Desperate Measures(37)
She recognized it immediately as the client who didn’t believe in paying taxes, preferring that the government just print some more hundred-dollar bills to cover his tab. “I have plans. I can’t.”
“Cancel them,” he said as he turned to go. “Make him happy. He wants you and only you.”
Elizabeth was angry and frustrated, too tired to keep the emotion out of her voice. “He’s your client, Bill, not mine.”
Bill stopped in his tracks and turned, raising an eyebrow at her. “Excuse me? I’m sorry ... ” He put his finger up to his ear. “Did I just hear you tell me Mr. Bridgestone isn’t your concern?”
Elizabeth squared her shoulders. “No. What you heard me say was that he’s your client, not mine. If he needs to be taken care of, it should be you doing it, not me.” She flipped open the file jacket and studied the first page for two seconds, before saying, “There’s an entire weekend of work to be done on this.”
She’d never stood up to Bill this way. Ever. She always just took whatever file he didn’t want to deal with and completed the work without complaint or comment. She’d lost count of how many hours of Bill’s work she’d done. She wasn’t the only one in the firm who had and wouldn’t be the last. Bill called himself the rainmaker, and he was very fond of saying that the rainmaker makes rain; he doesn’t crunch numbers.
Bill dropped his hands to his sides, clenching his fists once before letting them go loose again. “Do the work, Elizabeth,” he said in a very controlled and almost arrogant voice. “And next time, think harder before you respond to me. I’d hate for you to say something that you’d regret.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She just clenched her teeth and steamed internally, watching Bill’s back as he exited her office. No doubt he was heading out to go have a few cocktails at his very exclusive country club.
Maybe if I spent every afternoon drinking martinis with the good old boys, I could be the rainmaker and you could crunch numbers for a change. That’s what she wished she could say, but she just thought it instead. No need to get fired over Mr. Bridgestone. The guy was an ass, but he did have a big account at the firm.
The front door of the office slammed shut behind Bill, and she could hear Sandy, the receptionist, gathering her things. The front waiting area lights went off, and then Sandy yelled, “Goodnight, Elizabeth! Have a good weekend!”
“Yeah, right,” said Elizabeth softly. This file was going to take the full two days to get straightened out. “You too!” shouted Elizabeth, not wanting to be rude. It wasn’t Sandy’s fault that Elizabeth’s job sucked and that Bill was a pompous, chauvinist prick.
She sat down at her desk, and began working on the file, all the while looking up from time to time to stare at the email from Kiki. Another one popped up around six o’clock, this one from Aimee. Elizabeth clicked on it sadly.
I’M SO EXCITED! AND I EVEN HAVE HEELS. SEE YOU GIRLS SOOOON!!!
Elizabeth smiled at Aimee’s obvious enthusiasm. Then she looked at the stupid folder sitting on her desk, knowing she’d be there until midnight with it, while Kiki and Aimee were having wine and hanging out. She was pissed.
Elizabeth took one more look at Aimee’s email and felt a spark light up in her heart. She made a command decision, only a very small piece of her hoping she wouldn’t live to regret it. She stood up, grabbed the file, and marched out of her office, heading to the one located three doors down – the one on the corner of the building with the gorgeous views of downtown Orlando. Bill’s office.
She walked in and slapped the folder down on his desk, grabbing a post-it note and a pen from the carefully arranged and nearly bare surface. She wrote out a note and stuck it to the folder, placing the whole thing in the center of his desk blotter so he’d be sure to see it when he came in on Monday. Of course, that would be sometime around ten o’clock and long past the time Mr. Bridgestone would have expected this little problem he’d created to be resolved. Bill had the privilege in his position to hold old-school banker’s hours. She, on the other hand, came in at seven every morning, seven days a week. She left after ten most weeknights and after four on weekends. But not tonight. And not ever again. She’d had it up to her eyeballs and was tired of drowning in Bill’s work and covering for his ass.
She went back to her office and took her favorite Mont Blanc pen out of the drawer and the picture of her sister she had in a frame on her desk and stacked them neatly together. She looked around the room and saw nothing else urgently personal to worry about. She’d get the rest later, when she worked her last two or three weeks as part of her take-this-job-and-shove-it offer. She quickly sat down and typed out a letter of resignation before she could second-guess her crazy, impetuous decision. Her heart was racing, but she felt free. For the first time in years and years, she thought maybe she could be the captain of her own destiny, instead of following the path laid out for her by others.