Single Sashimi

by Camy Tang

  One candidate looked promising. She studied his resume again, as if that would make more experience somehow appear between the lines. Well, might as well call to set up an interview.

  Ew, her phone hadn’t been cleaned in days. She fumbled in her desk drawer for her purse, but pulled out her computer case instead. She hoped she’d have time later today to work on it. She set the case beside her desk, reached in for her purse, and grabbed a wipe-up. She even scrubbed between the buttons. And the underside. And the cord.

  She called. “Hello, this is Venus Chau. I saw your resume—”

  “Oh, no.”

  She blinked before answering. “Excuse me?”

  “Not another interview. They’re so tedious.”

  Did he really say what she thought he said? “I’m calling about a job—”

  “I really can’t do another job interview. They take up so much time.”

  Venus glared at her computer screen, closed his resume file, and emptied it into the recycling bin. “Since you’re not interested—”

  “Oh, I am. Interested.” He yawned as he said the word, so Venus was guessing that’s what he said. “But you’ll have to hire me based on my resume alone. Or I might give a few minutes to you now on the phone.”

  “No, thank you.” She hung up without saying good-bye.

  Well, it was nice to be able to at least eliminate someone. Next candidate—even less experience, a little young, perhaps, but still worth an interview. She dialed.

  The first thing she heard was someone shouting at the top of their lungs in the background, followed by a whispered, “Hello?”

  “Um…I’m Venus Chau, I saw your resume…”

  She heard the background voice raise to bellowing level. “And you messed everything up with your laziness and incompetence… Are you on the phone?”

  “Can I call you back? Bye!” Click.

  What was up with these people? Did the hiring process change since she last looked for a job a year ago? She brought up another resume on her computer. Dare she try another phone call? She wouldn’t have been surprised to get a chicken farm or a funny farm instead.

  She flipped the screen back to the presentation, but that only made her want to lay her head down on the desk and cry.

  Esme’s hesitant knock sounded on the door.

  “Come in.”

  She poked her head in. “Did you want more coffee? I’m going to make a pot.”

  “Thank you, yes.” Venus held out her mug.

  Esme peered at the presentation. “Do you need any help with it?”

  Venus slumped in her chair. “Want to do it for me?”

  Her eyes sparkled like black diamonds. “Really? I’d love to.”

  Venus sat up, blinking at her. The offer was like a life preserver—no, Venus wasn’t drowning. Just…stressed.

  And as Operations Manager, Esme was qualified to give the presentation. Plus, Venus would be there in the room. It wasn’t completely unheard of to have someone else present it. Venus wasn’t averse to taking advantage of Esme’s cute face and sweet smile.

  “Do you feel up to it? It’s the Amity Group—they’re a pretty big investor.”

  “I’d love the opportunity. I won’t fail you.”

  Venus glanced at the slides on her computer, now not so threatening. “I’ll send you the preliminary slides. You’ll need to organize them and figure out which others to add. If you’re comfortable presenting it, I’ll ask Gerry if it’s okay.”

  Esme’s sunbeam smile made Venus blink against the glare. “Thanks! I’ll be right back with your coffee.” As she turned, her heel caught Venus’s computer bag strap. Her foot kicked up a little, and she looked back at the bag. “Oh! I’m so sorry. It’s not damaged, is it?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Venus returned it to her desk drawer. Esme’s curious gaze as she turned the drawer key in the lock seemed a little strange. She shrugged it away as she dropped the key in her blazer pocket. “Thanks for getting me coffee.”

  Esme nodded and pranced out.

  Venus paused before emailing the PowerPoint presentation to Esme. Was this really a good idea? She hated feeling like she was passing the buck. But if Esme would do a good, or even better job at it—be more enthusiastic, look charming and natural, and present the technical data in a competent light—why not? Besides, she’d email Gerry to ask if she thought it would be okay. If Gerry said no, then Venus would just do the presentation herself.

  Esme returned and plunked the coffee cup down.

