most pathetic tone she’d ever mustered, “Good luck.”
That had been bad enough. But when Hazel, whom Nella had hardly spoken to all day, proclaimed, “God, Vera is so awesome,” Nella had picked up the remaining plate of stale fruit and dropped it in the trash. She said nothing as she longingly ran a hand along the bottom of her empty emergency snack drawer.
A whoosh of air brushed her ear. Hazel was suddenly at her side, holding a bag of Bugles out to her. An offering, maybe.
Nella’s stomach protested as she gestured No, thank you. The glass barrier she’d been imagining materialized in her head again—this time with Hazel fixed on the other side.