by D. D. Ayres
Shay swallowed and gripped the strap of her bag tightly as she crossed the street. Her flawless day now had a ding in it.
An hour later, she glanced up at the clock. Even for a Monday the calls were coming thick and fast. It was the last full week before Thanksgiving. People were double-checking their balances and moving money from account to account as they made plans to travel and Christmas shop. She didn’t have reason to do either. Angie had invited her to her family’s house, as usual, but she was getting a bit weary of spending holidays with people who thought turkey should be served by noon so that it didn’t interfere with football. Angie claimed she only watched for the close-up shots of all those tight ends.
What would James’s Thanksgiving be like? Not that she would get a chance to find out. He had lots of family to celebrate with. Must be nice. But too intense for her taste. Maybe she would volunteer to serve the holiday dinner at a soup kitchen.
She was only half listening to the next caller when she suddenly frowned.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Did you say you need to move fifty thousand dollars from your account?” Her gaze shifted to the guideline sheet she kept close by for backup. It stated that large sums were to be run by a superior if there was any hint of a possible problem. The caller, who sounded elderly, couldn’t remember her password.
She glanced at the name on the account. “Just one moment, Mrs. Leggett. I will need to put you through to a personal banker. This might take a minute but don’t hang up. I promise someone will answer. Thank you for your patience.”
Shay’s finger punched a key that would put her in touch with a superior. The instant she heard a pickup, she launched into her request. “This is Customer IT. I need verification on a customer’s withdrawal. It’s—”
“Shay Appleton.” Eric’s voice was practically a snarl.
Shay felt herself flush, her heart rate accelerating. “It’s for a fifty-thousand-dollar transfer. And the customer doesn’t have her password.”
She heard him swear under his breath. “Haven’t you learned anything while you’ve been here? Stick to bank policy. Call a personal banker.”
“Transferring call now.” Shay had connected Eric with Mrs. Leggett. The click echoed so loudly in her earphones she flinched.
Oh God. Shay had stared at the keypad and realized she had punched the wrong extension. Even so, Eric wasn’t supposed to be here. Now he knew she was here, too.
Follow bank policy. That was what he’d told her.
She glanced around the bank lobby. Two personal bankers were with customers. The third was nowhere to be seen. When the personal bankers were busy, bank policy said she was to move up the ladder. She’d done just that. Even if it was by mistake.
Doing my job. As much as she wanted to grab her purse and walk out, a new sense of self held her back. She was working. Whatever craziness Eric might come up with after hours, he wouldn’t dare do anything here, in his place of business.
She adjusted her headphones and punched up the next customer.
A few minutes later she was back in full efficiency mode, hanging up from one call to field the next without a hitch. “Halifax Bank IT Customer Service. How may I help you?”
“I seen you talking to the police.” The gruff voice ignited every synapse in her brain. “Told you, keep your mouth shut!”
“About what? Who are you—”
“You’re gonna pay!”
Shay stabbed the end call button and jerked the earphones from her head. Yet she didn’t feel as panicky as she had the first time. The jittery sensation tingling her nerve endings was more like the revulsion she’d felt that time a boy at school had dropped a slug down the back of her tee. It disgusted her but she wasn’t actually hurt.
Sliding her chair back from her desk, she ignored for the moment the two new calls rolling onto the waiting list. She smoothed her hands up and down her sweater-clad arms, feeling a chill at odds with the bank’s overzealous heating.
The caller had made a new threat. Don’t talk about what? Eric? Too late.
Only Eric wouldn’t know that.
She was certain Eric had hired some lowlife to track her moves. It was the only explanation. This way, he wouldn’t be directly connected to the harassment. So like Eric to do things from on high.
He wanted her to submit.
Or she could run away.
Running away. She’d been doing that half her life. Hiding, staying small, not wanting to draw too much scrutiny for fear people would learn her secrets and pull away.
Only James hadn’t. He’d listened and not judged so much as let her be. He was urging her to fight back. And maybe she would, when he came back.
Shay sat up straight in her chair and reached for her earphones. Eric Coates could go straight to Hell without passing Go.
* * *
“There she is.”
Shay paused just inside the bank’s entrance. She’d been out having her lunch.
Eric stood on the main floor with two female bank employees.
“Come here, Ms. Appleton!” Her name echoed in the bank’s cavernous space, drawing every eye in the lobby.
Shay clenched her jaw, refusing to even try to smile as she approached. “Yes, Mr. Coates?”
Eric held his head at an angle that allowed him to glare down at her. “Did you answer an IT customer call this morning from Mrs. Elsa Leggett?”
“Yes. I—”
“Your actions reflected poor judgment and an indifferent attitude concerning this bank’s policies.”
“What are you—”
“Not here.” He actually used his hand in a slashing motion to cut her off. His face was cold, the muscles locked in an emotion she recognized as anger, if not the reason for it. “Come with me.”
The curt words were spoken with such viciousness Shay couldn’t quite believe it. Usually he hid his contempt behind an amiable façade. Unless he’d been drinking. The two employees he’d been chatting with darted speculative glances at her as they moved rapidly away.
