Enthrall

by Z. L. Arkadie

  How excited I felt when one of them turned around and said, “Have you filled out the breakfast menu?” Her English was painted with accents of Spanish.

  “No, not yet,” I said.

  She took the card from the back of the door and a pen out of the breast pocket on her shirt. “You like scrambled eggs, fried eggs, eggs Benedict?” She had a very authoritative tone for such a small lady.

  I stood a hair taller. “Eggs Benedict.”

  She checked something on the card. “Hash browns, home fries, potato au gratin?”

  “Home fries.”

  “Bacon, turkey bacon, sausage?”

  “All of it,” I said.

  For the first time, she looked up at me with a smile. “Pancakes?”

  “Yep, those too.”

  “Orange juice, coffee, and tea?”

  “Just coffee and mint tea.”

  She wrote on the menu. “And for lunch, would you like lobster roll with lobster bisque or…?”

  “Say nothing more. I like that.”

  We smiled at each other again.

  “That is good,” she said. “What about dinner?”

  “Surprise me.”

  She cocked her head. “Sorry, but you have to choose.”

  I pressed my lips together. Choosing from a menu every day was so unnecessary. I’d grown up in a house where I ate what was on the table, no matter what. “How about I eat whatever Mr. Christmas eats? He is here, right?”

  She looked back into the hallway, where the other woman was standing, and then at me again. “I don’t know.”

  I wanted to throw up my hands and ask them what was up with all the secrecy. Instead, I maintained decorum and smiled. “Well, if it’s possible, then that’s how I want it. And by the way”—I held out my hand for her to shake—“I never got your name. I’m Jada.”

  “Yes, Miss Forte, I’m Marta”—she pointed to the lady in the hallway—“and she is Teresa.”

  It took every ounce of willpower to beg her to please not call me Miss Forte. As far as I was concerned, we were all employees. All the formality wasn’t necessary and was way too classist for my blood. However, it suddenly dawned on me that they all were receiving instructions from on high. I would have to ask Mr. Christmas to have them all call me by my first name.

  I decided to make that one request of Mr. Christmas once we finally met face-to-face. The suspense was killing me as I hurried into the bathroom to dress for my first day of work, though I still couldn’t stop yawning. I’d fallen asleep sometime between six and seven o’clock the previous day and woken up after three in the morning, which gave me roughly eight to nine solid hours of sleep. When all was said and done, I could have used ten more.

  Regardless, curiosity was my fuel for the morning. I made it to the dining room, and servers entered with breakfast as soon as my butt hit the chair. The large room had a beautiful view of a crisp lake next to a grassy hill and a different part of the mountain range than the view from my room allowed.

  I sighed heavily before digging in. I had never gone this long without sitting across from one of my friends to share a drink or a meal, and so soon into my new journey, I was already beginning to feel lonely.

  I was done eating before nine and texted Hope to let her know I was going into the office and that we should talk at six o’clock my time and nine o’clock her time. As soon as I hit Send, Felix walked into the dining room, making me jump, and asked if I was ready to go to the office.

  I hopped to my feet and slid my phone into the side pocket of my blazer. “Um, sure.”

  Finally, I would meet the boss and learn what sort of situation I was really in. I shouldn’t have listened to Hope about staying away from the Christmas family biography, but then again, I’d only had three days to get my affairs in order, so really, there hadn’t been time to read it.

  I followed Felix up a path of twisting and turning hallways that led to a spiraling set of stairs, and we walked down to the office. “I’m starting to think this place is a carnival fun house,” I said with a chuckle.

  Felix kept a straight face as his hand directed my attention. “Your desk is here.”

  I sighed, accepting that my last joke had bombed and letting my curious gaze roll around the room. There were two large L-shaped wooden desks with identical high-backed leather office chairs. A laptop sat on top of the one Felix directed me to. A wall of floating shelves held a printer-copier duo and other office essentials like paper, pens, pencils, and staplers.

  Despite a fire kindling in the hearth, the atmosphere felt dank. I looked up at the recessed lighting, and then my glare lapped the room again. At the end of my assessment, I jerked my neck. “Wait. There are no windows?”

  “No, there aren’t, Miss Forte.” Felix then explained how Mr. Christmas had left detailed instructions for me, which included how to log onto the computer. “Marta will carry down a fresh pot of coffee and an assortment of teas and fixings and pastries. Unless there’s something else you prefer.” He looked at me in a way that said both of his ears were open and ready to receive every word that came out of my mouth.

  He’d already made it clear that he wasn’t willing to address my gripe about there being no windows.

  I blew a hard breath out of my nostrils. “I don’t need snacks. If I want them”—I patted the phone at the top right side of my desk—“I’ll call the kitchen. Thank you.”

  “Very well. Lunch will be served at noon.”

  I frowned at the other empty desk, which I assumed belonged to my boss. “So this is it?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re asking for.”

  “I’m getting paid to follow what’s on the list?”

  He watched me with his favorite blank expression.

  I shook my head in frustration. “Forget it. Thanks again, Mr. Felix.”

  His eyebrows furrowed before he bowed graciously and left me alone. I knew I’d shaken him up with that. If he has to call me Miss Forte, then I get to show him the same sort of respect that seems to be required around here.

