Pink Slip

by Katrina Jackson

  Just as she started to frown, a flash of movement in her peripheral vision caught her eye. She scanned a small crowd gathered at a taxi stand, all waiting impatiently. A family with two screaming children were at its head. The mother seemed to be trying to placate them, while the father checked his watch and looked anxiously away as if he were late for something, while two teenage girls posed for a selfie.

  “Ready?” Kenny called from the bus.

  Kierra gave him a weak smile and then stepped off the curb.

  eleven

  “Am I having a psychotic break?” Kierra typed into the search engine on her phone. She was currently crouched down, hiding in a window seat, behind a heavy and musty old curtain in the library of the old – and very drafty, she was going to make sure to mention on the retreat’s comment card – house in the small Irish town of Enniskerry. The highlights of the little bit of the countryside that she’d seen seemed to be pigs, wild chickens, a rooster that couldn’t discern between daybreak and two o’clock in the afternoon, and dial up internet.

  She’d been at the writing retreat for two days and had become certain of a few things.

  First, she was right, four minutes into the thirty-minute drive from the airport, Kenny’s voice had coaxed a splitting migraine into bloom just behind her right temple. She’d hoped that it might disappear once they arrived at the retreat, but as social director, he was literally everywhere and he was literally always talking.

  Second, between her migraine, very little sleep – on account of the wind gusting through every crack in her room – and the hunger, she hadn’t written one word at this very expensive retreat and she wouldn’t if things didn’t change.

  And thirdly, about the hunger: Irish food was terrible. Or at least their Irish chef was terrible. But Kierra couldn’t be bothered to split hairs when she could feel her stomach eating itself.

  The little dotted circle at the top of her phone’s screen turned and turned for a solid five minutes before the results page finally loaded with a number of interesting lists and online quizzes to her query. She couldn’t click on anything, since it would probably take at least another five minutes to load, but from what she gleaned from the page previews, all of the websites seemed to be suggesting that… maybe she was having a nervous breakdown. But also maybe she wasn’t. She chewed her lip and tried to quell the rising panic that she’d wasted a sizeable chunk of her unemployment nest egg to not eat or sleep or write in a farm town in rural Ireland. She literally could have stayed at home feeling sorry for herself and accomplished the same thing.

  She started typing a very angry, but carefully worded, email to her mentor asking if this was really the retreat that had changed her life, when she heard it. She clutched her phone to her chest and held her breath.

  It was Kenny. She knew it was. It was always Kenny.

  He seemed to follow her around the grounds as if she were the only guest at the retreat. Every time she turned around, there he was “checking in.” How was she supposed to write if he hovered? Another thing she would be complaining about at the end of the retreat in just five more days. Five drafty days without a meal worth swallowing.

  The steps were slow and measured as whoever it was walked into the room. Kierra held her breath and prayed that they would move on. But they didn’t. The footsteps grew closer. Kierra’s heart was beating fast in her chest and she could feel beads of sweat at her hairline. She closed her eyes, childishly hoping the person would disappear or that she would remain invisible.

  And then there were other footsteps in the room.

  “Kenny,” Asif Hassan, his Irish accent thick and – when he really got going – almost musical.

  Kierra let out the breath she’d been holding slowly, silently; relief washing over her.

  “The pigs have gotten out of the pen, mate.”

  Kierra could hear the sneer in Kenny’s voice, which was not as high-pitched as normal and so didn’t aggravate her migraine as much. “That’s not my job.”

  There was a moment of silence between them, longer than Kierra thought there should be. And then Kenny let out an exaggerated sigh, “Fine. But this is not what I’m paid to do.”

  Kierra listened to his footsteps fade into the distance, but she refused to move. And then the heavy curtain in front of her was ripped away.

  “There you are,” Asif said, his dark face smiling down at her. His jet black hair was in an artfully disheveled bun at the top of his head and he looked as he normally did, devastatingly handsome and a little bit mischievous.

