The Promotion
Suddenly I remembered why I stopped drinking. I was late for
work. I had a headache and felt sick to my stomach and the jostling of the
subway car was not helping. I scanned up and down the subway car looking for an
empty seat or a sign that someone was about to get up but no such luck, so I
hugged the doorway to the next car and mentally willed my stomach to settle. I
guess I do not bounce back from a night of drinking as I did in my prime
drinking days. Though meeting Ines made it all worth it, I think anyway.
I went to T.C.’s Lounge to meet an old friend in our old
haunt. Erica had moved back to Florida years ago, got married had two kids, and
got divorced since the last time we had been in the same room. T.C.’s had been
our hangout of choice. We used to toss back jack n’ cokes and pump quarters
into Area 51 until they locked the doors almost every night of the week. She
was in Boston on her way to Maine for a vacation. Erica saved my life. I was in
a bad place and she dragged me back from the brink. When she left Boston, it
crushed me but left me better than when we met. It was good to see her again.
The bad news was T.C’s had removed the video games and
pinball machines in favor of more seating. It had changed from a neighborhood
joint into a high-priced bar for amateur alcoholics. Still, I adjusted rather
easily and quickly re-gained my first drunken state in several years. Erica was
not as enthusiastic and left relatively early after just a few drinks. I stuck
around.
My old pal Quinton was still behind the bar and still put as
little coke as possible in my Jack Daniels and knew not to poison my bourbon
with fruit. I sat at the bar reminiscing with Quinton about the good old days
when a goddess appeared at the bar, at the corner perpendicular to me. I do not
mean to put too fine a point on it but she was smoking hot. She looked a lot
like Selma Hayek without the uni-brow. Her sundress was white with a pattern of
dark blue flowers and her boots looked stylish, at least all the girls are wearing
them these days.
Quinton raised his
eyebrows at me, checking that I had noticed her arrival. I gave him a nod. She
clearly noticed this interaction and smiled.
“¿Qué volá contigo?” she asked.
“Nada“, I replied. “And that’s about the limit of my Spanish
I am sorry to say. I’m Jean.”
“That’s okay; I was fucking with you a little. I’m Priya.”
“That’s cool. Where are you from, Priya?”
“Well, I was born here but my parents are Cuban.”
It went on like that for a while. We took turns buying
drinks and I learned a lot about her and her about me. She was actually an
awesome painter – oils on canvas. However, I guess being an awesome painter was
not paying the bills. She had just moved here from New York to accept some
corporate job purely for the money. Just then, I was happy she had. I told her
all about my crappy job at Draft Kings. I had applied for a job as a writer,
providing content for their web site, fantasy advice for gamblers and number
geeks. What I actually did was whatever crappy jobs needed doing. Checking
spreadsheets, typing memos, and delivering them to people who were working in
the adjacent offices was most of my job. She seemed sympathetic and
optimistically said it would probably work out eventually. I shrugged and
changed the subject. I try to be a happy drunk and I usually do not complain to
beautiful strangers but she had a way of drawing things out of me. It was
probably those eyes. Maybe it was because I was drunk but I have no idea what
color those eyes were, and I swear it seemed like they were changing color as
she looked at me. She told me about her family and friends while we drank. We
drank a lot.
At one point Quinton gave her a free drink and comped us a
round of Cuervo shots in which he participated. He whispered something to her
and flashed a big smile for which his reward was a stone face.
She whispered “Jamonero.”
I have no idea what it meant but almost as soon as she said
it Quinton slipped and smacked his head on the bar. He was not seriously hurt
but he was holding a towel full of ice against his head the rest of the night.
He must have been drinking more than I thought.
I soon reached that state of drunkenness where I was only observing
myself drink and talk to this woman. I am not a pick girls up at a bar type of
guy, but I have a vague memory of leaving the bar with her. The rest of the
night is a blank, right until I woke up this morning and noticed that sundress
hanging over my desk chair. There was no sign of her however. Not a hair, not a
single sign she had been there other than the dress. I tried to remember if I
had seen her carry in luggage or
something but I stopped thinking about it when I realized I was already an hour
late for work. I skipped through the shower, dressed quickly and ran to the
subway.
I was almost two hours late when I emerged from the elevator
into the Draft Kings offices. Immediately, Frieda the receptionist informs me
that they want to see me in the main conference room. I would need to find a
new job I assumed. I psyched myself up to be indignant and thought about
throwing a chair or two on my way out, definitely break something. The
conference room blinds were shut, another bad sign, they wanted it to be
private. I walked in with expletives loaded and violence in my thoughts.
Instead of the team of executives I was expecting, there was just one person.
Priya spun happily in the chair at the head of the conference table and beamed
at me.
“You’re late!” she laughed.
I struggled to find words. Finally came up with this doozy: “What
are you doing here?”
“Eric (CTO) and Tim (the COO) have both been fired and I’m
your new boss.”
