Now a Major Motion Picture (43 page)

It was the perfect storm, and she’d caught it.

I leaned forward to downsize the screen. “Two-point-seven-million views?” She’d titled it
“
World’s Worst Boss?!” There were lots of comments, many expletives, and a passionate nine exclamation points in a row.

Bob dug a crust from his eye. “It’s not something to be proud of.”

My mind raced. How to spin this before he offered up his own damaging interpretation? I managed a casual shrug. “I’m in marketing. I can’t help it.”

“This makes us look
so
bad.”

It was crunch time. There was no room for complaints or excuses. “Does it though? Does it? What I see is that we expect a certain professionalism and energy from our employees, a requirement that, pregnant or not, they perform to the best of their abilities. My delivery was very rough, but it was a message she needed to hear.” He wasn’t buying. I grabbed for a straw. “Isn’t posting this on YouTube a violation of my privacy?”

“I don’t know,” Bob said wearily. “That’s 2.7 million negative hits with MLJK’s name attached.”

My heart clenched. I needed a cigarette. Now. “Whatever happened to ‘any publicity is good publicity’?”

He ignored my lame joke. “She’s threatening to file suit. I checked with legal. We can tie her up in court, but the claim is legit.”

I inhaled sharply, forgetting, in my growing panic, to exhale.

“Breathe, Kylie.”

“S-s-suing us?” Great, now I was stuttering.

“You called her fat. She says you created an unhealthy work environment.”

My jaw dropped. This was not the time to point out that, as a former chubette, I never, ever use the F word. “The operative word here is
work.
I was running on vapors.”

Bob got up and looked out the window at his fabulous view. “Stella, by the way, corroborates everything you’ve said.” My eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Yes, I’ve talked to her. I’ve talked to a few people, but the point is that sooner or later we all have to deal with this. Pregnant women deserve…” He stared off into the silver buildings and cloudless sky. When I’d entered, the view had felt empowering. Now it was an invitation to jump. “Latitude. We are a family-friendly company.”

I snickered bitterly. MLJK years were dog years. Most of the senior partners were divorced. “And what about women who aren’t ever going to have children? We just put up and shut up?” I knew this sounded whiney, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like a tightrope walker studying the tiny figures below, waiting for me to fall. Then it struck me. I felt like this most of the time.

He gazed at me, his eyes weary. “Come on. You’re what, not even thirty? You don’t know that.” Bob was still in his marriage of origin.

“Look at me, Bob. My relationships have the longevity of a fruit fly. I have nothing left at the end of the day.”
I have nothing left right now.

“Maybe it’s time to branch out.”

Clearly he pitied Betsy. It was time to grab the controls. “I can fix this. I can smooth things out. Get my assistant her own assistant. At least until she’s had it.”

“Her baby is not an
it
,” he snapped.

“Did I say ‘it’?” I’d been talking so quickly.
It? Good move, Kylie.

“Yes,” Bob said quietly, losing his starch. Crossing his arms, he glanced at a framed photo: a gap-toothed, pigtailed toddler on a swing, pushed by his beaming, very pregnant wife. “You’re going to have to leave until this dies down.”

For a second I felt nothing but a weight pressing on the top of my head, a dull ringing in my ears. “This isn’t
Survivor
. You can’t let random strangers on YouTube vote me off because I lost my temper.”

“They’re not. Lance is.”

The CEO?
I was in a tippy canoe, and by golly, there went my paddle.

I made a tiny bubble of an objection as I sank. “She wasn’t doing her job.”

“Effective immediately,” he said. I knew what silently preceded those two words.
Terminated.

This wasn’t a break.

This was permanent.

CHAPTER TWO

Speak when you are angry, and you will make

the best speech you will ever regret.

—Ambrose Bierse

I wasn’t quite sure how I’d made it to the fifteenth-floor bathroom. My heels clattered on the toilet lid as I reached for the pack of American Spirit cigarettes stashed in the ceiling tiles.
My hands shook like a detoxing drunk as I lit up. Years ago, my former best friend, Melanie, taught me how to blow smoke rings into the PE bathroom ventilator shaft in the Cedar Falls High School. The shaft went into the office of the principal, who accused her secretary of sneaking smokes, until we were collared.

