chapter 18
Having never been fully stable and happy in my adult life—I had been close, but never fully there—I had no idea what happened to emotions during those good times. Did happiness bring patience and calm along with it? Was there ever a state that you could be in that would shield you from a dangerous world?
An emotional safe house? A place where nothing could penetrate your outer, exposed layers?
The closer I got to work, the more my body rejected the notion that everything would be okay. I regretted not giving the situation more thought, more delicate consideration the previous night. It felt like a blunder on my part.
You'll be fine.
It was as if I had the cartoon devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. The first sip of my latte burned my lip, startling me and giving me the impression that the devil was about to come in first place. Dammit.
As I walked up the stairs to my floor, I considered what I knew and what might happen. At the very least, Jack had said he wasn't going with MCI, which meant that Sam would probably be upset. There was also the situation with that loser, Dan, the one Jack had encouraged me to ignore. Jack had seemed less than sympathetic about Sam's situation, but he seemed to act like Sam had an acceptable reason for being so pessimistic.
I walked past the windows where I had first spoken to Jack over the phone, my stomach immediately reminded of the sharp tension I had felt as I waited for his call. God, those gifts paired with Sam's volatile reactions had been somewhat priceless in retrospect.
It had been a simpler time then, but not by much.
Our office looked normal for a Monday morning. Everyone was busy, and I didn't see Sam around. I walked over to my desk and took a seat, intending to catch up on email. My network password didn't seem to work no matter how many times I typed it in.
No big deal. They sometimes upgraded computer stuff on the weekend when everyone was out of the office. I'd just have to notify one of the IT guys. It would probably only take a second for them to reset the password.
I sat there quietly for a few minutes, looking at the clock and idle other than sipping my latte. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam charging into the office, his face unshaven, his shirt a wrinkled mess. His eyes were bloodshot, like he hadn't slept at all.
He came straight to me. "Jacobs?" he asked. It wasn't a properly phrased question, so I moved on.
"Hey, Sam." I said. "My password won't work."
He winced at me, his face a look of total disgust. "Oh, your password won't work, huh? What a f*cking shame." I smelled alcohol on his breath. Two minutes in and I already knew this was going to be an unusual Monday.
I looked around the office, realizing that we were starting to attract attention. "Sam, I don't get it. Can you please settle down?"
"Jack Teller's people notified me that the f*ckin' deal is off. Doesn't that just piss you right off? It's like someone on the inside f*cked it up for us. I know he was going to go with us."
I spoke without even realizing, catching myself after it was too late. "Jack wasn't going to—"
"What's that, Jacobs?" He really seemed to be enjoying this.
"Sam, please. There are all of these people around." I was starting to feel legitimately humiliated, beyond the usual Sam's just having a bad day flare-ups. My cheeks flushed red, so red that no one could have misinterpreted my discomfort.
"Who do you work for?" His fingers frenetically tapped on a nearby desk.
"I beg your pardon?" I asked, feeling like I was stepping face-first into a trap.
A wry smile formed across his lips. "Do you work for an escort service or something? Jack must pay you real well, huh? Better than I do, right?"
At the very least, this was sexual harassment. However, with the way he was going, I didn't know if I'd be able to maintain professionalism much longer. My blood was starting to boil as adrenaline overloaded my system. "Sam, this is—"
"You've been hiding this from me, haven't you? You've been f*cking our star client, you f*cking whore. A little part-time job?"
I wanted to spiral out of control, to run freely with any emotion I felt and deal with the consequences later. Yet via some minor miracle, I took my time responding, allowing myself those crucial calming seconds before my lips moved.
"Sam, stop. Relax. This is not cool." Was I dealing with Sam or Timothy? I couldn't not be reminded of the incident at the coffee shop. Was he about to knock me on the floor too? "You need to calm down." I figured he wouldn't listen, but I would try anyhow.
What was it with men accusing me of being a whore for merely being in the wrong monogamous relationship? Maybe I had become a magnet for sexist, misogynistic pigs without realizing it.
"What the f*ck are the chances that Dan Miller ran into none other than Jack Teller in Beverly Hills this weekend, the accessory on his arm an Effie that matches your description to a tee? Was that you or was it someone else?"
I wanted to scream and cry and disappear all at once, if that was somehow possible. So much for the don't worry about him mentality Jack was pushing in reference to Dan.
Everyone was staring at us, and I didn't know how to react. I was trying to control a situation that didn't make a lick of sense to me. Who should I be mad at? Sam was being a total dick, but then again, Jack had invited me on the trip when I had wanted to take a break until this all cleared. Without that trip, I might have gotten out of the situation without a scratch.
