“Am I seeing you in the parking lot right now?”
I looked around, somewhat unnerved by the strange question. Finally, I looked up at the building and saw some of the blinds in one of the windows were being held apart. I could only imagine that Brandy was on the other side of the small gap, staring down at me. I waved and the blinds snapped shut.
“Yeah,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“You’re still coming in today?”
“Yes,” I said, starting toward the door again. “Why wouldn’t I? I’ve been away for three and a half months. Don’t you think it’s about time I get to work again?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line that slowed my steps until I stopped on the small patio at the front of the building.
“I guess that means that you haven’t seen this morning’s edition of The Apple?”
The bi-monthly newsletter had been one of Mr. Royal’s efforts of love in the company. Written entirely by him, it usually contained a few announcements, acknowledgements of accomplishments or special events such as birthdays, anniversaries, years of service milestones, or births, and a pep talk in the form of a personal note from Mr. Royal. Though it was far more quaint than it was actually helpful, the newsletter was something that everyone in the office looked forward to each edition. It was heartwarming and offered a little bit of an emotional boost if any of them us was feeling down. I had actually found myself missing finding the letter on my desk during my time away from the office, but the way that Brandy had mentioned it didn’t sound as though it was something that I should be looking forward to.
“I haven’t,” I said.
“You probably should before you come in here. Wait just a second. I’ll bring it to you.”
“Alright,” I said through the lump that had formed in my throat.
I hung up without saying goodbye and dropped my phone back into my bag. It only took a few moments for Brandy to get to me, but I spent them pacing back and forth across the patio nervously. I really didn’t like the tone in her voice and the fact that she thought there was something in The Apple that I needed to read before going into the office.
When Brandy arrived, I stepped up to her probably a bit more aggressively than I needed to. She was gripping her copy of the newsletter in her hand and looking at me with a veil of fear and devastation over her eyes. I reached for The Apple and she hesitated for a few seconds before handing it over to me. I noticed that the template was exactly the same as it had been when Mr. Royal wrote them, but the byline had been changed to read Lucille Royal. Just seeing that sent a chill through me. Anything that Lucille had written couldn’t mean good things. I scanned the first few chunks of text, quickly recognizing that it was just a regurgitation of the calendar reminder email that I knew Mr. Royal got every month to make sure that he remembered all of the events that he wanted to include in the next couple of newsletters. I was starting to feel that maybe Brandy had overreacted about the newsletter not mentioning my triumphant return to the office when I unfolded the page and my eyes fell on the bold headline that sliced across the newsletter.
Snow Whitman Fired After Moral Indiscretions Flout Company Policy
My heart started beating so hard it felt as though it were trying to keep time with the words of the text as I read them. The article outlined in scathing detail how Lucille had uncovered the “lewd and lascivious behavior” I had indulged in while out on leave, scorning me for my “lack of standards” and stating in no uncertain terms how humiliating it was to be associated with someone of such low moral fiber, particularly considering the closeness of my relationship with Mr. Royal. I felt my stomach turn at the implication that I had done exactly what she had and as my hand clenched around the newsletter, crumbling it, I stomped past Brandy and through the front door to the office.
I stalked past the security guard posted in the front, ignoring his pleas, albeit half-hearted, for me to stop, and moved directly to Lucille’s office. Too infuriated to care what anyone thought of me and fully embracing the idea that I wasn’t going to walk out of this office with my career intact, I planted a brutal kick into the middle of the door. The heel of my shoe splintered through the cheap wood that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn had been there since the day that the company opened. It was something that I had mentioned to Mr. Royal before, telling him that the appearance of his office was a major part of the impression that he made on prospective clients, and that that started with his door. It was one of the few suggestions of mine that he hadn’t heeded, but as I listened the satisfying sound of my foot cracking through the door and the gasp of surprise from inside, I was happy that he had ignored me.
Lucille was on her feet when I pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped inside to face her.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
So, we have dispensed with the decorum all together.
“Me?” I said, taking a step closer to her. “Me? What am I doing? What do you think you’re doing writing something like this about me?”
I tossed the newsletter to her feet and saw a sickening smile come to her lips.
“Oh, that,” she said. “What? You don’t like it? I know that I don’t have the same quirky little style as my husband, but hopefully everyone will be able to rise above their seventh-grade reading level to understand without all the colloquialisms.”
“How dare you say those things about me?”
“What things, Snow? That you went to a retreat that specializes in giving you men to fuck? Is there something about that that is not correct?”
I felt a shudder go down my spine. The reality was that that was absolutely the truth. It may have been put into cruder terms than I would have appreciated, and she completely missed the point of why I was there, but I couldn’t argue that she was wrong.
“I earned the time off that I took,” I said, deciding that I was going to skirt around what she had said. “What I did during my leave has nothing to do with you and is none of your business.”
“Oh, but you see,” she said, walking around to the back of the desk and settling down into the chair slowly, “that’s where you’re wrong. What you did during your leave has everything to do with me. When you started working here, do you remember being given a personnel handbook?”
She looked at me with an expression of mock curiosity and reached down to one of the drawers beside her.
“Of course, I do,” I said though my gritted teeth.
Lucille withdrew a worn copy of the same handbook that I had been given when I first started working at the agency many years before. She set in on the desk and rested her hand flat on top of it.
“So, I can assume that you read it?”
“Yes, I read it.”
The condescending tone of her voice was making my blood boil and my fingers were clenched into my fists at my sides. This wasn’t the first time that Lucille and I had butted heads. It wasn’t even the first time that she had done something shady in an effort to humiliate and discredit me. This time, however, she had gone too far.
She turned her head to the other side, continuing to look at me in that sarcastic, simpering way.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said with a hint of a hiss in my voice. “It was part of the orientation process.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem that you read through it very carefully.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if you had, you would remember the morality policy.”
“What morality policy?”
Her expression turned to a slight grin.