She gasps theatrically. We’ve been making variations of this joke for months.
“What was it this time?” she asks.
“Hello?”
My heart does a record scratch in my chest.
“Hello?”
My face must look like death because Ramona freezes, mid-giggle.
“Brady?” The voice is decidedly male and decidedly coming from the headset over my ear, not from somewhere else in the office.
Like a slo-mo horror movie, I slowly glance down at the phone, where the red light for line one is still solid.
Motherfucking Oedipal Christ. He’s still on the line.
I throw the headset off like it’s on fire and push away on my swivel chair so hard it sends me crashing back into the wall behind me.
“What? What’s going on?” Ramona says.
I gasp, pointing a shaking finger. “The phone. Hang up the phone.” My voice is a strangled whisper.
Ramona, excellent employee and wingwoman that she is, does as commanded. She stabs at the button on the phone over and over until the red light disappears.
Oh my fucking God. I am so fucked.
“What happened?” Ramona looks scared, probably because I’m still cowering in the corner of my cubicle like the monster from The Ring is about to come through the phone and tear me into a million bloody pieces.
I’m fucked. The film festival isn’t my biggest client, but they’re one of my steadiest. And they’re exciting to work with. So many of my clients are law firms and accountants who pay me a ton of money for encryption and security, but I never get the same thrill seeing their numbers on my call display as I do when Nash’s number comes up.
And now it’s over.
“He heard me.”
“He heard—” Ramona gasps, putting her hands to her mouth. “He heard you call him daddy?”
I can only nod, running through the conversation in my head, trying to figure out how to talk my way out of it. I didn’t say daddy, I said maddy, like he was mad when he called, and I talked him out of it.
Yeah, no one is going to buy that, least of all the film fest boss with the flinty eyes that see way too much.
On cue, my phone starts ringing.
Ramona and I stare at it like it’s a bomb.
“Is it him?” she whispers. We find it’s best to split the client portfolio, but it means she doesn’t know the phone numbers for the Out & About Film Festival the way I do, just like I don’t know her clients’ numbers on sight either.
The phone rings and rings. I can’t bring myself to pick it up. Because he’s either calling to chew me out for my unprofessionalism then probably fire me, or he’s calling to laugh it off, pretend it was no big deal, and the very idea of that is so humiliating I want to wheel myself out of this office and right into traffic.
When it finally goes silent, we both breathe a sigh of relief.
“Oh my God.” I put my face in my hands. “This is a disaster.”
The phone starts ringing again. On a Friday in the summer, when the co-working space that we rent our office from is practically empty, the ringing is impossibly loud. Every chime is the sound of my doom coming for me.
“I’ll answer it,” Ramona says. I hide, holding my breath as I listen. “Hello, Ramona speaking. Oh, hello, Nash, yes, how are you? Brady? No, uh, he’s on a call with another client right now. Is there something I can help you with?” Her voice is brittle in a way you probably can’t hear if you don’t know her, but I know she’s lying for everything she’s worth. “Uh-huh? Well, I’ll let him know, but, uh, he’s got a few meetings this morning. Sales calls, actually, so he’ll be out of the office. Might be a while before he can get back to you. Okay. I’ll let him know. Goodbye.” When she hangs up, she gives me a smug smile punctuated by jazz hands. “You’re welcome.”
Kissing your employees is highly inappropriate, and since I’ve already violated too many professional boundaries today, I’m going to draw the line at that one.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t fling myself at her feet. I have no shame, and the floors here are reasonably clean.
“Oh my God,” I grovel. “We don’t have enough revenue this quarter for me to offer you a raise, but I will pay for the Starbucks run for the next month at least.”
“I like a venti PSL with extra whip,” she says.
I snort. “It’s not even PSL season.”
“You would put conditions on my loyalty? Next time, you can answer your own damn phone.”
She’s kidding, but I’m so screwed. I should probably call him back and apologize, but with every minute that passes, it gets harder and harder.
The decision is made for me when the phone rings and it’s a prospective client with a million questions. I talk to him for over an hour then have to leave immediately for a sales call at a small manufacturer near the train tracks. By the time I’m done there, it’s already midafternoon.
I should do the right thing. Nash has been a good client, and even if he can be a jerk, he’s never unreasonable. I’ll apologize, maybe offer to let Ramona handle his account from now on, and hopefully clear the air.
Except when I call, his number goes to voicemail. And I can’t really leave a “sorry for being a pervy weirdo on a Friday morning” message, so I hang up and catch the streetcar back to the office.
I’ll call him on Monday.
2
Nash
I have to stop scheduling meetings on Fridays. Especially Friday afternoons. But we’re getting ready for the family film weekend and I want to go over the schedule with Doug, the programming director, one more time. After that, I have an interview with Reel Magazine, which is only marginally painful, and then two hours with the accountant because Canada Revenue Agency seems to think our nonprofit status means we must be hiding money in our desk drawers. Or maybe it’s because we’re all queer. I’ve spent the past two weeks compiling every receipt and every spreadsheet. I will drown the CRA in paperwork and make them regret ever questioning our bookkeeping.
The point is, by the time I shut my laptop down, I’m exhausted and wondering why I ever thought Friday meetings were a good idea. Except I look at my schedule for next week and see next Friday is as full as today. And the Friday after that. And after that.
My phone rings. My cell phone. The new one I got yesterday. Not the desk phone that has stayed annoyingly silent since—
Right. Phone is ringing. It’s Dominic.
“Hey, I’m finishing up,” I say.
“Take your time,” he says.
“I’ll be there by six.” Maybe six-thirty. Twenty minutes to get back to my apartment and pick up the car. The highway will be a nightmare for traffic by then, but once I’m north of the city, I can run the toll road until I get to Markham, to our house where—
I stop. To Markham, to Dominic’s house. Not mine anymore. Someday, the little twist of pain will be a memory. Someday, I’ll stop slipping up.
“So, would it be okay?” Dominic says.
“Would what be okay?”
He sighs, and the pain in my chest goes to dread, because he makes that sound when he’s annoyed and doesn’t want to say it. He made that sound a lot in the last two years of our marriage.