Sleeping With The Single Dad

by J. J. Bella

  The rest of the work day went as planned. My office grew dark as the afternoon shifted into the evening, the orange and blue of the setting sun giving way to an inky-black sky, the lights of the city twinkling below. Checking my phone, I saw that it was getting on seven o’clock. Normally, I would’ve stayed later, asked the help to look after Olive a little longer, call her up and tell her I’d be bringing home take-out, but today I wanted to get back early. Olive was surely frustrated enough with me already, and on top of that, I was going to be letting her know about the new arrangement with Ms. Kimble.

  Olive is a…precocious girl, to say the least. Quiet and studious, she takes after me in many ways. But unlike myself, her interests drift more towards the academic. When I was ten, I ran a small business buying candy bars and other treats unavailable during lunch from the local convenience store before lunch and selling them at marked-up prices to my classmates at the boy’s academy. Olive, on the other hand, would rather spend the days with her nose buried in a history book.

  But, although she didn’t seem to take after my entrepreneurial leanings, she was smart and ambitious, and I had great things in mind for her. Ever since her mother passed, however, she’s drifted further and further over the last few years into her studies. She just didn’t seem to be all that interested in friends, and playing, and other things that ten-year-old girls should spend their time with. I was fine with her being a bookworm, but I was determined not to stand by and let her drift into total social isolation.

  The rest of the evening went as well as I could expect, with me giving my usual apologies to Olive and her accepting them, though how genuinely she meant it was up for debate- it seemed more and more that she was less affected by my constant cancellations, which was worrying. I told her about the new arrangement with Ms. Kimble, and she seemed nonplussed.

  The next morning, I got up at five AM, my usual time, and went through my fitness routine, having a run along 5th Avenue, staying out a little longer than I normally would, letting the fresh morning air do its work on me. Olive had a half-day at school today, only having to go in for a few hours in the afternoon, which meant the day would work well for getting her introduced to Katie.

  At around eight forty-five, the low chime of a guest arrival sounded through the apartment. Ms. Kimble was early, which was a good sign. I was dressed and ready by that point, and decided to finish my coffee at the kitchen counter while she arrived.

  A few minutes later, the stainless-steel doors that led directly from the elevator to my penthouse suite opened, revealing Ms. Kimble, who stood in the elevator with that same wide-eyed expression I was beginning to associate with her, the blue of her eyes bright and visible in the morning light that streamed into the apartment, a small, blue tote on the elevator floor at her side.

  “Ms. Kimble,” I said, getting up from the counter stool that I was sitting upon. “Welcome.”

  “This is, um, quite the place,” she said, still standing in the elevator.

  “Well,” I said, walking towards her while fastening the buttons of my black blazer, “I’m glad you like it. But I suggest you come in from the elevator, unless you’d rather be sent back down to the lobby when the doors close.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, snatching her tote off from the ground and stepping into the main space of the apartment, the heels of her black dress flats clicking against the tile floor and echoing out through the space, the sound crisp and bright over the jazz that I was playing on the Sonos system.

  “I trust your trip over was without incident?” I asked. I considered sending the car over for her, but decided that I’d rather leave her to her own devices this morning, to see what time she’d arrive. She didn’t disappoint.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said, her eyes still scanning my apartment.

  “I’ll be sending for your things this evening, assuming you still feel the job suits you at the end of the day.”

  She shook her head, as though realizing that she was gawking at the apartment when she should’ve been paying attention.

  “That would be great,” she said, looking at me, smiling a warm, professional smile of wide lips and no teeth.

  “Allow me,” I said, taking her tote from her.

  We walked through the space of the apartment, towards the hallway that would lead her to her room.

  “Let’s start this little orientation by showing you where you’ll be staying. I trust a view of Brooklyn is to your liking?”

  “Yes,” she said, obviously trying to hide the excitement in her voice. “Brooklyn’s just fine.”

  8

  When I looked up at the towering, high-rise condo where Mr. Lane lived, I couldn’t help but feel like I was in over my head. One of the new, pencil-thin luxury condos that were now springing up all across the Manhattan skyline, it seemed to stretch upwards forever into the sky. And he wasn’t just any old ultra-wealthy inhabitant of this particular building- he was all the way up top, in the penthouse.

  The lobby of the place was like a modern art museum, spacious, immaculate, and filled with both expensive art and natural light that poured in, illuminating the massive garden that sat in the middle of the place, itself topped off with a bubbling fountain.

  The man working the front desk -one of them, at least- looked at me with skepticism when I stepped in. I figured that when you associate with the elite all day, you learn to be able to spot a mere middle-class girl from a mile away. Maybe it was my H&M blazer, maybe it was my shoes whose cost was only in the double-digits, but he quickly swooped in next to me and asked me who I was looking for, and by his tone, he was seemingly certain that I was in the wrong building.

  “I have an appointment with Mr. Lane,” I said, still in awe of the luxury around me.