I flopped down in a chair near her. My head was still
spinning and it was not just the remnants of alcohol. She continued to stare at
me and her eyes were still weird but I started to relax. She was no less
stunning in the bright sunlight glaring through the office windows. She was
dressed in a simple black skirt suit that would have appeared quite
professional if not for the blouse that was open a bit too wide.
“So, I’m not fired?” I really wanted to know.
“Nope, in fact you have been promoted to Director of Online
Media. You can work out of Eric’s office for now, he won’t need it.”
Promoted, that was the last thing I expected when I walked
in here.
“Did you know this was happening last night or is some of
this because of last night?” I was far too shocked and hungover to be anything
but blunt.
“Of course.” She said, not really answering my question. I
was about to inquire further when there was a commotion outside the conference
room. I looked at Priya and she rose to her feet and walked to the door with
me. Everyone seemed to be running towards the elevators and stairs. I stopped a
passing intern and asked for the scoop.
“I guess someone jumped from the roof. Someone said it might
be Eric but…it’s kinda hard to tell.”
The intern kept walking. I turned to Priya but she was gone.
Eric jumped or was pushed is what the police indicated to us
about an hour later. I was in my new office, Eric’s old office when I found
out. It felt a little strange. All of his things were still in place. Deila
told me all about it. She had not heard about my promotion. She came into his
old office as if she expected to find Eric there. I had been standing behind
the desk looking out at the street where the police were still preserving the
scene. Eric irritated me but he was a decent person and I was sorry to hear he
was gone. Deila, one of my few close friends in the office, had been close to
Eric. I often teased that I did not know why she liked him so much but I felt
horrible that she was taking his death so hard.
She walked behind the desk, put her arms around me, and
sobbed into my chest. She explained that she and Eric had been seeing each
other quietly. Deila worked as our medical specialist, advising us about the
likely recovery times for various sports injuries. When it comes to gambling,
the more information you have the better. I led her around to the sofa and
stepped into the private bathroom to get her some tissue to clean up her face,
which was a mess of streaked make-up. I thought I heard someone come in while I
was in the bathroom. I returned just seconds later to find Deila desperately
grasping her throat as blood oozed and squirted between her fingers.
I ran to the office door and yelled for help. Screaming that
we needed an ambulance, I ran back to her to try to control the bleeding. Deila
was hysterical and frightened and I tried to calm her as we waited for the
paramedics. When they arrived, they asked how it had happened. I explained that
I had not seen it from the bathroom and they left.
I was standing there looking at the bloodstained couch when
Priya hooked her arm into mine. I had not heard her enter the office. I gently
pulled away when the phone rang. They were not looking for Eric; someone transferred
the call here to me. The police wanted to speak to me about an open case and
would be in the office soon.
“Is this about Deila,” I asked.
“Deila? No. An Erica Nunez never returned to her hotel room
and her family is concerned. You may have been the last person to see her.”
“Erica? Something happened to Erica?”
The person making the call did not have details for me and
refused to answer any further questions. Jesus! I dropped to the couch, ignoring
the blood. Priya sat on the arm of the couch and glared at me as I held my head
between my hands.
“I cannot believe this day. What the hell is happening?” I
asked the question aloud but I was surprised to hear an answer.
“Stop whining!” Priya shouted. “You have me now. Thanks to
me, you also have your dream job. Stop thinking about those bitches and
appreciate me!”
“I’ve known those girls for years and they could both be
dead for all I know!” My temper was flaring and that almost never ends well.
“You can either respect that fact or go fuck yourself.”
I stood up, Priya rose as well, and we had a bit of a stare
down. “Do you mean that,” she asked.
“What I’ve done for you means nothing?”
I just shrugged.
Priya clenched her fists in front of her and let out a
blood-curdling scream. A long, nasty looking dagger appeared in her right hand
and a change came over her. Suddenly, she seemed much older. Her hair seemed to
rise in the air as if electricity was surging through her. Layer on layer of
gray rags replaced her neat business suit. A haze seemed to fill the air as if
she were sucking all the light from the room. She came at me screaming and
swinging the knife wildly.
I wrestled her for control of the blade. She was uncannily
strong. She managed several shallow cuts before I snatched it away from her.
Her eyes were clearly glowing red and looked almost aflame. She dug her nails
into my face savagely and I drove the dagger into her abdomen. She hissed and
was gone. I was standing there covered with blood with a dagger in my hand when
the police arrived.
Police officers found Erica’s body in an alley in the Fenway
with her throat slit and signs of a sexual assault. The police suspected the
very blade I had been holding was the murder weapon. They arrested me on two
counts of murder and clearly suspected me of a third since it was apparently
too much of a coincidence to believe that Eric killed himself.
I told them about Priya. No one believed me. The
receptionist had sent me to the conference room by Eric’s request not Priya’s.
No one else in the office had ever laid eyes on her. The dress was still in my
apartment when the cops searched it but by itself, it did not mean anything to
my case.
A jury of my peers found me guilty of three counts of murder
and sentenced me to life in a secure psychiatric facility. I have been here
ever since. I did see Priya again. She forgave me eventually. She visits me
every night in my padded room.
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