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Finally, he clears his throat and nods. “Well. I did ask you to be honest, didn’t I? Be careful what you wish for.” Then, to my utter confusion, he bursts into laughter.
“I apologize, sir,” I stammer, unsure what’s happening. “I should have, um, I mean… I know you must be under a lot of pressure—”
“Oh no, no.” Mr. Hastings waves a hand at me to cut me off. “Don’t you go walking that back now. It’s the first time in a long time someone’s had the balls—ah, pardon the expression—to speak like that to me.” He continues chuckling as he reaches for a folder on his desk and flips it open. “Well, Ms. Rider, I was going to give you this option anyway, but now, knowing your temperament, I think it’s safe to say this would be an appropriate opportunity for you.”
Here it comes. My stomach sinks, and I dig my nails into my thighs now too, in order to brace myself. You want this, I remind myself. Severance pay will give you enough money to go home to Atlanta. To start over. But no matter how much I know that mentally, it doesn’t prepare me for the emotional turmoil of facing a firing. I’ve never been let go from a job before.
And then… “I’d like to transfer you.”
I blink. Squint from Mr. Hastings to the file he’s got open on the desk between us, then back to him. Is transferring code for firing? “To where?” I ask.
“To another branch.” He folds his hands on top of the desk and levels me with a stare. “I’m not going to lie, it won’t be much better than here. Worse, in fact, if the reports I’ve been getting are to be believed.”
My stomach sinks again. So I am being punished. “Why send me there, then?” I ask, nails still dug into my knees for support.
Mr. Hastings’s mouth quirks into a little sideways smile. “Because I think you can handle it,” he says. Then he shrugs and spreads his hands wide. “And because we’re desperate. This branch has the worst turnover rate of any location in LA at the moment. The word came from on high to refill it again, give the manager there one more chance to figure his shit out—pardon my language.”
I almost snort with laughter, but manage to stop myself just in time, and shake my head. “I’ve heard worse,” I reply, arching an eyebrow. Hell, I say worse on a daily basis. What does this guy think, I’m some delicate fainting violet? I clear my throat. “So I told you I wasn’t happy here, and you want to send me somewhere worse.” I lean back in my seat, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why should I go?”
“Well, if you’re this unhappy, I assume you’re already seeking employment elsewhere.” Mr. Hastings shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll be honest, your position here won’t much improve. You’re right about the lack of secretarial work—we need more assistants in this office. At least half a dozen of them, truth be told. But we’re prohibited from hiring anyone else at your level until some of the blowhards up at my level quit.” He tilts his head down to level me with a direct, frank stare. “You may have noticed in your hiring papers that we have a rather, ah… attractive severance package on offer. And it gets more attractive the more years you’ve got under your belt at the company. We’re not supposed to get rid of anyone at a high enough level that it would cause us too much financial pain, which leads to us getting into this situation,” he gestures at me, “Over and over again.”
I press my lips together hard to keep from laughing. So I’m not the only one who’s trying her best to get let go around here.
“But,” he continues, “Over at this other branch, things are different. The manager there has been ignoring all protocol about who to let go when he’s gone through an entire round of staff at the branch twice over in just six months. So, if you can manage to hang on by your fingernails over there, the opportunities for advancement into better-paying positions—positions where you’d actually be given real work, no less, which is what you came in here asking me for—is much better.” He sizes me up, in a way that makes me both want to simultaneously sink into my seat and sit up straight to glare back at him. I do the latter, since that approach has seemed to work best in this company so far. He nods with a satisfied grunt when I do. “I wouldn’t send you there if I didn’t think it would appeal to you more than this place has,” he says, while he flips open the folder on his desk.
“I didn’t say I agreed to this yet,” I point out as he lifts a rubber stamp and presses it into an inkpad.
“No,” he admits. “But I am still the manager here. You don’t need to agree in order for me to approve this transfer.” He pauses. Levels me with another of those X-ray stares of his. “Unless, that is, you’d like to quit?”
I swallow once, hard. “No, sir.” I can afford to get fired, but not to voluntarily walk out of here. I don’t even have enough saved up in the bank for a plane ticket home—I’ve managed to set aside a little of my paycheck, but most of it so far has gone into paying back the costs of moving out west in the first place. Plane tickets, moving vans for my stuff, apartment rent, shipping over my car…
“Good.” He smiles, benign once more. “It’s settled then. Next Monday, you’ll begin work at your new location. The branch out in Santa Monica.” He slides the stamped folder across to me, with details written on the front page—address, security information, everything I got when I initially started work here.
My mind races, meanwhile, calculating. Santa Monica. Ugh. My commute just got even longer. I wonder if the metro runs there or if I’ll have to stoop to the bus or driving in mornings. The thought of freeway traffic weighs on my stomach like I’ve just swallowed a bowling ball.
Not to mention, the thought of everything he just told me about this branch. I stand to go on watery legs and shake my former manager’s hand, already dreading the thought of meeting my next one. From the sounds of it, he’ll be even worse than Hastings.
He’s already fired his entire staff in the last six months? More than once?
What the hell did you just get yourself into, Daisy? I wonder as I pace out of Hastings’s office, balancing precariously on my heels. On the one hand, at least from the sounds of it, I won’t be stuck doing secretarial work for very much longer. On the other hand, it sounds like I just jumped screaming out of the frying pan and straight into a bonfire instead…
5
Bronson
“This is your last chance, Bronson.”
I stand, straight-backed and level-eyed as a soldier, at attention in front of my father’s ornate home office desk. It’s even more ridiculously expensive than the one he uses at work—at least that one’s just a Brazil nut wood, which although it’s highly illegal to own much less transport to the United States from Brazil, does just look like a normal desk. This home office one is made entirely of jade, accented with gold leaf at the corners, giving his office the blinding, disorienting sensation that you’ve just walked out of a large LA mansion and into a house that would be more suitable in Singapore or Malaysia somewhere. Between the desk and the heavy brocade on the windows, not to mention the Japanese, Chinese and Korean art jumbled everywhere, it’s a hodgepodge of Asian diaspora in here.
My mother didn’t have a vote in how Father decorated his private office, so he unloaded all his frustrations about not being able to tacky up the rest of the house on this one room.
“I understand, sir,” I say, because it’s what Father wants to hear. And because, deep down, despite the fucking mess my life has become since I got back here to LA, I know I do still owe him. Big time. To the tune of 1.5 million fucking dollars, the kind of loan I’ll never be able to work off or repay.
And he knows it, too. It’s why every time I meet with him, he’s wearing a smug, shit-eating smile. Because he knows that finally, once and for all, he wins. He’ll be able to hold this debt over me for the rest of my life, and I’ll never be able to say a word, because I really would be dead in a ditch somewhere without that lifeline of his.
Doesn’t mean I can’t still disappoint him, though, apparently. “I mean it,” he’s saying. “The tabloids are already all over your every m
ove—I can’t believe you took that hussy to that club last Friday.”
“She’s not a hussy, she’s my friend,” I reply through gritted teeth. “One of the few I retained from my high school years, so I’d rather not completely desert her when she asks me to accompany her to a social event.” She’s also gayer than a three dollar bill, I mentally add, but he doesn’t need to know that. If it drives Dad nuts to see me hanging out with his friend’s “no good party girl daughter,” the very daughter he was so desperate to hook me up with back when we were in high school, then good. He deserves the stress.