  She smiled up at him, “How did you know I was back here?”

  “Easy. I just thought ‘where would I hide if Kenny was trying to convince me to do a journaling exercise about marmalade’? And here you are.” He reached out his hand to her and she happily grasped it to steady herself as she stood up.

  “He just won’t leave me alone,” Kierra whined. “Everywhere I go, he’s right there. This is not the retreat I was expecting. Were you?”

  She asked the question and looked pleadingly into his eyes. And she didn’t like to plead, but she was very close to her wits end. Also, she simply enjoyed looking at him. Especially when he smiled at her as if she were the only person in the room. Although, she realized, and took a step back pulling her hand from his, she actually was the only other person in the room so there was no need to let herself get carried away. And besides, there was the other matter of her still being pathetically hung up on her former bosses.

  If Asif noticed that awkward moment, he didn’t comment on it. Instead he smiled and answered her question. “I don’t have expectations. They’re too difficult to manage. I take everything as it comes.”

  “And how’s that working out with this retreat?”

  “Well,” he said, leading her out of the library in the opposite direction of the pig pens behind the building. “Kenny is a right knob and hours of entertainment. And you’re literally gorgeous. So I think this retreat is turning out just fine.”

  He beamed at Kierra as they walked slowly downstairs, through the sitting room just off the main entrance and into the breakfast room that everyone used as a lounge since that’s where the coffee was.

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Ugh, optimism.”

  Asif’s laugh was a nice, deep rumble that didn’t ask anything of her, not even unbidden arousal. It just washed over her, comforting her distress and inviting her not to take the retreat – or life – so seriously.

  Not for the first time in the last couple of days, Kierra tried to ignore the way Asif reminded her of Lane.

  ◆◆◆

  Kierra was having a good dream. A great dream actually. Besides the bliss of passing out and staying asleep even as a tornado ravaged the old house’s rafters, this was an A+ dream; a snatch of memory mixed with a bit of dirty fantasy.

  She shivered in her sleep remembering the way Lane’s eyes had roamed appreciatively over her body, his hands sliding up Monica’s back between them. She knew the moment that he entered Monica because she moaned, guttural and deep, and the vibrations had washed over Kierra’s sex and sent her spiraling over the edge. But before dream Kierra could come, the scenery transformed into a more familiar set up.

  They were having breakfast at Command. Monica and Lane were sitting across from one another in the boardroom, strategizing and comparing intel, their eyes lazily drinking in Kierra’s body, which was barely covered in that mesh dress from Serbia. She pranced around the table in her highest, thinnest heels and poured coffee, offered Monica another pen just as the one she was using began to run out and straightened stacks of files Lane had spread haphazardly in front of him.

  Kierra sometimes felt ridiculous that this was the kind of thing that got her off: anticipating Monica and Lane’s needs while desperately displaying herself in front of them; for them. But she had been their PA for three years and had spent the entire time drowning in her own erotic desires. Just as it had taken a while after she left school to s
top waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worried that she still needed to finish a phantom essay or prepare for a test tomorrow, she needed some time to adjust to this transition.

  In the meantime, her dreams were a psychoanalyst’s financial windfall.

  She was just getting to the good part. Sitting demurely in Monica’s lap, Kierra was all but purring as Monica lightly stroked her thighs as she and Lane discussed the best tactic for breaking into the Chinese embassy in South Africa; as if this were oh so normal. Because that was Kierra’s ultimate fantasy. She gasped in her dream, and in reality, when Monica’s fingers grazed the edge of pussy.

  “Keep quiet, sweet girl,” Lane said, his voice a promise of what would come if she didn’t.

  And Kierra tried, biting her lips and swallowing the moans that threatened to break free as Monica gently massaged the skin where her leg met her hip starting at the outer edge and pushing down between her legs, just barely grazing her sex. But then Monica pushed her legs apart for a better angle to lightly run her fingers up and down Kierra’s drenched folds, just as she announced that she needed Kierra to order a new sniper scope. And Kierra had to answer her, it was her job. Only when she opened her mouth a loud moan escaped instead of the “on it,” she had meant to say.

