New Boss by Christine Heriat

Construction announces New Boss’s arrival before the HR department bothers to notify us. We watch from a safe distance as the crew erases the last artifacts of our Old Boss and replaces them with strange new things for New Boss, such as soft velvet chairs and carved tables. We find this ominous, even though we know nothing about her.   

One thing is certain: she takes up more space. Her office expansion eats our break room.

New Boss’s first day soon arrives.

We began preparations two weeks earlier, not because HR notified us of her arrival, but because she sent the three of us an invitation to a meeting on the morning of her first day. She included a long list of bullet points we must address during the meeting. 

We pour in hours of preparation. Sara grouses. Heidi, the overachiever in our merry trio, focuses with renewed intensity. I split the difference. We all have our roles, and I know mine. The three of us have worked together for a long time. 

New Boss is shut up in her office before any of us arrive. We can’t help but imagine her and what’s she’s doing in there. Our speculation takes us down wild paths, because we work in a bank, and banks are boring places. Other than the disappearance of our Old Boss, this is the most exciting thing that has happened here in the last decade. 

Before I’ve finished my first cup of coffee, she opens the door and summons us inside. She’s dressed in black Armani, head to toe. Her face is sharp, her skin translucent, and her eyes ink-black. Everything about her office is unnaturally tidy and has the faux-old look of a ride at Disneyland. 

Sara, Heidi and I seat ourselves around the pointy occasional table in the corner of her office. Four chairs are available, but Sharen reclaims her seat behind the desk. We glance at the closed door in her office, which leads to the room which used to be our breakroom. Sharen pretends not to notice. 

Sharen doesn’t introduce herself and doesn’t ask us anything about ourselves because she doesn’t care to get to know us. Heidi begins her presentation. 

Sharen interrupts. “Which one of you is the VP of Client Services?”

I raise my hand like a schoolchild. 

“Client numbers are falling. Explain.” Sharen aims for the jugular and doesn’t miss. 

I stammer through the reasons. Sharen’s stern face doesn’t change, but I don’t know if this is because she is unsatisfied, or if she’s incapable of any other expression. Her forehead shines from an overabundance of filler injections. She eats ethical foie gras as she tortures each of us until we’re finally dismissed. I close the door behind us. 

The office’s overhead lights flicker all afternoon, which makes it difficult to concentrate. The building is a mashup of Greek and Gothic revival, complete with dodgy wiring. The historical charm appeals to bank customers, who spend their time in areas which are well maintained. Employees, who are housed in the decrepit portions, find it annoying. 

Sharen doesn’t emerge all afternoon. She summons Heidi to her office. I try to push the thick door open with my powerful mind, but it doesn’t move. Heidi emerges, washed-out. She avoids eye contact. 

That night, I suffer from a complicated nightmare in which Medusa operates out of the locked room in Sharen’s office, beheading those who can’t answer rapid-fire questions. Even though the dream isn’t terrible, I can’t fall back asleep. Nightmares are a lifelong problem, driven by an overactive imagination which is tortured by the waking terror of working in a bank. I’ve failed out of psychotherapy because I refuse to quit my job. 

The nightmare plagues me all morning. It’s a shadow which looks over my shoulder and watches me as I work. Worried that she’ll crack my fragile façade, I avoid Sharen, which isn’t difficult since she doesn’t emerge from her office. 

That doesn’t stop her from flooding my inbox with emails. I don’t have time to respond to one series before the next inundation arrives. My laptop pings with the frequency of raindrops falling on a tin roof. I roll my eyes. 

My messenger app lights up with dots. Sara sends a message.  

-having fun yet? too early for lunch? 

She comes to my desk with her purse over her shoulder. Heidi elects not to join us because she needs to catch up on messages from Sharen. I adore Heidi, but she’s too committed to her role. 

Since we lost our breakroom, we have no choice but to eat out. Today I don’t mind because I hope the warmth of the sunlight will improve my mood. 

We step outside. It’s raining.

While we’re at lunch, the rain intensifies, and the wind picks up. Sara splits off halfway back to run an errand. I pick up my pace to avoid a soaking.

In the lobby, I wait for one of the bank’s golden elevators to arrive. These vintage clunkers charm the customers, but I find them claustrophobic. Ding. Sharen is visible inside through the ornate metal gate. To be polite, I wait for her to step out, but when she doesn’t move, I step inside. I nod at her. She ignores me. 

I want to ask why she’s ridden down only to ride back up, but I don’t. A normal person would have shared this information unprompted. I press my back against the wall to maximize the distance between us as a horrible nausea comes over me.  

“Someone in your position should not consume garlic at lunchtime,” she says. 

