by Paige North
Every day I’d hand him the printout of names and phone numbers I’d taken down during the last hour, and then, without ever pausing to even look me in the eye, he’d disappear behind his office door.
Which he’d then slam shut. Hard.
Thinking about my oh-so-brief and not very friendly encounters with the elusive billionaire makes me shiver as I come back to the present. As much as I’m intrigued by Jared King, I can’t wait for the lunch hour to end, so I can scurry back to my typical role, tucked safely away from any possible interaction with this intimidating person.
“Jared King’s office,” I repeat into the receiver. There’s a low, crackling buzz underlying the connection that spikes every few seconds, completely obscuring the words of the person on the other end of the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. King is away from his desk at the moment. Can I take a message?”
I can’t tell if the sound coming through the phone is more static or an epic sigh. “Tell him … Rochester … version two … needs approval account immediately … version one … Dubai … 417-620.”
It takes me a beat to realize that he is attempting to tell me a phone number, so I quickly scribble down the numbers I can make out.
“I’m sorry sir, your phone is cutting out, can you please repeat that?” I ask, gripping the pen so hard my knuckles turn white.
“Flight to Dubai … unreachable for the next 12 hours … 176 … 32…”
I’m frantically trying to piece together the numbers. Was the 176 part of the 417-620? And did he mention a name even?
“Can you please repeat that?” I ask again, my voice rising over the static like I’m yelling through a tin can and a string. But then the static disappears. There’s a moment of blessed silence, nothing but a slight ring in my ear from the earlier connection, but the peace is quickly overtaken by complete and total dread.
Shit.
I replace the handset on the cradle and stare at the phone, like I can will the guy to call back and fill in the blanks. I glance at the computer where I’d attempted to take a message, but all I have are fragments that look more like clues to catch a serial killer than a coherent phone message.
Shit shit shit.
The glass door of the suite flies open, and a tall figure in an impeccably tailored black suit strides through it. The heels of his large, polished leather shoes — probably Italian, but what do I know from designers— clack menacingly on the tile floor. Just the sight of him standing there, broad shouldered and brooding, his jawline so sharp it could cut glass, makes my eyes go wide and my stomach flip.
Jared King.
Fuck.
My stomach does an epic drop, twisting and turning, feeling like it falls out my feet and through the floor below.
He crosses the pristine white rug covering the reception area in just three long strides, and then he’s next to the desk, towering over me, but gazing down only at the phone in his hand.
“Messages?” he says, his voice gravelly, yet cold, his eyes never moving off the tiny screen.
“Actually, there was one, but—“
Before I can finish, he holds out his hand, still not looking at me. I click a button and the printer spits out a paper. I pass it to him, and his eyes immediately go to the one at the bottom, the serial killer jumble of words and numbers. His eyes flick from the paper to me, and the heat behind them roots me to my chair.
“What’s this?” he asks in that way someone might ask a dog what the giant puddle is on the middle of the rug.
I try to fix a sweet smile to my face, my one and only weapon in my arsenal. It doesn’t work. It only makes his eyes narrow further.
I struggle to find my voice. “That one just came in. The connection was terrible, and we got cut off before I could get the number down.”
“This is from David Rochester?”
Rochester. Ok, so not the city in New York. I nod. “Yes, that was from him.”
Jared’s eyes narrow. “Did he give approval?”
“I, um—” I pause, trying to bring back the memory of the call. Did he say anything about approval? He definitely mentioned an account, but I don’t think he said anything about approval. Or disapproval?
“Did he or didn’t he?” Jared’s voice is quiet, but there is venom behind every word that sends a chill straight through me.
My smile is all but gone now, and I’m simply trying not to cry. Not in front of him, anyway. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get anything from him before the line went dead,” I practically whisper.
He stares at me, his chocolate brown eyes suddenly icy. I expect him to start yelling, or to say anything actually, but instead he just stares at me. For the last three weeks I’ve wondered what it would be like to have Jared King look at me, but this is not in my fantasy. The longer he stares, the colder I feel, all the color draining from my face.
“Maybe he’ll call back?” I say, my voice thin. And as if I can’t get any more pathetic, my shoulders gave a tiny shrug.
I see something flash behind his eyes, and I swear there’s the tiniest hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. Like he is enjoying this.
“No, he won’t call back,” he says, his voice like ice cubes running up and down my spine, “because he’s getting on a flight to Dubai, where he’ll be unreachable for the next 12 hours, the one thing I see you actually managed to write down.” Jared flicks the paper at me, and it flutters down into my lap. “Your inability to complete the one task assigned to you has just cost this company hundreds of thousands of dollars and potentially an entire account. So my question is, why are you even here?”
He doesn’t wait for a response. Apparently the question was entirely rhetorical, because he turns on his heel and disappears into his office.
I don’t know how long I sit there staring at the discarded message log in my lap, my hands clutching the armrests of chair. Maybe it’s a few seconds, maybe even a few minutes. But when I feel the tears start to prick my eyes, I know I have to get myself together. I will not let Jared King make me cry. At least not out here where everyone can see.
What I need is a release, and that’s what I have Janet for.
Janet and I were roommates freshman year at BU, and have been best friends ever since.
She recently started her first job as an assistant at a gallery in the South End, and she too has a dragon boss. To cope with our respective indignities, we’ve taken to firing off epic screeds to one another detailing all the things we wanted to say to our bosses but couldn’t.
I open a new email, my fingers itching to tell her about the mixed up message and the way Jared tossed the paper in my lap like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. As I type it, I feel myself getting more and more heated. How dare he treat me like a screw up? I work my ass off, not that he’d know anything about that because he hardly bothers to look at me, let alone notice that I’m an actual human being trying my best.
I type my thoughts down, enjoying the catharsis of saying exactly what I feel, almost as if I’m saying it to him. Right to Jared King’s smug, cold, arrogant face.
My boss thinks he knows it all, clearly. But actually the man is blind.
His arrogance is keeping him from seeing that he has an amazing employee right under his nose, and his reign of terror only serves to silence people and thwart their true potential. And by people I mean me, and by potential, I mean that I am almost certain I could do his job if I was given the chance.
He has had opportunities, he’s had people treat him with respect, but he can’t be bothered to do the same for someone like me.
But of course, no one has ever or will ever call him on being so cruel and coldhearted. When you’re rich and sexy you can get away with treating people like servants or scum. When your employees spend their breaks talking about you bending them over the copy machine, you will pretty much always get your way. I can’t believe I let myself think that this job would actually be good for me. That I’d learn something and show people what I could do. Instead it
’s just another company where the CEO treats everyone like shit and we all creep around pretending it doesn’t suck.
By the time I get to the end of the email, I can feel the heat start to recede. The truth is, Jared pays so little attention to me that he’ll probably forget all about the botched phone message by tomorrow.
I bet if I cut my hair, he’ll think he’s gotten a new temporary assistant, for all the notice he gives me. I decide to add that part in for good measure, smiling to myself as I sign off and hit send. The little whoosh sound of the email pops through the speakers, but before I can sit back in my chair, my eye catches on one line in the disappearing email. One little bit of text in the “To:” field.
No.
I couldn’t have.
I didn’t.
I pull up my sent mail, my eyes frantically searching for Janet Kinney, but it isn’t there. The last email in the queue, the one that opens with “You will not believe what my flaming asshole of a boss just did,” was not sent to Janet Kinney.
It was sent to Jared King.
Shit. Shit. Fuck. Goddammit.
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