I guess I needed to blame Stacy Levons on top of everyone else as well for inadvertently blurting out my title to the wrong person.
Instead, I was facing what looked like doom.
Should I lie? Just confess the truth? What I wanted was whatever would get him to leave me alone in front of everyone, to stop flagellating me in public like this was some medieval punishment ritual. Did he have a Catherine wheel in his office, too?
Sadistic bastard.
Dammit, I just couldn't lie. I was in a corner and this was too much to cope with. Sam's words had riddled my body with holes of vulnerability—and now I was bleeding honesty.
I was choking back tears when I said it. "It had nothing to do with it," I said. "Nothing. He wasn't going to go with us. No way. You knew that, too." There was suddenly a powerful shadow of doubt over the past few weeks. Sam had been hounding me as if he knew something, but I wasn't sure how he could know anything. I guess he just got excessively suspicious when there was a lot at stake.
He inconspicuously pulled a flask out of his pocket and lowered his head to take a sip. After all of this lead up, it actually didn't surprise me one bit. He stuffed it away before continuing. "You don't f*cking know that! And you don't get to do my f*cking job. That's why it's my job and not yours. I knew you were f*cking him and I knew I should have ended this sooner. Would have made this bullshit a hell of a lot simpler for both of us."
Had he slipped up? What was going on here? "What the f*ck are you saying, Sam? You knew about Jack and me? How could you know for sure?" His strange admission had thrown me a loop, distracting me from the emotional blows he had already dealt. I was more concerned with solving this logical dilemma than my own future.
His arms crossed defensively in front of his body. "Effie, just get the f*ck out of here and stop wasting my time. You're fired. MCI doesn't want you anymore."
All of the eyes in the room caught my response as he delivered the final, fatal blow—and then instantly looked away. I was like the trapeze artist that had botched it all and tumbled into the net, ruining the show for the sacred paying customers.
I had nothing left to stand on, no tricks or escape routines, no cloud of smoke to obscure my compromised position. At the very least, I had told the truth—but I still felt like shit.
Everyone acted as if they were ignoring the spectacle, yet it was obvious that they couldn't look away. I hoped at the very least they had witnessed him drinking on the clock and that they'd take him down too.
I felt defeated, pathetic, confused, subjugated. Why had Jack just told me to trust him? Thinking back on the incident, I was done the moment that Stacy introduced me to Dan. That was it. How could I have let Jack delude me into thinking everything would just be all right? I took a real risk going on that trip with him, and through that magical coincidence, got myself fired from the first real job I'd ever had in my life.
What were my parents going to think? Jesse? What about Jack? Would I be able to tell any of them?
"Jacobs, are you f*cking deaf? Get the f*ck out!"
Sam was right in my face, screaming at me. "Jesus Christ, okay, fine. You're nuts! You're losing it, Sam."
My eyes scanned the surface of my desk as my mind struggled to recall if I had brought anything with me from home. I opened the drawers haphazardly, digging to see if I had left anything inside. They were empty. If I had brought anything, it was probably gone now. I was usually on top of things, but given the humiliating nature of this situation, I guess it wasn't surprising that I was having such a difficult time.
I was losing my breath, my heart pounding as blood rushed through my body. I couldn't stay here any longer, even if I was accidentally leaving some sacred family heirloom behind. This was toxic, like poison gas as I breathed it in. Sam was unfazed, his eyes almost demonic, his lips curling into a menacing smile I'd never forget as I struggled to recollect myself enough that I could actually leave. It was far too obvious that he was enjoying every moment of this.
My feet pulled me rapidly toward the door, the door symbolic of escape and short-term relief in my mind. I was f*cked, but I wasn't about to solve my problems in that office.
"Don't think I'll forget any of this, Jacobs," he said, his words slurring as he spoke. "You'll never work in this business again."
I turned toward him, continuing to cautiously walk backward. "If this business is full of people like you, then that sounds just fine to me. Maybe sober up before work next time, huh?"
He snarled something behind me, but I couldn't make any sense of it. Just angry syllables. I just kept walking until I was on the street, once again surrounded by so much stimuli I thought I might explode. I yanked my cell phone out of my purse, ready to dial Jack and talk his ear off, unsure of what my angle would be with him. My grip was faulty; the phone slipped out of my sweaty palm and tumbled to the ground touch-screen first.
"Dammit!" I mumbled, reaching down and grabbing it, upset with the fact that the accident had slowed me down. But why did I care? I was unemployed now. I had all the time in the world!