  And then Lane was standing up, looking at her with hard eyes and that easy smile, slowly unbuckling his belt. And Monica’s fingers had slipped inside of her.

  A loud crash from the garden pulled Kierra from her dream and she sat straight up in bed, panting, a light sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

  She looked around her dark room. What little she could see in the dim light the moon cast through the windows, showed that everything looked to be in its place. There were no new sounds outside and she almost wondered if she hadn’t dreamt the crash that startled her awake. But her racing heart and raised hair on her arms told her that she had heard something. The wind howled outside and seeped through the poorly framed windows and she decided that the relentless gusting air was the culprit as she settled back into bed.

  She tossed and turned, trying desperately to get back what she had lost.

  twelve

  The next morning Kierra was bleary eyed and irritable.

  She spent half of the night angrily awake and horny and just as the sun had begun to rise she finally drifted into a deep sleep and missed breakfast. From the previous three days, she felt certain that the eggs would have been runny or insanely dry and the toast and sausage would very likely have been burnt beyond recognition. But her stomach growled loudly that even that might have been worth it, she was so hungry. On top of all that, she was also late for the early freewriting exercises; the only time Kenny left her alone long enough to think.

  She could see everyone filing down the hall toward the large conference room they used for group writing and turned in the other direction toward the kitchen. She couldn’t stop the triumphant yelp from escaping her lips when she saw a carafe of coffee. She pressed her hand to its side and felt that it was hot and likely fresh. It wasn’t her mama’s grits and eggs, but it would do. For a brief moment Kierra thought that maybe this was going to be the turning point of this retreat. Maybe she’d write a few lines today. Maybe the cook would finally make something better than almost edible. Maybe her heartbreak would miraculously heal.

  But then a few things happened all at once to send her day into a tailspin.

  First, outside in the garden the chickens started to squawk loudly and Kierra moved to the sink to peer out of the window. Which is why she didn’t notice the man inching toward her through the kitchen’s back door with a knife in his hand. So in hindsight she guessed he counted as the second thing. But she didn’t notice any of the danger at her back until the third thing happened: the cook, the absolutely terrible cook named Mrs. Wilde – who seemed hell bent on keeping them all hungry and agitated – burst out of the pantry and clubbed the man over the head with a heavy rolling pin. His knife clattered to the kitchen floor.

  Kierra jumped and turned, her eyes wide and her blood pounding in her veins. She took in the scene in front of her and absolutely none of it made sense. “What the fuck?”

  The rolling pin in Mrs. Wilde’s hand was bloody. She kicked the knife out of the man’s reach and then leaned down to check his pulse.

  “Mrs. Wilde, what the fuck is going on?” Kierra screamed. The cook ignored her.

  And then Asif came running into the kitchen, Kenny fast on his heels.

  “Help me get him up,” Mrs. Wilde directed and Asif moved to the prone body on the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Kenny was standing in front of Kierra, squatting down to her eye level and peering into her face, his hands gripping her shoulders.

  She was shaking. “What the fuck?” Was all she could think to say again.

  “I said are you all right?” Kenny said louder.

  “She’s in shock not deaf, you idiot,” Asif said as he and Mrs. Wilde pushed the unconscious man into a chair. He slumped face first onto the table.

  Kierra turned quickly toward Asif, her eyes bulging. “Where the fuck is your accent?” She asked him because until right this moment he had spent the past two days trying to charm her with an Irish accent that was missing in action this morning. Apparently.

  And then they all stopped. Mrs. Wilde looked between Asif and Kenny and Kierra, her mouth a thin, serious line.

  Asif stood up, hands held out in front of him, “Okay, there’s something we need to tell you,” he started in a very thick Boston accent.

