"You didn't," I said, catching my breath.
"Is everything okay?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"No reason."
She came into my cubicle and sat down in the chair, mindlessly sifting through a stack of magazines. She was wearing her red-blouse-with-a-short-black-skirt-and-shiny-black-boots outfit that I'd always thought she looked really cute in.
"So what're you doing?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing much," I said. "Just looking over Peter's idiotic edits."
"How's the damage?"
"Listen to this," I said, looking at the computer monitor. "My original sentence was "Byron took a major risk last year, expanding abroad in the face of fierce competition at home." The schmuck changed it to, "Byron took a terribly odd gamble last year, spreading its operations too thinly abroad, while competition from industry leviathans swelled in the States."
"You know what he did to my last story?" Angie said. "He said the company I was writing about had 'indefatigably gained market share."
I laughed. It felt good to have something to laugh about.
"I wish we could do something to get even with him," Angie said, "like expose him somehow. Like maybe we could start a web site Peter-Lyons-is-a-fucking-asshole-dot-com, or something like that. We could post all this trash about him and everybody in the world would know what a prick he is… What's wrong?"
Laughing with Angie had managed to distract me from my real problems for a while, but it had all set in again.
"Nothing," I said.
"God, you scared me," Angie said. "For a second I thought you couldn't breathe or something."
"I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Maybe it's allergies pollen. I'll have to stop by the drugstore later."
Angie still seemed very concerned, and I wished I could've opened up to her about everything that was going on in my life. It would've been great to have someone to talk to.
Wanting to change the subject, I said, "So how're you and the frat boy doing?"
"Please," Angie said, blushing.
"What? You and Mike are dating, right?"
"No," she said, overly defensive. She got up and peered over the tops of the cubicles to make sure Mike wasn't around, and then she sat back down. "We went out last night to dinner at City Crab on Park. I had the shiftiest time. He kept going on and on, talking about some hockey game he went to with his friends, even though he knows I couldn't give a shit about hockey. Then he starts taking all these cell phone calls.
Just stupid calls from friends of his "Hey, man, what's goin' on?" "Not much, dude just sittin' here chillin', havin' dinner with this hot chick from my office."
I laughed.
"So finally he gets off the phone and the rest of the meal we barely talk at all. I'm just checking my watch, hoping I'm home in time to do my laundry; then the check comes and he's like,
"So do you want to go back to my place and fool around?" I look at him like, Are you out of your fucking mind? I mean, what was he expecting me to say? "Yeah, let's go fool around that sounds like a great idea.
Why don't you invite some of your hockey goons over too?" So we get outside and I just get in a cab and tell the driver to drive away as fast as he can. I don't know what I'm gonna say when he sees me today.
Hopefully he'll just blow me off."
"If you want to go on another date we'll pay for it," I said.
"No, thanks, Chuck," Angie said, and then she glanced at her watch.
"Well, I better get to work. I have to talk to this analyst, then write this story about some company I know nothing about."
"What company?"
"Cornwell and Wallace. They're a search firm specializing in accountants."
"Fun."
"I know, right? It sounds like some bad joke. What's more boring than headhunting? Headhunting for accountants."
Angie got up to leave.
"Stay," I said.
She looked at me, noticing the strange desperation in my voice. I liked the distraction of having Angie to talk to. It made me feel safe, as though as long as I was with her nothing could possibly go wrong.
"I can't," she said. "My story's due this afternoon and I haven't even started it yet. But if you want to do lunch plater, maybe around twelve-thirty…"
"Lunch sounds great," I said.
"Cool," she said, looking at me I thought flirtatiously. "See ya later."
I continued reading through the edited version of my story, but I couldn't concentrate, reading the same lines again and again. Every time I heard a noise behind me I felt a pang in my chest and I looked over my shoulder expecting to see police officers. I hoped it wouldn't be a big production six or seven officers, guns, handcuffs.
The tiny clock in the lower right hand corner of my computer monitor seemed to take up the entire screen. When ten o'clock came I knew it wouldn't be much longer. The body had to have been discovered by now.
Charlotte had told the cops my name and where I worked, and they were probably in the building, getting on the elevator right now. Maybe they considered me a dangerous felon and had cordoned off the building.
Dozens of cops no, a whole SWAT team could be on their way up to get me.
I was sweating through my shirt. I went to the bathroom to wash up, and then I used the urinal, wondering if it was the last leak I'd take as a free man.
Back at my desk, I skimmed the story on the screen, noticing more Britishisms and awkward sentences. I started to write an angry e-mail to Jeff; then I had a better idea. I forwarded my original version of the article to Jeff, without Peter's edits. It was against the magazine's protocol to bypass the associate editor, but at this point what did I have to lose?
At 10:42, the police still hadn't arrived, and I decided that something must be holding them up. Maybe Charlotte wasn't home when they went to question her and they were waiting outside her apartment. So I'd gotten a couple extra hours of freedom, but maybe it would've been better to have been put out of my misery.
Another excruciating few minutes went by, and then Jeff IM'd me, telling me he wanted to see me in his office.
"Take a seat," he said when I arrived.
Jeff had turned forty last year, but he looked at least fifty. His hair had been totally gray since I'd known him, and he had a wrinkled, prematurely aged face, probably from years of alcohol abuse. Everyone at the magazine knew to stay away from him after two in the afternoon, when he was known to be irritable after his long martini lunches. Once, during my first year at the magazine, I'd made the mistake of asking him for some advice about a story while he was lit, and he blew up at me, screaming, "Get out of my motherfucking office!"
I sat down in the chair across from his desk when he said, "Are you okay?"
"Fine," I said. "Why?"
"You look exhausted."
"Oh, I'm just trying to fight something off."
"You mean you came into work sick? What's wrong with you? I have kids at home, for Christ's sake."
"I don't think I'm actually sick," I said, wondering if he'd started drinking earlier than usual today. "I just have a scratchy throat."
"Still," Jeff said, shaking his head, and then he became distracted by his computer monitor and he swiveled in his chair to face it head on.
"So I was looking over your story on this, er… Byron Technologies …"
"I was going to write you about that," I said. "I sent you my original version because I don't think it's fair what Peter's been doing. He doesn't edit; he rewrites."
"So this writing is entirely yours?" Jeff asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Well, I think it's one of the best stories you've done since you've been here."
"Really?"
"Love it," Jeff said. "It's angry, it's biting, it takes a strong point of view you know that's what I always look for. I love this line when you say Wall Street needs to reserve a plot in the high tech graveyard for Byron, and how the company has had more fumbles than a high school football team. That's perfect."