  I stood in silence for a while, trying to get a better grasp on my dilemma with Mr. Christmas. Despite all the space in that gigantic house, his office was in the basement. That was strange and uncomfortable and made me feel as if I was working in a tomb. But I wasn’t the sort to pout for longer than a few minutes. That attitude had never worked in my mother’s household. I reminded myself how much the job was paying. I had a windowless room with a soft fire brewing and nothing to complain about.

  I sat at my assigned desk, opened my laptop, and started reading the list, which to my surprise was handwritten.

  All correspondence to those outside the office—voice, written, and video—is only to occur on this computer.

  Report to the office at 9:00 a.m.

  Open my email and tag each one Action Item or Informational. Write a brief summary of each.

  Attend all meetings that require my presence in my stead. Take meticulous notes. Read the room. Essentially, you are me. If you receive pushback, handle it.

  Place the report in the inbox near the printer. If I have a task for you to complete, you’ll find it in the outbox.

  Check outbox every morning to address special projects as they arise.

  Finally, tend to my needs as I see fit.

  I sat up straight, rubbed the inside corners of my eyes, and read his list again. Yes, that’s exactly what he wrote.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered, reading it for a third time. No wonder I was getting paid a CEO’s salary. I was getting paid to be a CEO. Not only that, but what the hell does he mean by “tend to my needs as I see fit”?

  I rubbed my forehead, wondering if that was his discreet way of saying that he was writing sex into the work plan. Mentally taxed by what I’d just read, I fell back into my seat. It still felt as if what was happening to me wasn’t actually occurring. At any minute, I would wake up and see that I’d reached the end of a wild dream in which I boarded a fli
ght to Wyoming, got stuck in an airport, and eventually ended up in this big house on a ranch, reading the weirdest list of job duties I’d ever been assigned. I couldn’t picture myself appearing in important meetings as a stand-in for Mr. Spencer Christmas.

  I mean, is this a joke? I imagined that Hope and my other friends were going to rush into the room and say, “Surprise! Got you!” before they all laughed their asses off and partied like it was the turn of a new century.

  I shook my head, accepting that this was real life and I had a job to do to the best of my ability. I took the first step in the right direction by powering up the MacBook Pro.

  I’d never seen anything like Mr. Christmas’s email. There were eleven thousand unopened messages. My new boss hadn’t opened a single email in seven and a half months. His email inbox was so full that it had been rejecting new messages for weeks. To get through them, I had to come up with a system to purge as many as possible without getting rid of the important ones. Sorting them all by sender helped. Most individuals sent multiple emails about the same topic. Basically, they wanted to get in touch with Mr. Christmas so that he could approve costs and new systems of operations that his corporate officers came up with. The job description said that I would be working for a finance company. I hadn’t realized that he owned TFC Global. My parents had a lot of their investments parked there. The databases and files Mr. Christmas had on my computer gave me access to everything. I could even see what employees were doing on their computers in real time. And if they were away from their computers, I could still access their machines. I was pretty sure there were some privacy issues being infringed upon. I was tempted to look at my parents’ investment portfolio simply because I could, but the fact that it was wrong quashed my curiosity.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Forte. You’re not eating lunch?”

  I jumped, startled, and turned to see Marta standing at the bottom of the stairs. I rubbed my tired eyes. I’d been working for some time, and my brain felt like it was on autopilot. I caught a glimpse of the time at the top right side of my computer. It was after three.

  “Damn it,” I said under my breath because I was indeed starving. When I became wrapped up in work, I often forsook food until the task was complete. In the case of answering and organizing Mr. Christmas’s emails—and, in effect, his life—it would have taken me forever if my system of arranging them hadn’t worked. “Um, sorry I missed it.”

  “Do you want to eat? We’ll bring it.”

  I told her yes, and the two men who’d brought my luggage in the previous day came down the stairs with silver-tray lunch service. As they set up on the empty side of my desk, I thanked them and Marta with a smile, and she told me to call when I was ready to have dishes cleared. They all disappeared back upstairs just about as fast as they’d appeared.

  I ate the lobster roll and drank mint tea as I continued working. The number of emails in the inbox declined steadily. Soon, I’d gotten the hang of things, figuring out the demands of Mr. Christmas’s business. A lot of transactions had ground to a halt because he hadn’t signed off on them. I also ascertained that he’d gone missing around the time I got fired from my old job, which was a strange coincidence. There was a lot of email from his sister, Bronwyn Henrietta Christmas, whose cursive signature was elegant, unlike the tone she took in most of her messages. My favorite from her was You’d better tell me where you are, or I’ll fart on your face. That was quickly followed up by Sorry Spence. That was my attempt at humor, ha, ha, ha. Why can’t I track your server? That had been in February. She reported that she was back in rehab in May. In August, she said she wanted to get the family together for the holidays, and this time, the fancy signature was replaced with a simple Love, Bryn.

  She sent more emails asking him to please respond and whether he’d heard from Asher. I figured out he was her twin brother because she said she would be able to track him down if all that “twin telepathy bullshit” was true. The poor thing had no idea that Spencer never read any of her emails. I made sure to print out every one of them and arrange them according to date so that he could view them all.

