A graduate of Sinclair State University, a historically black college and university on the outskirts of Baltimore Maryland, she, like many of the friends she’d graduated with, had gone on to bigger and greater things. One of her former roommates, now a genuine Hollywood movie star, was recently spotted in Atlanta filming a new movie. If Cassandra Morrison, known to her fans as C-Mo, got an opportunity she would call for drinks or lunch. Jeffrí didn’t plan to hold her breath for that call or to hear from Trista Hathaway, whom she also attended college with and was the County Coroner for Macon. They, too, felt like shards from an old life that returned at night in mangled snapshots of horror stories during her attempts at sleeping.
There were so many friends who called to check on her after the life-altering incident in Mosul. She lied often when she held the phone, spouting off promises of calling them soon, or heading to New York, D.C., or San Diego, yet the farthest her travels these days took her was from the bedroom to the kitchen and then to the couch. It wasn’t as if she actually slept anymore, but rested her eyes periodically, trying to erase the nightmare of the whistling sound, bearing down overhead from the RPG and coming at the convoy. Each time she closed her eyes, the whistle, the detonation of the grenade followed by screams and loud bursts of fuel exploding in her ears, haunted her like ghosts of lovers’ past.
The accident in Mosul had occurred three years ago. In dog years, it felt like 28 birthdays had actually passed in her miniature Schnauzer of a life. Dating was not an option since she never slept, and the times in which she did were ended with her own screams and her thin body soaked in sweat. Today she had a job, a temporary position, writing obituaries for a newspaper and a man who looked at her like she was a Dagwood sandwich with extra spicy mustard. Truthfully, she liked it. Jeffrí also liked how he smelled. It felt good to be looked upon as a desirable woman versus one who required the pity of a man who offered a hump for the slump she’d entered into. The slump was over and she had a job. A temp job writing obituaries, but it was a paycheck.
“Okay, let’s see what we have here,” she said, thumbing through the stacks of paper. Jeffrí set to work, sorting through items that had long since passed the posting dates, but with no computer access, she couldn’t verify if the requests had actually been entered into the system. It took less than two hours to make headway with the papers, and she sorted the materials into four neat stacks: Past, Present, Future and Follow-Up.
“I see you’ve set to work,” the strong male voice said.
Jeffrí looked up to find Wyatt Miland standing in the doorway of the office, his hands jammed down into the pockets of the chino pants which showcased a perfect crease. At nearly six feet tall, her new boss was a good-looking man, slightly older than herself, bearded, a touch of gray in the edges of his hair and with interesting eyes.
“I tried to tidy up the desk a bit so I could make heads or tails from the papers scattered about,” she told him.
“Ben Richardson had an unorthodox method of dealing with incoming requests and loading it into the database,” Wyatt offered. “Somehow, or another, and I’m not quite sure of his methodology, but he managed to get it all done.”
Her eyes sparkled when she looked at him, making Wyatt blink twice, asking her to repeat the question. Jeffrí asked, “Ok, but what is it that Ben Richardson did here?”
“Ben maintained the online guest book and wrote obituaries for the Jane and John Does who come into the morgue,” Wyatt told her.
“I sure hope that doesn’t mean I have to visit the morgue,” she said, scowling with a sister girl expression on her face. He immediately noticed how cute her nose was as she challenged the status quo.
The button nose, absolutely adorable, crinkled against the ebony skin. The soft, reddish brown locs fell over her left eye and everything in him wanted to reach out and push the strand from her face. More than anything, he desired to touch the woman and hold her close. He shook the thought away, choosing to focus on the conversation at hand.
“On occasion, but the first two trips I will make with you,” he offered. “It’s not necessary for you to see the bodies, just go through the files to find any pertinent information or identifying marks that would help friends or family searching for their loved ones make a connection to get closure.”
She was on her feet, her eyes wide in a deep concern. Jeffrí tempered her voice when she asked, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Very,” he replied. “Ben did this job for 10 years.”
“Is Ben dead?”
Wyatt chuckled at the freshness of the lovely doll he watched on screen, actually come to life. She was even better in person. “It would be ironic that the first entry into the database you make would be for the man you were brought in to replace,” he said with a wry smile.
“Ironic and karmic,” she replied. “Did he retire?”
“No, he just decided he no longer wanted to do this job and posted a note on my door that served as his resignation,” Wyatt said. “The job can have many rewards as a journalist, but in the process, you become more of a historian, searching for the “rosebud” moment in a person’s life.”
“Citizen Kane would be so proud,” she said, looking at the stacks. “What if the lives they’ve led were simply ordinary or riddled with bad decisions?”
“Then we look for that window in their universe where the light shone brightly before the darkness entered their soul and took up residence.”
“You are almost romanticizing death,” Jeffrí countered. “I have seen it up close, and trust me, there is nothing romantic about leaving this world screaming in pain.”
“It is not the manner of death which we celebrate, but the manner of life up until that moment,” Wyatt told her. “Writing that a person was born on a certain day, married, had children, worked a job, and then perished is easy. Our challenge is to present the best in mankind, showing how the actions of one soul impacted the lives of others. The process can be cathartic and uplifting.”
