Someone needed to right this ship. The enterprise that bore my name was now a bloated, sagging mess, licensing to cheap mills using sweatshop labor. Kingsley sheets, Kingsley tents, Kingsley dog collars: my name was everywhere but my influence was nowhere. It was time to return to the real work of designing quality clothes. I needed to stop licking my wounds and regain control of the people now staring up at me. I needed to get to work.
And that meant they were going to start working too. None of this standing idly and staring at me nonsense.
"When you get out, I want you to tell them to get back to work. No parties, no gladhanding, none of that bullshit. I'm their employer, not a goddamned rock star."
"Yes sir." Only the slight upward tilt of Dalton's bushy eyebrows betrayed his surprise at my vehemence. I paid him good money to put up with me.
I'm pretty damn terrible to put up with…
We only bounced once upon landing. The pilot cut the engine and the sudden silence was almost as deafening as the roar of the rotors had been moments prior. Dalton jumped agilely from his door. His grace always took me by surprise. For such a big man he moved with the innate fluidity of a former athlete. That was something he hadn't lost, even as age stole his hair and his waistline.
I saw him waving his big arms over his head. It looked like he was scattering a gaggle of geese. Several aggrieved faces greeted me, but I didn't care. I wasn't paying them to gawk at me. Soul-sucking yes men, every one of them. Even the ones I didn't recognize.
I tried to twist my wedding ring again. Dammit.
When news of Dana's infidelity had broken, my so-called handlers had seen fit to keep it from me until I was the last one to know that my wife had been caught with her tennis instructor. I had to find out from goddamn WWD magazine.
It was humiliating.
Solitude had been my friend. Holing myself up in my rambling 17th-century cottage had allowed me time to refresh and regroup. I thought I had had enough of being alone. Clearly I had been mistaken.
I needed a goddamned cup of coffee.
Once the crowd dispersed, I slipped down from my seat on to the baking heat of the rooftop and fairly sprinted to the door. The pilot lifted off again, the backwash hitting me square in the back and rippling my dress shirt. It was so hot in this city. How had I forgotten that?
One floor down from the roof was my office. I had the architect build me a glass-walled crow's nest so that I could look out over the open expanse of the office space below. I loved it up here. I could see everything but no one could see me unless I sent for them. It made me feel like I was in my boyhood treehouse.
My office was exactly how I left it; right down to my favorite chipped mug perched precariously at the corner of my desk. Someone had at least washed and rinsed it in my absence.
"Okay Dalton, three things." I didn't need to turn to know that Dalton was right there at my side.
Dalton immediately whipped out the tiny notebook that he always carried. He poised himself with pen at the ready and nodded his head. I strode to the window and crossed my hands behind me as I looked out into the tumult below. Disappointed employees were dispersing from the elevators and returning to their desks all clumped together in gossipy little groups. Didn't these people ever do any work?
I took a deep breath. "First, I need a cup of coffee. Second, I need Annette to bring me up to speed with the office politics crap. Third, I need a meeting with the heads of each department."
Dalton looked stricken for a moment.
"What?"
"Sir, I must inform you that Annette was let go from the company."
I felt my jaw drop. "What? I thundered. "Who the hell had the nerve to fire my personal secretary?"
Dalton ran his head over his bald spot nervously. "Well sir, I guess that would most likely be me."
"You?!"
My assistant flushed from his neck all the way up to his shining bald head. "I didn't want to bother you with city drama. You told me so yourself. You said 'Dalton, I don't want to hear about all that petty bull shit, I just want to design.'"
My indignation softened slightly. "Okay so I did say that, that's true. But what the heck does Annette have to do with petty office drama?"
"Well sir, it seems she was caught using your personal apartment for her own… ah… personal uses."
"What?! Annette? Are you sure?"
Dalton nodded with his lips pressed together. I could tell he was unwilling to cast aspersions on a woman's good name. He always was the soul of discretion.
But I wasn't. "You're telling me that my fifty-three year old, married secretary was having illicit sex in my personal apartment?"
Dalton flushed even brighter red. "It really was quite the scandal. We had to let her go of course. It's up to you whether or not you want to press charges, sir."
I waved my hands irritably. I was having a hard time getting the image of my mousy secretary getting caught in flagrante delicto out of my head. It was a disturbing image.
"No, I don't ever want to think about that again, Dalton. But now what the hell am I supposed to do without a secretary?"
"Well sir, we can start looking for candidates immediately."
"I don't have time to look for candidates, I need someone today."
"I could to try to do my best, sir?" Dalton offered
I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Dalton, you're one hell of a good assistant, but your eye for design is complete shit and you know it."
Dalton grinned ruefully. "Fair enough sir, I'll see if we can pull someone from the floor."
"Yes, yes go do that." I agreed and turned back to the window.
I heard him huffing quickly out the door. Dalton was going to find someone and that meant I could relax slightly. I trusted the man.
"Why am I back again?" I asked my empty office.
It was a rhetorical question of course. Work was all I knew how to do, work was what I was good at. I was here to work and drown out the pains of heartbreak that still tugged at me whenever I felt the nakedness on my ring finger.
Nakia
¤ ¤ ¤
The stack of magazines teetered dangerously. I had to shoot my hands up quickly to steady them before they toppled to the floor in an a
valanche of paper.
I felt like I had been standing in this corner my entire life. The excitement this morning seemed to have died down quickly. Mr. Kingsley had ignored everyone who had run upstairs to greet him and made a beeline to his office, leaving a trail of disappointed employees in his path. Dejectedly, they had wandered back down the roof and settled down in the main office area in clumps of twos and threes. Their voices buzzed quietly about his return, leaving me out entirely.
No one had come to see about me starting my first day. Even August had disappeared into a knot of worried looking people milling by the break room.
I checked the clock again. Only one hour had crawled by since I arrived. Being ignored makes time go by very, very slowly.