by Penny Reid
Quinn had been gone since Sunday night but he was still sending me text message jokes. I read them, enjoyed them, but didn’t respond as I was also starting to feel silly about my behavior. When he dropped me off that night I gave in to my see-saw of self-doubt and it made me nauseous.
Why would he continue to text if he was trying to avoid me?
Additionally, on Wednesday night, he texted me a reminder about our phone call for Thursday. I promised myself that I would talk to Quinn on the horrid cell phone and I wouldn’t participate in any playground equipment emotional dramacoasters.
However, the incident on Sunday and subsequent time apart on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday allowed me some time to reflect: I didn’t really know much about Quinn. I didn’t even know what his job was and I worked with him. I didn’t understand Quinn’s role or title in the company, no one really spoke about him, and, when they did, they always called him Mr. Sullivan.
Therefore, I gathered the nerve necessary to ask Steven about Quinn.
Steven and I were having lunch in the break room, which was more of a long hallway also along the perimeter of the building with a window view of the city, and discussing my upcoming first official business trip and client meeting.
Steven and I would be flying to Las Vegas next Monday. He explained that the client owned the club Outrageous, which made me think of Quinn, and wanted to use Guard Security for another club in Las Vegas. The client also wanted to discuss arranging personal security through Infinite Systems.
“Does Cypher Systems have an office in Las Vegas?” I was eating a taco salad and dipped my chicken in sour cream before taking a bite.
Steven shook his head mid chew-swallow.
“What about New York? Do we have any office other than in Chicago?”
Steven just finished dipping his spicy tuna roll in soy sauce and answered before he ate, “Sweet Pea, can I call you Sweet Pea? No. It’s just us lunatics.”
“Don’t call me Sweet Pea. What about Quinn Sullivan? Where is his office?” I tried to sound ambivalent; I watched Steven over a forkful of taco salad as I tried to suppress the blush threatening to overwhelm my cheeks. I hoped he didn’t notice.
He shook his head, “Mr. Sullivan has an office here, in the building, but, as you’ve likely noticed, doesn’t use it much during normal business hours. I think he prefers to be out in the field.”
“Why does everyone call him Mr. Sullivan?”
Steven placed a generous portion of shaved ginger on his sushi and lifted his eyebrows at me, “What do you want me to call him? Sully? Quinning the winning?”
“No, what I mean is, we call Mr. Davies ‘Carlos’ and everyone else here goes by their first name. Why don’t we call Mr. Sullivan ‘Quinn’?”
Steven shrugged, “I don’t know. I’ve worked here for three years; we’ve just always called him Mr. Sullivan.” Steven seemed to think about the issue as he chewed his sushi; then, with a half full mouth, added, “The only time I usually see him is for the client meetings and it just makes sense to call him Mr. Sullivan then, in front of the client I mean. Maybe it makes him seem more important in their eyes.” Steven shrugged again and swallowed, “Well, I guess he is important... strange but important.”
“What do you mean ‘strange’?”
“Well, you spent time with him last Friday, right? When you had to work late? So typical. He insisted on taking you out personally to-” Steven used air quotes, “‘train you.’ I told Carlos I thought he just wanted someone to glare at. I can’t believe you’ve been so nice about it.”
I wrinkled my nose at Steven, “What do you mean? He doesn’t glare at me.”
Steven gave me a sympathetic look, “Only you would be so gracious, Janie.”
I put my fork down and stared at Steven, my tone incredulous, “What are you talking about? I’ve learned a lot from him. I’ve found the time to be beneficial.” I felt the need to defend Quinn; I didn’t want Steven thinking Quinn had been rude or done a poor job training me and, therefore, get Quinn in trouble.
“Oh really?” Steven lifted his eyebrows.
“Yes, really.”
Steven pursed his lips and gave me a pointedly disbelieving stare, “I once spent twenty minutes alone with him during a car ride from the airport to the site. During that time he said a total of three words and his face didn’t change expression once- no, wait, that’s wrong-” he held his hands up as though to stop me from interrupting, “he had two expressions: at first he was stoic but then, toward the end of the twenty minutes, his expression changed to apathetic. This is all despite the fact that my conversation was obviously thrilling.”