“I was given this assignment by the temp agency because of my journalism background,” Jeffrí said.
“We are the better for your presence,” Wyatt said softly.
“Your words, although flattering, are falling on broken ears,” Jeffrí said. “I’ll do what I can for as long as the assignment holds out.”
“Or you can give me everything you have and make this your own,” Wyatt said, staring her directly in the face.
His words had double meaning, and she sat there uncertain of herself and his intentions, almost horrified that on her first day on the job her boss took the low road to hit on her. Jeffrí’s fingers went to the puckered skin on her cheek to touch the scar. The waffled pattern had emerged from the attempt at a skin graft, only to make the matter worse, with the addition of keloids around the wound. In Jeffrí’s eyes, the scar looked as if she’d been struck in the face with a metal meat tenderizer.
“The scar adds character to your face. It can also enrich the future words which you pen,” Wyatt said, moving closer to the desk. He leaned over the front of the wooden workspace, taking the pen she held loosely between her fingers. Scribbling on a piece of paper, he wrote the username and password for the computer. “Log in, take a look around, jot down any questions you have, and let’s pow wow at the end of the day.”
“You are placing a lot of trust in me,” Jeffrí said, logging in and gaining access to every file and folder on the server.
“Ms. Jones, you are an award-winning journalist,” Wyatt said. “A difficult moment on the job gave you a setback, but that doesn’t change who you are inside. The stories you wrote to explain to the world with moving visuals forming behind your head is no different than being on camera or painting a picture on paper. In this job, you paint the visual with words on paper.”
“A setback is the sweetest way I’ve heard to describe what happened to me,” she scowled at him.
“We all have setbacks and course corrections during our lives, Ms. Jones,
but it is how we handle them which makes us better for the effort,” he said with a flash of a smile that made her toes tingle.
“And your setback, Mr. Miland, since we are unequally yoked here in the knowledge department with the file you have on me versus the nothing, I know about you,” she said more flippantly than she intended.
Wyatt stood upright, turning on his heel to close the office door. His hands touched the fabric of his pants leg, raising the fabric up slightly, as he took a seat in the chair opposite her desk. He ran his fingers across the fine hairs of his beard, pulling his words together carefully.
“This conversation is not from boss to an employee or to a temp, but a conversation between Wyatt and Jeffrí, two former reporters,” he said. “Therefore, consider my words to be off the record, understood?”
“Understood,” she said, turning her body to face him and provide her undivided attention.
“After college I worked as a journalist for several large newspaper outlets and online media exchanges,” Wyatt said. “I have the awards and prestige to go with everything I am saying should you choose to look me up.”
“I’m more concerned about the point you are trying to make here, Mr. Miland,” Jeffrí said with a softness in her tone, as if to encourage a child to stop running with a pair of scissors. It was the same tone she used with world leaders, criminals and those unwilling to talk, which calmed the person in front of her and made them spill their guts. Her mother once said she had a way with people that put them at ease, making them want to tell her every secret in their life. Wyatt Miland would be not immune to her spell. She encouraged him to continue, questioning whether being an obits editor was his lifelong dream, if so, what was the final point on his road map of life.
“My point is that I put everything I had into my dream. One day I woke up and was 45 years old, partially gray, and single with no kids. My 4,000 square foot home was like a mausoleum filled with items I had collected to prove that my life had meaning and I mattered,” he said, crossing his legs.
“Therefore, your logical next steps were to connect and make more of you?” She asked in such a way that nearly made him bristle. The challenge in her eyes spurred him on as if she were daring him to be honest.
“Therefore, logically, I needed to get married and have a few kids,” Wyatt said. “I got married, but my wife’s idea of kids was in the form of cats. At least 20 of them, which were not all spayed or neutered, and those little bastards shit all over the place and scratched up my very expensive furniture.”
“And now you are here,” she said, with an air of breathiness which made her chest rise and fall. A gentle movement that he quickly noticed. Yet he was drawn back to her soulful brown eyes.
“I’m here and divorced, and my ex-wife’s best friend is the HR Manager. She placed you in this job to either drive me crazy, like my ex and those cats that now live with her are doing, or she placed you here to piss me off,” Wyatt said. “It won’t work, either way.”
“Mr. Miland, you have my undivided attention,” Jeffrí said, leaning forward on the desk, her eyes again issuing an ‘I dare you’ glare.
“Ms. Jones, we are relics of a system which is dying, but it doesn’t mean we have to fade into the background, hidden by instant streams of information and flashing colorful banners encouraging readers to ‘Click Here’ for immediate gratification. We do a public service, telling the stories of the everyday man and offering closure,” Wyatt said. “I take pride in my job and actually love what I do. This job gave me an opportunity to really matter to people who don’t even know my name. I know your name and you matter.”
The brown eyes twinkled again when she spoke, “Fair enough. So, you are saying I matter to you?”
“From the moment you walked through that door, you mattered to me,” he offered with a smile.
“Truthfully, Mr. Miland, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with this conversation,” she said. “There is a fine line between you saying that I’m interesting and have a potential home here and you coming across as possibly sexually harassing me.”
