скачать книгу бесплатно
Anna’s mouth fell open. Jim Bellows. Camilla was really reaching to be bringing up Jim. Anna had dated Jim when she first started working at Arsenal as a receptionist. They broke up when Anna started getting promoted. “Is this about a boyfriend? Because I think Jim proved that this job isn’t all that conducive to relationships.”
“The way you do the job isn’t conducive to relationships.” Anna opened her mouth to defend herself, but Camilla kept talking. “When was the last time you did something, anything that was fun?”
“I do fun things all the time,” Anna answered, even as the words came out of her mouth she knew she was lying and that it would be only one more nail in the coffin Camilla was making for her. The coffin she was going to have to spend six months in.
“Anna.” Camilla’s tone softened and Anna’s backbone stiffened in response.
“Fine, have it your way. I quit.” She jabbed her finger at Camilla. “I don’t want to have anything to do with an organization that treats its hardest workers like this.”
Part of Anna had believed Camilla would quail under this threat. She had a half-baked notion of Camilla taking it all back and offering her the president position immediately.
But Camilla’s eyebrow arched in the silence and Anna felt sanity slipping right out of the room.
“I could get a job anywhere,” Anna shouted and Camilla’s other eyebrow arched. “Don’t play with me, Camilla.”
“I know Mernick and Simon would kill to have you….”
“That’s right, Mernick and Simon and a dozen other companies,” Anna shot in.
“Is that what you want?” Camilla asked softly.
“It’s the only choice you’re giving me.” Anna couldn’t believe this conversation was continuing.
“Look, I’m giving you six months. If you want to go to another company, fine. You want to forget about all the work you put in here, go right ahead. Andrew will have every one of your accounts. You can say goodbye to Goddess Sportswear.”
Ouch. Camilla really knew how to kick a girl when she was down, which used to be one of the things Anna kind of admired about her. It wasn’t so pretty being on the receiving end of that honesty, however. Goddess Sportswear was Anna’s baby, her very own. She had cultivated Aurora Milan, a ditzy woman with a good idea, had spun her designs into what was going to be the leading sportswear line for women in the country. In turn, Goddess would cement Arsenal’s future.
Anna hung her head for a moment, overwhelmed by the sudden changes Camilla was making with her life.
“Or you can take six months off and come back and all of this will be yours.” Camilla gestured at the view and the office and kingdom she had built and was ready to lay at Anna’s feet. After six months. “I’m not playing with you.” Camilla took a tentative step forward and Anna held her ground but she knew her expression must have been dark because Camilla stopped a safe distance away. “I’m trying to save you Anna. If you continue to work like this and take over Arsenal, you’ll never have the opportunity to enjoy your life. You’ll work yourself right into the grave with nothing to show for it but a bunch of advertising campaigns for sports bras and vodka.” Camilla braved a step closer and Anna, feeling the walls close in on her, growled low in her throat. “Sweetheart, don’t you want a family?”
Anna felt something sharp twist in her chest and she tried to ignore it. She had been ignoring that twist more and more over the past year and had, in fact, become a pro at pretending that there wasn’t some internal clock ticking away inside her body. She had blocked off the part of her brain that had started counting the years that were flying by. If she noticed that all the women she knew her age were married, some with kids, she quickly rationalized it with her career. Some women chose family and some women chose career. Anna had made her choice and if sometimes that choice seemed a little lonely, then she only had to look at one of the million billboards or magazine ads for Goddess Sportswear to feel vindicated.
Besides, she was no good at family. She was good at Arsenal.
“You have to trust me,” Camilla was saying. “This is for your own good.”
Anna took a deep breath and turned to face her window and the view of the harbor and mountains behind it. The birds. She knew every single detail by heart. She had been looking at that view for fourteen hours or more a day for almost five years, ever since she’d moved into the office from her cubicle.
It had taken many long years to get from her spot behind the receptionist desk to this view.
Ten years of service to this woman and her company and this is where I end up. Anna shook her head.
