The Kissing Game (12 page)

Wasting no time, I lift my leg over the balcony
and the wood creaks. Only a one story jump, onto grass. How bad can it be? For
a second, I remember breaking my arm when I was ten, the sound of the snap, the
misshapen limb. Regardless, I clamber over the railing, tilt off the edge and
crouch down, one hand holding the envelope, the other holding the railing. Let
go, I tell myself, but my hand won’t let go.

And then I just do. As I land on my crouched feet
and then roll, the pummeling hurts my chest, and the ground nocks the wind out
of me. Coming to a stop on the tiny hill, I realize the envelope has fallen out
of my hands. My eyes search the darkness and spot it crumpled up, lying in the
grass, about ten feet away. Above the envelope, flashlights move through the
atrium, shining through the balcony door I’ve just exited from. Two shapes move
in the dark.

On my knees, I scurry toward the bushes, where
I crouch behind a thick evergreen and hold my breath, tell myself not to move.
Being caught means moving my body and moving my body means being caught, so I
become one with the evergreen, like Buddha or Gandhi or Luke Skywalker, the
bristly leaves on my face. With an evergreen sprout tickling my nostril, I
contemplate all the ridiculous excuses I could use to explain my presence here
at the Chairman’s house. But my mind just spins and feels as if it might
implode.

 “Damn alarms. What do you think made it go
off?” a male voice asks.

“Got me. The wind might have blown open the
back door,” a woman answers.

“I tell you what, if I have to be sent to one
more mansion to lock a back door for some rich asshole, I’m gonna leave San
Francisco and take a job with my brother finishing floors in Florida,” the guy
says.

I breathe in the intense smell of evergreen
while the light of the flashlight passes through the bush. I’m as still as a
flagpole on a breezeless day.

“Hey, what’s that?” the woman asks, and suddenly,
I have a terrible urge to pee.

“What?” the guy answers.

I close my eyes tightly and pray. Dear god,
dear god, dear god. That’s all. Just dear god.

“That envelope on the grass.”

“Hell if I know,” the guy grumbles.

“Go down there and get it,” the woman orders
him.

“Jesus. Fine.” 

I hear stomping through the house that
dissipates, then the sound of a sliding glass door opening, and the sound of
paper in someone’s hand.

“Now can we get out of here?” the guy asks.
“I’m so hungry I could eat this paper.”

“Why don’t get something here?” the woman
grumbles.

I hear the door close and their voices
disappear.

For years, decades, millennia, I stand there
breathing in the scent of evergreen, an entire sapling nearly lodged in my
nose, my pulse calming its lunacy, until I’m a thousand percent certain I’m
alone in the backyard. Warily, I peek around the bush, hugging it as I do. The
grassy space is empty, the envelope gone, and the house looks like black
reflective glass, the moon a silver ball on its surface. The great burden I
feel from not finding the envelope still lying on the grass makes me
contemplate another go inside the house, but a logical voice mounts in my
brain, and I decide my heart might not endure another attempt. Looking behind
me, I spot a gate and work my way through the bushes toward it. When I open it,
I find an empty alleyway, only a few recycle bins and trash cans lined for
pickup. Down the back alley, I run. I run down the street. I run all the way to
Henry’s car.

.

“Donde las dan, las toman.”

What goes around, comes around.

The following morning, Robert and I sit side by
side in the Chairman’s office, each in our own chairs, the man across from us
holding our lives in his hands. By the time I arrived at the office, I had only
enough time to put my bag down before the Chairman summoned us over the phone.

As he sits next to me, Robert seems to suspect
nothing other than a standard meeting during which the Chairman will give us a
new case. Standard procedure. Nothing out of the ordinary. Robert’s expression
suggests he’s as interested in this meeting as he is in standing in line at the
DMV. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen, obviously. He turns his bored eyes
at me, and for a second they brighten with some sentiment. I wonder what he’s
thinking and what he thinks I’m thinking. And the thoughts swirl like a horde
from hell inside my brain, yammering and screeching and clothed in smoke.

“Bacon avocado on toasted white,” the Chairman
says into the phone.

Robert then glances down at my empty hands and
scowls slightly, no doubt thinking I should’ve brought a notepad. But who needs
a notepad now? Bringing one along would’ve been just a unfitting formality. It
would be like bringing a parachute on a sinking ship, a clarinet to a shootout,
a snakebite kit to a blazing inferno. Utterly useless. I know what’s going to
happen, and I won’t need a notepad for it. The whole event will unravel while I
sit here, motionless, my capillaries exploding. Looking at the books on the
shelves, I notice one entitled
Morality of Law,
and think about how the
word
morality
is so close to
mortality.

Around us, the Chairman’s office looks the size
of three of Robert’s. I’ve never seen the inside of it before, only walked past
it the way commoners walk outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. The room is
an explosion of glossy wood and books and smells like rare things. I suspect
the wood comes from rare trees in a rainforest in some exotic corner of the
world, where no doubt several species of insects and animals became extinct so
that the Chairman’s office could look nice.