  “Thanks. I just emailed the slides to you.”

  Esme looked down and bit her bottom lip until it looked like a raspberry. “I hope you don’t mind…I had already said yes…I told him six o’clock…”

  “You have a date? That’s fine.” What was Esme’s problem? Venus wasn’t a monster, expecting her to stay late to work on a presentation that wasn’t due until next week.

  Esme’s V-shaped smile and strange, direct gaze sent a bolt down Venus’s spine. “I’m so glad you understand. When Drake asked me out, I was so excited. I didn’t want to disappoint him.” She breezed out of the office.

  Venus wasn’t sure how to feel. She liked Esme, and she—logically—knew she shouldn’t be jealous about Drake. But even after a week, the memory of the almost-kiss in the snow burned into her brain, making her a liar.

  But why would Drake want to kiss her if he was interested in Esme? That seemed out of character—he was never a flirt. Which meant he might be open to Venus if she made a move… She quelled the surge of electricity that jolted through her heart. No, Esme liked him. Esme, the best Operations Manager she’d ever had, the nicest person she knew, the first woman outside of her cousins who seemed to like her. Venus would not go after the man Esme confessed to liking. That would be completely heartless of her. She reached for the coffee.

  Ugh, Esme made the coffee strong this time. Venus went back to scanning resumes.

  She jerked awake from a snooze. Too little sleep last night? She gulped down more coffee. The résumés blurred in front of her…

  A hammer was pounding on her desk. She could feel it through her skull. Which was strange, because she couldn’t understand what her head was doing on her desk in the first place.

  Venus opened bleary eyes to the sideways picture of her phone. She blinked, and it came into focus a bit more, but it still lay sideways. She inhaled, only then feeling the hard surface of her desk pressed against her cheek. Had she fallen asleep? After all that coffee?

  She closed her mouth, feeling the sliminess of—oh no, she’d drooled onto her desk. An attempt to raise her head brought the hammer pounding to a thunder. Her skull had cracked open.

  Dizzy. She eased upright. Room spinning. How long had she been out? She creaked her head sideways to check the computer screen—the screensaver was on. Those psychedelic wavy lines made her close her eyes. Okay, well, the blinds were open and the room was dark. Must be at least past six.

  Had she caught the flu? That was just great. She should go home and take something.

  A note on her pristine desk caught her eye.

  I told everyone to leave you alone—hope that was okay.–Esme.

  So Esme had seen her sprawled out on her desk? Venus frowned and massaged her neck. Why would that bother her? It’s not as if Esme took incriminating pictures or brought the entire company in to laugh at her. She’d even saved her further embarrassment by telling people to leave her alone. So why did Venus feel like she’d been lying here naked instead of just asleep?

  The blood pounded in her head as if it would burst out of a vein any second. Venus fumbled for her desk drawer to get her purse—locked. She’d locked it? That’s right, she had. Where had she put the key? Oh, that’s right, her blazer pocket. Funny, her blazer was creased and twisted around in the opposite direction she’d been lying.

  She unlocked the drawer and got out her Advil bottle. She gulped a couple tablets down with the bottled water on her desk. The liquid made her mouth
feel less like a rat’s nest, so she drank all of it.

  Time to go home. She reached into the drawer to get her purse and computer bag.

  The bag was upside down. It lay near the back of the drawer as it had been before, but flipped over. Such a trifle…but she pulled it out and unzipped it.

  A jumble of cords fell out. Rather than neatly coiled and tied up on itself the way it always was, the power cord lay in a haphazard nest on the laptop. She hadn’t left it that way last night; she hadn’t left it that way this morning when she had briefly opened it to make sure it had enough battery life to last the day in her desk drawer.

  She only used this computer for one thing—the Spiderweb.

  She was having a heart attack. A squeezing in her chest made her gasp and rub her breastbone with her shaking palm. She heaved to draw in breath, but the air came in reedy gasps.