I started pressing buttons before I realized the screen was totally smashed and nothing I had pressed had worked. The glass had fractured in several spider web patterns that began from a deep, single point of impact.
"Dammit, dammit, dammit!" I shouted to no one. Tears were streaming down my cheeks now and I couldn't do anything about it. I desperately needed respite, but I didn't know where to find it. I wiped my eyes with a tissue from my purse and continued to the subway. I was just gonna go home and think. The universal solution for everything.
I had so many questions for myself, so many questions for the world, so many people to blame, myself included. It seemed that I had found myself standing atop a gigantic emotional landfill, my assignment the sorting and acknowledgement of every emotion beneath my toes.
Thankfully, I arrived home to an empty apartment. Upon entering my bedroom, I angrily threw my pillows on the floor and stomped on them with my bare feet before proceeding to deliver a brutal beating to my mattress. I sobbed uncontrollably, allowing everything out, not restraining myself at all. I was pretty sure that anyone else in the building that heard my outburst probably couldn't tell if it was one woman's total emotional breakdown or really loud sex.
I didn't care one way or another.
After calming down—and fighting the urge to get entirely wasted prior to noon—I grabbed my laptop and looked through Craigslist for any accounting jobs. No matter what I found, I felt totally inadequate. I had only set foot at MCI for the interview, avoiding the challenges of the rest of the city entirely. To make matters even worse, most of the listings paid less than I had been making.
My wounded phone on the table was a consistent reminder that I needed to remedy this situation fast.
Dammit, I didn't want to go back to that existence, the world of dead end jobs. I didn't want to be thirty and still working in retail or at a coffee shop. I didn't want to be a clerk. I wanted to feel validated by my work, whatever it was.
I gently closed the lid on my laptop—breaking one screen today was enough—and stared at the wall in silence, listening to the ambient noise from the street. The city kept moving, even though my place in it had vanished in the span of an hour. My position was gone, but MCI kept going. I wasn't necessary, wasn't needed in the grand scheme of things because I could be replaced...
... and this sort of nihilism wasn't doing me any favors right now.
My head more or less accidentally found the pillow and I quickly fell into a stress-induced slumber.
***
I awoke suddenly, startled from a dream in which I was both falling and being relentlessly chased by faceless men. "F*ck," I mumbled, pulling my sweat-soaked hair away from my forehead. I was glad to have escaped that fate of perpetual, confusing horror.
Buzz!
My phone fell off the table, leaping to its second death on the floor. It hit with a quiet thud, the rug cushioning the fall. It was already damaged, so I was mostly indifferent to the event. My mind still cloudy, I picked it up and answered the call without looking at the fractured display.
"Hello?"
"Hi, gorgeous. How's your day?" It was Jack, of course.
I took a sip of water from the glass on my nightstand and gulped it down before responding. "Jack." I tried to talk after that, but nothing came out. I felt so vulnerable after hearing his voice in my ear.
"Effie, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
Feeling like a pipe about to burst, I blurted "No!" and fell silent again. Those damned tears returned, slinking down my cheeks as if I somehow wouldn't notice their salty presence on my face.
"Effie, did something happen at work today? Oh shit, did that Dan guy run his f*cking mouth?"
I hated to say it, but I was a veritable mess, beyond the obvious events of the morning. That was the simplest way to describe me in that moment. I had spent Sunday realizing that my qualms with Jack had been unjustified, that I needed to let my guard down and trust him.
It felt good, no lie, but maybe it was just because I made a f*cking decision for once. It felt good what Jack did to me, what we did together. He took care of me physically and emotionally. Yet like a parasite in my belly, that desire to be independent and free awoke, telling my emotions to go f*ck themselves. That desire could really be an unreasonable a*shole sometimes, perhaps even worse than Sam.
By the time I realized what side of me I wanted presented to Jack, it was already too late. "I f*cking got fired thanks to our little adventure this weekend. Sam called me a whore and humiliated me in front of everyone!"
"Wait, wait," he said, urgency surging through his words. "He called you that and it was humiliating, or he called you that and did other stuff to humiliate you?"
"It doesn't f*cking matter," I snarled.
"You could sue his ass for sexual harassment. That f*cking prick."
"Jack, I don't have a job anymore. I have rent and student loans to pay. I don't have time to sit around waiting for a lawsuit to go through. Or a lawyer for that matter."
His voice got weaker on the other end, perhaps reflecting a change in strategy. "I'm so sorry, Effie. I didn't know this would happen. Let me make this—"
"Well, I did know this would happen. That's why I asked for a break. I didn't want Sam to have any ammo to use against me. Instead, I gave him a f*cking atom bomb!"