I’m hoping that he spends all day on the phone specifying
what kind of salad he wants on the side of his bacon avocado sandwich because I
haven’t quite figured out how to hold onto the massive cliff I’m about to fall
off.

Morality, mortality.

The partner hangs up the phone. He leans over
his desk and puckers his lips but then returns them their natural state. I
wonder what irrevocable things are about to spout from his face. He’s wearing a
burgundy colored suit that gives him the appearance of rust. Parted as far on
the side as gravity will allow, his grey hair forms a thin frail carpet over
his shiny bald head, where freckles try to hide on his scalp.  

“It pains me to have this conversation with you
two,” the Chairman begins. “Especially since you two would be the last people I
might expect this from. Shocking, just shocking.” He shakes his head as if to
say
naughty naughty, tsk tsk.
Everything he says carries with it a tone
of self aggrandizement, as though he practices in front of the mirror each
morning.

A motionless statue, I watch as he slides the
familiar-looking flash drive into his laptop. I know what’s about to happen. I
know what my flash drive looks like, but still I pray for a miracle and have
the urge to lunge across his desk and yank it out of his computer, shove it
into my mouth, and swallow it. But he’s already seen the tape, obviously. Instead,
I listen as the computer wheezes in a deep breath while I contain the sensation
ascending in my ruined stomach.

The Chairman then swivels his laptop around so
that it faces us like a television. On the screen, Robert and I are kissing in
the elevator, the image a wicked guest in the room. The sounds are so intimate
that they aren’t really sounds at all, just hints of breathing and lips. While
the video plays, Robert doesn’t move beside me. I hear nothing from his seat. Out
of the corner of my eye, I see the ball of his thumb slide tightly across the
armrest. Behind the computer, the partner puckers his lips again. The video is
only seconds but feels like ten minutes. Then it’s over.

After the video ends, he closes his laptop, and
Robert and I are suddenly two detainees. The silence becomes electric static in
the room.

“Now, Robert, you’re aware of our firm’s
policies, so I needn’t say any more to you than to notify you that there’ll be
a meeting with the other partners tonight.” He then turns to me, his grey-blue
eyes condescending. He tilts his head. “And you, Caroline, you’re being
transferred. Henry’s working on the task now. You’ll no longer be working for
Robert. You’ll be assigned to another attorney until a suitable position can be
found for you.” He glances at both Robert and me, two hormonal twits who
couldn’t follow a simple rule.

“You should know I don’t revel in these
conversations with staff, but it’s vital you understand, Caroline, we frown on
this activity between partners and employees. While the burden of responsibility
falls on our partners,” he gestures at Robert, “who understand the firm
policies and agree to them, we believe staff must also observe the rule of professional
interaction, which is always the best policy.” The Chairman pauses to tap his pen
on his desk. Next, he scowls.

“What concerns me is the method of delivery,
however.” A pause. “Do you two have any idea how this flash drive arrived at my
house, in my back yard?” 

If there were a button that if pressed would
result in my being sucked into a black hole and spaghettified, I would press
it. Instead, I shake my head and turn to Robert, who now has small ropes of
tension forming in his neck.

“Can’t say I do,” Robert states, his voice
crimson. The sound reminds me of a dark road where travelers get killed and
buried in shallow graves.

“If you suspect anyone, Robert, I’d certainly
like you to tell me. The matter is disconcerting, to say the least.”

The smell of expensive wood in this office is suddenly
making me queasy and being queasy is making my forehead sweat and being sweaty
and queasy is making me feel the need to lie down. 

“Well,” the Chairman continues, “do either of
you have anything to say on the matter? Would you be inclined to state the
nature of your relationship?”

I shake my head and notice Robert’s knuckles
whiten on the chair. “No.”

“That’s it for now, then. Caroline, you can collect
your things and report to Henry who’ll give you the location of your new desk. It’ll
be temporary until we can figure out which attorney to assign you to. Robert,
I’d prefer if you’d stay in here with me a little longer. We’ll need to discuss
a few matters of importance,” the Chairman adds.

I rise, shifting my eyes to catch Robert’s but
he looks straight ahead, his knuckles shaped around the armrests, his jaw
looking ready to bite something. I walk behind him, past the wood-paneled
walls, where I see my own shadow. I’m the mutinous evildoer--it’s written in
the shape. It’s written in my own stupidity, which seems to have been
preordained from ancient times, before lawyers and assistants existed, before
there were suns or moons or jobs, before dinosaurs and Chairmans. As I walk
behind Robert, I have the urge to bend down and whisper, “
It’s not what you
think
.” But it
is
exactly what Robert thinks. I
am
the
abhorrence, the sin scribbled in the ledger. I have fanned the coals of my own
hatred for him for so long that it now totters and moans, lists to one side,
and exhausts itself into a shapeless heap.