  There were some meetings taking place the next day that I was sure he would have wanted to be part of had he been more attentive when it came to his business. If I were CEO of his company, I would want to be there. A hedge-fund manager wanted to make deposits for a group of clients in foreign growth investments but needed Spencer’s approval before completing the transactions. I had followed the string of emails and was up to date with that issue. The hedge-fund manager, Dillon Gross, had figured out workarounds on how to bring the project as far as he could without Spencer’s full approval. I thought that was interesting and sort of wrong, as if this guy was forcing the project because he was desperate for the payoff. Most likely, I was totally wrong, of course, which was why I kept my subjective opinion out of the write-up and stuck to the facts.

  “Miss Forte,” Marta’s voice sang. “Dinner.”

  She appeared at the bottom of the stairs. It was going on nine o’clock. Once again, I had lost track of time.

  “Wow, Miss Marta,” I said, rubbing the inside corners of my eyes. “I couldn’t tell it was so late.”

  She touched her chest. “You called me Miss Marta?”

  I felt my eyes soften along with my heart. “I figure you call me Miss Forte out of respect. And I respect you, too, so I want to do the same.”

  “Oh!” She sounded delighted. “No need to do that.”

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and whispered, “Then no need for you to call me Miss Jada.”

  She swiftly checked over her shoulder and then leaned toward me. “Okay. When no one is here, I call you Jada. Is that a deal?”

  I extended my smile wider, even though I wanted to strangle my new boss for creating such a formal culture between employees. Employers who were that draconian usually had something to hide. Suddenly, I was struck by a realization—he did have something to hide. But what? I didn’t know and couldn’t even guess.

  “That’s a deal,” I finally whispered.

  “Now, you come to dinner. You eat. You are skinny.”

  I tossed my head back and laughed. Marta reminded me of my maternal grandmother—her shiny jet-black hair wrapped in a bun, her straight forehead, and her gorgeous almond eyes, high cheekbones, and bow-tie smile.

  I fought the urge to slip in a question about our boss now that I had gotten her to break ranks. However, I didn’t want to come off as disingenuous. I cherished the connection we were making. The short time I’d spent in the house had been extremely lonely until now. But as Marta left the room and I placed my notes in the inbox, shut down my computer, and went upstairs to the dining room, the isolation gripped me once again.

  I felt ridiculous sitting alone at the table and vowed never to do it again. From that point on, I would have my meals in either my room or my office. As I stared at the darkness beyond the window, I could hardly believe I had missed the day. It would have been nice to bundle up and go for a walk in nature at some point. I usually ran on the treadmill at the gym at least three times a week, sometimes four. I needed exercise just as much as I needed people.

  If I were at home, I wouldn’t have been sitting at any table, especially one like this. It was Thursday night, which meant I’d be out with Hope, Rita, Ling, Portia, and a tag-along male friend named Johnny. We’d be at Red Tar, drinking five-dollar margaritas—in New York City, that was almost like getting them for free. We went there every week, and the night always went the same way. Hope would flirt with as many cute guys as possible. I would watch, amused by her aggressive and successful style. All night, Johnny would stare at Ling—who kept up with Hope in the flirting department—because he had a massive crush on her.

  Rita and Portia would spend most of the night picking out the minutest problem with each guy they saw. For instance, one guy would be bald before he was thirty-five. The other would have a potbelly before he turned forty. That guy had cruel eyes. He was stup
id, he had no style, he might be a serial killer… the criticisms went on and on and on until Rita and Portia each found that one guy who didn’t have any flaws worth discussing. Once they’d each beamed on Mr. Right for Tonight, I wouldn’t see them until the next time we decided to go out.

  I would usually run into groups of people I’d met on the many previous Thursdays when we’d graced the scene at Red Tar and had a ball chatting about the conversation topics of the night, which could include how someone had found a rat in her oven and six exterminators told her to just cook it.

  “The barbarians!” I would reply.

  One person might say he saw Taylor Swift singing “I Knew You Were Trouble” in the subway station the week before. Someone else would confirm that it wasn’t her, but someone else would say it absolutely was. A song everyone loved would play, and we’d all start singing, dancing, and drinking until four in the morning, when the bar shut down and everyone stumbled out onto the sidewalk in all phases of intoxication.

  I took a moment to relive one of the best Thursday nights at Red Tar I’d ever experienced. I saw myself fawning over a Chris Hemsworth look-alike and boldly introducing myself. Hope always said my problem was I was attracted to the guys all the other girls in the world were attracted to as well. Usually, a guy like that would have about fifty hyenas around him, snapping at him, ready to strip off their clothes and be fucked by him. But that night, I got to the Adonis first simply because I was the one he wanted. He flashed me a big white toothy grin and enthusiastically extended his hand for me to shake. His gaze embraced me as if I were the most beautiful woman in the world. He asked what I did for a living, and I said I was in PR. He was a hedge-fund manager but loved the idea of saving enough money to retire to a farm in Vermont and live there for the rest of his life with a woman who had my kind of tits.

  “Good evening, Miss Forte,” a man said.