Chapter Three
Josh
I heard a slight rumbling sound coming toward me and I looked up from the papers spread across the table in front of me. My eyes immediately started burning and I rubbed them, trying to get rid of the gritty feeling behind my eyelids. The door to the office was halfway open and I saw a pale, shimmering figure lingering in the doorway. Bloody rags hung from its slight frame and one hand gripped what looked like a large wooden mining cart behind it. I felt my heart start pounding in my chest at the same moment that confusion started swirling through my mind.
Did they build this office on top of a mine? Are there mines in the middle of the city? Have I lost my ever-fucking-loving mind?
The door slowly opened the rest of the way and the figure stepped in. The glow from the lamp on the smaller table pushed against the wall was just enough to illuminate the figure as it came a few steps into the office and lifted its other arm. This was it. This was how all of the bad horror movies went. The ghost walks in and points at you, and then you die a horrible death that somehow relates to it.
So, I was going to get crushed by a mining cart? Buried alive? Pecked to death by a canary?
The figure’s arm moved up to its side and then pressed the light switch. Bright light from the overhead fixture was blinding against my exhausted eyes and I grimaced.
“You really shouldn’t sit here in the dark like that. It’s not good for your eyes.”
I peeled my eyelids apart and focused on the ghost in front of me. After a few seconds my eyes got accustomed to the blistering light and I could see that it was actually the beautiful woman who came to the office each night to clean. I had seen her for a few moments every night for the last several weeks when she slipped in and out of the office, but I had been too immersed in the endless meetings to have much interaction with her.
I know I don’t remember her being so pale and shimmery, though.
She looked at me about as strangely as I felt that I was probably looking at her and we stayed that way for several more moments, seemingly unsure of what we were supposed to do next. Finally, she turned and reached into what I realized now was her cleaning cart that had been wrapped in woodgrain fabric and lined around the top with large plastic gems. She tossed something onto the desk in front of me and I stared down at it, trying to process the little packages before realizing that it was a handful of tiny candy bars.
“Happy Halloween,” she said.
I looked up at her.
“Halloween?”
She nodded.
“It’s a holiday. Comes at the end of October. People wander around getting candy?”
I nodded.
“No, I’m familiar,” I said. “I just didn’t realize that it was Halloween.”
She looked me up and down like she was scrutinizing me.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
I glanced down at myself. I was wearing my usual suit, though I had relented to taking off my tie sometime in the evening after the Sommers family had left.
“Well, I don’t generally dress up in a costume when I come to the office.”
I regretted saying it as soon as it came out of my mouth, not wanting her to feel like I was making fun of her, but she didn’t seem at all fazed. She shrugged and reached into her cart, pulling out a piece of candy and unwrapping it.
“I take any opportunity to dress up that I can. My son has outgrown trick-or-treating and would rather just throw on a t-shirt and go hang out with his friends, so I have to amuse myself alone.”
“You have a son?” I asked.
I didn’t know why that struck me as much as it did.
She nodded.
“Matteo. He’s thirteen and officially no longer thinks that his mother dressing up is cool.”
I laughed.
“Well, I think that you’re cool,” I said.
She laughed as she chewed the candy, then shook her head.
“I think the fact that my boss just told me that I’m cool makes me even less cool,” she said.
An uncomfortable feeling rippled through my stomach. I really didn’t like being referred to as her “boss”.
“Wilton Sommers is your boss,” I said.
“And his delightful children,” she said. Her eyes widened slightly, and she rolled them, her shoulders falling as if she was internally scolding herself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s alright,” I said hastily, not wanting the conversation to end. I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “You’re not exactly wrong.”
She laughed again.
“I’m a little surprised to hear you say that,” she said.
“Why?”
“I just assumed that you were…part of them.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Was I part of them? What did that even mean?
“I’m not a Sommers,” I said.
It came out sounding a touch more defensive than I had intended, and she had obviously noticed it.
“Well, that’s probably a good thing, considering it looks like you’ve been abandoned.”
I looked around at the empty office.