The ride up one floor was more than long enough for Shay to feel her fried egg sandwich begin to go rancid in the nervous gush of acid flooding her stomach. She didn’t look at Eric but stared at the dully gleaming panels of brushed metal before her. She used the tense silence to try to calm her nerves and prepare for a fight.
Something had gone wrong. But she had followed bank policy. He might be angry but whatever happened as a result of that call was not her fault.
The elevator didn’t stop on two but continued. She didn’t glance Eric’s way but kept her eyes on the numbers until they reached the top floor, where the top bank brass had offices. How had she not noticed that he had put a key in the elevator pad that would allow them to take it to the top floor?
Once off the elevator, with Eric in the lead, they bypassed several empty offices. Senior management must still be at lunch, she thought absently, and followed him straight toward the president’s boardroom. Had he convened a meeting to deal with her supposed bank policy infraction, whatever it might be? She squared her shoulders, readying to defend herself.
Eric used a key to unlock the door. He pushed it open and indicated that she should enter. She was in the room before she realized they were alone. She turned around, but he was there, blocking the door.
“Have a seat, Shay. No one will bother us here.”
Shay watched him lock the door, her heart starting to pound. She hadn’t seen this coming. She was so certain Eric would not make a move on her at work.
“Lunch hour’s almost over.” She was glad to hear her voice was steady. “People will be returning to the floor soon.”
His mouth sketched a smile. “You think you know everything. There’s a banking convention in town. The keynote speech should be under way. No one wanted to miss it. I’m supposed to be there, with other senior staff. However, I volunteered to hold down the fort today. So for at least another hour, it’s just you and me.”
That shark grin. She fel
t the ground shifting beneath her feet. But he mustn’t know how rattled she was.
“What do you want?” She stared right back at him until he looked away.
“Have a seat, Shay. You’re always in a hurry. Except when it counts.” He was staring at her with a strange look of triumph that tugged at his mouth.
“I’ll stand.” She moved to put more of the length of the expensive mahogany inlaid board table between them. Behind the table, the skyline of Raleigh stretched out like an IMAX theater screen. The long wall of glass was a little dizzying for anyone afraid of heights. She wasn’t. She scooted to the far side of the table.
Eric moved more slowly, slipping out of his suit coat and hanging it on a chair back. His fingers slipped over either shoulder, smoothing out phantom wrinkles.
“You said this was about that call and following bank policy. That’s what I did.”
He waved off her words with a hand. “What am I to do about you, Shay Appleton? You no longer answer my calls or show any respect for my feelings.” He slanted a dark look her way. “You prefer your new blue-collar boyfriend. What should I do about that?”
“Forget about me. You have someone else.” For once, Shay swallowed the defiant words that flowed through her thoughts. Maybe if she pandered to his ego, he’d be satisfied. “You’re going to marry a senator’s daughter. You’re handsome, wealthy. Any woman—” She ground to a halt, choking on the insincere words.
“Any woman but you? That wasn’t always true. There was a time when all I had to do was call and you came trotting after me like the little bitch you are.”
Shay lifted her chin. “Open the door, Eric. You’ve made your point. I’ll leave Halifax Bank today and you’ll never see me again.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what you’re going to do. But not until we settle up.”
He was moving toward her and she was backing up. Nowhere to go, of course. The only way out was through locked doors. The more she backpedaled the more frightened she became. Mouse in a maze.
“I’ve tried to reason with you. Tried to be nice and charming. Tried to please you. But there’s no pleasing some bitches.”
Shay moved to a corner of the window and glanced out, not knowing what she expected to see. There was no escape that way.
“There’s only one thing I want from you. One last fuck. You can relax and enjoy it, or you can just take it. It’s up to you.”
Shay stopped. His words didn’t shock her. They focused her. “Is that what this is about? You want to get in my pants one more time. Not. Going. To happen.”
She didn’t move away as he came toward her. She let all her anger burn through the fear. When he touched her face, she knocked his hand away. With an expletive, he grabbed her breast and twisted it painfully.
Gasping in pain, she turned into him and brought her knee up quick and hard.
She heard him grunt in agony but she was jerking free of his grasp and racing to where he’d left his jacket hanging. She’d seen him drop the key into a pocket. She snagged it, searching madly for it as she headed for the door.
She was shocked that he staggered up as she stuck the key in the lock. He grasped her by the hair and pulled so hard she saw stars. But the key had turned. She was almost free.
She shoved an elbow into his ribs but he caught her and spun her around, twisting his hand in her hair.
She gasped from the pain but made herself look up and hold his gaze. “I will fight you, Eric. I never did that before but I will now. I swear I’ll scratch and bloody you, make you bruise and bloody me. And then I’ll go downstairs and stand in the middle of the lobby and scream the place down around your ears. Rape. Rape!” She shouted the word the second time, loud and harsh.
His expression turned so ugly she thought for a second he was going to hurt her anyway. Then he suddenly swung away, freeing her.
He leaned back against the wall, his tie askew and his face mottled with rage. “You won’t win, you little bitch. I still have many ways of ruining you. So run along. Back to your temporary life. I’m going to make it perfectly clear to your boss that, due to your ill-handling of certain matters today, Halifax Banking Corporation and all of its subsidiaries will no longer hire Logital Solutions employees in any capacity in the future.”
