The Receptionist Read online

  I frowned. The models had completely the wrong look. I’d had a hand in every detail of the party but had let Doug do his own planning.

  Sanjay stepped forward to the model on the left and lifted the EEG over her head. “It’ll feel a little tight at first,” he said. The model on the right raised her hand.

  Doug straightened. “Mia?”

  She ran her fingers through her hair and asked, “Um, what does it do?”

  Doug and Sanjay looked at each other before laughing. “I guess I should have gone over that,” said Doug. He came around the chair and stood close to her. He pointed at the next Pelican case. “This is an electroencephalogram. Can you say that?”

  Now it was the girls’ turn to look at each other. They smiled. They were flirting, all four of them. I backed up toward the wall, my mouth filling with the faint taste of metal.

  “Did you know your thoughts make electricity?” asked Doug.

  Sanjay fired up a giant, old-fashioned desktop computer and connected it to a projector. The model’s brain waves appeared in four purple lines on the drop-down screen above them. “The bottom one’s the alpha,” said Sanjay. “It tells us when the brain is at rest.” The model raised her arms to adjust the helmet, exposing a sliver of midriff and making her upper waves turn squiggly.

  Doug leaned his forehead toward Mia. “It’s called neuromarketing, like reading your mind. We’ll be able to tell if people are bored by a product or, you know, turned on.”

  “Doug!” His name came shrieking out of me. He turned. His expression opened in delight, with zero hesitation. It was too slick a move. Any normal guy would have had a moment of awkwardness after ogling a gorgeous woman in front of his girlfriend. I scowled as he walked toward me.

  “Did you hire go-go dancers?” I asked.

  Doug looked back at the women. “Those two? They’re demonstrating the product.”

  “They look like strippers.” Sanjay and the models glanced over at us.

  “They’re wearing jackets.”

  “It’s not the Maryn brand.” The models were staring at me now, stone faced. I pointed to them. “Girls, what else do you have to wear?”

  Mia shrugged. “Leggings.”

  “Travis?” I yelled for my assistant. “Travis!”

  Doug put his hand on my shoulder. “Em, let’s think about this.”

  I looked at the time on my phone. We had forty-five minutes. I went to the hall outside the library and yelled, “Someone find Travis!” I waved the models over. “What size are you?”

  “Zero,” said Mia. I glanced at her body. She had boobs. The bottom of her waist sloped outward into an unmistakable pair of hips.

  “Size two,” said the other model.

  Travis came rushing up, out of breath and wearing a walkie-talkie earpiece.

  “Travis, I told you to shadow me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Would it be easier if you had a walkie?”

  I recoiled. “I’m not wearing a fucking walkie! You think that’s my role? For random people to ask me where the bathroom is?”

  “I’m sorry,” Travis said. His cheeks were red. “I just—” I held up my hand to shush him and looked at Mia, the model, up and down.

  “You’re not a size zero,” I said. Mia flicked her eyes to Doug and back to me, pleading. “The dress has to fit, Mia.”

  She sighed. “I’m size four.”

  I pulled my corporate card out of my wristlet and handed it to Travis. “Where’s the nearest department store?”

  “There’s a Ross.”

  “God dammit!” I looked it up on my phone. It was a half mile away. “Run,” I said. “Buy all the little black dresses you can, sizes two and four.”

  “Got it.” Travis pivoted and sprinted to the exit.

  “And tasteful!” I screamed after him. I turned around. The models, Sanjay, and the group of hangers-on were staring at me.

  Doug put his arm around my shoulder. “Easy,” he said. Mia stood, pouting at us a moment before following Sanjay to the other side of the room.

  “I’m not apologizing for that,” I said.

  “It was a little harsh,” he said.

  “Tonight has to be flawless.”

  “I get it,” said Doug.

  I took a breath and shook out my hands. “I have to check on Maryn.”

  “Wait,” he said. “I have something for you.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “It’s not worth it if you don’t take the time to celebrate.”

  He pulled a long jewelry box out of his inside pocket. Inside was a watch. It was gold and exquisite, just delicate enough to be feminine, just expensive enough to say, Don’t fuck with me.

  “Most guys would have done earrings, right?”

  “I love it,” I said.

  “Look on the crown.” A sapphire, my birthstone, was embedded in the knob. I slid my index finger over the tiny stone, pebble smooth and soothing. “I had it customized,” he said.

  It was perfect. Tonight was perfect. The Dr. Maryn Store was taking off. His EEG would be next.

  We were about to start making real money.

  I pictured us in a mansion. I could see the house so clearly, in overhead drone footage: a sprawling Tuscan on an ocean bluff with a lap pool and fifteen-foot hedges.

  “We are so fortunate,” I said. My voice broke. I looked up at the ceiling to stop myself from crying. A bass line started up in the bar, and interior floodlights switched on, illuminating the tenting in pale violet.

  “I better get changed,” I said.

  My job, once the party started, was to monitor my most lucrative client. While everyone gave themselves over to the glitter and commotion, I maneuvered through the motley crowd of lifestyle vloggers, TV stars, and insurance CEOs with a single objective: manage Dr. Maryn. She was easy to find, in her shimmery gold pantsuit. She cleared space with her laughter, throwing her whole body into it.