“Yes, I have,” I said. “Come to think of it, I do remember Willa mentioning that there was a party tonight. I guess it was for Halloween. She’s not going to be happy when I don’t show up.”
I realized that I was talking primarily to myself as I contemplated just how angry Willa was going to be the next time that I saw her. It wasn’t something I was particularly looking forward to.
“It’ll be fine,” she said with a shrug. “Just tell her that you went as vapor and that you had a really convincing costume.”
She tugged her mine cart further into the office and walked over to the trashcan to empty it. She glanced down at the papers that tumbled into her trash bag, reached down, and looked at me. Giving me a mischievously suspicious look, she held a candy wrapper out to me.
“Looks like you might have been celebrating Halloween even if you didn’t know it.”
“I was kind of wondering why the secretary had a giant bowl of candy on her desk. I thought that maybe she and her boyfriend had just broken up again and she was letting everyone in the office in on her mourning.”
“Does that happen frequently?”
“More than she’d probably like to admit. I’ve gotten pretty used to it.”
She nodded and tossed the candy wrapper back into the trash.
“So why are you here all by yourself?” she asked. “When I saw the light on I just assumed it would be all of you.”
“I got roped into putting the final touches on the Black Friday ads,” I said, giving a deep sigh.
“You should be thrilled about that.”
“We’ve been working on them since summer. I’m getting a little tired of thinking about the same things. I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be able to get these done and just sleep until December.”
“Then I should probably stop distracting you and let you finish working. I’ll just head back to the salt mines.”
“I thought they were jewel mines.”
She glanced at her cart and the plastic jewels that lined the top.
“Well, it wouldn’t have looked as good with a bunch of salt around the top. A whole bunch of white powder around the top of a cart that I was pulling around might send a message that I wasn’t really intending.”
I laughed.
“That was probably a safer choice.”
She gave me a smile that seemed more tense than she had just a few moments before, and turned back to her cart. I realized that I hadn’t even asked her her name and was embarrassed by the oversight. She already thought of me as her boss. Now I was her arrogant boss. Fantastic.
“I’m Josh, by the way,” I said. “Josh Worthington.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Worthington,” she said.
“No,” I said. “No. Not Mr. Worthington. Josh, please.”
“Are you going to say Mr. Worthington is your father?” she said playfully.
I shook my head, feeling a hint of sadness settle over me at the question.
“My father’s dead,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, looking slightly startled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. It’s been a long time. But that’s why I’m here.” She nodded and turned back to her work. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Cristina,” she said. “Cristina Isabel.”
“Isabel?” I asked. “Is that your last name or is this a double name situation?”
“Last name,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Isabel.”
“Cristina,” she said. “And Miss. Not Mrs. Mrs. Isabel is my grandmother. And she’s dead, too.” She gave a playful smile that broke some of the tension that had built when I mentioned my father. “Wooooo-ooooo-ooooooo,” she said, making a ghostly sound that went well with her costume, “Happy Halloween.”
I laughed, and she went back to work, moving through the room with amazing efficiency. Each task was finished quickly and meticulously, and far sooner than I wanted her to be, Cristina was finished cleaning and heading toward the door.
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s my job,” she said with a smile. She hesitated for a moment and then took a step closer to the table. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded.
“Sure.”
She started to say something, but then shook her head.
“Never mind.”
“No, ask me. Go ahead.”
Cristina looked reluctant and I found myself drawn to her, not wanting her to leave. Each time that I caught sight of her since the first night that we had stayed late, I had been fighting the attraction that I felt to her. It didn’t feel right for me to sit there beside Willa and do everything I could to steal glances at the beautiful dark-eyed woman. Now, though, Willa wasn’t there, and I didn’t see the harm of at least enjoying a few minutes of interacting with someone who wasn’t always thinking about business.
She looked back at me and let out a breath as though she was still hesitant, but now that I had told her to ask, she couldn’t really turn back.
