Slices of Life (2 page)

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“I’d be better if my lovely wife would answer her cell phone when I call.” She feigned annoyance, but if there was one thing Jenna learned about Jules during the time she’d worked for Christine, it was that the woman was perpetually cheerful. “Is she in?”

“She is. Let me buzz her for you.” Jenna was shocked to see a slight tremble in her hand as she put Jules on hold and dialed Christine’s extension.

“Ms. Davis?”

“Yes?”

“Jules is on line three.”

“Oh! Great.” Christine sounded genuinely happy to hear from her partner. “Put her through.”

Jenna did so, her hand still quivering.
What the hell is wrong with me?
She flexed her fingers, opened and closed her hand until the tremor stopped.

“Everything okay?” Bertie asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Fine.”

Bertie continued looking at her even as she spoke into the small microphone of her headset, apparently answering a question posed to her.

Jenna gave her a look that said, “What?” Bertie turned back to her computer while Jenna wondered what that was about.

A glance at her switchboard told her Jules and Christine were still talking. Jenna wasn’t sure why that suddenly made her uncomfortable, but she squirmed in her ergonomic office chair and wondered if she wasn’t coming down with something. Her stomach still felt off, her body was restless, and a slow tension was building in her head as if her skull was in a gradually tightening, padded vice. A deep breath in and then gradually out seemed to steady her somewhat as she tried to relax and put her own mind at ease.

She was still staring off into space when the elevator across from the double glass doors to the hall dinged, and Kerry St. John stepped out with two boxes of doughnuts stacked in her arms. Shifting them to one arm, she opened the door with the other before Jenna or Bertie could get up and open it for her. Kerry was their new intern. Their tall, blonde, young, legs-that-went-on-for-days intern. She was always smiling, always cheerful, and—Jenna suspected—playing the dumb-blonde card on purpose. The men in the office fell all over themselves to help/teach/talk to/look at her. Jenna and Bertie just rolled their eyes over such displays.

“Hey there.” Christine’s voice snagged Jenna’s attention, but as she turned and tried to dim the wattage on her smile, she realized that Christine wasn’t talking to her. She was talking to Kerry.

“Hi, Boss,” Kerry said, her tone so saccharine and kind that Jenna wanted to lunge across the counter, grab her by the throat, and shake the sugar right out of her. “I come bearing gifts for the meeting.”

“I see that. Excellent.” Christine laid a hand on the small of Kerry’s back. “Walk with me to the conference room.” Then over her shoulder, she tossed, “Jenna, is the coffee ready?”

Jenna’s nostrils flared as she watched the two women head down the hall, walking entirely too close together as far as she was concerned. An ache in her jaw became noticeable; only then did she realize she was clenching her teeth together as hard as possible.

“What do you think she’s on?” Bertie whispered.

Jenna blinked several times and turned to look at her friend. “What?”

“Kerry. Nobody’s
that
happy
all
the time. She’s got to be on something. I wonder what it is. I wonder where I can get some.”

That small bit of Bertie’s humor broke some of the tension for Jenna, allowed her to take a deep breath and stop worrying about suddenly feeling so weirdly insecure. At least for a while.

Focusing on work was the best thing for her and Jenna knew it. She got the coffee brewed and stocked the conference room with the fresh pot, clean black mugs with the Davis & Fichter logo printed on them in gold, spoons, sugar, creamer, napkins, and tea bags. Then she took Kerry’s stupid doughnuts and arranged them tastefully on a round plate, all the while shaking her head in disapproval. Didn’t the intern know how tacky it looked to serve clients pastries from a box?

When the room looked distinguished and presentable, Jenna stepped into the burgundy-carpeted hallway. She was just in time to see Christine’s office door open. Christine and Kerry lingered in the doorway, apparently finishing whatever conversation started inside. Christine said something Jenna couldn’t make out and Kerry laughed, a high-pitched tinkling sound that made Jenna cringe. Kerry laid her hand on Christine’s shoulder and leaned in close to respond. Then she turned and headed down the hall to the left. Christine stood in her doorway and watched her intern saunter away before retreating to her office. Neither of them noticed Jenna watching.

