Revenge(10)

“Listen, Mr. Security Guy. Do you want me to cry? Because if you’re trying to make me feel terrible, it’s working. I’m supposed to start my new job today. Five minutes ago.”

“How old are you?” he asks.

“Twenty-two.”

“Are you a singer?”

I let out a light laugh. “I’ll sing you a song if you’d like, and if it will help me get a keycard faster. But I’ll warn you, I’m not much of a singer. I’m way more interested in the business side of music than I am in singing.”

He nods. “You’re not here to crash an audition?”

“No, sir. I swear. I’m an intern. They’ll probably put me in the mail room.”

“A girl like you? You won’t be in the mail room for long.” He withdraws a keycard from his back pocket. “Here. You can use this one for now. Third floor is Human Resources. If anyone in a uniform asks what you’re doing, tell them your name is Harold Chow. Then keep walking and smiling.”

I grin up at him. “Thank you.”

He may or may not be smiling under his big mustache, but his eyes twinkle. “Get going,” he says, nodding for me to walk through the metal detector.

I start walking as fast as I can. My new shoes aren’t exactly broken in.

Following the man’s instructions, I take the elevator up to the third floor to report to Human Resources.

I’m nine minutes late, and sweating.

The girl at the third floor reception desk looks me over, scowling. “You’re late.”

I try to explain what happened in the lobby, but she returns to typing on her computer keyboard and murmuring responses into her headset.

I take a seat in the sparse waiting area. I think about cashing in my ticket home, for the second time this morning.

Just when I’m about to bug the receptionist and ask if anyone’s coming for me, the elevator dings. A guy with multiple face piercings emerges from the elevator and comes right up to me.

He’s skinny and wearing nothing but black. His many piercings are distracting.

Remembering my training, I stand and reach out to shake his hand. The first thing I learned in business school is to shake hands. Nobody wants to do business with a stranger. Once you’ve shaken hands, you’re no longer a stranger.

Ignoring my offered hand, he stares at a space about two inches in front of my eyes. In a flat voice, he says, “Maggie sent me.”

“Who’s that?” I ask.

His facial expression doesn’t change.

Behind me, the receptionist practically screams with laughter.

I guess I should know who Maggie is.

Once the receptionist calms down, she says sarcastically, “Maggie Clark is only the vice president of the company. That’s all.”

I try to stand up straight, despite my mistake. “Of course. It’s just that I’ve mostly been emailing back and forth with—”

The guy with the piercings cuts me off by holding his hand up, palm facing me. “Fired.”

I close my mouth and try not to look as horrified as I feel. My only contact person at the company has been fired? The person who hired me? That explains why security didn’t know about me.

I stammer, “Do I even have a job here?”

The piercing through his lower lip wiggles for a moment. He says, “I don’t think Maggie’s wave of revenge firings got as far as you, so I’ll be doing your orientation today.”

“You know who I am?”

Ominously, he says, “I know who everyone is.”

His words seem even more spooky because he’s wearing tight-fitting black from head to toe, and eyeliner. I hardly noticed the eyeliner at first, because of all the piercings. He crooks his finger as he turns and walks back toward the elevator. “Come.”

I follow him into the elevator, happy that I’m at least moving.

He swipes his keycard across the panel twice and presses a button set aside from the floor buttons.

The elevator moves down, enhancing the feeling I have of my heart rising up the back of my throat.

“How flexible is your neck?” he asks.

I’m so caught off guard by the question that I ask him to repeat himself.

He stares at me like I just fell off a turnip truck. He repeats himself, his face still expressionless. “How flexible is your neck?”

Just when I think my day can’t get any more weird, it does.

“I don’t know.” I turn my head to test my neck flexibility, stopping with my chin over my shoulder. “About this flexible,” I say.

“Super,” he says in his monotone voice. “But you can’t walk around like that, so you’d better find someone else to watch your back.”

“Beg pardon?”