“Stoic and apathetic are synonymous.” I tried not to laugh, imagining Steven and Quinn alone in a car together for twenty minutes; Quinn glaring at Steven while Steven regaled the silent car with tales of his weekend clubbing exploits and latest furniture purchase.
“Sure, he’s very pretty, I’ll give you that but, you can’t tell me that you don’t think there is something off about him.” Steven looked over both his shoulders in an exaggerated manner then offered in a faux whisper, “Did you know he sometimes joins the security guards downstairs and acts like he is one of them?”
I twisted my lips to the side, debating whether or not to tell Steven that I originally met Quinn when he escorted me out after being laid off from my last position. Instead I said, “Well, isn’t he? Isn’t he one of them?”
Steven studied me for a moment before replying in a very dry tone, “In a small way, yes he is. In a much larger and more correct way, no. No, he is most definitely not.”
“Hm.” I picked up my fork again and poked at my salad, feeling pensive, “Why do you only see him during the client meetings?”
“He doesn’t go to all the client meetings; really, only if there is a problem or if he is vetting new client. Usually he sends Carlos.”
My fork stopped mid-air between my plastic container and my mouth, “Wait-” I could almost hear the clicking and squeaking of the gears in my head, “What do you mean ‘sends Carlos’? Wouldn’t the Boss decide who goes to what meeting?”
Steven blinked at me three times, his eyebrows pulling up so they looked like little umbrellas over his grey eyes, “What nonsense are you speaking? Mr. Sullivan is the Boss.”
Time stopped.
Everything seemed suspended as my brain struggled to accept reality. It was one of those moments you reflect on, later in life, and wonder how your brain could have thought so many thoughts; your heart could have felt so many feelings in the small span of a single second. The only explanation was that time must have stopped.
Quinn is my Boss.
I attempted to think back over the times I’d been with him and looked for clues. I found several. Actually, I found more than several. I wanted to hide my face in my hands and cry but resisted the urge by biting fiercely on my bottom lip.
How could I miss something so obvious?
Quinn’s words from the previous week came back to me: “…you are completely blind to the obvious.”
Really, he was more than just my boss; he was The Boss. He owned the company. He owned a really impressive, profitable company. Any previous balloons of hope I had been floating in my pretend-alternate-reality-carnival-of-dreams were immediately deflated if not brutally burst. This guy who I’d been fantasizing about for going on two months and with whom I thought I was kinda-sorta-maybe dating was not just out of my physical-attractiveness league, he was out of all my leagues.
I was in awkwardly shaped head Neanderthal league and he was in the hot ninja millionaire league.
As a co-worker, Quinn and I were on somewhat equal footing. Even if nothing romantic materialized in the long term, at a minimum I thought we were building a friendship. I hoped we were building a friendship because, blast it all, I really liked him. I thought about him with alarming frequency. He was interesting and good to talked to and I wanted to have a lasting connection.
At least, un
til this moment, that’s what I thought. The past weekend, the ‘training’ session, the text message jokes, our long conversations- I was becoming more and more comfortable. I thought our time together was leading towards something abiding, more than co-workers.
I was blind. I was so beyond blind. I was stupid. I was wrong. We weren’t becoming friends. Normal people don’t have enduring relationships with hot millionaires.
What did he say to me that night after the concert? That he didn’t date?
Once he lost interest in me, and he was bound to sooner rather than later, I would see him periodically at best during client meetings where he was ‘Mr. Sullivan’ and I was Janie Morris, his employee. These labels of ‘boss’ and ‘employee’ defined our relationship like the mine fields around Guantanamo Bay Cuba defined it as a US Navy base.
You don’t go for a walk in a mine field.
You aren’t friends with your boss.