Her statement is so weird that I don’t know how to respond, so I don’t. I pop a breath mint. Sharen wears black Versace platform loafers covered in sharp metallic spikes. Her long nails are shaped to claw-like points. Heidi says Sharen lives in Brooklyn, which hews to its own rules for fashion. Maybe ethical foie gras is trendy on that side of the bridge. 

***

The storm outside intensifies enough that it rattles the few windows on our floor. Sharen, Heidi and I are the only people trapped in the office. There’s a mechanical problem with the train line to my house. I use my time in captivity to fulfill portions of the ever-expanding Sharen work-list. 

Heidi emerges from Sharen’s office washed-out and weak. She waves away my concern, then catches a taxi home. 

My mind floats back to the nightmare. Reality and fiction macerate in my brain until I can no longer separate the two. I imagine myself stepping into Sharen’s office, but then I feel my hand on the doorknob. I try to remember what it looks like inside, even as I find myself enveloped by its bleakness. My hand brushes across the soft velvet of her chair. She’s not here, even though I know she is. I run my hands along the leather spines of the books that neatly line her shelves. It's a peculiar sensation since I shouldn't be able to feel her books from my desk. 

Except I’m not at my desk. I see myself step towards the mysterious door in her office, which looks old, worn, even though it's new. Underneath the tarnished doorknob is a keyhole. I press my eye to it. 

The room beyond is copied from the pages of an Ann Radcliff novel. Burning candelabras light it, an obvious violation of the employee handbook. I’m in a continuation of my dream from last night. In a few moments, I will wake with my head on my desk, a crick in my neck.   

Sharen leans over something stretched out on a sturdy table. I blink a few times to clear my eyes because I can’t process what I witness. Drops of blood. Slurps. Not something, someone. Old Boss. Sharen’s evening meal. 

I run from the room and don’t stop until I reach the train station. Water drips from my hair into my eyes. Any moment now, I’ll wake. 

***

Insanity is a prerequisite for my occupation. I show up at work the next day even though my grip on reality is weak. The texts I send my old therapist to request an urgent appointment go unanswered.  

Sharen beckons me to her office. The door squeals as I push it closed. A breakfast plate of ethical foie gras sits on the desk next to a bottle of bougie water. She’s a certified foie gras fiend, yet she thinks my lunch shouldn’t contain garlic. Her skin glows in the dim room.   

“Did you see me through the keyhole last night?” Her voice chills me.  

She wipes her desk with a disposable sanitizer sheet. The lemony scent mixes with the wet dog food odor of her meal. My stomach churns. 

“No.” I arrange my face to display what I hope looks like confusion. 

“Don’t lie. One more chance, or Heidi dies.”

I shake my head. Her interpersonal skills need work. I return to my desk. 

I could speak to HR, but they’ll think I’ve lost it and put me on unpaid leave. Anyway, this is my waking nightmare to manage, the product of the twin stresses of insomnia and an overburdened mind. 

I spend the rest of the day on Sharen’s requests. I text my old therapist. There is nothing else I can do.    

***

Heidi is already in Sharen’s office when I arrive the next morning. My body is heavy and worn. The line between waking and dreaming is blurred so that I can’t find it anymore. Fluorescent lights irradiate everything around me. Sara appears to wear a halo as she brings me a cup of steaming coffee. I wrap my hands around the mug.  

The door to Sharen’s office creaks open. Heidi floats out like a drunken ghost, and in some ways, she is. Sharen has that effect on people. I offer her my arm, but she waves me away. She doesn’t look well but refuses to go home.

A few minutes, or a few hours later, I hear a crash, followed by shouts. Heidi collapsed, and as she fell from her chair, she hit her head on the desk. Paramedics take her away. They won’t tell us anything, but their eyes don’t lie. Heidi won’t make it. I shudder, then wipe my eyes. 

Sharen uses sanitizer wipes to clean the smudges of blood from the edge of Heidi’s desk. She follows this with a long spray of an aerosol disinfectant. She demands I follow her into her office. Her liberal use of disinfectant causes my eyes to burn. My hands tremble, so I hide them in my pockets. 

“Did you see me through the keyhole two nights ago?” Sharen’s eyes are lasers which bore through my body and into my soul. 

Her knife screeches across the plate as she cuts a piece of foie gras. It contains more blood than I expect, enough that it spreads out in a gelatinous pool. I look at my feet. 

My throat is too dry to allow me to speak. The sensations in my body are not the products of my imagination, even if aspects of Sharen may be. She pushes the bottle of fancy water towards me. 

“Drink.”

The bottle glistens with condensation. I resist the temptation to touch it to my dry lips. Nothing Sharen offers is worth its price. She takes the water into herself with a long, greedy drink. My skin grows hot even while I feel cold inside. 

“Don’t lie. One more chance, or Sara dies.”

