The Hating Game

“I hope Joshua passed on the copy of The Glass Darkly I picked up for you? The first of the first.”

Fat Little Dick has a huge bookshelf filled with every B&G release. Each book is the first off the press; a tradition started by his grandfather. He loves to brag about them to visitors, but I once looked at the shelves and the spines weren’t even cracked.

“You picked it up, eh?” Mr. Bexley orbits around to look at Joshua. “You didn’t mention that, Doctor Josh.”

Fat Little Dick probably calls him Doctor Josh because he’s so clinical. I heard someone say when things got particularly bad at Bexley Books, Joshua masterminded the surgical removal of one-third of their workforce. I don’t know how he sleeps at night.

“As long as you get it, it doesn’t matter,” Joshua replies smoothly and his boss remembers that he is The Boss.

“Yes, yes,” he chuffs and looks down my top again. “Good work, you pair.”

He gets into the elevator and I look down at my shirt. All the buttons are done up. What could he even see? I glance up at the mirrored tiles on the ceiling and can faintly see a tiny triangle of shadowed cleavage.

“If you buttoned it any higher, we wouldn’t see your face,” Joshua says to his computer screen as he logs off.

“Perhaps you could tell your boss to look at my face occasionally.” I also log off.

“He’s probably trying to see your circuit board. Or wondering what kind of fuel you run on.”

I shrug on my coat. “Just fueled by my hate for you.”

Josh’s mouth twitches once, and I nearly had him there. I watch him roll down a neutral expression. “If it bothers you, you should speak to him. Stand up for yourself. So, painting your nails tonight, desperately alone?”

Lucky guess on his part? “Yes. Masturbating and crying into your pillow tonight, Doctor Josh?”

He looks at the top button of my shirt. “Yes. And don’t call me that.”

I swallow down a bubble of laughter. We jostle each other in an unfriendly way as we get into the elevator. He hits B, but I hit G.

“Hitchhiking?”

“Car’s at the shop.” I step into my ballet flats and tuck my heels into my bag. Now I’m even shorter. In the dull polish of the elevator doors I can see that I barely come halfway up his bicep. I look like a Chihuahua next to a Great Dane.

The elevator doors open to the building foyer. The world outside B&G is a blue haze; refrigerator cold, filled with rapists and murderers and lightly sprinkling rain. A sheet of newspaper blows past, right on cue.

He holds the elevator door open with one enormous hand and leans out to look at the weather. Then he swings those dark blue eyes to mine, his brow beginning to crease. The familiar bubble forms in my head. I wish he was my friend. I burst it with a pin.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he forces out.

“Ugh, no way,” I say over my shoulder and run.

Chapter 2

It’s Cream Shirt Wednesday. Joshua is off on a late lunch. He’s made a few more comments to me lately about things I like and do. They have been so accurate I’m pretty sure he’s been snooping through my stuff. Knowledge is power, and I don’t have much.

First, I conduct a forensic examination of my desk. Both Helene and Mr. Bexley despise computerized calendars, and so we have to keep matching paper schedule books like we’re Dickensian law clerks. In mine, there’s only Helene’s appointments. I obsessively lock my computer, even if I go to the printer. My unlocked computer in the vicinity of Joshua? I may as well hand him the nuclear codes now.

Back at Gamin Publishing, my desk was a fort made of books. I kept my pens in the gaps between their spines. When I was unpacking in the new office, I saw how sterile Joshua kept his desk and felt incredibly childish. I took my Word of the Day calendar and Smurf figurines home again.

Before the merger, I had a best friend at work. Val Stone and I would sit on the worn-out leather couches in the break room and play our favorite game: systematically defacing photographs of beautiful people in magazines. I’d add a moustache onto Naomi Campbell. Val would then ink out a missing tooth. Soon it was an onslaught of scars and eye patches and bloodshot eyes and devil horns until the picture was so ruined we’d get bored and start another.

Val was one of the staff who was cut and she was furious I didn’t give her some kind of a warning. Not that I would have been allowed to, even if I had known. She didn’t believe me. I turn slowly, and my reflection spins off twenty different surfaces. I see myself in every size from music box to silver screen. My cherry-red skirt flips out and I pirouette again once, just for the hell of it, trying to shake away the sick, troubled feeling I get whenever I think of Val.

Anyway, my audit confirms that my desk has a red, black, and blue pen. Pink Post-its. One tube of lipstick. A box of tissues for blotting my lipstick and tears of frustration. My planner. Nothing else.

I do a light shuffling tap dance across the marble superhighway. I’m in Joshua Country now. I sit in his chair and look at everything through his eyes. His chair is so high my toes don’t touch the ground. I wiggle my butt a little deeper into the leather. It feels completely obscene. I keep one eye permanently swiveled toward the elevator, and use the other to examine his desk for clues.

His desk is the male version of mine. Blue Post-its. He has a sharp pencil in with his three pens. Instead of lipstick he has a tin of mints. I steal one and put it in the tiny, previously useless pocket of my skirt. I imagine myself in the laxative section of the drugstore trying to find a good match and have a good little snicker. I jiggle his desk drawer. Locked. So is his computer. Fort Knox. Well played, Templeman. I make a few unsuccessful guesses at his password. Maybe he doesn’t hate me 4 eva.