And you certainly never set yourself up to have bedroom fantasies about him or unrequited longitudinal crushes. Lusting after your boss was like having a thing for your English teacher in high school; it made you more than a little pathetic.
My surprise must have been visible because Steven’s face changed suddenly from confusion to reluctant understanding, “Oh... oh my. You didn’t know. You didn’t know that Mr. Sullivan is the Boss?”
“I-” I endeavored to swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. “No.” I said flatly.
“How could you not know that?” It was Steven’s turn to sound incredulous. “He recruited you. You spent all day Friday with him. I’m sure we’ve discussed him before now, who did you think I was talking about when I said ‘the Boss’…”
I didn’t hear the rest of Steven’s musings. I was in the Matrix and I’d just unwittingly taken the red pill; my thoughts became as agitated and circular as a washing machine on the spin cycle. We ate in silence for several minutes and I mostly succeeded in avoiding eye contact with Steven.
Steven interrupted my internal avalanche of misery and said, “I thought you knew when he hired you.”
I met his eyes then frowned, “He said- he said that he could get me the interview but I’d need to get the job on my own.” I was having difficulty keeping my voice steady.
Quinn was wealthy. Actually, he wasn’t just wealthy, he was a stinkin rich son of a… lady. And, once again, I allowed someone else to be the captain in my sea of destiny. Once again, I was an accidental bystander to my illusion of success.
Steven seemed to understand my thoughts, “You really did get the job on your own.” My features must have betrayed my doubt and unhappiness because he put his chopsticks down and reached across the table, his grey eyes softening, “No, really, listen to me Janie. I’ll admit, Mr. Sullivan has never recommended someone for an interview before. Usually he just recruits them and they start and, I’ll tell you what, he is always right. For instance look at me.” He gave me a wry smile.
I tried to manage one in return but couldn’t help feeling a mixture of anguished devastation and annoyance with myself; Jon or Jon’s father arranged for my interview with the last firm and likely the job itself and look what happened. I didn’t like thinking that the only reason I was hired at Cypher Systems was because Quinn Sullivan decided on a whim that he wanted to kiss me and I was good with numbers.
“Honey Cakes, can I call you Honey Cakes?” he didn’t wait for me to answer as he continued, “Really listen to me. I knew you were going to be great if Mr. Sullivan recruited you. But, if it makes you feel better, I showed you that iPad spreadsheet with the wrong formulas on your first day as a test, one which you passed with flying colors.”
I sighed, suddenly finished with my salad; I didn’t want to eat ever again. “Thanks.”
He eyed me with what I perceived to be a speculative glare, “This is his company. His baby. Do you really think he’d hire someone who wasn’t amazing? Again, look no farther than your partner at this table as proof.”
I tried for a half smile and rolled my eyes, “No, you cannot call me Honey Cakes.”
What I couldn’t tell Steven was the real reason why I felt so upset. The clarity of the moment stung. My chest hurt and I didn’t really comprehend until that moment that my aforementioned balloons of hope in the alternate reality carnival of dreams had been quite inflated despite all efforts to keep my footing on the ground.
Suddenly the idea of seeing Quinn again filled me with dread. My heart skipped two beats when I remembered my upcoming trip to Las Vegas.
“Will, uh-” I cleared my throat and wiped my hands on my napkin, “Will Mr. Sullivan be in Las Vegas? At the client meeting?”
Steven, back to eating his sushi, shook his head. “Yes, as I told you before, the Boss vets all new clients for the private accounts. He’ll fly over with us, God help us all.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. In preparation for the Vegas meeting I’d been drafting proposals for the mysterious ‘Boss’ without comprehending that Quinn was the ‘Boss.’ In fact, I’d even told Quinn about one of my ideas when he interrupted my lunch at Smith’s last week. I felt like I was going to be sick. I croaked, “We’re all taking the same flight?”
“We’re all taking the company plane.” Steven’s voice was so nonchalant he might have said instead: “Wednesday is the day I cut my toenails.”
I blurted out: “There is a company plane?”
