"You don't have to pay dues," Jack protested. "You ought to get something for being a Travis."
"Being a Travis means I should pay extra dues," I said.
He looked at me and shook his head, and mumbled something about liberal Yankee shit.
I smiled at him. "You know it makes the most sense. And it's only fair to give the manager's job to someone who's really earned it."
"This is business," Jack said. "Fairness doesn't have crap to do with it."
But he relented eventually, and said far be it from him to keep me from starting at the bottom, if that was what I really wanted.
"Hack it all off," I told Liberty, sitting in her bathroom, draped in plastic. "I'm so sick of all this hair, it's hot and tangly and I never know what to do with it."
I wanted a new look to go with my new job. And as a former hairstylist, Liberty knew what she was doing. I figured anything she did to me was bound to be an improvement.
"Maybe we should go in stages," Liberty said. "It may be a shock if I take too much off at once."
"No, you can't donate it if it's less than ten inches long. Just go for it." We were going to give the foot-long rope of hair to the Locks of Love program, which made wigs for children who suffered from medical hair loss.
Liberty combed my hair deftly. "It's going to release some curl once I shorten it," she said. "All this weight is dragging your hair down."
She plaited it and sawed the entire length off at the nape. I held the braid while Liberty brought a Ziploc bag, and I dropped it inside the plastic pouch and sealed it with a kiss. "Good luck to whoever wears it next," I said.
Liberty spritzed my hair with water and moved all around my head with a straight razor, slicing off angled pieces until there were heaps of hair on the floor. "Don't be nervous," she said as she caught me examining a lock that had fallen onto my plastic-covered lap. "You're going to look great."
"I'm not nervous," I said truthfully. I didn't care how I looked, as long as it was different.
She blow-dried my hair using a round brush, ran her fingers through it to make it piecey, and beamed in satisfaction. "Take a look."
I stood and got a mild shock — a nice one — at my reflection. Liberty had given me long bangs that swept across my forehead, and a short layered bob, the feathered ends turning up gently. I looked stylish. Confident. "It's flippy," I said playing with the layers.
"You can turn the ends under or out," she said, smiling. "Do you like it?"
"I love it."
Liberty turned me around so we could both see the cut in the mirror. "It's sexy," she said.
"You think so? I hope not."
She smiled at me quizzically. "Yes, I do think so. Why don't you want to look sexy?"
"False advertising," I said.
The manager that Jack brought over from the other office was named Vanessa Flint. She was one of those highly groomed and put-together women who had probably looked thirty-five when she was twenty-five, and would still look thirty-five even when she was fifty-five. Although she was only medium height, her slimness and good posture fooled you into thinking she was a lot taller. Her face was fine-boned and serene beneath a sweep of ash-blond hair. I admired the composure she wore like a high-buttoned blouse.
There wasn't much substance to her voice, which was crisp and soft, like ice wrapped in velvet. But somehow it forced you to pay more attention, as if you shared in the responsibility of Vanessa making herself understood.
I liked her at first. At least, I wanted to like her. Vanessa was friendly, sympathetic, and when we went out for drinks after our first day at work, I found myself confiding more about my failed marriage and divorce than I should have. But Vanessa had recently been divorced too, and there seemed to be enough similarities between our two exes that it was a pleasure to compare notes.
Vanessa was frank about her concern over my relationship with Jack, and I appreciated her honesty. I reassured her that I had no intention of coasting by, or running to Jack just because he was my brother. Just the opposite, in fact. I was going to work a lot harder, because I had something to prove. She seemed satisfied by my earnest declarations, and said she thought we would work well together.
Vanessa and I were both given apartments at 1800 Main. I felt a little guilty about it, knowing that no other manager's assistant would have gotten an apartment, but it was the one concession I'd made to Jack. He had insisted on it, and the truth was, I liked the security of living so close to my brother.
The other employees lived off-site and came in each day, including a petite blond office manager named Kimmie; the leasing agent, Samantha Jenkins; the marketing agent, Phil Bunting; and Rob Ryan in accounting. We contacted Jack's commercial office whenever there was a need for legal resources, tech questions, or something we weren't equipped to handle on our own.