  Someone had seen her development tool.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  She didn’t care who she had to run over, she was not going to be late to work today.

  Venus slid around a slow-moving ancient Honda and revved her engine in the early morning traffic. A blaring honk followed her from the guy she’d just cut off.

  Her phone rang. She answered with her Bluetooth wireless earpiece. “Hello?”

  “Hello, dear.”

  “Mom, this is not a good time.” She squeezed in between two cars so she could make the freeway exit coming up. More honking.

  “Well!” Her mother’s huffing sounded like hurricane winds in her earpiece. “That’s a nice welcome.”

  “Mom, the presentation is today.”

  “What presentation?”

  “The one I told you about last week. At lunch. That I was stressing over.”

  “Speaking of lunch, you should go to lunch with me today. There’s this new restaurant I want you to take me to.”

  “Mom!” Venus jammed on the brakes before she rear-ended the minivan in front of her. “The presentation?”

  “What presentation?”

  Venus strangled her mother’s imaginary neck until the car behind her honked to get going. She hit the accelerator, but not soon enough to prevent an SUV from cutting in front of her, forcing her to hit the brakes again. Her padded computer bag slid from her passenger seat and thumped onto the floorboards.

  Aargh! She reached over to grab it and slide it back on the seat, enduring another round of honking from the cars behind her. She couldn’t stop that rush of despair that blew up from her stomach like a typhoon every time she looked at her laptop—ever since last week. She knew it had been hacked into, knew the development tool had been copied. She hadn’t had time to do much more than worry excessively about it.

  One thing she did know—Yardley was behind it.

  “So, dear—lunch?” Mom’s voice had that distracted tone—she was probably making breakfast or something like that.

  “No, I’m too busy today.”

  Tense silence.

  Oh, brother.

  “Mom, I told you I have a presentation today—”

  “It’s only a presentation; it takes one hour. You have eight hours in your workday. You can’t spare an hour to eat lunch with your mother?”

  “I still need to go over the slides with Esme”—she hit the brakes as she took the turn on the exit lane a bit too fast—“and set up the meeting room equipment”—she turned the corner and stopped hard at the sudden line of cars waiting for the light—“and go over the schedule with Gerry.” Could this light take any longer?

  “That’s not going to take you all morning, is it?”

  “Today. Is. Not. A. Good. Day. Mother.” Finally the light turned green.

  Click.

  Oh, great. Just when things between them were getting better. Maybe she should have offered to have lunch tomorrow. Why did she always think of these things too late?

  She screeched into the parking lot and grabbed her stuff. She wasn’t actually late, but she wasn’t as early as she wanted to be.

  Darla came running out the doors of the building, heading straight for her.

  “Esme quit!” Her voice echoed off the concrete walls.

  What? Without talking to her? Without warning? “Today?”

  “This morning. As of an hour ago.”

  “Why?” Venus hustled toward the doors. “Is she still here?”

  “No, she left!” Darla heaved. “She didn’t even tell Gerry in person. She sent an email, and then flung the news over her shoulder at me as she left the building. I had to be the one to tell Gerry. She’s having a cow, by the way.”

  Unnecessary news because Venus heard the shouting as soon as she got within a foot of the doors. Esme gone? What was going on? She clenched her jaw and inhaled, then yanked open the glass door.

  The noise level sounded like a hundred cats in heat. She plunged indoors.

  Darla followed. “We have another problem.”

  “What?”

  “Macy crashed the server last night. A bunch of people have been here since four this morning trying to fix it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She quit!”

  Naturally.

  Darla clenched shaking fists to her stomach. Her eyes were wide, but her jaw was so tight, it could have been wired shut. At least she held in her fear and anger rather than unleashing it, which somebody was doing down the hallway.

  “Does Gerry know about Macy?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said dryly.

  “When is the Amity Group supposed to arrive?”

  Darla straightened, tugging at her modest silk blouse. “Not until noon.”

