LITMIR.BIZ

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was sure some surly Frenchman would toss me off the side of the Eiffel Tower for butchering his language.

      “I can’t.”

      “Give me one good reason that doesn’t have to do with your being afraid of something you’ve always wanted.”

      I closed my eyes and tried to put into words the litany of good reasons I’d just ticked off in my head, but all that came out was, “If I go I’ll lose my studio space.” Ridiculous—even I had to admit it. The absurdity hung in the air between us like a bad smell. Rita regarded me with a confused grin, as if she was waiting for the punch line of my bad joke.

      “You’ll forgo Paris to keep your rented studio?” She looked around, and I could see her considering her words before she spoke.

      “Paris, Anna. And you could sell your work to the French government for tons of money. What’s not to love?”

      When I didn’t answer, she sighed. “They’re choosing twelve artists. You have to apply. Cross the bridge about going once they offer you the residency.”

      I set the application on the table, feeling faintly sick.

      “Just think about it,” she said. “You don’t have to decide now.”

      Working at Heartfield Retirement Communities was like living in a scene from George Orwell’s 1984. My boss, Jackie King—or the Jackal, as I called her—was always on red alert, watching and waiting for someone to screw up so she could sound the alarm and shine a great big spotlight. No wonder the day before I returned to my job as assistant director of marketing, I had a giant panic attack over what I’d face in the wake of Blake’s arrest.

      Exactly sixteen days had passed since the story appeared in the paper. I knew I couldn’t hibernate indefinitely. The longer I put off plunging back into the real world, the harder it would be.

      Cold hard reality dictated that since I was getting a divorce, I needed this job. Selling a painting had only lulled me into a false sense of security. Even if my attorney negotiated a decent settlement, I’d still need an income to support myself. Unfortunately, that meant that keeping my job had taken on new importance.

      Talk about adding insult to injury.

      Jackie King would almost smile if she knew how she had me under her thumb.

      The Jackal rarely smiled.

      Three of us made up the Heartfield Retirement Communities’ marketing and advertising department: Jackie, the director of marketing, a real piece of work who had no life beyond her job; her administrative-ass, Lolly Rhone, who fancied she ran the organization; and me, the marketing misfit.

      The Dynamic Duo. And me.

      I’d been blackballed from their club de deux for a holy trinity of sins: my refusal to give my life to Heartfield Retirement Communities; my refusal to kiss Jackie’s ass; and my blatant refusal to play their game.

      I had nothing in common with Jackie, and she hated anyone who was different from her. She was a shop-at-WalMart-all-you-can-eat buffet-white-cake-bland kind of normal. Anyone too different, she mocked mercilessly (behind their backs, of course) for the term of her employment.

      She cleansed her soul by going to church on Sundays and spending her vacations on mission trips to third-world countries where she built houses and shelters while her daughter stayed home with a sitter. Then she’d come back to work and treat anyone in her way like shit. But that was okay. She did church work.

      She and Lolly were like two rotten peas in a pod. They traveled together, ate lunch together, socialized after hours. Jackie even baby-sat Lolly’s kids. Yes, the boss baby-sat the administrative-ass’s kids. In return, Lolly had her face so firmly buried in Jackie’s behind she couldn’t see their “closeness” bordered on incest.

      We had our weekly department meetings—Jackie insisted the three of us have department meetings: one hour of hell consisting of a five-minute delegation of assignments for the week and fifty-five minutes of listening to Jackie’s harangue about how her boss, Ezekiel Bergdorf, had screwed up the previous week and how she could have done so much better. She wanted his job as vice president of operations so badly she nearly foamed at the mouth. I was willing to bet that over time she would systematically destroy him to get what she wanted.

      Therein lay the irony. Jackie’s weekly rants left her wide open for me to cause her serious professional harm; it was as if she was playing career chicken, daring me to take her tirades to the brass. She knew I wouldn’t do it.

      I didn’t rat on others (I’m sure in the catch-22 of her small mind she considered that a weakness) and I had no designs on her job.

      Sad to admit, but I wasn’t ambitious when it came to Heartfield Retirement Communities. I did my job and did it well, but come five o’clock, I was gone. Contrast that with Jackie-the-martyr whose life revolved around the company. She was divorced, had a nanny for her daughter and spent more time on the road than at home. She couldn’t fathom why everyone didn’t sell their soul to the company.

      My marketing job started out as a temporary gig that stretched to twelve long years. In the beginning it was a part-time position that provided enough flexibility that I could work while Ben was in school—he was in second grade when I started—and leave the job behind when I went home. It allowed me to keep my foot in the workplace, but still take care of our son—

      Who was I kidding? I used to feed myself that line of crap when I started feeling bad about not being able to be the room-mother for Ben’s class or chaperon his field trips because Blake was adamant that I bring in my fair share of the livelihood. Heaven forbid that he be the sole supporter of his family.

      Looking back, all I really wanted was to paint and be a mother to my baby (not necessarily in that order). My heart was never in marketing an overpriced retirement community. I suppose I should have left a long time ago rather than stay so long my boss regarded me as an inoperable tumor she was forced to live with because Heartfield never fired anyone—short of them murdering their boss.

      No wonder Jackie had it in for me. She had no patience for a woman who preferred her child to climbing the corporate ladder.

      Looking back, I should have done a lot of things differently. Now, all I could do was try not to look down as I crossed this rickety bridge over the canyon-of-major-life-changes. It was enough to make me contemplate curling up in a fetal position for the rest of my life. Instead, I walked in wearing my hair back in a tight chignon, the same as I had every weekday for the past twelve years. The place smelled of burnt coffee, carpet shampoo and office supplies, the same as it had every day for the past twelve years. I greeted our receptionist, Vicki, and started my approach to the break room to stash my salad in the fridge, the same as I had every day for the past twelve years.

      “Oh! Annabelle.”

      I stopped and glanced back into an uncomfortable pause that lasted a few beats too long. But I reminded myself to hold my head up and look her straight in the eye.

      “Yes?” I said.

      “Um…welcome back.”

      “Thank you, Vicki.”

      Then by the grace of God her phone rang, and I beat a hasty retreat down the long hallway that contained a row of offices on the left and a liberal sprinkling of cubicles on the right. I made it unscathed, stashed my lunch and made myself a cup of tea (no break-room coffee, thank you, because it looked like dirty water and tasted worse).

      Clutching my cup, I started to my desk, looking each person in the eye, greeting them. My personal life was my business, and I dared anyone to ask. But as I wound my way through the maze of cubicles, my co-workers honored my privacy.

      Perhaps returning to work wasn’t so bad. It reminded me of a little kid going to the doctor for a shot. The more she dwelled on it, the more it scared her, until she’d built it up to be something so monumentally frightening that even the thought nearly paralyzed her.

      I’d turned going back to work into the

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