  Kierra bolted out of the kitchen before any of them could react. She heard two pairs of footsteps behind her, but she could see the front door in front of her. She reached out for the knob, willing it closer. And then she was being lifted off of her feet. She started screaming.

  “Calm down, Kierra,” Asif barked.

  “Put me down,” she screamed back.

  “Sorry folks, nothing to see here. Just an exercise on finding your voice. Get ready,” Kenny said in his high-pitched, social director voice. Kierra assumed he was talking to the other retreat participants. She screamed.

  Asif had one arm around her waist and she tried desperately to shake her head to stop him from covering her face. But then Kenny grasped her ankles. She gasped and Asif’s hand clapped over her hmouth. They were shuffling her upstairs to her drafty bedroom before she even had time to fully comprehend all that had happened.

  Asif kicked the door closed behind them. Kenny clutched her ankles with one surprisingly strong hand as he reached onto her bed and grasped her blanket. He used it to tie her legs together so that Asif could hold her on his own. And then Kenny pulled up her sheets and began ripping them into long strips, which they used to tie her to the hard, straight-backed chair in the corner of her room.

  Only when her arms and legs were restrained did Kierra realize that maybe she didn’t just get to walk away from being the personal assistant to spies. Maybe it wasn’t that easy. And she was scared and then angry as hell. Shouldn’t Monica and Lane have told her that when they accepted her resignation? If she ever got out of this situation, she was going to write them a very strongly worded email and send it to their encrypted email server. Their new assistant would probably delete it on sight, assuming they hadn’t changed all of their servers the day after she left. But still, she’d write it because this was absolutely fucked up.

  Kenny crouched down in front of her, his ears red, she hoped in shame. “I’m really sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way?”

  Kierra wanted to scream at him and ask exactly how this was supposed to go down. But there was a gag in her mouth, so she glared at him instead.

  Asif pulled his cell phone from his pocket, pressed a button and waited for someone to answer. “Echo 5, Protocol B,” was all he said before hanging up again. Kierra didn’t recognize that operative combination.

  He turned to Kierra and gave her an awkward smile. “So you really bought my accent?”

 
; Kenny groaned and stood. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me?”

  “You owe me sixty bucks, fresh meat. Pay up.”

  Kierra rolled her eyes and mumbled “Fucking idiots,” around her gag, not that they could understand her.

  Kenny turned and headed out of the bedroom. Asif waved at her – as if he hadn’t kidnapped her and tied her to a chair – and followed him into the hallway. He closed the door behind him.

  Kierra listened for the sound of their footsteps down the hall and descending the ancient and thankfully creaky staircase. She waited for the sound of the door to the kitchen closing shut. Then she counted to fifty, working slowly to loosen the bedsheet around her wrists and slip from the bindings. She’d kept her wrists flexed as Kenny wound the fabric together and prayed that he wasn’t experienced enough to know that that would matter. At the count of fifty, she was still working to untie her left ankle when she heard the front door open. Kierra froze and listened to the heavy footfalls of whoever had just arrived. They didn’t climb the stairs.

  She finally undid the tight knot around her ankle. She ripped the gag out of her mouth and then stepped slowly out of the bedroom, stopping to listen. She inched to the landing at the top of the stairs and stopped again, ready to hide in one of the other bedrooms. But all she heard was the endless settling of an old house in need of many repairs.

  Kierra stepped gingerly down the stairs, her back grazing the wall where she knew the stairs were less likely to make noise. She held her breath the entire way.

  She turned the knob to the front door and pulled it open a small fraction, her eyes trained behind her, just in case someone appeared in the hallway. When the door was open just enough for her to slip through, she did.

  Kierra was just about to take off running when a very familiar voice made her heart stop.

  “Now where are you going, sweet girl?”

  She jumped and turned toward Lane’s voice just as the front door was wrenched open, the house’s entrance framing Monica’s tall, strong body and hard, angry face.