SEAN
I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Meara was just a regular intern, yet she seemed to have both Damien and Kent tied in knots. She and Damien would disappear into his office for hours at a time, and while I didn’t think they were actually having sex in there, I had to wonder why the door was always closed.
We all keep our doors closed,I reminded myself. Yet I didn’t close doors when I had a hot little intern all to myself. In that case, the door should remain open so that the rest of the office could serve as chaperone. That was how I figured it should go down, but nobody asked me. Instead, near the end of every day, Meara and Damien sequestered themselves in Damien’s office.
The other intern, Sam, worked with all three of us. We were showing her the ropes and hopefully giving her some value outside of the meager paycheck we were offering. Ostensibly, that’s what Damien was doing on those long afternoon chats, but I had no way of knowing.
I chalked it up to general horniness until I had a chance to talk to Meara personally. I found her at the reception desk randomly, the headset on, talking to a client. Waiting until she finished with the call, I inquired about the receptionist.
"She went to lunch," Meara said easily. I checked my watch. It was lunchtime. Usually when the receptionist was off, we let calls go to voicemail. I said that, and Meara shrugged. “She said she was waiting for an important call but she didn’t want to miss her break. I volunteered to pay attention.”
I considered the initiative and nodded. She had a bright future ahead of her if she was able to step up and fill in at a moment’s notice. After that, I paid more attention, and each little detail that was revealed to me added to her overall appeal.
To begin with, she was hot. She dressed professionally but in tiny pencil skirts that showed off the curves of her body. The other intern was hot too, but Meara was nice. The word seemed a little too bland to describe the lengths to which Meara would go to make people happy. She filled in everywhere. You didn’t even have to ask her. If you needed anything, she was there to make it happen.
It went beyond the daily office things like filing and research. I was on the phone with the nursing care facility, and she showed up to deliver lunch. We all went in together to get sandwiches again, and when the order came and I wasn’t there to pick it up, Meara came looking for me.
I appreciated the gesture, but what she did after that was truly astounding. We had one particular client who was really aggressive. He seemed to think that by insulting us it would make him richer. I wasn’t sure what kind of karmic demands he was putting on the universe, but I knew we were doing our best. Still, this client bitched and moaned about risk vs. reward and how it should all just fall into his lap.
I was running around trying to get everything prepared for the meeting, and I completely forgot about my father. I was playing phone tag with the nursing home over medications. It was the same story; my dad didn’t want to take them.
I didn’t have time to drive up there again, and when I finally got someone on the phone, I was about to ask for my dad’s favorite nurse. Ginny knew exactly how to work my father to get him to comply. All I needed was for her to feed him some line about how the pills were magical, get him to swallow them, and I would be up first thing in the morning.
“Ginny’s no longer with us,” the woman who answered the phone said.
“What do you mean, no longer with us?” It sounded ominous, as if the nurse had passed away suddenly without any warning.
“She got a job at a competitor and put in her two weeks.”
“Well, can I speak with her?” I demanded. I didn’t care if she was about to walk out the door, I needed her assistance to take care of my dad.
“That was two weeks ago,” the facility replied.
I hung up the phone, staring at the receiver for a long moment. It was just my luck that in the middle of a work crisis, there would be a family crisis. I looked up to see Meara in the doorway. She held a stack of files I had been looking for. It was the quarterly reports on our nightmare client’s money market accounts.
I waved her in, giving her the briefest smile.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I snapped.
“It didn’t sound like everything was okay.” She hesitated.
I wanted to chew her out. It was none of her business what was going on in my personal life, but she was just being kind. Kindness was in short supply in our industry. Kent and Damien and I got along just fine, but most investment bankers were at each other’s throats. There were times when we fell neatly into that category, competing with each other over the most lucrative clients. Our partnership was more than just a business relationship, though; we were friends.
The office was better for it, and Meara fit right in. It was comforting to have someone there to talk to, so I opened up and explained the situation. “My father’s been in a nursing home for a few years,” I said. “He’s not doing well. He’s getting paranoid, and I just found out that his favorite nurse quit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she responded. “Is there anything I can do?”
I looked at her critically. What exactly did she think an intern could do about my father’s situation? I shook my head, reaching out for the files. “No thank you.”
She dropped them on my desk and came around to give me a hug. It was unexpected but not unwelcome. We weren’t much for physical contact at the office, and I knew it was a gray area. As I said before, if we had an HR department, I might have crossed the line. But there was no one to chastise me, and it was just a friendly gesture.
In my arms, she felt warm and soft. I could smell her perfume, light and fruity with a hint of vanilla. All of a sudden, I realized what Kent and Damien were getting all worked up over. Meara was a gem. Not only was she attractive, but she actually cared about us.
I thought that was it, but the next day the facility called to thank me for the flowers. “They really made your dad’s day,” the new nurse said. “He was broken up over Ginny leaving, and they made a difference.”
“I didn’t send flowers,” I said.