It seemed that everyone who worked for Jack at the commercial office had acquired his personal style . . . everyone was relaxed and almost jovial, in comparison to our office. Vanessa ran a tighter ship, which meant no casual-dress Fridays, and a "zero error tolerance" policy that was never exactly spelled out. However, everyone seemed to regard her as a good boss, tough but fair-minded. I was ready to learn from her, follow her example. I thought she was going to be a great new influence in my life.
But in a matter of days, I realized I was being gaslighted.
I was familiar with the tactic, since Nick had done if a lot. A bully or someone with personality disorder needs to keep their victims confused, off balance, perpetually unsure of themselves. That way he or she could manipulate you more easily. Gaslighting could be anything that made you doubt yourself. For example, a bully would make a statement about something, and when you'd agree with it, he'd disagree with his own original statement. Or he'd make you think you'd lost something when you hadn't, or accuse you of forgetting something when he'd never asked you to do it in the first place.
What worried me was that I seemed to be Vanessa's only target. No one else seemed to be having a problem with her.
She would misplace a file and tell me to get it for her, turning up the tension until I was scrambling to find it. If I couldn't come up with it, she accused me of hiding the file somewhere. And then the file would turn up in some weird place, like beneath a plant on top of a cabinet, or wedged between the printer cart and her desk. She gave people the impression that I was scatterbrained and disorganized. And I had no proof of her mischief-making. The only thing that kept me from doubting myself was my own shaky sense of sanity.
There was no predicting Vanessa's moods or requests. I learned to save everything, after she asked me to write three different drafts of a letter and then decided on the first version after I'd deleted it. She would tell me to be at a meeting at one-thirty, and when I arrived, I was a half hour late. And she swore she'd told me one o'clock. She said I must not have paid attention.
Vanessa let it drop to me that she'd had an assistant named Helen for years, and she would have brought Helen with her to the new job, except that I'd already been given the position. It hadn't occurred to me that I would have broken up a long-running professional partnership, and robbed someone of a position they deserved. When Vanessa had me call Helen, who was still at the old office, to find out the name and number of Vanessa's favorite manicurist, I took the opportunity to apologize to Helen.
"God, don't be sorry," Helen said. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."
I wanted to quit right then. But I was stuck, and Vanessa and I both knew it. With my skimpy resume, I couldn't quit a job right after starting one. And I didn't know how long it would take me to find something else. Complaining about Vanessa was out of the question — it would make me look like a prima donna, or paranoid, or both. So I decided I would stick it out for a year. I would make some contacts and dig my own way out.
"Why me?" I asked my therapist, Susan, after describing the situation with Vanessa. "She could focus on anyone in that office as a target. Do I give off 'victim' signals or something? Do I seem weak?"
"I don't believe so," Susan said gravely. "In fact, it's most likely that Vanessa sees you as a threat. Someone she has to subdue and neutralize."
"Me, a threat?" I shook my head. "Not to someone like Vanessa. She's confident and put-together. She's — "
"Confident people aren't bullies. I'll bet Vanessa's apparent confidence is really nothing but a front. A false self she's constructed to cover her deficiencies." Susan smiled at my skeptical expression. "And yes, you could be a big threat to an insecure person. You're bright, educated, pretty . . . and there's the little matter of your last name. Conquering someone like you would be a big bolster to Vanessa's sense of superiority."
My first Friday after starting at Travis Management Solutions, Jack came to my cubicle carrying a large shopping bag tied with a bow. "Here," he said, handing it to me over a mountain of paper on my desk. "A little something to celebrate your first week."
I opened the shopping bag and unearthed a briefcase made of chocolate-colored leather. "Jack, it's beautiful. Thank you."
"You're coming out with me and Heidi tonight," he informed me. "That's the other part of the celebration."
Heidi was one of a virtual harem of women that Jack dated interchangeably. Since he was so open about not wanting to be tied down, none of them seemed to expect any form of commitment from him.
"I don't want to be a third wheel on your date," I protested.
"You won't bother us," he said. "And you're not even a full-sized wheel. More like a training wheel."
I rolled my eyes, having already accepted a long time ago that being the target of short jokes from my towering brothers was an inescapable fact of life. "I'm tired," I said. "Trust me, I'm not up to partying with you and Heidi. One drink and I'll probably pass out."
