LITMIR.BIZ

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Jackie was standing outside Lolly’s cubicle, which, like it or not, I had to pass on the way to my office.

      Jackie darted a quick glance at me, but kept on with her canned let’s-pretend-we’re-talking-about-something-so-important-we-haven’t-noticed-Annabelle conversation. Good, maybe she’d let me pass without a passive-aggressive dig or contemptuous look. I was almost relieved, because I’d rehearsed this encounter in my mind, prepared several pointed comebacks I preferred not to use.

      For instance, if one of them asked “How was your vacation?” I’d smile and say “Lovely, thanks.” Or if I felt strong enough to volley, I could say “Why would you ask me that?” Then stare them down until they crawled into their respective holes, and then as I walked away say “I am not in the mood for your crap.”

      Good God, this was just like junior high school. Of course, since I was prepared, Jackie took another tactic. As I walked past she said, “Lolly, hold my calls. Annabelle, good morning. Please come into my office.”

      Oh, shit. “Sure. Let me put away my briefcase and I’ll be right there.”

      I was not prepared to deal with her one-on-one.

      “Right. Take your time.”

      Take my time? She almost sounded…What was that vaguely familiar tone in her voice? Was she being…nice? Jackie King was a lot of things, but nice wasn’t in her repertoire. She was too mean to be nice.

      Oh God, maybe she was going to fire me.

      Surely she wasn’t that mean? She liked to pretend she had a conscience, and firing me now, when I really needed this lousy job, would be unconscionable.

      She told me to take my time, so I did.

      I shut my office door, placed my purse and briefcase on a shelf in the small closet. I closed the bifold door carefully so it wouldn’t jump the track, adjusted the clip taming my long auburn curls, smoothed the back of my black skirt before I sat down at my desk and picked a piece of lint off my stocking before I started my computer.

      The Windows logo had emblazoned the screen, and I had just lifted my mug to take a sip of tea when I spied Blake’s face smirking at me from the five-by-seven gilded frame perched on the left corner of my desk. A vision of the mug shot that ran in the paper flashed in my mind. My heart ached as the hole in it tore open a little bit wider.

      I pressed my hand to my chest for a few seconds before smacking the photo facedown and sweeping it—like a dead bug—off my desktop into a drawer.

      Tears stung my eyes. I dabbed them away and gave myself a pep talk: I was not going to cry. He was not worth it. I closed my eyes for a good minute, until the burning subsided, then I took a deep breath, donned my emotional armor and prepared to march into battle.

      “Annabelle, come in. Close the door. Sit.”

      Jackie’s lips curved down, even when she smiled. She looked at me, radiating a forced creepy-warmth that made me think of the funeral director who helped me make arrangements for my mother’s burial last year. An I-can-be-as-empathetic-as-you-want-while-you’re-giving-me-your-money kind of look, but it wasn’t money Jackie wanted.

      Oh, no, no, no. It was details. I sensed it the minute I walked into her office.

      She folded her hands on her desk, cocked her head to one side and looked at me. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

      Liar. She didn’t give a damn about me. She wanted the inside scoop—big fat play-by-play juicy details of Blake’s arrest—and she was willing to make nice to get me to spill my guts.

      “I’m fine.”

      “I wanted you to know I’m here for you.”

      Right. How about a pay raise and a transfer to another department? She’d never been there for me one day in the entire time I’d worked with her. And she’d be there for me now for as long as it took to get the goods and have a titillating oh-my-God-can-you-believe-that lunch with Lolly, because Jackie King was that kind of person.

      It took me years to understand what this woman was made of—because there was a time in the beginning when I allowed myself to be taken in by her—and I’d rather ask Blake to move back and bring his lovers home than confide in the Jackal.

      “Is there anything else?” My words were icy, yet I managed to curve my lips upward; not into a smile of gratitude, but one that closed this too-personal vein of conversation.

      Her funeral-director smile faded to a nearly expressionless mask of comprehension. She unfolded her hands and crossed her arms.

      “There is something else,” she said as I started to stand. “I don’t like the direction you’re taking with the new marketing campaign.”

      She opened the file on top of her desk and pulled out my preliminary design for the new brochure—the design I hadn’t shown to anyone yet. Where did she—

      “Home is where the heart is…Heartfield Retirement Communities…?” She scrunched up her nose. “That’s a little clichéd, don’t you think? Come up with something else by this afternoon. We’re way behind.”

      I glared at her in disbelief, trying to think of something to put her in her place, but as usual, my mind went blank with rage.

      “Where did you get that?”

      She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I peeked at your files while you were gone. After all, some of us had to work these past two weeks.”

      Some of us had to work? What the— Ohh, that martyr bitch. I was not out on a pleasure cruise and she knew it. She was just mad because I wouldn’t talk to her about it. Even worse, she’d snooped through my office and taken one of my files.

      “I need that back.” I held out my hand and made a mental note to lock my desk from now on.

      She closed the file and handed it to me, then started straightening the stacks of paper on her desk to avoid looking at me.

      Coward.

      Before I turned to leave, I stood there for a moment, towering over her, waiting to see how long it would take her to look at me. But she spun her chair around so that her back was to me and started typing on the computer perched on the credenza behind her desk.

      She was a coward.

      It dawned on me that the hardest parts of this crisis—telling Ben and going back to work—were over.

      “You can leave now,” she said without turning around.

      Yes. Yes, I could. Perhaps it was time.

      I smelled the scent of gardenias before I saw the movement in my peripheral vision. My gaze snapped from my easel to the doorway and there stood Rita in the threshold of my studio. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

      Yanking off my MP3 earphones, I said, “For God’s sake, you scared me to death.”

      She smiled and waved a stack of transparency sleeves at me. “Sorry about that. I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Your car’s out front so I figured you were here—wait till you see what I have.” She sang the words as she shut the door and dangled a plastic sheet between two fingers. “I think you’ll forgive me when you see these.”

      “The slides of my work?”

      She nodded. “They look fabulous.”

      I set down my brush, tossed the MP3 player on the table and met her halfway. She pulled a small slide viewer from her bag and popped in the first image. “Here, take a look.”

      The boxy magnifier lay cool and light in my palm. As I pressed the button and the light engaged, the oddest sensation enveloped me that my future sat in my hand.

      It was crazy—merely wishful thinking that I could make a living doing what I love, especially now that life was so messed up with Blake and I was ensconced in the new marketing campaign at work. All the

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