  At one point I saw Erik, the tech consultant, weaseling his way toward her with a martini in his hand. His hair was slicked back. Before I could run interference, I heard Dr. Maryn shout out, “Erik!” She summoned him with outstretched arms. “The man who made it all happen!”

  Erik tripped and almost fell into her before recovering and planting a kiss on her cheek. I moved closer and turned my back, listening in on their conversation. “Actually, you should thank your girl, Emily,” he said. He was slurring his words. “You know, I was skeptical that a Hollywood agent would be able to head up something so complicated, but she and Doug really got in there.”

  Dr. Maryn paused. “Doug?” she asked. “Emily’s boyfriend? What does he have to do with the store?”

  Fucking Erik, getting sloppy, saying whatever popped into his head. I never uttered a word without careful planning, without thinking how I could leverage what I said for greater purpose. And then along came this undisciplined moron, exposing me in the name of making conversation.

  I scanned the room. Doug was on the opposite side of the hall, near the bar, with Maryn’s husband, Stan, who was wearing a suit with a too-long tie. Doug had his arm around Stan’s shoulders and was leading him to a cluster of attractive young women. The whole group then disappeared into his EEG room together. I glanced at Dr. Maryn, hoping she wasn’t watching the scene, but she was.

  Doug came back out by himself. He smiled at me and winked. I turned to Dr. Maryn. She was staring at me. Her eyes were narrow and assessing.

  I sighed at grotty palm trees and billboards as Doug and I drove back to his place after the party. La Brea Avenue was lined with litter. The whole of LA seemed ugly. Everything did.

  “That was a great night,” he said. “We really raised our profile.”

  “Who?”

  “Me. You.” He reached for the back of my neck and massaged it. I touched my knuckles to the cool passenger window. I swallowed. I normally had no problem putting people in their place.

  “It’s funny,” I said. “Being an agent is basically a s
ervice position.”

  He took his hand back and put it on the steering wheel. “Everyone’s gotta answer to somebody.”

  “Right, but your clients are companies,” I said. “Mine are people.”

  “I deal with people.”

  “But you don’t have to follow their triathlon times or remember the names of their pets.”

  “You do that?”

  “I represent some pretty big egos.” I trailed off. Doug had an ego. “I have to appear devoted. To them. Like my whole point in life is to make them happy.”

  Doug stopped behind a line of cars waiting to get on the freeway. “Doesn’t that feel like you’re shortchanging yourself? Like, is your sole purpose to flatter famous people?”

  “Doug. You’re not hearing me.”

  He frowned. The cars ahead of him moved forward. He shifted and sped up.

  “When you’re with me,” I said, “for something to do with my work, you’re an extension of me.”

  He blanched. “Are you scolding me?”

  “Think about my position.”

  “I’m supposed to start kowtowing to your clients now?”

  “No!” He was making this harder than he needed to.

  “Then what?”

  “The way you were cozying up to Stan. It was bad, Doug. Maryn was pissed.”

  “Stan wants to invest.”

  “You looked like a pimp.”

  He let out a pained laugh. I didn’t care if he was hurt. He’d created a pocket of exclusion at the party, too trendy, with too many models. It was a place for the young, for men. Stan was welcomed there as a tourist, but Doug’s room had nothing to offer Dr. Maryn.

  “I know the pretty girls are fun to talk to,” I said. There was spite in my voice.

  “That’s what this is about?”

  “Dr. Maryn—”

  “You’re jealous? Seriously? Em, this was my first product demo, and you almost derailed it.”

  “How?”

  “You had a temper tantrum!” He shifted hard as he moved to the left lane. We jerked forward and lagged a second before accelerating. He leaned on the gearshift and clenched his jaw, unable, for a moment, to make his Porsche work in concert with his testosterone. This was the first time I’d seen him angry.

  “I yelled at my assistant,” I said. “That was nothing.”

  He threw a few quick glimpses my way. “You know, I almost didn’t give you that watch,” he said and anchored his eyes on the road, letting his words land, letting them pierce me. They were a threat. Our life together wasn’t guaranteed. I hadn’t realized until just then how much I was depending on ending up with him. The Tuscan mansion disappeared from my thoughts, and I pictured myself repeating the bleak endings of all my past relationships: packing, crying, moving back into my condo, all lonely and raked and wounded. That was my truth, the square one I kept returning to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Doug grimaced and shook his head. “You have to think before you explode like that. It wasn’t you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I could tell the house was empty the next morning before I opened my eyes. On Sundays, Doug normally got up first and opened all the windows. I’d wake to the stirrings of my senses, smelling, tasting the salt and sound of the waves. He’d make coffee, and we’d stay in bed for hours, making love, reading the paper on our phones, recovering from our work lives.

  But today the air was still. I went downstairs. The coffee maker was cold. I checked my phone. There was nothing from him.

  I thought of texting him, but I couldn’t. He was punishing me. Contacting him would be giving in. I’d said I was sorry the night before. I winced at the memory of my apology, like it was some shameful fragment of a drunken evening.

