Page-Turner Read online

  She had secretly pined to have a boss that would foster and mentor her and motivate her to escape the current career lull she was in, but Arin was certainly not going to provide that. The most she would get out of him was a half-hearted ‘Thank you,” which, in all fairness, was as rare as snow in July.

  Upon Arin's hasty approach towards them, Darcy and Sylvia looked hurriedly at one another, feeling like literal deer in the headlights. They speedily attempted to grab for anything that sat atop the workstation to give the false but convincing illusion that they were chatting about something work-related. Both of their hands fell on some of Darcy’s prized office supplies, in this case a rather suggestive looking wrist rest and a fluorescent Post-It dispenser. They both soon realized that they weren’t going to fool anyone with their random grabs, but were secretly pleased nonetheless at their effort made at pretending.

  “Well, well, what do have we here?” Arin said, his voice just a tad too high for the assertive role he was aiming to play. His white shirt was just also just a tad too big, and his shoes a bit too shiny, somewhat undermining his attempted portrayal as a literal Mr. Know-It-All. It was almost as though he heard those specific thoughts as they entered Darcy’s head, causing his smile to turn into a deep frown.

  He began to slowly shift his faze from Darcy to Sylvia, and then back again. His characteristic wide smile (which was once said to have caused an employee's small child to go temporarily blind at the annual Christmas Party) was now a small and tiny slit across his face. Even the dimple in his left cheek seemed to disappear into the expanse of the cleanly shaven skin.

  She noticed his gaze shift amongst the two women a good three or so times before his upper lip began to quiver, which was what it always seemed to do when he interacted with her. Sylvia believed the lip quiver happened because Arin was secretly and madly in love with Darcy, which disgusted her completely. It wasn’t that Arin was repulsive because of his looks, in fact, she found him somewhat decently attractive. It was actually his unattractive 'holier than thou/I'm a Kardashian' elitist attitude and evident lack of filter that made everything about him seem ugly, shiny shoes included.

  “We were just looking at the memo you emailed to us," Sylvia lied, hoping Arin didn’t notice the obvious waver in her voice.

  On the computer screen that was turned off? Darcy thought. Or the lack of any paper with the title “Memo” on it remotely near them?. She didn’t even attempt come up with an excuse. The two colleagues had been on an approved coffee break, pure and simple. They had nothing to hide or be ashamed of.

  “Were you now?” Arin said, looking slowly from Sylvia to Darcy’s darkened computer monitor. “On a computer screen that’s turned off?”

  Busted, Darcy thought. Now the fun’s going to begin.

  “I don’t appreciate being lied to, and I certainly don’t appreciate a lack of productivity from my employees on a Friday afternoon with a major deadline that is looming for Monday," Arin continued, lip quiver and too-big shirt in full effect.

  Darcy reached over to the CPU that was adorned in dust bunnies and turned on the monitor. The wide screen then quickly illuminated to the Wikipedia page for Powers family tree. She had been doing some refresher research before beginning 'Bright Nightfall' and her afternoon break. Her cheeks once again immediately began to redden and a cold shiver ran down her back.

  Sylvia and Arin both gradually took in the slowly illuminating screen set to its obscure Wikipedia page but clearly didn’t understand what the browser window was trying to explain. Darcy manically reached over to grab the mouse that lay atop her desk but couldn’t minimize the window fast enough, her cheeks now a fire-blazing red. Once the browser window was safely minimized, she promptly doubled clicked and opened the spreadsheet she was supposed to be working on. Once the spreadsheet was upon the screen, she dazedly noticed all the assorted numbers and colors that in unison were creating a cacophony of nonsense that gave her a slight twinge of a headache upon her temples.

  “And please don’t misuse the office resources,” Arin said, his voice deeper so as to denote some sense of authority. He turned around from his vantage point of his two staff members and began to quickly walk back to his office, leaving a trail of cheap cologne and a tinge of sweat in his wake.

