“Things have been very difficult lately,” she said. “The pressure from Shanghai is getting to be enormous. We are all under a lot of stress.”
I think that was supposed to be her way of apologizing for the outburst. Not with an apology, with an explanation of why she had no choice but to yell at me. I didn’t respond—didn’t have anything that wouldn’t make me sound pathetic—and it wasn’t what she wanted. She turned and went for the door.
“You will be checking in on the app regularly to let me know what you’ve been doing. I will have to enable location sharing until we have established enough trust to turn it back off. I hope that we can return to normal soon. Have a good day, Ms. Warrick,” she said, and she left the apartment, leaving me alone to break, the tears coming now, more out of frustration than anything else. Or… I wanted to believe, at least, that it was out of frustration. Anything else was too pathetic.
I knew it had been a bad idea. I wanted to be mad at Estelle for convincing me, but I didn’t have it in me. She just wanted meto have a good time. Didn’t know how badly I was constricted over here. And I was happy for her, that she didn’t know.
I just hoped she didn’t overreact when she found out. She’d always been… protective, like that. But even if she tried, I’d just be quietly tending to my responsibilities. Like I should have been the whole time.
∞∞∞
I stayed productive through the day. Attended a meeting with the creative head of a new division of a good brand, someone I was supposed to be working with on a project for the next few weeks, and it went well—deployed my best social graces, and it seemed to work. Had some conversations after that in the lobby of a nice hotel in Midtown, and one of them escalated to getting coffee together, talking business—or, well, a man talking business while I nodded along. He didn’t seem too interested in what I had to add to the conversation anyway, so I just agreed with his points and made him feel like a very smart man, and it was a success that left me as hollow as everything else had today.
Once he’d left, I sat with my mind wandering in the back of the pretty gold and brown café with swan-shaped latte art and overpriced muffins, thinking about the party and bludgeoning myself with every bad decision I’d made last night, when the centerpiece of all those bad decisions texted me.
CASSANDRA
Did everything go okay with Linyue?
Cassandra. The married woman who I gave a cute nickname to and spent the evening flirting with, so much so that Estelle started to get worried. In the moment, I’d brushed off Estelle’s playful comments as just teasing, but she did that… coached actual concerns in little jokes so it didn’t come across too harshly.
And objectively, she was right: I should not have been flirting with Houdini. I’d just gotten it in my head she needed to pull her escape act to get away from an evil husband, and go get what she wanted from a girl. She didn’t really hide that she was attracted to me, and I was flattered by it when I should have been shutting it down altogether. As if I hadn’t learned anything from last time. I guess one bad decision led to another, and going to a party I should have ignored led to thinking I could show Houdini what she was missing.
She was a dirty little liar, too. She said she was bad with names, but she’d picked up every name, referenced names constantly, and still remembered this whole thing with Linyue even with how much she’d been drinking when we’d had those conversations. The nerve of her, lying to my face like that.
I needed to stop thinking cute things like that about her. I also needed to stop talking to her altogether. She was charming, but I knew she liked me, and she had a husband, no matter how she felt about him. I texted her back.
HELENA
She wasn’t happy. Told me I’m expected now to do overtime on my regular work to prove to them I can be trusted.
CASSANDRA
They sound controlling as hell.
HELENA
It’s big business. With big stakes, unfortunately. It was nice to meet you, but it will probably be some time before I can see you again, now that I’m being forcibly repositioned.
She spent a while typing and deleting on her end, and my stomach sank more than I wanted it to. I got to have one night to myself and one fun conversation with someone who didn’t reduce me to dumb-and-D-cups, and now I was paying the price for it. Didn’t really want to push her away, but I knew what needed to be done.
CASSANDRA
That works.
I frowned, chest tightening. I guess it was better that way, but… I don’t know, I’d sort of hoped she’d be disappointed. I replied petulantly.
HELENA
Oh, yeah? Got tired of me?
CASSANDRA
No, just gives me more time to make my magnum opus before I meet the muse again.
You know, Odysseus on his voyage.
“Oh, shut up,” I laughed to myself, a smile on my face despite everything. I felt my face prickle with warmth, but… very differently than it had been this morning.