  I took a shower and stayed under the water long after I’d finished washing my hair and body, thinking, considering his point of view. He’d said he’d been supportive, and he had. He’d spent a tremendous amount of time on the Dr. Maryn Store. Now he must have felt like it was his turn.

  But his help also included billable hours.

  I clenched my jaw around a slim thread of paranoia. There was, indeed, a transactional element to our relationship. It was measurable, even. All I had to do was look up the invoices he’d sent to my agency, whatever side deal he had going with Erik.

  I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and picked up my phone from the sink. Still nothing from him. There was movement in my periphery, out the bedroom window. I turned and saw dorsal fins. A pod of dolphins was playing in the kelp bed past the wave breaks.

  I looked at my phone again. Still no word.

  Fuck this, I thought. I put on my bikini, went to the side balcony, and reached through the cascading bougainvillea to the bungee cords holding my kayak. I unhooked it and lowered it to the sand.

  This was it. This was the life I wanted. I could have it on my own. I almost ran back upstairs then, to check my phone again. But I didn’t. I held the boat steady with both hands and pushed it with a running start into the shallows. I hopped on and paddled hard, straight toward a cresting wave, piercing the top of it. The water was mellow on the back side of the surf. All I could hear was the swirling of my paddle, the clomp of my hollow boat. For the first time that day, I felt a sense of peace.

  I looked to the shore. A woman in a bikini was standing on the balcony of the ramshackle clapboard bungalow three doors down from Doug’s place. The house had been vacant since I’d met him. It was a teardown, a leftover from the sixties or seventies. The woman crossed her arms. Even from far away, I could tell her hair was overprocessed, the color of urine. It was hard to tell if she was staring at me.

  A burst of air and liquid sounded behind me. There was a dolphin surfacing just a few feet away. I whistled and patted the water with my hand. It came closer, lingering a moment, inspecting me as best it could before ducking under the kayak. “Oh,” I said. The thing probably weighed four hundred pounds. It popped up along the other side of me. The skin around its eyes was crinkled.

  “I know,” I said and reached for its rubbery body. “I know you can knock me over.” I patted the water again after it disappeared into the deep. It didn’t come back.

  Doug returned while I was kayaking. He took the boat from me after I paddled to shore and began dragging it back to the house. His hair was damp with sweat. I planted my feet on the sand. “Well?”

  He put the bow of the boat down and lifted his chin. “Well, what?”

  “You’re going to make me ask?”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I told you,” he said. “At the gym.” He took off his shirt, balled it up, and tossed it onto the kayak. “I’m gonna take a dip.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I sent you an email,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you with a text.”

  He swam out and rode a wave. I sat at the edge of the waterline, making a drip castle with the wet sand. The blonde from three doors down came back out to her deck. She watched Doug.

  I went into the house. My phone was on the breakfast bar. I checked my email. There was nothing from him. I checked the spam folder, the promotions tab, nothing. I had a growing sense that I was scrambled, like static between radio stations.

  I was dating a liar.

  His drinking, his “meetings.” There was always some dysfunction lurking, peeking through his personality at odd intervals. But this outright lie, this petty challenge, scared me.

  He came into the room and froze. “Is everything okay?” he asked in a voice I’d never heard. It was tiny and pitiful: a caught-in-a-lie, faraway cry from some hidden place I’d never be allowed access.

  What do you want? I should have said. Why are you with me? But I didn’t ask him anything. I was too afraid of the answer—Doug was with me because he knew I wouldn’t confront him. Or rather, as long as I didn’t confront him. This was a test. If I said nothing, we could keep going on in his be
autiful house, with our beautiful lives.

  But no, I thought. I stiffened. I raised my chin. I had my dignity. If only the lie had been about something important. I cleared my throat, not knowing where to start, not wanting this conversation.

  “A dolphin came right up to me when I was kayaking,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” he said. His smile was bright, relieved. I inhaled, flooding with an unexpected mix of giddiness and reassuring clarity. I could see through Doug finally, like I could see through everyone else.

  “I want a dog,” I said.

  He was silent, considering. “Like your mom’s dog?” he said. “What was that?”

  “Gucci was a Pomeranian,” I said. “I want something bigger.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bella was my beautiful, my wiry, my watchful Doberman pinscher. I met her when she was five months old, living with her brothers and sisters in a giant chain-link kennel at the edge of a dusty field in Ventura County. The other puppies were frisky. They jumped and pawed the fence with yelps of, Pick me! Pick me! But Bella was silent, standing alert in the back corner of the cage. All I could see was her eyes. They were calm and judging.

  The Doberman breeder, an overly tan lady with dirty fingernails, suggested one of the livelier dogs. “Shy pups are tricky,” she said.

  I nodded, keeping my gaze on the animal staring back at me. With most dogs, sustained eye contact would have been taken as a gesture of dominance, a signal to either look away or turn aggressive. But Bella continued observing.

  The breeder looked troubled. “See the others?” she asked. “They’re playful.”

  I thought of telling the truth, that I didn’t like to play, that I knew this dog understood. “I think she’s picked me,” I said. The breeder gave a respectful nod and went in with the leash.