Feeling empty and lost, she looked around her office, the familiar bland artwork and the pictures of her sister Marie, some of Camilla’s kids and the one grandchild that she had gotten close to over the years. Those few pictures were really the only things that made her office different from any other office in any other building in any other city.
Looking at her desk, nothing surprised her, nothing was not just as she had left it. She knew what every file contained, what was in each stack of paper set at right angles. Her pens lined up across the top of her desk blotter. Her phone with the egg timer beside it that she used to keep herself on schedule. Because once you got off schedule, there was no going back.
This was her life. Her whole entire life.
“I think I hate you,” Anna told her friend as she unwrapped another piece of chocolate and shoved it into her mouth. “Really, I think I hate you.”
“I expected as much.” Camilla pushed off the desk and reached into the briefcase she brought into Anna’s office before dropping this bomb. She pulled out a stack of papers and looked through them idly.
“How can you so calmly ruin my life and still look like a woman in a makeup ad?” Anna asked, digging into her bag of candy again. “It’s not right, Camilla. In fact, as I think about it, it’s sick. How does this happen?”
“Anna, I am thirty years your senior and for a while I worked as hard as you do right now. But I always had a man standing right behind me, helping me out.” She was, of course, referring to Michael, her husband and the father of their three children. “Being loved and helped and cared for when I needed it has made all the difference in my life.”
So beyond caring, Anna put a finger down her throat and made a gagging sound, then bit into her chocolate.
“Then I got you,” Camilla said and Anna looked up surprised. “I didn’t have to work as hard because you were working hard enough for the both of us.”
“Damn straight,” Anna said with her mouth full.
“As a result, I feel a little responsible for the way your life is going.”
“I like the way my life is going,” Anna shouted and when chocolate flew out of her mouth she didn’t even care.
This is how low a person can sink in the span of an hour, Anna thought wiping the chocolate off the highly polished surface of her desk.
“We’ll see, Anna.” Camilla looked at the thin watch on her wrist. “It’s eight o’clock. You need to pack your things.”
Anna heaved a big sigh. She put the candy back down, beginning to feel a little bit sick and pulled out her briefcase. When she started to put her files into her bag, Camilla stopped her.
“No work,” she said.
“Who’s going to take care of Goddess?”
“Andrew,” Camilla said.
Anna saw red. “You’re giving Goddess to Andrew?”
“I’ll be advising, it’s going to be fine.”
“What about Bluetech and Norway Vodka and Frederick’s?” Anna asked after her other major clients.
“Andrew and I can handle it,” Camilla nodded her head once. “Keep packing.”
Anna looked at Camilla for a moment in real disbelief and then didn’t even try to hide it when she started muttering things about Camilla under her breath.
“My mother has nothing to do with this,” Camilla said, but she was smiling. Anna collected her personal digital assistant, cell phone and pager to put in her bag, but again Camilla stopped her.
“You won’t need those,” she said.
“What am I allowed to take?” Anna asked, throwing her hands up again.
“Well, you can take those oranges you’ve got in your desk and that candy. It will probably be the only food you have in your house.”
“Fine. Great. You know, as I think about this, this is a great idea. Six months away from your manipulations will serve me a world of good.” Anna went to the small closet in her office. She opened the door and pulled out the suits hanging there. There were several, for those odd times that she slept on the couch.
“I’m sure it will.” Camilla was still smiling and Anna snarled as she shoved her tailored suits, all black and expensive, into her very large briefcase. “But you’ll be seeing me,” Camilla said.
“Probably not,” Anna answered over her shoulder as she went back to the closet for the toiletry bag she kept there. “I’ll probably be too busy getting married and having children and learning how to knit to hang out with you,” she growled. She grabbed the gym bag she used for her lunch-hour workouts, her blow-dryer, her contacts and spare glasses and the alarm clock.