  Sylvia sighed heavily and faced Darcy, her eyes soft. No one appreciated getting scolded, even if the scolder had no grounding or credence to do said scolding.

  “Back to work,” she whispered and walked away to her own desk which was in the same general direction as Arin’s office. Darcy, still completely embarrassed, returned to her meaningless-processing job. She soon found her mind swimming with thoughts about her future and general current state of relative unhappiness, as her mind always seemed to do at some point during her workday. She never denied the fact that she was completely unchallenged in her job, but she also didn’t do much to change her current situation. She had had grandiose aspirations upon graduating from college, as did all of her friends, but as time gradually went on, the aspirations seemed to become farther and farther away, and, as a result, harder and harder to achieve. When she had finally got this job a few years ago, she thought she would stay at it until she found something better, something more motivating. But she always found herself still there. Always just still there.

  ***

  Sure, she was making a bit more money, but the lack of joy in the actual work she was doing was tangible. Ever present. Almost heavy in its existence. Ditto went for her sense of motivation and hope, but she had tried earnestly and quite hard at times to not entertain the latter emotion. Nothing good or positive ever came of that.

  Being in her 30’s was not easy. Actually, being in her 20’s had not been easy either, but that she attributed to growing pains and ‘life experiences’. She felt that at her current age there was always a quantifiable repercussion to her actions, as miniscule as they may have seemed to be. On paper, she figured she seemed decent. She had a little apartment close to downtown, a dog that she adored with all of her heart, and she sometimes even went on the random (non-Sylvia-organized) dates. She had been at her job at the firm for close to five years and knew she was underutilized, but when that paycheck was deposited every other Thursday into her bank account, she would conveniently forget about that part of things.

  As she aged, she had found herself with less and less friends, but her core group remained the same, a fact to which she was grateful. Well, her core group was comprised of a friend, singular, but she couldn’t have foreseen the fact that most of her college friends would be married with kids and inhabit the foreign lands of suburbia that were only accessible by motorboat or RV.

  Her family was interspersed all over the city and its associated suburbs, and she found it difficult to visit them. Difficult may have been a misleading term. Painful was more apropos. It wasn’t that it was difficult to travel and physically see them, heck, it took more time to get to work sometimes than it did to visit her childhood home. No, it was the prescient and constant passive-aggressive conversations that were always had, leaving her to feel inadequate and immature and overfed. Every time she vowed that she was going to see her family only on Christmas and the odd momentous birthday, she would find herself sucked into emotion-laden family drama from time to time. When she would deliberately not entertain and immerse herself in the illogical and unnecessary events that were unfolding with her family, in particular her older and cranky sisters, she would cement her reputation as the black sheep of the family who did not care about anyone but herself. If that was the reputation she had and if it successfully worked in keeping her out of the melodramatic familial operettas, then it was a reputation she welcomed with open arms.

  In fact, she accepted the reported stigma of being the black sheep of the Platt family wholeheartedly. If being the black sheep of her dysfunctional Platt clan intrinsically meant maintaining her sanity, she prayed for the label wholly and truly.

  Her family had always referred to her as
the ‘different’ one, which was not really a compliment or insult. The one who backpacked through Europe instead of working full time at the family bakery once she graduated from college, and the one who was just oh-so-overly sensitive and took everything to heart.

  She was single, that was true, but that omission was not something that really caused her much chagrin or heartache. She had had boyfriends, in fact, she had broken up with Harold just a few months ago, but she found herself infinitely happier as a single woman. She didn’t have the worry of living up to any grandiose expectations of a needy partner, or making sure her figure was always a perfect 10 (her figure had actually been fluctuating as of late due to her recent fascination with nachos and home-made guacamole). The one thing that kept her grounded and reasonably content, as it had been doing since she was only nine years old, the only real constant in her life, was also the one thing she was most embarrassed of: reading teen fiction. When she found herself realizing that the acumen of her happiness was wholly based on stories written for a different demographic entirely than her own, she would feel immensely guilty. So that was the precise reason why she chose just not to acknowledge it. Some things were better left unsaid, right?