  “Ah, Ms. Kimble!” he said, his voice now eager and accommodating. “Right this way.”

  He led me towards one of the elevators, that same eager smile still plastered on his face when the doors slide shut.

  Despite the apartment being on the top floor, the trip took only a few seconds. And when the doors slid open again, my jaw dropped.

  To say that Mr. Lane’s apartment was the nicest that I’d ever seen would be the understatement to end all understatements. Even calling it a “palace” wouldn’t have done it justice. The main floor of the apartment was a wide-open space, with the kitchen, dining area, and living room visible from where I stood. The walls of the apartment were all glass, and as Mr. Lane led me from the elevator I could see that they provided a nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the entire city. Looking out, I could see everywhere, from the furthest-east edges of Queens on one side, to the endless stretches of New Jersey on the other.

  “Allow me,” said Mr. Lane, taking my tote and snapping me out of my slack-jawed view-gawking. I at least had the good sense to compose myself around him; the last thing I wanted was to turn from gawking at the view of the apartment to gawking to the view of, well, him.

  “You’ll have the southeast wing,” he said, leading me down a wide hallway lined with tasteful modern art.

  “I’m sorry, ‘wing’?”

  “Yes,” he said, a small smirk crossing his face, as though now aware of how what he just said might sound to someone used to living in a bedroom about as big as a sock drawer. “It’s just Olive and I, and we’ve got more than enough space for the two of us.”

  We passed a few doors, and Mr. Lane pointed them out as we went.

  “Bathroom here, though there’s another door that connects directly to your bedroom. There’s study down at the end, though I suppose you could use it for whatever you’d like. And here’s the bedroom.”

  He opened a set of double doors, revealing a spacious, yet cozy bedroom. There was a large, comfy-looking queen-sized bed against the right-most wall, and a set of modern-looking furniture, including a dresser and a desk. The outer wall was glass, just like the rest of the apartment, and opened up to a small balcony. The view was over Brooklyn, as promis
ed, and the entire borough was visible, all the way down to Coney Island.

  “You needn’t cram everything into the dresser; there’s a spare walk-in closet just over there.”

  “Oh, great,” I said, keeping as cool as I possibly could at what he just said. In New York, where space is at a premium, saying you have a spare walk-in closet isn’t too different than saying you have a spare pile of diamonds in your drawer, or an extra Mercedes kicking around in the garage.

  “But you’ll have to put off getting settled for now; I’d like to introduce you to Olive.”

  “Can’t wait to meet her,” I said, hiding my anxiety.

  Don’t get me wrong, I like kids just fine. But I never had that lightness and ease that most women seemed to have around them. And besides that, wasn’t just any kid, she was my new boss’s kid. I know how capricious kids can be; what if she just decided on first sight that she hated me?

  Mr. Lane set my bag on the bed, the weight of it sinking into the plush, soft sheets, and led me back down into the main room, then down another hallway.

  “This is Olive’s wing, though don’t think you’re unwelcome to enter.”

  We made our way down the hallway, which seemed to be set up just like mine.

  “Olive tends to spend her time in her study; she’s a bookish sort of girl,” he said

  When he opened the door at the end of the hall, he revealed a small study, lined with bookshelves, with scattered piles of books here and there. An iMac was on a desk in the corner, and a large, plush chair was in the middle of the room, facing the window.

  “Olive, come here and meet Ms. Kimble.”

  There was no response.

  “Olive, come here now,” said Mr. Lane, his tone fatherly and firm.

  A sigh sounded from the other side of the chair, and underneath it, I spotted a small pair of low-top Chuck Taylors land on the ground. Then, from behind the high-back of the chair emerged a petite, slim girl of around ten. She was wearing a pair of skinny, dark blue jeans and a fitted t-shirt of some band that I’d never heard of. Her hair was a bright red, and tied in a thick braid that was draped over her shoulder. Her face was pretty, in a pre-teen way, and on her face was a big pair of black-rimmed glasses. Her hand held the book she was reading, one finger stuck in between the pages, holding the spot that she wanted to get back to right away.

  “Ms. Kimble, this is my daughter, Olive.”

  I walked over to Olive, and extended my hand.

  “Hi, Olive. My name’s Katie.”

  Olive looked at my hand with a skeptical expression, as though I were trying to pull fast one on her.

  “Hi,” she said in a terse tone, taking my hand, giving it a quick shake, and dropping it.

  “What’re you reading?” I asked, pointing at the book in her hand.

  “Nothing. Just something about the third crusades. You probably wouldn’t be into it.”

  “Oh, cool,” I said, reeling from what I thought was probably the answer I least expected her to give.

  “Can I go back to my book?” asked Olive, looking past me and up at Mr. Lane.

  “Sure,” he said, a trace of frustration in his voice.

  “Come, Ms. Lane,” he said leading me out of the room.

  Great, I thought to myself as we walked back towards the main room of the apartment, less than a minute and I managed to get that kid not to like me.