“Well, actually.” Camilla smiled and looked at the papers in her hand. “I realized that you wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to actually get a life so I signed you up for some of the classes I take.” Camilla flipped the papers. “And I made a list…”
“A list?” This was crazy. Camilla was accusing her of not having a life.
“A short one, just a few things I think you should do….”
“Maybe you need a sabbatical,” Anna muttered.
“Starting,” Camilla talked over Anna, “with the picnic we have on Monday for Memorial Day and Meg’s birthday.” Camilla referred to her oldest granddaughter; this was an event Anna usually missed for work.
Apparently not this year.
“You are worse than my mother,” Anna said and didn’t feel at all bad about what they both knew was a serious insult considering Anna’s mother. But Camilla didn’t even flinch. “At least she never kicked me out.”
Anna shoved her extra blanket and the pillow into her gym bag and threw both bags over her shoulders. But they were so heavy that they fell a little bit and she ended up with them across her elbows, cutting off circulation to her hands. Her slippers fell out and she picked them up and carried them in her hand.
“This doesn’t prove anything,” she hissed when she saw Camilla laughing at all the stuff she kept at the office. But Camilla just smiled that enigmatic, could-be-a-model-for-Revlon smile. Anna grabbed the lists out of Camilla’s hand and shoved them in the feet of her slippers.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Camilla called as Anna breezed out of the office.
Anna ignored her and held her head up high as she walked out of the place she had considered home for the past ten years of her life.
2
ANNA STABBED another piece of bread into one of the dips in front of her. She noticed, but certainly didn’t care, that the roasted-red-pepper-whatever fell in huge globs onto the counter and onto her Donna Karan suit.
She shrugged and ate the bread in one bite. It was a few hours later and she still felt as though she was Chicken Little and the joke really was on her.
“Sis.” Anna’s sister Marie leaned against her oven and crossed her arms over her chest, ten bracelets arranged themselves on her wrists. “Take a breath. You’re losing it. You didn’t even taste those dips,” Marie pointed out.
“Well, I’m too busy coming to grips with the total destruction of my life to notice hummus,” Anna snapped. “I get to lose it. I am completely within my rights to lose it right now.”
Marie blew out a breath and hung her head for a moment before crossing the kitchen to yank the piece of bread out of Anna’s hand. “You have been here for an hour, you’ve eaten every carbohydrate I’ve got in my house. You’ve had half a bottle of wine and I still don’t understand what’s wrong.”
Marie’s long black curly hair fell over her shoulder, escaping from the scarf she was using to tie it back.
She looks like a gypsy, Anna thought a little glumly, her own self-esteem somewhere below sea level. She looks like a gypsy and I look like… Anna looked down at her probably ruined suit that was so terribly sensible and felt like her sister’s shadow. Which, frankly, was nothing new. She yanked the piece of pita out of her sister’s hand and ate it. Marie, who had spent most of the evening trying to be calm and sympathetic, finally cracked and laughed at Anna.
Get a grip, Anna told herself and mentally tried to rally.
“Okay, okay,” Anna said. She swallowed and dusted off her hands. “I’m all right.”
“There you go.” Marie nodded her head and leaned against the other side of the counter where Anna was seated. They were in Marie’s new apartment, her freshly painted orange kitchen. Not a color Anna would have picked, but somehow an orange kitchen totally suited Marie.
Marie picked up her glass of red wine and took a sip. “Now, let’s talk about this rationally,” Marie said. Anna chuckled, knowing those words had never come out of her sister’s mouth. Rational and Marie were like oil and water.
“What have we got here, really?” Marie asked. She began cleaning up the mess of breadcrumbs and dip splatter that Anna had made in her whirlwind of stress eating.
“I’ve been fired for six months.”
“Well, I imagine it’s all in how you look at it. You think fired. I think…six months vacation.” Marie shrugged. “Sounds like a dream to me.”
“Imagine telling me to get a life and then handing me a list…I mean, what is she thinking?” Anna asked, not really listening to her sister. She was not dealing with this well, she knew that. She would feel calm for a second, then there would be an explosion in the back of her head and all she could think about was not going in to work tomorrow and how dumb it all was. How ridiculous. What was she supposed to do?