  Venus realized Darla had dressed the part of a receptionist today, and a tiny piece of stress melted away. “Good. Then we have time. Come with me.” She marched behind the lobby down the corridor.

  As she turned the corner, she discovered that not all the noise was emotional. Some of the voices were merely hurried as techs shouted to each other, trying to fix the system. So different from the first day, when they’d all been gathered in the breakroom.

  The argument emanated from Gerry’s office. Venus knocked and didn’t wait before barging in.

  Lisa, the website programmer under Macy, faced off against Gerry. Lisa stood as immovable as a stone Buddha while Gerry’s white face had the skin pulled back like a corpse. Although she stood behind the desk, her shoulders angled forward as if she’d leap over the top and beat up the poor girl.

  Lisa turned toward Venus as they walked in. She panted as if she’d run a race and her mouth was solid and mutinous, but her wide eyes had a frantic gleam.

  She’d rescue the poor tech first. “Lisa, the system—”

  Lisa turned to her with desperate appeal. “The system is a complete mess—”

  Gerry slammed a fist down on her desk. “The system wouldn’t be a mess if you hadn’t—”

  Lisa rounded on Gerry. “There was no way to know Macy would—”

  “You’re senior programmer under her—you should have been watching…”

  Venus gave Gerry an urgent, Shut up and let me talk to her look. Gerry’s nostrils flared, but she turned and stalked toward the window of her office.

  Venus had never met such melodramatic women in her entire life. Did they pump hormones into the air filtration system or something? The mess today was huge, but Gerry needed a serious chill pill, as the high school girls would say. Venus remembered how she’d dealt with Angeline on her first day here. Okay, that had been a bit harsh, but Venus had only worked with men before coming to Bananaville. She’d learned a thing or two about dealing with women since then.

  “Lisa, it’s not your fault.” Venus heard her mother’s voice. She’d pitched her tone exactly like Mom when she was being charming and soothing—which she usually did when she wanted something. But maybe that was the solution, since Venus certainly didn’t have a nurturing personality.

  She kept her voice quiet, in hopes Lisa would calm also. “We know you do your best. There’s noth
ing you could have done…” And more repetitive, calming things, which seemed to work because Lisa’s breathing slowed from offended heaves to a more normal rhythm.

  Venus touched her shoulders gingerly, but it seemed to relax her more. She turned her gently and pleaded with Darla over the girl’s head. Darla obliged by wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “You go with Darla, now, and we’ll take care of everything.”

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Venus hissed at Gerry, “Do you have to argue with everyone?”

  At the same time, Gerry whirled. “Do you know what the Web director that you hired did last night?”

  They faced off, each breathing fire. But Gerry seemed to check herself, and she took a deep breath and backed off. A bit disgruntled, Venus did the same. Since when was volatile Gerry the calm one of both of them?

  Gerry sat at her desk. “I’m sorry. When you hired Macy, you certainly couldn’t predict what she’d do.”

  “Her résumé was stellar.” Venus rubbed the back of her neck. “I should have followed her more closely. I would have known she was incompetent.”

  Gerry tapped two fingers on her desk. “Lisa said it was deliberate.”

  “What?”

  “Sabotage. Why would anyone sabotage us?”

  “I…” The thought of her tampered laptop made her pause. Was all this connected somehow? Was Esme connected with it? She couldn’t breathe for a moment. “Esme didn’t say why she left, did she?”

  “No. Just polite nothings.” Gerry gave a groaning sigh. “Well, we can’t do anything about it now.” She checked her watch. “It’s seven thirty.”

  “So we have, what, four and a half hours before Amity shows up?”

  “Do you have the slides for the presentation?”

  “Yes. I’ll do the presentation.” The acid boiled in her stomach.

  “We need the server up so we can demonstrate it for Amity.”

  “Lisa’s working on it—”

  “Lisa’s smart, but she’s just out of college. Can we call anyone to help us out?”

  Venus snapped her fingers. “Jaye. I’ll call him.” She fumbled with her purse and grabbed her cell phone.