Just One Night, Part 3_ Binding Agreement(6)

“I am beautiful.”

It’s a mantra, a chant, an aspiration. I sit down at my desk. There’s calm in the isolation of work.

I didn’t know I wanted to be a business consultant when I was growing up but I knew I wanted to do something that involved numbers and strategy. In high school I fell in love with Einstein’s beautiful equation, and as a child I used to love playing chess with my father . . . although he began to lose interest in the game when I was about thirteen . . . right around the time I started regularly beating him.

What would Melody have done with her life had she lived? Her dreams for the future were always a bit mercurial. One day she would want to be a dancer, the next an actress; once she pulled me aside and whispered that she wanted to be a jewel thief. She said she wouldn’t even sell all the jewels she stole but just hide them in her attic until she had so many that when you climbed up in there the darkness would sparkle like a night sky filled with earthbound stars.

I was about seven when she told me that, and I remember the mental image made me giggle with delight. Melody was always making me smile back in those days. She was so fun and vivacious. I loved her. I think my parents loved her, too . . . just not unconditionally.

In the end, she took it all too far and like a supernova she ended up shining so bright that she burned herself up. And my parents just turned away from the spectacle, pretended it wasn’t there, and focused on me. My light was never as impressive as Melody’s, but it was steady, and that’s what was needed for me to keep the love Melody had lost. My father told me not to shed tears for her. He said she simply didn’t exist anymore, not to us. And so it was. At night I would bury my face in my pillow and fill it with tears. Still, I was cared for and she was just . . . erased.

Their rejection of her was even more terrifying than her death. After all, by then I already knew all about death. But it wasn’t until then that I realized people could become completely invisible to those they love.

My parents don’t even know that I’ve broken up with Dave. Obviously I have to tell them eventually but part of me is so afraid that if they see that my light is no longer steady, they’ll erase me, too. And yet here at work I’m still the star everyone turns to, despite my mistakes . . . maybe even because of them. Like an alchemist Robert turns mistakes into rewards. He makes sure people see me and they don’t get to turn away if I shine a bit too brightly. That’s the reality of Robert that both attracts and scares me.

They’ll play by our rules and we’ll change the rules as we please.

That’s a very different game than the chess I was raised on.

I try to push those thoughts out of my mind as I work, memorizing statistics, double-checking figures and percentages. At six, Barbara sticks her head into my office to see if there’s anything else I need before she leaves, but I simply shake my head and wish her good night. Everything I need is in the folders on my desk. The tangibility of the numbers soothes me. They’re something I can hold on to when everything else is upside down and backward. By the time I lock up my office well into the night, the building is dark and virtually empty.

Except.

The light in Asha’s office is on. It’s not entirely uncommon for her to stay late, but not this late. Not after the sky is completely black and the only other people in the building are janitors and security personnel. I should pass her door without a glance. How many times has she sought to undermine me, humiliate me, even dominate me? A thousand times. If you count today, a thousand and one. I should ignore her.

But her light is on and for some reason I find myself reaching for her door.

I don’t knock. Instead I just turn the knob. I expect to see her poring over copies of the same files I’ve been studying or perhaps researching other companies, trying to find new ones to bring to the firm to enhance her status, but instead she’s staring at the wall with such intensity, I wonder if she sees something I don’t. An apparition maybe, or the hazy outline of a lost dream. Something other than white paint.

“I graduated in the top ten percent of my class at Stanford,” she says. She hasn’t even looked up at me. I shouldn’t be here at this time in this place. I should have knocked. But none of that fazes her. She just glares at the wall and continues.

“I was recruited. This firm wanted me. They knew what I could do for them. I didn’t need to sleep with anyone to get here.”

“I never slept with anyone out of ambition,” I say, acknowledging and correcting the insult, but this time without offense. I’m a bit too tired for a brawling fight. “Tell me something,” I ask, “if I had, would you really have a moral problem with it? Is your bitterness coming out of disapproval or disappointment?”