Kim Oh 1: Real Dangerous Girl

by Kim Oh

  He smiled. This was a little routine we had going between us.

  “How different?”

  I wrapped both my arms around him again, and rocked the both of us. “Real different,” I said. “Different as . . .” My tired brain tried to come up something new. But couldn’t. “Different as night and day.”

  “Ducks and oranges.”

  “You and me.” I sat back from him. “From everybody else. That’s how different.”

  It wasn’t much of a game. But we’d been doing it for a long time.

  “Okay, pal.” I stood up from the edge of the bed. “You should’ve gone to sleep a long time ago. Don’t get on my case about this sort of thing.”

  “Okay.” Donnie laid back against his pillow and pulled the covers over himself. The apartment was freezing, but the landlord wouldn’t turn the heat on unless there was actually ice forming on the insides of the windows. “I left dinner for you in the fridge. In the green bowl, on the second shelf.”

  That bugged me a little bit, but I wasn’t going to chew him out about it at the moment. When I wasn’t there, it was usually too much trouble for him to deal with the wheelchair, so he’d just scoot himself around on the floor. Which meant quite a stretch for him to accomplish anything in the kitchenette area, but he’d somehow manage. I was just afraid he was going to set fire to the whole place someday. How would he get out? And even if he did, it would just be one more piece of bad luck, losing what little stuff we had, right when things were going to finally turn around for us. We didn’t need that now.

  “I’m not hungry,” I told him.

  “Yeah, right.” He gave me one of his hard glares, which from a kid his age were usually more funny than intimidating. “You gotta keep your strength up, Kimmie.”

  “I’ll have it for breakfast.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “Whatever it is.” He had a limited range, given what I usually managed to carry in from the store on the corner. Pretty much always something with rice, not because of any ethnic thing going on with us, but just because the stuff was cheap, and that was what we could afford with what I was bringing in from my crappy job. All that was going to change, though, and soon. I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “I promise.”

  That mollified him enough for him to close his eyes and turn his head to one side on the pillow. I switched off the light and closed the door, going out to the front room where I slept. On the sway-backed couch that had come with the place. Sometimes there’s an advantage to being short; at least I didn’t have to hang my feet over one of the upholstered arms.

  Which didn’t matter, at least in this part of the movie I’m telling you about. I couldn’t sleep. Not just because of getting rattled by having to deal with that jerk Cole – the way I always got when I had to cut him a check – but just because there was too much going on inside my head.

  You know how it is when there’s a thunderstorm heading your way? Even the air seems to get tense, expectant. Something’s going to happen. And I knew that it was. Even if it’s something you know is going to be good, your stomach’s still doing flip-flops.

  So I’m lying there curled up on that broken-down couch, in my pajama shorts and the extra-large man’s T-shirt that I used to put on back then, whenever I was emotional. I still have it, though I don’t wear it much anymore. Don’t need to, I guess, because I’m so hard and dangerous and all these days. But the T-shirt still means something to me. Not because it belonged to my dad or anything like that – when you’re a kid going through the Child Protective Services system, you pretty much lose all that kind of stuff. They probably figure it’s better if you don’t have anything to remind you of your parents. And maybe they’re right. Donnie remembers them better than I do, or at least he says he does. So the T-shirt had actually belonged to one of our foster dads, the one that had been the nicest to us back when CPS had been shuffling the two of us through places out in Middle of Nowhere, Oklahoma. We’d only been with the guy and his wife for less than a year – but I kept the T-shirt, anyway.

  Well, it wasn’t doing any good this time. You’re watching this movie on the screen inside your head, and there’s not much happening in it at the moment – nothing fun like people getting killed and stuff, at least – just the Little Nerd Accountant Girl that I was, lying curled up in a ball on a ratty furnished-apartment sofa, staring up at the ceiling. But there’s another movie, one that she’s been watching for a while now. Nothing much happens in it, but she watches it over and over, just the same.

  Here’s what happens in that movie going on inside her head. That used to be my head. She’s sitting behind her desk in her stuffy little cubbyhole office at work, going over more numbers – it doesn’t matter which one. Just any kind of numbers. And she looks up, and there’s her boss Mr. McIntyre standing in the office doorway, just the way he had been a little while before. And he gives her that same big nice-boss smile . . .

  Kim, he says in that movie inside her head. It’s time. Time for some big changes around here. Still smiling. I hope you’re ready for them.

  “Oh, yes –” The girl curled up on the couch squeezes her eyes shut and whispers the words aloud. “Yes . . . I am. I’m ready . . .”

  EIGHT

  Little Nerd Accountant Girl didn’t get the dialogue exactly right, in the movie that she’d play over and over again in her head – it was a little more brusque than that. But she didn’t care.

  About 5:00 p.m. or so, the company offices starting to close down for the evening – this is maybe a couple of days or so after that last bit, when I’d had to stay so late and cut the check for Cole. I can’t remember exactly; that’s how excited I got.

  Anyway, in this movie – the real one – she looks up and there’s Mr. McIntyre standing in her office door again. Be still, my beating heart. Not his big nice-boss smile this time, but just sort of thoughtful and preoccupied.