"Then I'll put you into a cab and send you home." Jack gave me an inexorable look. "I'll haul you out of here if I have to, Haven. I mean it."
Even though I knew he would never use force on me, I felt myself blanch, and I went stiff in my chair. Don't touch me, I wanted to say, but the words were locked behind my teeth, thrashing like caged wild birds.
Jack blinked in surprise, staring at me. "Hey . . . I was just kidding, honey. For God's sake, don't look at me like that. It makes me feel as guilty as shit, and I don't even know why."
I forced myself to smile and relax. "Sorry. Bad memory." I reflected that Nick wouldn't have wanted me to go out tonight, having fun, meeting people. He would have wanted me to stay at home, isolated. Just for that, I decided, I would go out to spite him.
"Okay," I heard myself say. "Maybe for a little while. Is what I'm wearing all right?" I was dressed in a black turtleneck and a simple skirt and pumps.
"Sure. It's just a casual bar."
"It's not a meeting-people type of bar?"
"No. This is an after-work bar where you get a drink to unwind. After that, you leave for the meeting-people type of bar. And if you pick up someone good there, you go to a nice, quiet gonna-get-laid bar, and if that works out, you take her home with you."
"That sounds like a lot of work," I said.
Vanessa came to the opening of the cubicle, slim and sleek and poised. "What fun," she said, her gaze moving from Jack to the present on the desk. She confused me with a warm smile. "Well, I guess you deserve a reward, Haven . . . you did a great job this week."
"Thanks." I was surprised and gratified that she would praise me in front of my brother.
"Of course," she added, still smiling, "we'll have to work on using your time more productively." She winked at Jack. "Someone likes to e-mail friends when she should be working."
That wasn't true — I was outraged — but I couldn't argue with her in front of Jack. "I don't know how you got that idea," I said mildly.
Vanessa gave a gentle laugh "I noticed the way you click on the minimizer whenever I walk by." She turned to Jack. "Did I hear you say you two were going out?"
My heart sank as I realized she wanted to be invited along. "Yeah," Jack said easily. "We need a little family time together."
"That's nice. Well, I'll be home, resting up and getting ready for next week." She gave me a wink. "Don't be too much of a party girl, Haven. I'll need you to get up to full speed by Monday."
Implying, I thought darkly, that I hadn't been at full speed so far. "Have a nice weekend," I said, and closed my laptop.
Jack had been right — it was a fairly casual bar, even if the parking lot did look like an impromptu luxury-car show. The interior was trendy, unromantic, and crowded, with dark paneling and low lighting. I liked Jack's girlfriend Heidi, who was bubbly and giggly.
It was one of those winter evenings when the Houston weather couldn't make up its mind about what it wanted to do. It rained on and off for a while, a few sideways gusts hitting us beneath the shelter of an umbrella as Jack guided us inside. I gathered Jack was a regular at this place — he appeared to know the bouncer, two of the bartenders, a couple of waitresses, and pretty much everyone who passed by our small table. In fact, Heidi seemed to know everyone too. I was introduced to a steady parade of overworked Houstonites who were all desperate for their first Friday-evening cocktails.
A couple of times Heidi nudged me under the table when a nice-looking guy had stopped by. "He's cute, isn't he? I know him — I could fix you up. And that one over there — he's cute too. Which one do you like better?"
"Thank you," I said, appreciating her efforts, "but I'm still not over the divorce."
"Oh, you've got to get a rebound guy," Heidi said, "Rebound guys are the best." "They are?"
"They never even think of getting serious, because everyone knows you don't jump into a relationship right after a divorce. They just want to be your welcome wagon when you start ha**ng s*x again. It's your time to experiment, girl!"
"The world is my petri dish," I said, raising my drink.
After slowly drinking one and a half vodka martinis, I was ready to go home. The bar was getting more crowded, and the groups of bodies moving by our table reminded me of upstreaming salmon. I looked at Jack and Heidi, who appeared in no hurry to go anywhere, and I felt the kind of loneliness that can happen in a roomful of people when everyone but you seems to be in on the good time.