“Camilla is just looking after you like she always has.” Marie walked back over to the sink and dumped the crumbs.
Anna laughed a dry little bark. “Couldn’t she just slip me a twenty or…?”
“She’s still doing that?” Marie asked, turning from the sink surprised. “She never slips me twenties anymore.” When Anna had gotten a job at Arsenal at age eighteen, Marie had been sixteen. And when Camilla started taking Anna under her fine and gracious wing, Marie found a place there, too. Now both women looked at Camilla as someone much more than a boss or a friend. She was family of sorts, like a favorite aunt and it made the pain of this six-month betrayal even worse.
“No, no twenties, but anything would be better than this,” Anna said glumly. She fiddled with the breadbasket and because it was empty, she used her finger to scoop up more of the hummous she wasn’t actually tasting and put it in her mouth.
“You work too much,” Marie said, snatching the basket and dips away from her. “And frankly, it’s not like you are really fired. You are being slightly overdramatic here and, as a woman with a fine appreciation for dramatic, I can tell you there is no need.”
“Yeah, but do you know what can happen in six months?” Anna asked her sister. “With Andrew in charge of Goddess, I may not have a company to run when this little vacation is over.”
“Come on, Camilla is going to be there,” Marie said skeptically.
“Sure, but she hasn’t been a part of the day-to-day life of Arsenal in years.”
“Anna,” Marie interrupted sharply. “Do not sell that woman short.”
Anna blew out a big breath and rolled her eyes. Camilla was hardly the one who needed to be defended here. Anna was the injured party, why couldn’t her sister see that?
Marie poured more wine in her glass. “What’s really got you so upset?” Marie asked quietly.
“You mean it’s not enough that life as I know it is over?” Anna asked and took a sip of her wine. Marie hummed and leaned on the counter. “It’s not enough that the fall line for my pet project is going to be run by a spineless imbecile?” Anna was working herself up; she could feel her heart rate doubling. “How about I really have no idea what she wants me to do? What am I supposed to do for six months?”
“How about sleep?” Marie suggested.
“I sleep,” Anna protested, but Marie obviously didn’t believe her. “Okay, so I sleep for a week, then what. Get a life? I don’t have any idea what she means.”
“That—” Marie lifted her glass and looked over the edge at Anna “—is the saddest thing I have ever heard.” Marie drank and the buzzer on the stove went off. She turned around to deal with what had become a very elaborate midnight snack.
Anna sat in her barstool and felt lost. She felt as though she was eighteen years old and her mother was leaving all over again. What was with the older women in her life abandoning her like this? Just when she felt like she was accomplishing things, someone she loved and trusted ripped the world out from under her feet. Get a life? It made no sense.
“So,” Marie was saying as she pulled a casserole dish out of the oven. The air filled with the smells of oregano, basil and buttery pastry crust. Despite having eaten everything within arm’s reach, Anna was starving. “You do what she needs you to do. You read some books, take naps, help your sister renovate.” Marie looked merrily out of the corner of her eye at Anna.
“You can’t take my lemons for your lemonade,” Anna laughed ruefully, but the gorgeous tart Marie was putting on the counter to cool distracted her. “What is that?”
“Tomato and basil tart,” Marie said and pulled out some dishes. “I am thinking of adding it to the menu at Marie’s.”
Tired and sad and lost and hungry, Anna looked at her sister buzzing around her kitchen and felt a sudden deep appreciation for her. Marie had finally moved back to San Fransico a few months ago and, after working in others’ kitchens for most of the past eight years, she had figured out, as Anna knew she always would, that she was not a good employee. She put down her savings on a little restaurant in a funky new area of town and was planning on taking the San Francisco dining world by storm. And she would, Anna was sure of it. Marie took everything by storm.
Not like Anna, she thought bitterly. Anna gets fired.