  “Uh, Kim . . .” He gives a little nod. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

  “What about, Mr. McIntyre?” She folds her hands on top of the printouts she had been going over, trying not to look any more nervous than she always does.

  “We’re going to be making some changes around here. I mean, in the Accounting Department. Shift things around a little bit. I just wanted to give you a heads-up, that’s all.”

  “When –” She can barely speak, her heart’s wedged up in her throat so tight. “When’s this going to happen?”

  “Tomorrow, actually. You’ll see when you come in. Don’t worry about it.” Now the big smile. “I’m sure it’ll all be something you can get behind. You have a good evening . . .”

  An hour later, she’s on the bus heading home, and her heart’s still pounding away. It’s a long ride to get from downtown back over to the crappy neighborhood where I used to live with my little brother Donnie. But this time, she doesn’t mind. The bus grinds and crawls along through rush-hour traffic, and all she can see are more of the bright, happy movies playing on the screen inside her head. What a joker her boss is! Something you can get behind – yeah, everything she’s ever wanted, that’s all. Finally it’s happening, after all her hard work, all those late hours. Everything’s going to be different now, for both her and Donnie. Real different.

  Something outside the bus, in the next lane over, does manage to break through and catch her eye. It’s a motorcycle that some guy’s riding, zipping through traffic. A little number called a Ninja 250R, made by Kawasaki. Technically a sportbike, though the engine’s on the small side: 250 cc displacement, hence the model name. A year ago, she’d had a big adventure – big for her, something that nobody would have figured for the mousy kind of girl that I used to be. She’d actually paid a $100, carefully squeezed out of her bare-bones household budget, and taken the Motorcycle Rider Safety Course over at the community college. For a whole weekend, she’d paddled across a roped-off set of asphalt basketball courts, wearing a borrowed helmet as she and the other s
tudents had slowly weaved their way around the orange plastic cones, then eventually getting up to speed – sort of. The bike she’d ridden had been a Ninja 250R, just like the one scooting along outside the bus, only considerably more beat-up. She’d added a couple of scrapes, dropping it just one time. But she’d still managed to pass the course, getting the little piece of paper that she had taken down to the Department of Motor Vehicles office and getting a new driver’s license with a little M printed on it. Which she figured meant that she was a motorcyclist, even if she didn’t own a motorcycle. She’d made a promise to herself about that, though – When everything changes, when everything’s different – justifying it on the basis that not only would it be thrifty urban transportation, it would also show the world that she wasn’t just the Little Nerd Accountant Girl everybody thought she was.

  I guess the world’s pretty much learned that by now, though not exactly the way I had been planning on back then.

  Flash-forward in the movie another hour, and now she’s sitting on the edge of her brother’s bed. The two of them lean their heads together, each stepping on the other’s words as they excitedly go over all their plans for the big day tomorrow. The day they always knew was going to come.

  “You can’t be the new Chief Financial Officer, dressed like that –”

  Donnie’s only telling her what she already knows. That’s why she’s carried into the bedroom the special garment bag that she’s kept hanging on the wheeled rack out in the living room. The rack’s as much of a closet as she has right now. Everything on it is pretty drab, all of her Nerd Accountant Girl stuff, the cheap white blouses, the shapeless skirts – everything, that is, except for the contents of the zippered garment bag. There’s just one outfit inside it, that she’s carefully collected, bit by bit, as she’d been able to scrape the money together. Then go over to some discount outlet store and try to find something as close as possible to what she and her little brother, leaning over the magazines spread out on his bed, had figured would make her look like a real businesswoman, on her way up the corporate ladder.

  Okay, so now the movie isn’t some action thing, like it was when Cole was up on the screen, doing his job. Now it’s more of a chick flick – working girl transformed to corporate Cinderella – as Donnie and I reinspect the garment bag’s contents. There’s the tailored pencil skirt that comes up above my knees a carefully calibrated distance more than allowed by those clunky schoolgirl schmattas I had been wearing. The jacket, dark red with three-quarters sleeves, just enough color so it didn’t look like a man’s. Silk blouse with a lady-lawyer bow at the neck. Nude taupe pantyhose, that a salesgirl had told me would go with an Asian skin tone – those were a completely new thing to me, and kind of scary.

  We both sat there on the bed, looking at the clothes. Then I took a deep breath, gathered them all up in my arms, and carried them to the bathroom. Pulling everything on in there was like getting dressed in a phone booth with faucets – I had to sit down on the edge of the tub to put the shoes on. They had two-inch heels, which brought me that much over five feet. Very intimidating. I leaned close to the mirror, working with the nail scissors out of the medicine cabinet, until I had some bangs that I could brush a little to one side, instead of the total skinned-back ponytail look I had been sporting. One of the magazines in our arsenal was a fashion thing for teenagers – younger than me, even – that had an article on how to do that. Which I’d memorized but hadn’t pulled the trigger on, until now.

  “How’s this?”

  Donnie studied me critically for a few seconds. His squinting frown made me nervous. This was the first time I’d put every piece on, all at the same time. “Turn around.”

  I buttoned the jacket and turned my back to him.

  “Okay, look at me again.”