“I know that I shouldn’t have been listening, and I really wasn’t trying to, but a few weeks ago I heard Willa say something about a concept store. What’s that all about?” As soon as she said it, Cristina looked like she wished she hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be asking. You don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s fine,” I said, feeling like I had used that phrase more in that one night than I had in recent memory. “You’ll hear about it soon enough anyway. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Promise,” she said.
“It’s totally confidential.”
“Absolutely.”
“And you aren’t a corporate spy or anything?”
I tried to keep a straight face, but I knew that there was a sparkle in my eyes. She managed to keep her serious expression much more effectively, but the glimmering blue and white ghost makeup that she was wearing took something away from the affect.
“Not anymore. Totally reformed.”
“Good. I’ve put a lot of work into this in the last year and I would just hate to have to throw it away because a competitor steals it out from under me.”
“I can see how that would ruin your fiscal year.”
“I would think. Alright. So basically, we are working toward combining our businesses. There’s an official merger coming, but Wilton and I started toying with the idea of not just having the companies held by the same entities and continuing on in the same way as two different retail chains. Instead, we’re thinking about opening bigger stores that combine both businesses under a newer, fresher model. That way we’ll be able to maintain the two original chains, at least a few locations, for those loyal consumers who want to stick with the traditional shopping styles, and also have the more cutting edge stores for younger or more tech-savvy consumers.”
“What do you mean tech-savvy? They’re going to a brick and mortar store, not shopping online. Don’t you think if they wanted to use their technology they would just pull their little computers out of their pockets and order online?”
“You mean their phones?” I asked, chuckling.
She fumbled around under the tattered clothes that she wore over her uniform and pulled out a black flip-style phone that looked like something I carried in high school.
“No, this,” she said, holding up the phone emphatically. “This is a phone. It makes calls. It sends and receives texts. It’s a phone. Those things that other people carry around are the embryo stage of the robots that will lead the uprising.”
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling out my own phone, which I had just purchased a couple of weeks before and was still discovering features and functions that I didn’t know about when I chose it. “I think this one is at least on to toddlerhood. It does everything. It does things sometimes that I don’t particularly want it to. It beeped at me a couple of hours ago and there was a message on the screen that told me I needed to get up and walk because I didn’t get enough steps today. I don’t know who it was from. I don’t know why they sent it. But it offended me.”
Cristina gaped at me and snatched the device from my hand.
“Are you kidding me?” She said, staring down at it before snapping her eyes back to my face. “Now tell me. What could you possibly need with something like this? Are you part of a network who must be readily available to each other at any second through at least five different channels because the very survival of the world depends on it?”
I laughed.
“Not that I know of.”
She held up her flip phone again.
“Phone,” she said. She held up mine. “Ridiculous.”
I laughed again and nodded. I knew that she wasn’t wrong, though I did feel the need for technology that was a touch more advanced than her idea of a phone. Being able to check email and connect with people when I was out of the office was crucial for me to be able to do my work. I wasn’t convinced that the anonymous judgments about my activity were all that necessary. My phone suddenly let out a high-pitched ring and Cristina glanced down at it. I saw her face fall slightly and the humor drain from it as she held it out to me.
I took the phone from her and looked down at the screen. A picture of Willa and me from early in our relationship, kissing at the most boring New Year’s Eve party that has ever been thrown, stared up at me and I felt my levity disappear. I kept that picture on the phone as a reminder every time she called me of what Willa was supposed to mean to me. Now it felt more like a warning.
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Where are you?” Willa snapped.
I looked up, wanting to gesture to Cristina to wait, but she had already taken her cart and was nearly out of the office.
“I’m still at work,” I said.
“You were supposed to be at Britney’s house three hours ago!”
“And you are just now noticing that I’m not there?” I asked, not bothering to cover the aggravation in my voice.
I heard the office door close and let out a sigh. Willa’s voice coming through the phone blended into just a continuous sound and I tuned it out as I turned my attention back to the plans in front of me. Cristina had looked like there was more that she wanted to say about the plans that she had overheard, and I wondered what it was that she had been thinking.