  Chapter 2

  “So what’re you doing after work? Want to go shopping?” Sylvia asked her as they power-walked to the elevator down the hall from their respective workstations. “I wouldn’t mind picking up some of those tank tops that are on sale at Unique Chic”.

  Darcy opted not to respond right away as she found that the store Unique Chic sold clothes that seemed to have been designed by teenagers who made clothes for older women, full of inside jokes and hideous color combinations. She had seen Sylvia with literal combinations of leopard print, velour, and a weird derivative material that looked like a macramé project gone horribly wrong – and that had been all in one outfit.

  The remainder of the afternoon had dragged and dragged on, forcing her to momentarily think that someone had intentionally set all the office clocks times back an hour or possibly more to mess with her head and lengthen everyone’s work day, but then realized she was thinking crazy thoughts – again. If Sylvia and Darcy didn’t get on the elevators right at 4:02, they would have to wait until midnight to get down to the ground level. Being on the 25th floor certainly had its perks (the view, private bathrooms, the coffee cart that came around at 10 am every day) but the whole daily waiting for the elevator event was something that could cause much furor. In fact, the last fire alarm proved that tenfold. Sylvia had almost become a double amputee because of the fervor that had quickly taken over the stairwells.

  Sylvia, all boobs and hair as Darcy liked to say, always wanted to shop. She wasn’t all that particular about where they shopped – as long as the store in question had shiny, loud, bright colors that were a little too tight and a little too cheap to be considered a sale. Darcy sometimes joined her, often feeling entertained by the woman who fearlessly tried on everything that seemed just a bit inappropriate, but tonight was Friday, and she had bigger and better things planned.

  They luckily got on the elevator promptly and began to descend the skyscrapers massive elevator shaft. Sylvia simultaneously played with her frizzy hair and applied some more bright red lipstick. Darcy always marveled by her co-workers ability to multi-task so efficiently with non-work related duties.

  The elevator was comprised of a mishmash of corporate executives, administrative staff, and custodians. The smell was a mix of sweat, strawberries and Coco Chanel. She tried not to look directly into the armpit that belonged to a burly gentleman millimeters away from her. She was having a hard time not ogling at the repulsive sight, especially since the pit was not only at her eye level, but also seemed to be beckoning her with its disgusting sweat stain ring and dark plethora of she didn’t want to know quite what.

  “Can’t tonight, Syl,” she replied, trying to appear nonchalant as she pretended to look for something in her purse. She found herself having to speak loudly so her friend could hear her on the other end of the elevator, although the actual distance between them couldn’t have been more than just a few feet.

  Seconds after replying, she felt Sylvia’s questioning eyes upon her, and instantly, as they always did, her cheeks began to redden, a characteristic Darcy trademark.

  “Oh really? What do you have planned?” Sylvia quickly retorted. “You wouldn’t say, um, a certain visit to somewhere where there are both A: No single men, and B: A good chance of being sexually assaulted.”

  The woman’s response caused her to look up quickly from her purse-looking charade. All she really carried in there was Chapstick, her house keys and her cell phone. The odd sanitizer bottle appeared from time to time, however, depending on the season.

  “Maybe,” she said, trying not to give Sylvia any ammunition to turn her statement into a full-blown tirade, which was a strong likelihood given the sometimes volatile temperament of the older woman. Sylvia could be what you would call a ‘loose cannon’, an impression not only had by Darcy but shared by the entire office. It could probably take out an army or cause joy in a child’s heart – it utterly depended on the type of mood the woman found herself in.

  Sylvia’s heart was in the right place. Being in her mid-forties (or fifties – she was ever so elusive about her actual age) and happily married, Sylvia felt it was her duty to ensure single, lonesome and mildly depressed Darcy met a nice guy, get married, and have lots of babies - precisely in that order. Being promoted at work was also a big wish of Sylvia’s for Darcy, but that was definitely lower on the totem pole after the marriage bit - but not by much.