  I turned all the way around, holding my breath.

  He regarded me for another couple of seconds, then slowly nodded.

  Then smiled.

  “Rock ’n’ roll,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Locked and loaded!”

  * * *

  Of course, one of the problems with giving yourself a complete makeover is that nobody recognizes you when you go to work. I had to dig around in my purse – also a part of the new outfit, instead of the backpack I usually carried – to find my company ID card, to get past the guard in the building lobby.

  And then I’m upstairs. Stepping out of the elevator, ready for my new life.

  This is a good movie. I’d practiced with the heels back at the apartment, so even those were under control. A couple of moving-type guys carrying cardboard file boxes brushed past me in the hallway. That was a good sign; it meant that things were getting ready for me. I give them a smile; one of them even notices.

  I poke my head into my dingy little cubbyhole. Yes! Even more action. Other men in coveralls were packing up all the files, and the computer terminal off the top of my desk. How much more do I need to see?

  “Careful with that,” I say to the guy lifting the computer. “Lot of important stuff on there.”

  “Lady –” It’s the first time anybody’s ever called me that. “My kid’s got a better machine than this.”

  “Your kid doesn’t work for Mr. McIntyre,” the transformed Nerd Accountant Girl informs him. “We watch our pennies, okay? So just make sure there aren’t pieces falling off when it gets over to where it’s going.”

  The movers look at each other and shrug.

  Now we do a tracking shot as she heads over to the other side of the building, where McIntyre and the other execs have their offices. It’s a lot nicer over there, with potted palms and freshly painted walls, and the kind of framed paintings that you see in expensive hotels rather than Motel 6 lobbies. Even a couple of minor Warhols.

  There’s a corner office with big tall windows that’s been vacant for nearly a year. Because the position had been empty as well. As she comes walking up, she smiles because she sees the workman precisely lettering the position title – CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER – on the front of the propped-open door, as the movers carry the file boxes past him. She squeezes by them, careful not to bump the arm of the guy doing the lettering.

  Then she halts, right in the middle of the office. There’s somebody she’s never seen before, sitting behind the desk, his jacket hanging off and hanging on the wooden coat rack by the cabinets. Young guy, with slicked back Gordon Gekko-type hair and an expensive-looking silk necktie. He’s sitting there in his shirtsleeves – the shirt looks expensive, too – and he’s going over some of the printouts that he’s taken from one of the file boxes the movers have stacked up beside the desk.

  After a moment, he realizes that there’s somebody there, staring at him. He brings his gaze up and looks back at her. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  The movie goes into a tight close-up on her. She’s not smiling now. “Who are you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  She feels a little dizzy. Beyond the desk, which is about as big as her old cubbyhole office, the windows look out over a dizzying expanse of the city.

  “Okay –” She nods; now she gets it. “Mr. McIntyre didn’t tell me that I’d be getting an assistant.”

  The Brooks Brother guy – that’s what she’s already calling him, inside her head – frowns in puzzlement. “Assistant? What are you talking about?”

  One of McIntyre’s officious, snooty secretaries appears in the doorway. “Sorry, Mr. Harris. I didn’t see her barge in –”

  “Wait a minute.” Nerd Accountant Girl turns on the woman. “I didn’t ‘barge in’ anywhere. This is the CFO’s office, right? Well, that’s me.”

  The Brooks Brothers guy and the secretary both stare at her. He lowers his head and murmurs softly to the secretary: “Call Security.”

  “No –” She jabs a finger toward the secretary, who freezes. “Call Mr. McIntyre.”

  Cut to McIntyre’s office. He’s sitting behind his even bigger desk, and she’s slumped in a chair in fr
ont of it. She stares straight ahead of herself, seeing nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” says McIntyre. “I meant to tell you before.”

  She doesn’t look up. “Tell me what?”

  “That I’m not giving you the job. Not the one you apparently thought you were getting, at least.”

  She stiffens a little bit. “What do you mean?”

  McIntyre slowly shakes his head. “Did you really think I was going to make you the company’s chief financial officer?”

  “Wait a minute.” Now she does look up at him. “You told me –”

  “Told you what?”

  “When I came here. Over a year ago. You told me, that when the company got up and running, that job would be mine.”

  “Kim –”

  “You did. You did tell me that. And now the company is up and running. So who’s that in my office?”

  McIntyre heaves a sigh. “It’s not your office, Kim. It’s his. He’s my new CFO.”

  “Are you joking?” Her hands go white-knuckled as she grips the arms of the chair. “He’s not any older than me!”

  “Well, actually, he is. At least by a couple of years. Plus . . . he’s an MBA. Harvard.”

  “What’s that mean? What does he know about running your business?”

  He gazes at her sadly for a moment. “He’ll learn.”

  “But I know already!” Her voice rises. This is the most she’s ever said in one go, to anybody at the company, let alone the boss. “I know it from the beginning. I know everything. The IRS would’ve come here, they would’ve come down on you, if it hadn’t –”

  “Watch it,” growls McIntyre. “Don’t even go there.”

  She doesn’t heed the warning. “I did everything for you!” She gets even more emotional. “And you promised me.”