Shay swung around. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Are you sure your employer will believe that when we’ve pulled our business?”
His threat didn’t shock her. It focused her. Get away. Then fight back.
She ran.
Moments later, she was alone in the elevator, headed back downstairs. She stared at the geometric design on the rug until her eyes began to burn. James was right. Eric wasn’t going to go away. This would never be over, until she did something about him. Even if it cost her everything.
* * *
“Seriously, that shit is unreal. Sorry.”
Shay didn’t even look up. The sight before her was so awful she couldn’t look away from the reason for the passerby’s comment.
Etched into the paint of the driver’s door of her car in crude capital lettering were the words DIE CUNT.
Under the parking lot’s lighting the jagged words gleamed silvery where the blue paint had been scrapped down to the door’s metal.
It was too much. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the insult. All she could think of was that her car had been violated, again, and that she could not afford to erase the damage this time.
She could not drive home like this.
On legs that felt wooden, she stiff-walked her way to the trunk of her car and pulled out the roll of duct tape she kept for emergencies, along with an old map. Within minutes, she had covered the scrawl. Yet it seemed to her as if the hideous words might burn through for all to see.
She sat behind the wheel, staring out at the darkness. Night had fallen with the suddenness of late autumn. It didn’t matter. She was blind with rage.
Pick on someone your own size, dickface!
Bullies never chose the strong. They had a mean hunger that could only be fed by taunting the weak. Even after she had forced herself to finish her job, sitting in plain sight all afternoon as if nothing had happened, did she still look like a victim?
The long-ago day came tumbling back into her mind with a clarity that ripped through her blind rage.
When she’d mentioned the skit to James, she hadn’t felt a thing. But now her heart accelerated. She closed her eyes. Her hands flexed over the steering wheel as she held on for dear life. She was no longer remembering the past. She had dropped into it.
It was a skit for homecoming weekend. Her junior year. New school. New town. New life. Nine weeks into the semester, she was doing okay. At least, she was not being looked at weirdly, as she had at her former school. She didn’t worry about friends yet. The only person who talked to her regularly was the junior varsity team captain, Ned Jackson, who was failing precalculus. Because she wasn’t, he’d been paired with her to do in-class practice assignments. Boys made her nervous but Ned didn’t seem to notice that she was a girl, so it seemed to be working.
The only time he’d said a personal thing to her was the day before the homecoming game. The school always held a pep rally, he told her, and he was going to be in one of the skits. She should come and see it.
So she went and sat in the bleachers, ignored by anyone who thought enough to even look in her direction.
Midway through the rah-rah speeches and drill-team-led cheers, the skits began. Finally, there was Ned in his football uniform, sitting at a desk before a blackboard. A chill slipped up Shay’s skirt as a girl student joined him. She wore jeans and a big baggy sweater, and a fake ponytail hiked so high it look like a horse’s tail growing out of the crown of her head.
The snickering began in the audience but Shay didn’t really pay much attention to it. Her gaze was glued to the stage. The girl wrote a math problem on the board then stopped to listen as Ned made lame attempts to solve it. Each time he got the answer wro
ng, the girl got twitchier.
Shay began to fold up inside. They were making fun of her. But that wasn’t right. She thought Ned was becoming her friend. How could he betray her like this?
The girl wrote another, easier problem. Ned hammed up the dummy role. As he voiced more wrong answers the girl started to writhe in frustration. When he finally got even 2 plus 2 wrong, the girl suddenly screamed in primal rage, whipped out a giant pair of scissors from behind the chalkboard, and began stabbing the team captain. On cue, the band began to play. It was the music from the shower scene in Psycho, shrieking clarinets punctuating the stabs.
Paralyzed by shock, Shay sat there, her heart pumping so hard her body shook with every beat.
When Ned was sprawled on the floor, the girl stepped forward and cried, “Don’t mess with Psycho Shay!”
A blur of faces had turned toward her, many laughing, others staring at her in doubtful surprise or horrified recognition of what the skit meant.
In that instant, shame burned her to the ground. All her mother’s efforts and planning and secrecy had come to nothing. Everyone knew!
Someone rapped on her car window.
Shay nearly jumped out of her skin.
Doris Butler was peering in at her, her gaze sharp and mouth primmed. “Are you okay, Ms. Appleton?”
“Yes. Of course.” Her words sounded awkward, as if the muscles no longer knew how to work together to form words.
“Very well. Good evening.”
Shay watched as Doris moved on toward her own car. She was sweating. Her blouse beneath her jacket was sticking to her back. Her face was damp and her hands were slippery on the wheel. Yet in her core, she felt ice-cold.
She had not gone back to that school. But word always got around. Another school, another revelation. When she begged to leave, her mother lost it. For the first time in two years she had a really good job paying wages that put a decent roof over their heads. She had sacrificed so much. No, everything for her daughter. Shay would just have to find a way to live with what she’d done, to both of them.
After that, the crack that had been there between mother and daughter since the night of the stabbing widened a little more each day.