Thinking of Melanie tightened the knot in my stomach.

I couldn’t think of Melanie or my father or anything else. I’d been exterminated, and at this moment this blessedly empty bathroom was my sanctuary. I’d rather be here than at the Elizabeth Arden Red Door spa, which was, I thought, a truly horrible marker of how low I’d sunk. There were, I dreaded, many more fathoms to go.

How many people on this floor were texting Betsy,
the wicked witch is dead
? In moments, she’d update her YouTube channel with an Academy Award–like speech.
Thank you so much for all your love and support. I could not have taken this courageous stance for my unborn child without the love and support of my other, nicer, colleagues, my family, and most of all, this wonderfully diverse online community.

I had placed all my apples in the basket of my bright, shiny career.

If anyone entered this bathroom, I’d scream.

The bathroom door opened. “Kylie? Are you in here?”

It was Stella.

Perfect. The one person I have abused above all others. And she’s going to be really nice.

At that moment I was suffused with a feeling so intense and foreign that it took me a moment to recognize it. It had been absent from my emotional responses since I first trod these city sidewalks, although in high school it was my constant companion.

Shame.

I remained pathetically still until she pointed out that she could see my shoes. She’d picked them up at the Barney’s sale when a saleswoman had texted me.

“How’d you know where to find me?”

“I know you sneak a cig now and then. Figured you’d be hiding.”

I tossed the butt into the toilet and wiped an errant tear. I would not cry. Mom was the salty gusher. I was Teflon. “I think I’m going to stay in here until everyone goes home.”

Stella giggled. “Okay. But I’ve got your stuff. Human resources sent a box. I wasn’t sure if you wanted the
Sex and the City
Pez collection, but I packed it anyway.”

“Throw it away. I don’t know who gave it to me.”

“I did.”

I stepped out of the stall. She was holding the dreaded white cardboard box, the “it bag” of the recently fired. It was heaped with the detritus of my career. A mug with a toothless old man that said
Smile
, a Japanese Zen sand garden, and a dead plant. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “In that case, I love it.”

She handed me the box. “I’m really sorry.”

Sympathy was not my gig. Had she told me that I belonged on the first helicopter to Hades, I could have handled it. Couldn’t she, just this once, for my sake, muster some sarcasm? My voice quivered. “You’re not stuttering.”

She shook her head.

“Why?”

She squinted as if trying to remember. “You don’t scare me anymore. I knew when you came back downstairs that you wouldn’t be my boss.”

“But you defended me to Bob.” I held up the box. “You packed up my dead plant, my stupid mug.”

She tilted her head like a sparrow and did something very strange. She reached her arms around the box and awkwardly hugged me. “Talking to Bob last week, I realized that even though you kinda terrorized me, you also taught me a bunch. Plus, Bob gave me Betsy’s job. So yeah, thanks for that.”

I pulled out of the embrace that had made me incredibly uncomfortable and took the stupid box.
Where is a Dumpster when you need one?
“You’re welcome. I guess.”

“Before you go, I just want to—” She reached into my box and pulled out a book. For a moment I thought it was the copy of
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu that I’d loaned her, but it was my mother’s book,
Fifty Acts of Kindness
.
“I read this,” she said.

“Oh.”
You and six other people.

“Did you read it?”

I thought about tossing off some comment about how great it was, but what was the point? “I meant to. I skimmed it. I took her to lunch when she did those cable talk shows. I bought her a Stella McCartney handbag. She sold it on eBay and donated the money to Greenpeace.”
I’m babbling.
Mom had spent our entire lunch talking to the waiter about her goat’s infected nipples. “It’s autographed. Do you want it?”

She tucked it into the box. “You keep it,” she said, opening the bathroom door. “Good luck, Kylie.”

I had to get out of that bathroom and hide from that horrific beam of sunshine. “Thank you.” It was probably the first time I’d ever thanked an assistant.

* * *

Stella’s final “good luck” rang in my ears as I tried to stay busy, running errands in a stunned daze and trying to focus on moving on. Although she didn’t mean it in a sarcastic way, of course, that was the way I heard it, with an underlying hopelessness and sad finality. On my way to the drycleaners, I was feeling so morose that I looked up to make sure there wasn’t a rain cloud hovering above me, like a Charlie Brown cartoon. But there were only buildings containing millions of people who didn’t care about me or my career. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so alone.