Closing the office door behind me, I feel the gust
of circulated air from the hallway hitting the perspiration on my forehead. I
hear the click of the office door and the murmur as the Chairman speaks. I take
several steps over to Henry’s cubicle, where I grab a chair from a nearby empty
desk, wheel it over to Henry, and sit down to put my face in my hands.

“Be cool, be cool,” Henry tells me in a jazzy
whisper without looking at me. He’s wearing his typical brown plaid sweater
vest over a white shirt and blue dress pants. He’s scribbling on a piece of
paper. “You’ll be sitting in for Marjorie who works for Sara Denton. Two floors
up. You’ll be filling in for her assistant who is in Hawaii on vacation.” He
hands me the piece of paper. “You’re not to speak to Robert at all.” Then he
whispers, “But everyone loves you, my dear, so your job is secure. Now go
scurry back to your desk and get your things. Hurry, before Robert comes out.”

“But, Henry, I need to talk with you and the
boys at lunch. Can we meet in the empty office on the 23
^rd
floor?” I
whisper.

“Yeah, sure, but be calm. Everything is coolio.
Robert’s out. You’re in. It’s all fine. Exactly as planned.”

Picking myself up, I clutch the slip of paper
and try to muzzle the tears that want to snake out of my eyes while I glide the
brightly lit hallways towards my desk, moving around the corners and stopping
only to grab my backpack from my desk drawer. Todd is talking on the phone, but
he winks knowingly at me. It feels as if I’ve killed a village of children and
now the town is congratulating me.

Instead of taking the elevators, I swing open
the door to the stairs. Climbing the steps, the loud clomps of my footsteps
throttle my ears. When I find Marjorie’s cubicle, I take a look around and my
new temporary station. It’s a foreign country on this floor of the firm. The
lighting is dimmer, the view out the windows is west instead of east, tall
buildings rather than water. All the assistants sitting at their cubicles are
Czechoslovakians to me. I plop down at the desk and notice the light indicating
that Sara Denton is on the phone. I turn on the computer and login, using my
typical user name and password. This computer wheezes and hums a mottled sound.
Immediately, I check my email, but there’s nothing new. Around me, I hear the
clacking sound of typing, the murmuring of conversations behind closed doors. I
begin drafting an email to Robert.

Robert,

Did you ever do anything you regretted before? Did
you ever look in the mirror and just hate yourself?  

I groan and delete the email. For a while I sit
there just looking at the blinking cursor as if it might type a message all by
itself, as if it could take the words out of my head and form them on the page.
If only that were possible. Imagine all the great love stories that could be
written. The lump in my throat feels like dough. For nearly two hours, I sit
there while Sara Denton talks on conference call after conference call. Meanwhile,
I reorganize Marjorie’s desk, sharpen her pencils, dust the photo of her cocker
spaniel, try to look busy, but all the while I’m thinking about only one thing.

As soon as the time on the computer clock reads
noon, I log out and head to the 23
^rd
floor, on the south side of the
building, where a small office sits vacant. Bursting in, I find Henry and Cory
sitting holding sandwiches like microphones. Cory’s leaning back in his chair
chewing on his mozzarella pesto from the downstairs food court, while Henry smells
like he’s eating a tuna salad sandwich from home.

“Well, if it isn’t the vixen of the hour. Come
in, shut the door, you little slut. Did you get some lunch?” Henry asks me, the
look of twisted glee on his face.

“No, I can’t eat,” I confess, closing the door
behind me. Food sounds atrocious right now. I sit down next to Cory. “Where’s
Todd?” I ask.

“He’s getting lunch,” Cory replies. His tie-dye
of choice is blue and purple today. The benefit of working in the tech
department is that nobody sees him. “So how’re you doing? You’re the hero of
the hour, you know. I have to tell you. The staff is already discussing
erecting a statue in your honor. They’re going to call it the
Red Widow
,
as in the black widow, only with red hair. You’ll be depicted on a horse, like
Joan of Arc, with your cloak flailing behind you. Maxine has already drawn a
mock-up in marketing!” he laughs.

I don’t laugh. I feel the gargantuan tragedy of
my situation as I glance past Cory toward the view of the freeway leading to
the Bay Bridge, a peek of the bay’s icy waters in between sky scrapers. The
office is so tiny that the room barely holds the three of us around the small
desk. Bookshelves behind us sit empty. Without the overhead light on, the room
has only the dim light from the floor-to-ceiling tinted glass window, giving
the space a cave-like quality.

Cory studies me. “Take a deep breath,” he says.

“Yeah, it’ll all be over soon,” Henry adds.
“There’s a partner meeting tonight. Robert’s out for sure. Robert’s pissed off
enough of them to guarantee his ousting. They were in there yelling for two
hours.”

“Oh god,” I say. “This is awful.”

“Yeah? What’s with the big change of heart,
anyway?” Cory asks.

“I’ve made a huge mistake, you guys. Huge. And
another thing, I’m pretty sure that I was the one who drank the Xanax that
night, not Robert. On accident, of course. I must have drunk from the wrong
glass,” I confess.

Cory opens his mouth like a fish, and Henry
stops chewing.