"Dammit," he said calmly. "I'm sorry, Effie, I couldn't resist inviting you. When you're around, everything is better." He seemed to choose each word with careful consideration, uttering it with an even cadence. "I couldn't just idly sit there doing nothing, hoping you'd come back. It felt like too much of a risk. I don't want to let you go, Effie."
Unfortunately, there was a lot of truth in what he said, far more than what I wanted to allow myself to believe at the time.
"What am I going to do?" To me, the question had no answer, but I needed to ask it.
"Let me make this right," he pleaded. "I swear everything will be fine. I promise you that I'll take care of everything. Let me take care of you."
His promise felt like nails on chalkboard. Something told me he was right, that he would help me unconditionally, but the whole misery loves company part of me didn't want to hear it. He was trying to help—and it scared me.
"Jack, I have to go right now. I can't deal with this."
"Effie, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry about the trip and I'm sorry about what happened with Stacy."
"It's nothing but sorries these days, isn't it?" I asked. I didn't even know where my attitude was coming from. "Goodbye for now, Jack."
"Trust me." He hung up before I did. I looked at the phone and realized that thanks to the shattered face, I couldn't have pressed the end call button anyhow. I sat there silently, hands splayed across my lap, pondering my life in that moment.
Why was it that sometimes people would refuse the best advice only because they hadn't arrived at it themselves? What was it about us that made us so selfish and prideful, so unwilling to budge until we came to terms with things by ourselves? It seemed like a lot of heartache could be avoided by just listening instead of talking or shouting.
My internal determination to succeed on my own didn't make much sense, yet it was the only thing I was fixated on, the only thing I really cared about in that moment. I needed to make a plan for myself, a getaway from the mess I was in. I grabbed my laptop and opened up a new blank text document.
Goals for tomorrow:
1. Sort out finances.
2. Fix phone.
3. Update resume.
4. Check classifieds and job websites.
Jack?
I typed that last bit without a number, a quiet acceptance that Jack might actually have an unstructured solution for me. Whether I ever looked at the document again or not, it felt good to type everything out. I didn't want to deal with this tonight, I just couldn't.
Tomorrow, however, was a different story.
Out of nowhere, I realized I needed to eat, and fast. Even though I was on a budget, I decided to grab cheap Chinese food, just for tonight. Even though I had nothing to do, making something in the kitchen and having the scrub dishes sounded like the furthest thing from soothing.
After a quick trip to the nearest restaurant to grab my take-out—my budget definitely wasn't about to include delivery charges—I met Jesse in the kitchen.
"Effie, how are ya?" he asked. He was alone, his backpack slung over his shoulder. It was obvious he had just arrived.
"I'm fine, Jesse," I said, lying through my teeth."
"You don't look fine," he said sympathetically. "Is something wrong?" I didn't know if I should tell him what happened or not.
No, I wasn't ready yet.
"I feel a little tired and sick. I didn't sleep that well last night." I threw my take-out bag on the table like it weighed a hundred pounds and I needed relief.
He gave me a disappointed look. "That sucks. I've got to catch up on some work though. Try to feel better, okay?"
"Yeah, sure." Jesse appeared to be mildly distressed by the fact that he couldn't stay here and talk to me due to his workload. I, on the other hand, was perfectly okay with the situation. I wasn't ready to tell him, not until I gave it some more thought.
Yeah, sorry, Jesse. I can't pay rent this month because I got fired because I didn't take your advice. Now we'll both get kicked out of the apartment!
No, I wasn't about to do that.
I shared my lonely meal with no one, washing it down with lemon-flavored sparkling water that I desperately wished was a cocktail. I wasn't sure why I wasn't permitting myself to drink, because temporary escape sure felt like a good idea.
It was so hard not to think about what had happened, especially because I kept telling myself not to think about it. Telling yourself not to think about something was definitely the best way to ensure that you actually did think about it. Think about it way too much. Brains could be so cruel.
After starting to feel nauseous as I replayed that cruel event from today in my mind, I realized that I needed to drop it. I put on Netflix and put on the first movie that showed up in my recommended section, not even looking at the title.
Thank God that Jesse would leave before me in the morning so I wouldn't have to maintain some dumb charade where I snuck out ahead of him to pretend that I still had a job.
Before I fell asleep, I thought about how much I wished Jack were here, even though I wasn't totally over the blaming him phase of my grief. I debated trying to call him on my mangled piece of technology, but I let the thought go.
Tomorrow, I thought. Everything good is tomorrow.