The Brutal Truth

by Lee Winter

  “She’s making a scene. Unacceptable.” Bartell stalked towards the distraught woman.

  All eyes in the office swung to watch, as Bartell Corp’s imposing boss rapped on the hard drive tower on Josie’s desk to get her attention. “What is this?” Bartell said, voice tight. “You are at work and have a diseased child?”

  “W-what?” Josie sniffed.

  “I will not have a human incubator putting this office at risk of contamination.”

  “But it’s not…not catching. I mean…you can’t catch gastroesophageal reflux, it’s—”

  “Go home,” Bartell said, drawing herself up to full height. “At once. I don’t want to see you back here until you are at nil risk of spreading any vile germs to the rest of the staff, and especially me.”

  “B-but the budget…”

  “Home,” she said. “Now.”

  “Ms Bartell, can I speak to you please?” Dave Douglas, the news chief, had a pinched look as he inserted himself into the scene, his gaze flicking to his finance reporter and back.

  “No! I do not have a minute. I am supposed to be doing a conference call with Hong Kong. Instead, I’m wasting my time within disease-catching distance of this loud, infected…person.” Bartell glanced back at Josie, who was frozen in her seat. “What did I say? Leave! And do not come back until you are safe to be around.”

  Bartell turned on her heel and strode back to her office.

  A flicker of anger crossed Dave’s face, and he clamped down on his jaw. He pointed to a man sitting not far from the finance reporter. “Take over, Robert. Deadline’s an hour. I think most of it’s done. Right?” He glanced at Josie for confirmation.

  Josie nodded between sniffles. She pushed a folder Robert’s way, mumbling a few instructions.

  As Bartell passed Maddie’s desk, the media mogul paused at her open curiosity. “You have an opinion?”

  “Nope,” Maddie said. “But Josie’s not a disease risk any more than you are.” She lowered her voice and took a gamble. “And I think…maybe you know it too.”

  Bartell’s eyes flashed a warning. “I’m sure there are more Kilimanjaro-climbing teachers who need eulogising far more than I need your medical opinion.”

  Surprise flooded Maddie. “You read my obit?”

  “Someone had to,” Bartell said. “I doubt our readers did, given where it was run. Now, why aren’t you working? We’re done.”

  Maddie turned to face her computer and watched as Josie virtually sprinted from the building, a look of profound relief on her face. Maddie wondered if anyone else understood the favour Bartell Corp’s president had done for her. She could see the incredulous faces of the rest of the staff, exchanging furtive looks. They’d probably be tweeting about their draconian, germaphobic overlord in two minutes under smart-ass aliases.

  But Maddie knew the truth. What germaphobe did yoga on a mat on some run-down office floor?

  How…unexpected.

  BlogSpot: Aliens of New York

  By Maddie as Hell

  Someone once said: “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” Surely this is the hardest advice ever offered.

  We all wear masks. We’re all practiced liars, neatly curating ourselves for the benefit of others. It’s only natural, isn’t it? We don’t want strangers to know we’re secretly nervous or shy or intimidated or cowardly. That we’re not brave enough or smart enough or well-off enough or that we’re barely coping. So we fake the ease and perfection of our lives. I’m the first one to admit I’ve posted a grinning selfie of me at Times Square with #lifegoals in the caption. I’m a fraud. But writing #drowningslowly or #lostandembarrassed doesn’t have the catchiest ring.

  You never truly know what’s under anyone’s mask until you take one corner and start to peel. It awes me that anyone would allow another human to do this to them. To willingly say, hey, this is me. Do you still like me?

  The advice might be right—but by God, it’s asking a lot of us.

  CHAPTER 5

  Exotic Balls and Exorcisms

  Maddie arrived home just before 2:00 a.m., feeling twitchy as hell, and the need to bake hit her. Hard. It did sometimes, and fortunately, Simon never complained too much at being woken to the sound of a cake beater or oven timer going off at all hours. Of all the addictions to have, at least baking meant a payoff for Simon, too, given he always got to sample the spoils in the morning. Still, she really did owe him big time for all the ways she ruined his sleep patterns.