No world exists in which I confess to New Boss that I saw her drink Old Boss’s blood and things work out. She’ll report me to HR and I’ll end up on permanent unpaid leave. I lie. A loud strike of thunder causes me to jump from the chair. I leave without glancing back at Sharen. 

For lunch, I consume two servings of garlic bread. Sara asks if I carbo-load in advance of an evening marathon. She doesn’t know how close she steps to the truth. 

We jump over puddles and dart between awnings on our way back to the office. Once I step into the bank’s lobby, I realize I can’t return to my desk, can’t pretend that I’m not falling apart at my seams. I ask Sara to cover for me. She squeezes my arm. She can’t see the danger she’s in. 

***

My old therapist’s voice is tight when he answers my call. At first, he tries to extricate himself from me, which I understand, given how our relationship ended, but I persist with my story. His breath catches in his throat. 

He encourages me to leave the family restroom in which I’ve locked myself and proceed immediately to the hospital. My inability to distinguish fact from fiction concerns him, as it concerns me. He doesn’t think I’m in danger, but also knows I can’t continue like this. I’m beyond his ability to help. He’s right, but I also know I can’t take his advice, or I’ll lose Sara. 

He says one thing that sticks with me: I must try something different.

***

I return to the office towards the end of the workday, stashing the bag I carry under my coat. 

Sara comes by to tell me she hasn’t seen Sharen all afternoon, and that the pace of her emails has slowed to a trickle. She thinks I don’t look well and should go home. She says these things because she doesn’t know what’s going on in the office, but then that isn’t her fault. As much as it pains me to keep secrets, it’s the only way to protect her.

I can only assume Sharen expects me to act. And that, instead of sending banal emails, she spends her afternoon locked in her office plotting her defense. But she won’t expect the attack I have in mind. 

Once I am alone in the office, I hide myself, bag in hand, in the men’s toilet. I sit in a stall with my feet pulled up. Even if Sharen comes in here, she won’t find me. The foul odors produced by a day’s worth of stinking men will cover my garlicky perfume. 

My legs cramp as I wait. After several hours, I somehow no longer feel Sharen’s presence in the office. It’s as if the veil which covers my eyes is lifted and I can see the world with sharp brilliance. For the first time in days, I am certain I’m awake.

The bag and I make our way into Sharen’s office. I search her drawers for the key to the locked room, but do not find it. Through the keyhole, I see the room is as dark as the inside of a coffin. Although I can’t confirm it, I know Old Boss is no longer alive. Sharen’s fed on him for far too long.  

None of this matters for my plan. I open the mini refrigerator that is built in under her desk and take out the top plate from the perfectly aligned stack. With the metal cover off, I can see that it’s a large piece of raw foie gras. I swap it with the contents of the container in my bag. Then I remove the front row of bottled water. Careful not to let it touch me, I pour the water from each bottle out into a jug, then refill each one of them with the water from the large flask in the bag. Everything goes back into its perfect place, as if I was never there. I hide the piece of ethical foie and the full jug at the bottom of an empty drawer because nothing of hers should enter our world, which is not her world.  

***

The next morning, I convince Sara to skip work to take me to the doctor. She lives far, and it's an odd request, but she agrees because we’re friends and she’s a good person. By the time she arrives, I’ll be long gone. She won’t appreciate that, but it’s what I must do to protect her. 

I sit at my desk and wait for Sharen to call me into her office. My grip on time slips away again, like sand falling through my fingers. Maybe minutes pass, maybe an hour, before Sharen beckons me. She can’t resist.

Sharen stares at the unbranded water bottle in my hand, but says nothing. She wrinkles her nose, and this time I agree with her assessment of my odor. Roasted garlic on toast is not a normal breakfast.   

My half-eaten foie sits on the bloody plate in front of her. A cold, full bottle of fancy water sits beside it.  

Again, she offers what she thinks is her water to me. I could take it, but I don’t. If I drink from it, I’m not sure she will, so instead I take a long drink from my wide mouth bottle. As I gulp it down, I imagine myself as one of those beautiful people from a soda commercial. 

Sharen takes a deep drink from her bottle. My shoulders relax. She failed to notice that the bottle had already been opened. Her overconfidence will be her demise. 

“Did you see me through the keyhole three nights ago?”

She coughs. She finishes her water. Her coughs intensify until she grips her throat and her eyes bulge. I stand, then I throw the contents of my half empty water bottle in her face. She can’t speak. Water drops run down her twisted face. 

I leave her office door open behind me. My colleagues' eyes follow me, but they remain silent. Sara is not among them to witness my triumph. I take my things and head to the elevator, knowing I will never return to this wretched place.  

There’s no reason to, now that I’ve slayed the elitist vampire in the corner office with my clever tricks: faux gras and Jersey’s finest tap water.