Revenge(13)

“I was once like you.”

Standing now, I get the last specks off my skirt.

“You were once a naive intern?” I ask.

“No. Something else.”

I frown at him, annoyed by his mysterious ways. First he made the comments in the elevator about watching my back, and now this? He’s trying to deliberately keep me off balance. I’m pretty sure he has an ulterior motive. I haven’t known many schemers in my life, but Nick strikes me as a schemer. I still like him, in spite of this.

We walk back over to the elevator, and Nick shows me how to use my keycard to get back again.

“No offense, but I don’t want to come back,” I say.

“You think you’ll get promoted on your first day?”

“I’ve got to try.”

His neutral expression doesn’t falter. “Top floor,” he says.

I push the button for the tenth floor.

Morris Music takes up five floors of the building, or six if you include this mysterious archives basement. The executive offices are up on the top floors. I thought it would take me years of hard work to get called up there, but now here I am, going on my very first day. My mouth goes dry, my throat scratchy.

Standing in the elevator, I stare through the opening at Nick with wide eyes, wishing he’d come with me. The doors begin to close. I nervously thrust my hand out and press the button to keep the doors open.

“Nick, what did you mean, you were once like me?”

“Let that button go,” he says.

I release the button, and a few seconds later, the metallic doors begin to close between us.

Before he disappears, I ask urgently, “Were you once an intern?”

He laughs. “No. But I was once a virgin.”

The elevator doors close, but the word virgin has already flown into the small space. The word swirls around, taunting me.

Why would Nick say such a thing?

And what does it have to do with my meeting with the vice president?

With each floor the elevator ascends, my mouth gets more dry. The navy blue suit that seemed to fit me so well this morning feels loose in some spots and tight in others.

I can’t shake the feeling I’m in trouble.

Nan says whenever we feel guilty, we need to take extra care to be polite and helpful until we figure out what we did wrong. Our conscience will lead us out of trouble.

The elevator stops on almost every floor. People step on and off, ignoring the girl huddling in the corner.

I glance over at the mirrored wall to check my hair. My straight brown hair is tied up in a twist. I thought the style would make me look corporate and sophisticated, but all I can see is my ears sticking out. Did they always look like monkey ears or is this a new thing? I feel sick. And now I can actually see my cheeks reddening with embarrassment.

Why did Nick say I’m a virgin? I’m twenty-two. It’s not reasonable to think a college graduate might be that way. Maybe it’s my monkey ears?

The elevator reaches the eighth floor, and the doors open. The people next to me step off, and a woman in a curve-hugging red dress steps on. Her overwhelming perfume is as difficult to ignore as her huge boobs, which she’s flaunting in the low-cut dress. I try not to stare. She’s got a lot of sun damage from over-tanning. I’ll have to wear sunscreen all the time now that I’m in LA.

My dry throat is irritated by her sickly sweet perfume. I hold my cough until the elevator stops on the ninth floor and she steps off.

Alone now, I turn and take a good look at my monkey ears and my hair. I reach up to loosen the clip holding up my twist. I gasp in horror at two dark streaks visible along the seam of my blue blazer. Oh, no. I’ve sweated through my blouse and onto my blazer, which is dry clean only.

The elevator dings and the doors open.

Tenth floor.

Abandoning the idea of taking down my hair, I clench my arms to my sides and step out.

This floor has a more spacious layout than Human Resources. I’m in a wide hallway that looks more like a spa than an office. There are soft lights dotting the wall instead of fluorescents overhead.

To the left is a large meeting room behind a glass wall. I bet some huge, multi-million dollar deals get made in there.

I follow the hall to the right, into a waiting room lit with natural sunshine. The receptionist on this floor greets me warmly. No wonder she’s more pleasant than the one on the third floor—she’s got an unobstructed view of the city through her own window.

“I’m Jessica, here to see Ms. Clark.” I don’t even know if Maggie Clark is married, but I take a guess that she likes to be called Ms.

The receptionist looks amused, pressing her lips together in a sweet smile. She’s about my age, and she’s also wearing a blue suit, but hers has topstitching and looks like it came from a designer boutique. I wonder how much receptionists make. Is it really that much more than interns?