I went to an upscale market to load up on baking supplies, knowing this would be the last time I could afford such an indulgence. Once home, I fired up my shiny new oven and called my best friend in the universe, Marcus. He patiently listened while I recounted the last three days. How a punk couple had recognized me in the subway and told me I should be sterilized.

Then there was the dog walker who wanted my autograph. “Sign it World’s Worst Boss,” he had said, laughing when one of his dogs peed on my shoe, telling me it was karma.

Coming upstairs, my doorman had refused a tip for carrying my groceries because he pitied me. “Ah, keep it, please. You’re gonna need every cent living single in a city like this,” he predicted. “The men ain’t exactly gonna be crawling all over you, if you catch my drift.”

As I whined to Marcus, I could hear the hum of blow-dryers in the background. When he’d graduated from college, Cedar Falls had offered little in the way of employment for an openly gay man. Strangely passionate about returning home, he temporarily went to work for his hairdresser aunt. “A gay hairdresser, now that’s a bold move,” he’d said at the time, rather sadly. Luckily, he enjoyed the work.

“If you’re getting famous,” he said, “you might as well work it hard. I wonder if you can get a reality series out of this.”

“I hope she gives birth to an aardvark,” I said, wishing I was in the bustling salon with him, surrounded by chattering women, their perfume clashing with the bleach and shampoo.

“She’d just use it to her advantage. ‘Woman with world’s worst boss gives birth to aardvark child. Details at eleven.’ Maybe an extra toe.”

“Or a tail,” I added. My apartment felt like a very chic morgue.

“Yeah, that’s better. Something long enough so it could sleep in a tree. That would be cool.”

“Did you watch the YouTube video?”

“Oh, honey, everyone did.” He stopped short. “I mean, no. Of course not. That would be wrong.” He waited a few calculated moments. “And I didn’t watch her on
The View
or
GMA
.”

“Liar.” I let the end of the word slur, returning to the familiar long vowels of my childhood.

Cedar Falls, North Carolina, population 35,000, had recently experienced a renewal thanks to an explosion of farm-to-table restaurants and wineries. What had been there all along was co-opted by city folk, made more rustic and therefore cool. As Marcus liked to say, “The city folk wanna be country, and the country folk are all about not giving a shit.”

“Keep your head straight,” Marcus snapped.

“How can I? Everyone hates me.”

“Not you. My client. You’re baking, aren’t you?” It wasn’t an innocent question.

I pulled a dozen coconut cupcakes out of the oven. Mango custard was chilling in the Sub-Zero. I would fill the cupcakes using a pastry bag and top them with a fluffy cloud of coconut-cream frosting. Then place them in pink bakery boxes and deliver them to the homeless people on my block. Not because I had some Mother Theresa complex—I just didn’t want to get fat. It was cheaper than therapy. Plus, unlike at the office, homeless people didn’t say, “Oh no, I shouldn’t.”

“What am I going to do? I am going to lose my condo.” In the late afternoon sun, the dark wood floors shone with the luster of a purebred horse, which I could have bought for what it cost to refinish them. What was I thinking?

“Welcome to the new economy.” Someone told Marcus to get off the phone. He said, “I’m talking to a client!”

“This isn’t the new economy. This is a water-retaining ball of hormones intent on ruining me because I asked her to do her job. I’ll admit—I wasn’t very nice…”

“Not nice?” I could hear Marcus’s raised eyebrows.

“Okay, I was pretty awful, but I was under so much stress. You have to see the whole picture.” God, there was nothing I hated more than making excuses.

“You were intent on sabotaging her because you fear competition,” Marcus said.

“Is that what she’s saying?”

“I think Iyanla said that. Or maybe it was Rachel Ray.”

I groaned, disrobing another cupcake. I’d eaten past the half-dozen mark. “She woke up earlier for those talk shows than she ever did for work.” Piping custard into the scooped-out centers of the cupcakes was utterly consuming. Squeeze, curl, repeat.