  Maddie hummed as she stirred the ingredients in her mixing bowl. Quinoa flakes, vanilla protein powder, almonds, chai spice, medjool dates, and coconut. She thought of Bartell…Elena, she corrected herself…and her late-night cravings for chai tea. The flavour of Maddie’s exotic protein balls would likely please any fan of that tea variety.

  As she worked, she contemplated Josie, so desperate to get home, and Dave, who had been wearing his “this is nuts, we’re on fucking deadline” face. Maddie frowned and sprinkled in a little more coconut.

  Elena had descended like a thunderstorm, doing Josie a favour dressed up as a bitchy reprimand. It had been quite brilliant, now she thought about it. Elena couldn’t have directly overruled the news chief about a story without shredding his authority, and she needed him to retain the respect of his staff to be effective. So she made it look like some strange, personal issue that allowed her department head to save face, Josie to go home, and Elena… Well, she came off looking petty, weird, and void of any empathy. She’d put her tiger shark mask to good use.

  No one else might have understood what she’d done, but Maddie did. She wondered what was really under the mask. Elena might have allowed this one crack to show, but her mask seemed welded on like armour the rest of the time. Did she even take it off at home? Surely she did. As Maddie stirred, her wooden spoon turning into a blur, she decided it didn’t matter. Either way, the woman deserved a little reward for her dark-arts gallantry.

  * * *

  Sixteen hours later, Maddie was back at work. She checked the clock. It was almost four, so she was an hour early. She glanced at the empty corner office.

  Elena was absent from her desk, and Felicity and the temp were also nowhere to be seen. The trademark black, glossy handbag perched on the media boss’s desk told Maddie that she couldn’t be too far away.

  She plucked a small container from her backpack and emptied six little balls onto a paper plate that she’d nabbed from the kitchen. Maddie slid the plate onto Elena’s desk and adjusted the presentation three times until she was satisfied. Then she backed away.

  As Maddie returned to her desk, her heart was thumping, and she felt as if she’d achieved something special. Which was ridiculous, really. All she’d done was put food on her boss’s desk anonymously. Food she might not even eat. Because, come to think of it, how silly would it be eating strange food when you’re the boss that people love to hate? Or just hate to hate?

  Okay, so she hadn’t thought this through. It was a dumb thing to do. Really dumb. Hell. Maddie pushed her chair back to go and retrieve the plate, only to find a blue-eyed gaze fixed on her as Elena plucked, studied for a moment, and then bit neatly into a chai tea ball.

  Maddie swallowed at the same time Elena did. A look of surprise flitted across Elena’s face, and the hint of a smile. Then nothing. Elena turned back to her computer.

  Facing her own computer, Maddie listened for the sound of spitting. She waited, ears straining, for five minutes. When nothing happened, she tried to go back to work. Her heart only slowed its pounding after she reminded herself it wasn’t as if Elena knew the treats were from her. There were plenty of people still in the building at four. The offering could have been from any of them.

  She peeked eight or nine more times throughout the night, and the little pile of balls had almost disappeared by the end of it. Not that she’d been stressing about it or anything.

  Nope, not at all.

  The tenth time, Elena looked straight at her and gave a faint smile a
s she popped the final ball into her mouth.

  Not for the first time, Maddie wondered what on earth Elena was thinking.

  * * *

  Elena chewed slowly and pondered Madeleine Grey. Her little food balls were a most unexpected offering. The way the junior crime reporter had watched so fearfully as she tried the first one instantly told her the identity of the chef. As offerings went, they were sublime. Not that she would share that with her. It was a fool’s errand to get too friendly with the staff, especially those likely to be fired in a few weeks. Her mood darkened at the reminder. The figures on the Hudson Metro were worse than she’d expected. Her plans were now a certainty. She would have to get Felicity to make the appropriate calls.