He held up his hands in surrender. A slight smile eked across his lips as he stared at the smooth skin, minus the jagged, ugly scar pickling the dermis on her cheek. The eyes that gazed back at him spoke of intelligence which sparked a jolt of electricity through his chest.
“No to the latter,” he said with a straight face.
“Why am I disappointed to hear that?” she asked, frowning with a tilt of her head, shocked by her own honesty with him.
“My job, as your boss, is to make you feel comfortable and hopefully willing to stay here once you are trained in the position,” Wyatt said.
“And your role as a recently divorced man?” she asked, arching one eyebrow and feeling playful in a situation that called for professionalism, but she liked the vibe about him and he smelled like a night a sheet clutching and heavy panting.
“That is neither here nor there, Ms. Jones,” Wyatt replied, also arching one eyebrow in return.
“Oh, but it is,” she said with a wicked smile. “We are here and there is the humming building between us. Plausibly, the ideal thing for me to do is finish the day and not come back tomorrow. Simply tell the agency that this is not a good fit for my night terrors and all, you know, the whole morgue thing.”
“If you did that, you’ll leave having learned nothing, having gained no understanding, and receiving no growth for the effort,” he said, intentionally not addressing the humming she too felt between them.
“But if I stay, Mr. Miland, at some point, that humming is going to get louder.”
“When the hum becomes intolerable for either of us, then we shall discuss ways to silence the whirr,” Wyatt responded.
“By giving you a hummer?” she asked with a cocky grin.
“Clever, Ms. Jones, very clever,” Wyatt said, getting to his feet. “There is work to be done, lives to recount, stories to discover. The work can be its own reward if you are willing to put in the sweat.”
“At this point in my life, Mr. Miland, I have nothing left to hold onto. This was my last grasp at tethering myself to this world without spiraling away.”
“Well, to be honest, I need time to assess your skills, so hang in there,” he said. Wyatt knew better than offer to have Jeffrí tether herself to him. Seven years with one crazy cat lady was enough to make him rethink throwing the buoy into the water. However, he could rescue the bobbing little boat and rub the head of the man in it.
The hum was moving to the front of his pants and this was his cue to exit the office before Jeffrí had a real complaint about him. A seasoned woman who’d traveled the world instead of a college kid fresh out of the classroom sat behind that desk. She excited him and stimulated him with her quick wit fueled by funny repartee.
She called him out on the obvious attraction. A woman who stated clearly her intention and her needs, which seem to overlap each other. Based on the conversation, she needed a job, which afforded her income and the use of a man wasn’t off the table. Wyatt hummed to himself as he made his way back to his office.
Chapter Three – I’ve Got the Bread
Excitement.
For the first time in nearly three years, she was excited to get up and prepare for the day. Nearly all the clothes in her closet lay flung haphazardly across the foot of her bed as she searched for the perfect outfit to wear to her new job writing about the dearly departed. The boss was cute, and he had noticed the vibration in the air between them. She wanted him to notice her cute bottom as well, but the outfit had to be chosen wisely. It would just be entirely too tacky to appear as if she’d put too much exertion in what she decided to wear.
The pink dress, cut low in the top, showed off just enough of the ebony colored cleavage to give the man an eyeful; however, it also showed off the tattoo which read “Death from Above,” a spur of the moment idea she’d gotten when jumping from a plane into Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Paratrooper Division out of Ft. Bragg, N
orth Carolina. Now it was a permanent image of a skull wearing an Army beret with a pair of wings coming out of its ears. It was too sheer to hide the skin branding even with a dark under slip which was too hot to wear on a humid day.
“No to the pink dress,” she said, changing for the fourth time.
Next, she tried the black pants with neat creases in the front, but when she looked at her butt in the mirror, her ass looked good enough to flick quarters off. Jerri faced front looking at her reflection, horrified by the giant camel toe imprinted in the fabric.
“Good grief. I want him to be interested, not offer the man a chance in stick his fingers in Pandora’s Box,” she said, quickly removing the pants and looking for a skirt. “Can’t go wrong with a skirt.”
The lavender flowers on the pale beige fabric took her back to earlier days when life was less complicated. Days of cropped tops, no bras, and freedom of movement as she floated effortlessly on words splashed onto paper describing instances of history being created or made in a world who only saw her as a reporter of facts—actualities created by politicians and people of fame who wanted to make a difference and people on the move who created change for others.
All change, she’d learned the hard way, wasn’t always good. Change brought upon those who didn’t desire for the world in which they lived to be altered or brought into the new millennia wasn’t good. Some of the changes in many of the cultures in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa were rallied against by men unwilling to raise their boots off the necks of young women, as if the ghost didn’t need to escape the machine and be set free. Today was her day to move forward and leave the nightmares behind by focusing on what had been placed in front of her.
“Wyatt Miland, this may not be fair, but whether you want it or not, you just became my tether,” she said, slipping into a silk blouse. She loved the blouse because when the room grew cool, her nips poked through the soft fabric like welcoming beacons.
Lunchtime Chronicles: A Yummy Sub Page 2