Not wanting to analyze why the scene bothered her, but unable to think about anything else, Jenna swallowed the lump in her throat. What was the big deal? Yes, she was sleeping with Christine, but she was by no means in love with her.
Right?
It was just sex.
Wasn’t it?
In the beginning, she didn’t think of Christine as any kind of predator. True, she was the boss and the boss shouldn’t be sleeping with her subordinate, but Jenna was just as guilty. She wanted it just as much; Christine certainly didn’t force her. But after what she just witnessed, the whole bit about secrecy began to make sense. It never once occurred to Jenna that she wasn’t the only one in the office Christine bedded or intended to bed, and the scope of her naïveté was suddenly, acutely embarrassing. She wasn’t sixteen. She was a grown woman. A grown woman who should have known better.

Now, as she flopped back down into her chair, Jenna wondered which of them was the bigger cliché—her for banging her boss or Christine for banging her secretary. Both were equally unimpressive.

Before she could wallow further in her own self-deprecation, the door opened and Sal Farelli entered, flanked by three men and a woman. Farelli owned six car dealerships in the area and was, by far, one of the most successful businessmen in the city. Everybody knew his name because of his wealth. Everybody knew his face because of his television commercials.

Jenna didn’t like Farelli and her conclusion was based simply on the way he presented himself. Most of Christine’s clients were average businesspeople, but Sal Farelli was a caricature of a middle-aged, Italian male. Of average height, he had a squat build and a bit of a gut. He was in his mid-fifties, and his salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back, giving him the stereotypical greasy look of a car salesman. He wore jeans, a black and white bowling shirt, and sunglasses. He looked like he had come directly from the set of
The Sopranos
, and Jenna often wondered if he was in some sort of mafia. Her next thought was that he was a walking cliché, which brought a bit of a grin to her face until she remembered that she also fit that category.

“Hiya, doll,” he said to her, removing his sunglasses and grinning at her as if expecting her to swoon. Jenna had to fight to keep from rolling her eyes.

In the end, she ironically decided she was almost grateful for Farelli’s appointment because it kept her mind off her situation with Christine. Kerry the Intern got to sit in on the meeting, much to Farelli’s delight, and Jenna was very happy to close the door on them and walk back to her desk. She didn’t think she could handle the way everybody in the room leered at Kerry, Christine included.

“You okay?” Bertie asked her as she sat back down in her chair and tried to focus on her computer. “You seem tense.”

“I’m fine,” Jenna told her. “Tired, I guess.”

Bertie gave a nod and they each went back to their work.

A few minutes later, Jenna spoke again. “Bertie?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you ever done anything that you regretted later? Something you thought was a good idea at the time, but turned out not to be?”

“Such as?”

Jenna sighed, frustrated with herself for bringing it up. She wanted somebody with whom to commiserate, but didn’t want to reveal what she’d been up to. “I don’t know. Dating somebody for the wrong reasons. Something like that?”

Bertie chuckled. “Dating somebody. Sleeping with somebody. Oh, yeah. Who hasn’t?”

Jenna chuckled too, not wanting to seem overly serious. “Right? Yeah, my sister has been seeing somebody she knows she shouldn’t be seeing, but isn’t sure how to get out of it.”

“Does she want to get out of it?”

Jenna cocked her head, contemplating the question, and answered in a voice much softer than she intended. “Yeah, I think she does.”

“The sex must be good.” Bertie shot her a knowing grin.

“She says it’s incredible.”

Bertie nodded, her eyes on her computer screen. “That’s what usually keeps ‘em hanging on.”

“I’m just not sure what to tell her,” Jenna pressed gently. Bertie was older, wiser, and no-nonsense. Jenna wanted very much to get direction from her.

“Tell her she already knows what she should do. She’s just ignoring her instincts.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” Jenna chewed on that for the next hour, knowing deep down that Bertie was right.
I am sleeping with my boss. I am a living, breathing Lifetime movie.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, horribly dismayed with the decisions she’d made, and utterly disgusted by the fact that she’d become “the other woman.” Her feminist friends would skin her alive if they knew.