  Little did I know, that was going to be the least of my troubles for the day.

  9

  The first meeting between Ms. Kimble and Olive went about as well as could be expected. However, I could tell that Ms. Kimble seemed shaken by her inability to win over a moody ten-year-old girl within a minute, as though her job were resting on whether or not Olive loved her from the start. No; what her employment would rest on was the other work I had planned for her.

  “Like I said, she’s a bookish girl,” I said, leading Ms. Kimble back towards the main room of the apartment. “Don’t worry about hitting it off with her right away.”

  I could tell these words put Ms. Kimble at ease.

  “But the work of the day is what I’d like you to get started on right away,” I led her to the kitchen table, where a Macbook that I purchased for her was sitting, opened and ready.

  “This will be your work computer. Only use it for work-related business. If you need to use another computer, there’s the desktop in the office.”

  “Oh, I’ve got my own,” she said.

  “Very good. Your first task is to get my next week into the computer. My papers detailing my appointments are here, and I want them entered down to the minute in the computer. Pay special attention to the appointments I have with Olive; those need to be highlighted, with notifications schedule that will go directly to my phone on the day of. You’ll have an hour to get this taken care of, then we’ll be off to the office. Any questions?”

  Her face seemed to take on a slight shade of green. This meeting was likely a little overwhelming for her as is, let alone adding a workload on top of it. But I was interested to see how she performed under less-than-ideal circumstances.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. My office is down that hall if you need anything.”

  As I walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help but notice that I was very interested to see how she did. She was overwhelmed, sure, but that’s par for the course for a recent college graduate. The real question would be if she could shake out her nerves and get the job done; that’s what I was interested in.

  But as I opened the door to my office and stepped inside, a troubling thought entered my mind. I found myself thinking about Ms. Kimble in a different context. Not simply as my assistant, but in a…more physical manner. Her face, fair-skinned and bright, and her eyes, blue and clear, appeared in my thoughts without prompting, as tough my unconscious mind were insisting that I consider them.

  I shook them out, focusing my thoughts instead on the work I needed to have finished before I went into the office. But they returned. This time, they weren’t limited to just her face. I found my mind’s eye drifting downward, long her body, wondering what she looked like underneath her thin, white blouse and pencil skirt. And what her body might feel like.

  This wouldn’t do. I focused, on other thoughts, clearing my mind and pushing out this nonsense about my new assistant. I made myself a cup of coffee and walked over to the window, choosing to think about the day ahead instead of these more puerile thoughts that were seemingly invading my mind.

  And it worked. There was a lot to do, and Ms. Kimble was going to be essential to getting the necessary business taken care of if the week was to run smoothly. My meeting with Mr. Liu the previous day was only one step in the long process of securing manufacturing, and each step would need to be handled with care and precision.

  Sitting at my desk, I pulled up the security camera from where Ms. Kimble was sitting. Normally, I would never bother with such an invasive maneuver, but I did want to see if she was actually at work, or if the pressure had gotten to her and she was running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.

  A few taps on my computer later, and the footage was brought up. Far from seeming overwhelmed, Ms. Kimble was seated at the table, a cup of coffee to her right and the computer in front of her. She was looking back and forth between the papers and the computer, typing with a look of intense concentration on her face.

  Good, I thought, she’s not messing around.

  But now that she was on the screen in front of me, my eyes drifted once again. This time, to the straight brown hair that she wore in simple tresses that lay draped over her shoulders.

  This was getting absurd. I closed the window of the camera footage and attended to more serious matters. Before too long, the hour allotted passed, and I was ready to get to the office to get some real work done. I turned off the computer, gathered my belongings and headed into the kitchen, eager to appraise
Ms. Kimble’s work.

  “Finished?” I asked, walking to the coffee machine and pouring myself another cup for the road.

  “Yes, I think so,” she said, making a few last-minute keystrokes.

  “Let me see.”

  She turned the computer towards me so that I could get a good look. I clicked through the necessary programs, checking to see how accurately she had input the information.

  It was fine. Not amazing, not bad- just fine. And I knew it could be better.

  “Unacceptable,” I said, turning away from the screen.

  “W...what?” she asked, shocked.

  “Send me today’s appointments; they’ll have to do for now. But for the rest, I want you to do it all again. Don’t simply use the templates; I could do that myself.”

  Ms. Kimble said nothing. Instead, she slowly turned the computer back towards herself.

  “Now, shall we?” I asked, picking up my suitcase and gesturing towards the door.

  10

  The next few days were an insane blur. Ever since that first morning, when Mr. Lane asked -no, told- me to redo the perfectly good work that I had done, he never seemed to let up. Nothing was good enough. Nothing seemed to please him. But I tried and tried anyway.

  I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I made sure all of Mr. Lane’s appointments were in order, and made sure that everything I sent to him was checked, double-checked, and checked again. I followed him like the shadow he asked me to be, paying close attention to his conversations and making everything of note spoken aloud was written down and input into his notes on the computer.