“And you are?” I asked, inserting myself into her field of view.
“Meara,” she said.
“Meara,” I repeated. “That’s a unique name.”
She shrugged. “I never really thought about it.”
“I’m Sean.” I offered her my hand. “I’m one of the partners.”
“It’s good to meet you.” She stood up, instinctively recognizing my position.
“No need to stop what you’re doing,” I told her. “When did you start?”
“Yesterday.”
“I won’t ask you what you think,” I decided. “I’ll give you a few days to get your sea legs.”
“I like it,” she offered without hesitation.
“Good,” I replied. “What do you have on tap today?”
“Damien…Mr. Kovak…said that I should read the employee manual.”
I scoffed. It was busy work. The employee manual was best used on an as-needed basis, in my opinion. Having someone read it cover to cover was a waste of time. But I didn’t want to interfere with Damien’s instructions. Curious how she’d called him by his first name originally.
I saw myself out and went to knock on Damien’s door.
“Come in!” he barked.
I stepped inside and found Damien with two laptops on his desk. He alternated between them, typing something into one and then scrolling on the other. We didn’t have an IT department yet; our firm was too new. I could see that was something we needed and that as soon as the next quarter’s earnings were in, I decided we should look into hiring someone.
“How’d things go yesterday?” I asked.
“Fine,” he snapped.
Something was definitely up. Both Damien and Kent seemed on edge. I wandered back to my office deep in thought. The tension in the air wasn’t good. I was sure that clients would pick up on it and want to know what was going on just as much as I did.
I sent a message out on the project management software that we should meet in the conference room in three hours. That gave everyone enough time to finish up what they were doing and to let me know if they had any conflicts. I didn’t get a response from Sean, but Damien approved the meeting.
It was approaching nine by the time I really got down to work. The day trading started, and I opened up the market ticker on my desktop. It was always good to pay attention to what was going on. I didn’t want to be surprised by any sudden upticks or downturns.
I called the nursing facility to ask about my dad. They said everything was okay and that he hadn’t given them any more trouble. I wondered what I would be like forty or fifty years down the road. Would I be paranoid about socks and medicine? Would I accept the falsehood that the doctors were feeding me Viagra?
Chuckling to myself, I hung up the phone. I saw two clients before the meeting in the conference room. One of them was a piece of cake while the other one required a little bit more finesse.
I checked in with the receptionist to let her know that we were all going into a meeting. I could have sent an email or just tagged her on the software platform. She was on top of it and could probably already see that I had reserved the room. Since she was right down the hall, it was just as easy to pop by to let her know what we were up to.
“Very good sir,” she responded.
She was typing something, and I guessed it was an email. A lot of the regular correspondence went out through her. She was in charge of making sure the clients were booked for their annual visits and fielded all the questions that didn’t need a partner to answer.
In the conference room, I found Damien waiting for me.
“Where’s Kent?” I demanded.
Damien shrugged as if he could care less. I was about to go find the guy when he barged in, looking like he had more important things to do. I wanted to air whatever grievances there were and get back to business as usual.
“What the fuck?” I opened.