“Yes.”
My heart rate increased at the thought of spending four hours in an enclosed space with Quinn. “And we’ll all fly together? With him?”
“Yes.”
“But-” I searched the table as though it might provide me with answers and tried to squelch the panic from my voice, “But what if I want to fly on a commercial flight?”
Steven raised a single eyebrow at me, “And why would you want to do that?”
I huffed, not wanting to tell the truth but recognizing the strangeness of my statement. I could only think of one excuse: “I- I have frequent flyer miles.”
Steven’s thin lips curved into a broad grin then he abruptly laughed so hard tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. I could feel myself turning from red to eggplant purple with embarrassment. His laughter was, however, contagious and I managed a self-depreciating half-hearted chuckle.
“Oh, Janie, you are a peach.” I think he meant it as a compliment but I only heard: you are a fuzzy fruit. “You won’t mind forfeiting some frequent flyer miles, I promise. It’s a pretty stress free way to travel. And, on the way, we’ll be briefing the Boss and talking over strategy, so there is actually a good work-related reason to travel together. He’s not so bad if you stick to business topics.”
I didn’t know how stress free it would be; I already felt pretty stressed out about it. “Who else will be on the plane?”
Steven wiped at his tears of hilarity and gave me an open smile. “Well, you and me, Carlos, Olivia, and the Boss- you know, Quinn Sullivan.”
I glared at Steven, “Thank you. I get it now.”
He gave me a sweet smile, “Just making sure.”
I suddenly had a headache.
~*~
That night I cancelled my tutoring session on the south side and I called Jon.
I didn’t call Jon last Sunday like I promised. At first it was an oversight but, after talking to Kat during our bathroom pow-wow on Tuesday, I’d been purposefully avoiding him. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t certain he’d been the reason I lost my job and I didn’t want it to be true.
However, for some reason, now I really wanted to see him. Elizabeth didn’t say anything about my abrupt decision but she gave me plenty of disapproving stares before I left the apartment and, as I pulled on my boots, said, “Isn’t Quinn calling you tonight from New York?”
A sharp pang reverberated in my chest, her words finding an unintended target: I missed Quinn and I wanted to talk to him. I missed talking to him, seeing him, touching him. Despite my confusion after he left on S
unday I’d been looking forward to his call all week. I swallowed the knot in my throat and set my jaw.
I currently had no plans to tell Elizabeth that Quinn was my boss’ boss. I needed to process it first, decide what it meant. Right now, in my current mindset, it meant that Quinn and I were already over.
In response to her passive-aggressive query I shrugged my shoulders and stood to leave.
She lifted her chin toward my cell, “You’re not taking that?”
I shook my head, “Nope.” and pulled on my coat.
She crossed her arms over her chest, her glare heavy on my retreating back, “Well, if he calls I’ll just let him know you’re out with your friend.”
I paused at the door, taking a deep breath, then calling over my shoulder as I shut it behind me, “Don’t wait up.”
I thought I heard her growl as I walked down the hall but couldn’t be certain.
As I left the building and walked toward the el platform I was acutely aware of the two guards behind me. I wondered if they were in frequent communication with Quinn. I wondered whether they would tell him what I was up to, who I was meeting. The thought made my stomach turn a little sour. I didn’t like the sensation of being leashed. The cell phone felt like an albatross around my neck and I’d only had it a week. The guards also were starting to grate on my nerves.
With a literal shrug of my shoulders I tried to shrug off the mounting irritation and redoubled my efforts to focus on the task in front of me. I walked faster.
Jon and I met at one of our, previously, regular haunts. It was an Italian restaurant on the North side with tall burgundy leather booths, dim lighting, and really good fried cheese. I didn’t return his embrace when I entered, my arms hung limp at my sides, and I felt no nostalgia when the heady tomato, wine, and sausage aroma wafted over me. But, I did allow him to lead me to our normal table. We placed our drink orders, I wanted only water but Jon ordered a bottle of expensive Sangiovese and two glasses.