By eleven o’clock, Jenna succeeded in focusing the majority of her attention on her work, which gave her brain a much-needed respite. Rolling a terrible judgment call around in your head over and over again can be exhausting; attempting to come up with the best way to fix it, even more so. Jenna was very happy to work on some invoicing, send out statements to overdue clients, and prepare the outgoing mail. Busywork became her savior and she was grateful.

Just before 11:30, the elevator door opened and a compact, yet muscular, woman exited, pulling a cart of packages behind her. Leaving her cart in the hall, she entered the office. She was dressed in brown from head to toe, her dark hair was close-cropped with gray sprinkling the temples, and her smile was contagious.

“Hey there, good lookin’,” she said to Jenna as she set three small boxes and four envelopes on the counter.

“Good morning, MJ,” Jenna replied. “How are you today?”

“Can’t complain” was MJ’s stock answer, every day, no matter what. She scanned each package with her UPS computer board, then gave the board to Jenna, along with the plastic pen for her signature.

“Well, you
could
,” Jenna said with a grin.

“But what good would it do me?” MJ winked.

“She has a point,” Bertie piped in.

Jenna sighed as she signed on the little computer screen, her writing nearly illegible. “I know.”

MJ leaned on her forearms, pushing herself closer to Jenna. “Hey,” she said, her voice soft. “Don’t let the assholes of the world get you down. You deserve better. Okay?” She held Jenna’s gaze with her own, and Jenna marveled at the lushness of her dark eyelashes, devoid of any makeup and in no need of it. Her dark skin was nearly flawless, causing Jenna to wonder if it was as soft as it looked.

“Okay,” Jenna said with a nod, handing the computer board back. “Thanks, MJ.”

MJ ran a hand over the top of her head and Jenna had the sudden urge to do the same thing. “My pleasure. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.”

“You too.”

Jenna and Bertie both watched as MJ left their office and took her cart off to the next business on their floor.

“That one is a charmer,” Bertie said with a chuckle. “She even gives me a tingle. Don’t tell my husband.”

Jenna nodded, her eyes still on the empty hall.

“See? Why can’t you lust after somebody like that?” Bertie asked. “She’s intelligent, she works hard, she’s perceptive, she’s adorable. You like her. And I think she’s got a little crush on you.”

Jenna continued to nod. Bertie was right. From the first day MJ took over this route, she and Jenna clicked. Jenna didn’t know if it was their gaydar or a mutual attraction or both, but she always got a bit of a flutter in her belly whenever MJ came through the door. And MJ always made sure to stop and chat with her, even if it was only for a moment or two, no matter how busy she was. She always paid Jenna some kind of compliment, no matter how small, and by the time MJ left the office, Jenna seemed to feel a bit better, a bit lighter. It was funny how a five-minute visit from somebody could change the very atmosphere you sat in. MJ had that effect. In fact, Jenna was toying with the idea of asking MJ out for coffee.

Then the fateful after-hours meeting with Christine happened and all bets were off.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
.

“Really,” Bertie was saying. “You two would make such a cute couple and I bet she’d treat you like a queen. I wonder if she’s available.”

Jenna wondered, too.

She worked through lunch, her brain half on her work and half on her UPS driver. More than once, she caught herself smiling for no reason and it was such a new feeling. The idea of thinking about somebody she could openly discuss seemed almost foreign. Funny how that happened in less than two months, how having a secret affair made her feel so closed, so alone, so…not a good person.

What she was doing with Christine was wrong. She knew that from the beginning, but now it made her almost nauseous. Yes, the sex was fantastic. So what? Christine was spoken for. She knew it and Jenna knew it. For the first time, she allowed herself to think about how it would feel to be in Jules’ shoes, what it would do to her trust, her self-worth, her heart, if she knew the person she loved was being intimate with somebody else and hiding it from her. If that other person was somebody she knew, somebody who smiled and said hello and pretended to be a friend, all the while knowing full well she was stabbing her in the back. Jenna’s stomach churned and she tasted bile in the back of her throat.

“Hey, what’s going on with you today?” Bertie asked with concern. “You look almost green, hon.”

Jenna swallowed hard. “I don’t feel so good.”

“I can tell. Look, it’s after two. Why don’t you just go home? You worked through lunch and you’re caught up, right?”