  While she certainly appreciated Sylvia’s motherly tendencies towards her, and she certainly tolerated it more than she did from her own mother, she found it annoying and relentless nonetheless. She didn’t let her own mother dictate her life or tell her what to do, and she didn’t know why she let Sylvia, her only real workplace ‘friend’, talk to her the way she did. She often chalked it up to her inherent Catholic guilt and the instilled rule of respecting your elders.

  Both women remained silent as they exited the elevator upon reaching the first floor of the building and were immediately thrust into the throngs of people making their quick attempts to leave their work life and return to their semi-normal, albeit incredibly monotonous, lives in suburbia. Darcy had to struggle to keep up with Sylvia’s pace as they quickly morphed into Olympic power walkers making their way towards the invisible goal of home life.

  “It’s really not that bad,” she yelled to Sylvia above the noisy ambient sound of stiletto heels and 10,000 PDA’s in the cold city street on that November evening. It was only a little past four pm but it was already dark as midnight. Secretly, amongst most of her other likes, she enjoyed the shorter days and longer nights because it allowed her to not feel as anxious about her non-existent social life, aside from reading her teen books. The usual obligation of having to fill the daylight hours with “fun things” (beers on a patio, hanging out in a hipster-laden park) were gone, which she welcomed as she found herself not particularly liking those things anyway. She sometimes got an immediate feeling of envy when passing a group of friends enjoying a laugh on an outdoor restaurant deck and her walking by all alone, but it soon passed once she was out of eyesight. Hanging out on a patio in the summer never really lived up to its expectations anyway.

  Sylvia looked at her over a tiny business man having an intense conversation and laughed as though she had just said told her the world's funniest joke. At first she didn’t understand what Sylvia has found so amusing, but then quickly realized that only now was Sylvia continuing the conversation they began moments ago in the crammed elevator.

  “Darcy, honey, Ridgewood and Van Sant is on Channel 4 News every night,” she replied, her voice not as raucous as Darcy’s had been but certainly very audible. “Why just last night I thought I heard a girl around your age was mugged!”

  Sylvia was right. Ridgewood and Van Sant was certainly a super sketc
hy part of town. Located in the eastern part of the city, it was a hotspot for crime, mostly theft and drug related, with a side of the casual random sexual assault. She didn’t feel any particularly less safe walking around that neighborhood then where she lived, which was fortunate as because it also happened to be location of her absolute favorite bookstore in the world: Marina’s.

  ***

  In the world according to Darcy, Marina’s was the one and only literal place in the whole entire world where she felt like she could be herself without being judged or ridiculed. She had been visiting for years, primarily for the bookstore’s vast selection of teen fiction books, and had actually only randomly stumbled upon the shop for the first time on a complete whim, which added to its unexplainable magic and allure.

  She had just moved to a new neighborhood of Maher Heights five years ago, fresh from having been made redundant at an advertising firm that paid her peanuts but which she loved terribly. After that fateful meeting with her boss about having to let go of some of the staff which she was one of (there was plenty tears shed and snot flowing), she found herself ready to make a big change. She had just binge-watched The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which only further fueled the fire of starting anew in a new city. If possible, she tried to tie in a nice binge TV-watching event with what she may have been experiencing in her personal life at any particular moment. Sometimes she had to reach to find that commonality with the show.

  She had been scouting the city on a rather warm April day with her then-boyfriend Chip, who was all teeth and cheeks, but ultimately a really nice guy, if a little dull. They had just moved to their new apartment just a few days before and on that particular day were attempting to find interesting spots and hot pockets to visit, as well as cool, vintage shops to furnish their rather naked apartment. She had dug her heels and vehemently refused to furnish yet another apartment with furniture from IKEA, and so they opted to go the ‘antique’ (aka ‘used’) route.