  Her thoughts returned to Madeleine. What did Elena know about her? She was from Sydney. She was a reporter. She was homesick, most likely, if their elevator conversation was any indication. She seemed…unhappy. Madeleine probably wasn’t even aware of how frequently she glanced at the global time-zones display on the far wall. Her head tilted left, where the Sydney clock was, then her shoulders would slump. She also often picked up her Sydney Harbour snow globe as she talked on the phone, caressing it, giving it a shake, before returning it to its spot with a tiny pat. This was not someone embracing a new city.

  Elena stared at the coconut flakes that had fallen on the plate.

  Madeleine. Also known as Maddie. How many Australian reporters in New York had that name anyway? She stopped cold as the realisation hit her.

  After turning to her computer, she typed in an address she knew by heart. Elena never missed Aliens of New York. When she’d first discovered the blog about eighteen months ago, she’d gone back and read all the previous entries. They were pretty much the same—observant, nuanced, sometimes beautiful, and always sad. The author could convey the ache of loneliness better than anyone she’d ever seen.

  Elena related to that a little too well. Juggling her media empire, she didn’t have a lot of time for close friendships, but it didn’t mean she was immune to the emptiness of that choice at times. Even her husband, some days, felt more like a partner in conquest rather than someone interested in knowing the woman behind her success.

  Maddie as Hell captured the subtlety of human flaws, hopes, and frailties. Her perceptiveness was addictive, like a secret shared to a select few. Elena had always imagined the blogger to be someone much older, wise, with ancient eyes and a stillness to her.

  It was unnerving to work out Maddie as Hell was not ancient, still, or steeped in wisdom. She was just a lost, homesick, young reporter. Someone hapless, chaotic, and unfathomable, not to mention a fashion tragic…and yet she wrote words that stirred Elena.

  She shook her head, closed the blog window, and turned to better observe the paradox that was her junior crime reporter. Elena chewed slowly and watched.

  * * *

  Now that Maddie had seen a crack in Elena’s mask, she found herself curious to find more evidence. She was just bored, she told herself. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the odd way she felt when that intense gaze settled on her and studied her like something of interest. Something to be puzzled out.

  Elena did that sometimes. Maddie knew not to read anything into it. In the scheme of the woman’s global empire, Maddie was still a single-cell organism of no consequence.

  Lisa had been right about one thing. Maddie was well situated to hear Elena’s conversations. She often caught snatches of phone calls. Sometimes Elena spoke to her husband, and there was a tone to her voice that Maddie found hard to pin down. It was neither cool nor warm. The pitch never seemed much beyond professional or, occasionally, pleased. It was all so one note and… She paused, surprised when she finally identified it. Almost bored. Yes, that was it.

  Elena’s husband bored her? Hell. Maddie felt sad for her.

  The only warmth and softness Maddie heard was reserved for discussing someone called Oscar. Suspicions of an illicit affair abruptly ended, however, when Elena requested her housekeeper get him neutered and his toenails clipped.

  Maddie also was well positioned to see who came for meetings. Occasionally, men with cheap suits and document tubes under their arms would arrive, not making eye contact with any Hudson Metro staff. Sometimes the suits would be expensive, the men’s gazes not shifty but smug, and they would shake Elena’s hand with authority and be pointed to visitors’ chairs, the door closing.

  “Board members,” Felicity said once, when she caught Maddie’s curious stare. “A necessary evil.”

  “I thought Bartell Corp was her company? Isn’t she like the queen of all she surveys? Why does she have to put up with anyone she doesn’t want to?”

  “Yes, of course it’s hers. But it’s a publicly listed company. She’s president and chief operating officer. She still has the board, the chairman, and CEO to be nice to. And the CFO, as well, if she’s outlaying some large expenditures.”

  “Right,” Maddie said, becoming curious. “Do they say no often?”

  Felicity’s eyes narrowed. “Even once is too often. They think she just comes up with her business decisions on a whim. But she always has a plan, even if they’re not smart enough to see it.”

  Maddie studied the men in suits. Only one of them touched Elena’s arm, and she allowed the familiarity. His photo was in a framed picture on the wall behind Elena’s desk. “Who’s the tall one with silver hair?”

