“Oh, they give you Columbus Day off?” she whined, obviously at work.
I guess it’s October, I thought, realizing I had never checked to see what was new on Netflix this month. I looked around my bed for the remote.
“You know, we’re looking to expand our Asian Contemporary department before the new year. Would you consider a move?”
I stopped looking for the remote. “I wrote my senior thesis on Japanese avant-garde!”
“I know—I’ve done my research.”
I was surprised.
“I’ll invite you to our Christmas party and introduce you to my boss.”
“That would be wonderful. I’m definitely interested,” I answered.
We hung up and I felt the first glimmer of hope for my future. I opened up Instagram and took a selfie, sitting on my bed in the room I’d grown up in, eating Oreos from the package. My signed poster of the Spice Girls was slightly visible in the background. I wrote #hopeful. It was my first honest post in forever. And then, of course, I deleted it.
CHAPTER 14
Come Monday
By Felicia (aka Arthur Winters’s Executive Assistant)
I was glad Arthur was honest with me. He came right out and told me that I had to leave because he was meeting Sherri and the girls at Elio’s. I mean, I guess I had assumed that it was over with Sherri or he wouldn’t have asked me to the Four Seasons to begin with, but people have strange rules about dating nowadays. I guess Arthur was following today’s rules, not the old-fashioned ones we grew up with. Truth be told, I was too happy to care, even if I had, after all these years of avoiding it, become the other woman.
Our relationship was illicit all around. Office protocol says that employees cannot date each other. Partners can certainly not date their secretaries. Secretary—I said it again. It’s become a bad word, taboo, along with stewardess and garbage man. Assistants—partners cannot date their assistants. I don’t consider myself to be old-fashioned, yet much of my lingo dates me, and I don’t get half the words these young associates and their assistants use: bandwidth, wheelhouse, low-hanging fruit. I wish they’d just say what they mean. As I ate my buttered sesame bagel and glanced at the girl in the next cubicle eating tofu and quinoa out of a bamboo bowl, with chopsticks, I was again thankful to be working for someone of my generation. God, I hope I didn’t blow that by sleeping with the boss.
It would probably be quite difficult for me to get another job at my age, and anyway, I didn’t really want to. I loved it here for reasons that went far beyond seeing Arthur every day. Even if he were to become my boyfriend and I were to see him every night, I’d still want to keep it a secret until I knew it was worth what I would need to give up. Oh god. I was really getting ahead of myself. What if Arthur were to walk in, call me into his office, and say, Felicia, I’m sure we can both agree that yesterday was a one-time thing and we should just put it behind us? I had to prepare myself for that. How could I think it was anything more than lust? I tried to plan ahead to avoid being blindsided. I would go along with it: Of course, Arthur. I was going to say the same thing. I’m so glad you said it first.
I looked at the clock. He was late. He was never late. Oh my god. He wasn’t coming in because he couldn’t face me. How could I have let myself go like that? I was mortified. Why hadn’t I controlled myself? I should’ve been smarter, I should never have let any of this happen. When he’d asked if I still wanted to cross the bridge, I should have said, Yes, Arthur, I was looking forward to it. He must think I’m easy. Me—easy.