  Felicity’s face became the perfect impression of someone sucking on a lemon. “Frank Harkness. They go a long way back. He mentored her when she first started out in corporate media. He’s the one board member she actually likes.”

  Maddie’s gaze drifted over the rest of the men. “They all look like funeral directors.”

  Felicity’s purple lips contorted once and then let out a strange, sharp burble.

  Maddie looked at her in confusion before realising she was laughing.

  “Yes,” Felicity said, head bobbing. “They do.”

  Felicity straightened as though she had suddenly remembered laughing on the job was unprofessional. “Enough show and tell. Get back to poking the dead. I have a big speech to write.”

  Maddie took the hint and turned to face her computer.

  Ten seconds later, Felicity threw down her pen and coughed.

  Maddie spun back around. The chief of staff looked bursting to say something. “Yes?”

  “It’s Elena,” Felicity said, practically vibrating with pent-up excitement. “I’m writing a speech, because she’s New York’s Businessperson of the Year.” She beamed. “Of course, it’s only right. I mean, who else has done what she has? Taken a little publishing company into a global concern?”

  Who else, indeed? Maddie sat back. Well. This news deserved some sort of recognition.

  * * *

  Elena walked into work the next day, head reeling from some of the absurd budget cuts Jana Macy had suggested for Style Sydney. Macy truly thought removing the free magazines on the coffee tables in her building’s foyer was one of the “serious cuts” Elena had demanded of her? The woman was delusional. She sighed. She would have to fire her. Incompetence surrounded her.

  Elena dropped her Hermes handbag on her desk and paused. A strange plant had been placed two feet away. She sat cautiously and studied it. The plant was a bright, glossy green with a thick stem that looked related to the parsley family.

  “Felicity,” she said with a low growl, “why is there parsley on my desk?”

  Felicity scampered into her office. “I…oh…have no idea at all. I thought you’d put it… I mean… Is that…? I don’t think it is parsley. My sister works at some herbology place; I could ask her what it is. I mean if you’d like?”

  “A herbology place?” Elena peered at her, astonished at the thought anyone in Felicity’s family was less than a type-A career climber.

  “She’s the black sheep in the family. I mean…hippie, greenie, crystals, the whole bit,” Felicity said as though it were a grim confession. She took out her
iPhone, took a snap of the plant, and tapped a few buttons in the phone.

  Elena’s gaze shifted past her, outside her office. The crime desk was empty, but since it wasn’t even close to five yet, Grey was not likely to be the culprit. This time. She cast her eye about for other suspects.

  “It’s an Angelica archangelica.” Her chief of staff smiled at her sister having identified the weed for her. As she kept reading her phone, her smile fell away.

  “What is it?” Elena asked.

  “Oh, um, never mind, it’s…probably, I mean…”

  “Felicity.” She levelled a cool glare at her until the woman wilted.

  “It goes by a lot of names, holy ghost root, um, archangel, masterwort. Popular in…” Felicity gulped in a breath. “Ah, witchcraft and…” Her face screwed up, and she winced.

  Witchcraft? Elena felt her irritation stir. “And?” She waited, drumming her fingers on the desk.

  “Exorcisms.”

  She gave Felicity a long, cold stare. Well, it had been a while since some underling had decided on a full-frontal attack. At least this one was original. In years gone by, she had been left shark teeth, sex toys, voodoo dolls, and devil tridents. “I see. We’re done.”

  “I don’t think whoever did this… I mean maybe it was just a j-joke.”

  “We’re done.” With that Elena swept the plant into her waste bin, clamped down on her jaw, and focused on work.

  * * *

  Maddie was in a pretty awesome mood by the time she returned to work after sneaking in her green offering that morning. Her latest blog post had been well received. And one of her followers, Jason, had been really complimentary about it. He was a single dad who really felt the isolation of his city more than most. It felt nice to have helped him feel more connected to others.

  She settled into her chair and—as had become her habit these days—immediately pivoted to look into the office behind her. There was just something about Elena that drew Maddie to her. She couldn’t explain it if she’d tried. Elena was like a curious knot to unpick.