Cathryn Grant

Eddie was the only person in the marketing department who wasn’t sick to death of Jill Madison. Ready to kill her, in fact. Longing to kill her. Some of them even said so, right to Eddie’s face. I’d like to strangle that woman. Why doesn’t someone smack her on the side of the head and shut her up; permanently?

She talked far too much. All the time. And not only did she talk too much, she talked exclusively and continuously, in painful details, about her children. Everyone in product marketing at CompuTech knew the ages and social development of Jill’s sons. They knew the boys’ bedtimes, the symptoms of their childhood illnesses, the status of their loose teeth, their progress as early readers and their brilliance at math.

Eddie was the only one who didn’t mind hearing the daily review of the boys’ lives. It made him feel important. It made him feel necessary. Especially now that his wife had announced she no longer needed their marriage, mostly that she didn’t need Eddie, he was relieved that one person in the world still found his presence valuable.

Eddie had known Jill before she had children, and he’d watched the slow decline of her reputation. Over the years, the weight of her conversation had shifted slowly, until it was like a holiday tree laden with too many ornaments, the boughs scraping the floor with information about children, her engineering expertise buried now under layers of tinsel.

So he had made it an item on his weekly to-do list—defend Jill.

“How can you listen to her go on and on about her kids?” said Anna Percel, the program manager. She trapped Eddie in his office by closing the door and standing in front of it.

“She’s my friend.”

“What does your wife think of this ‘friendship’?” Anna wiggled her fingers in the air miming quotation marks.

Eddie shrugged. His wife. He couldn’t tell Anna about his wife’s departure. He couldn’t bear to hear her pity. Worse, he might get teary-eyed. Just the memory of her casual departure, a single suitcase and a garment bag. She didn’t want to talk about her reasons. Isn’t it obvious, she said.

“She wouldn’t care,” Eddie said.

“Well Jill is going to drag you down. Her reputation for wasting work hours talking about trivia will rub off on you.”

“Jill doesn’t waste hours.”

“Are you serious? No one can stand sitting in a meeting with her. Unless they want the latest on her brats, or an update on how she saved the company.”

“Everyone complains. And we all want attention for our personal lives.”

“No, we don’t. I think you should be careful. I’m just looking out for you.”

“Thanks, but not necessary.”

Anna opened the frosted sliding door and walked out of his office without another word. Eddie wanted to walk two doors down and see how Jill was doing, but resisted the urge. He looked through email instead, deleted a few hundred old messages and checked the time. Four. This was the worst time of day, the lengthening shadows, evening just around the corner. Evenings that stretched on forever now that he sat alone in his cavernous house. When Angelique was still there, he could be in the upstairs office and Angelique could be out in the backyard watering plants, at least 300 feet away, beyond shouting distance, but he still didn’t feel alone.

The following day there was an eight o’clock meeting to review pricing. Eddie arrived in the conference room a few minutes before eight, hoping for a fresh pot of coffee on the fifteen foot credenza that stood just below a bank of windows looking out on the southern-most tip of the San Francisco bay. But this morning, the blinds were closed to block the early sun. And there was no coffee. The only thing sitting on top of the long, useless credenza was an enormous glass bowl. An award from a partner, the glass as thick as carved ice. The thing weighed about ten pounds, and the center was filled with polished amber and black stones. Pointless. Beautiful but pointless. Even with the blinds closed, Eddie could see the layer of dust coating the inside surface of the bowl.

Only Anna was in the conference room, leaning across the long mahogany table, setting up the projector.

“Jill better not be late.”

“Good morning to you too,” said Eddie. He thumped the case containing his laptop on the table and sank into the chair. “I wonder if I have time to grab a cup of coffee.”

“I’m sure you do. No one else is here, and we can count on Jill to keep us all waiting.”

Eddie pushed back his chair. “Everyone’s late once in a while. Want a cup of coffee?”

“No.”

He walked out and down the hall to the break room, poured a cup of coffee, ripped open three bags of sugar simultaneously and watched the crystals sprinkle across the surface and dissolve. It would be a long two hours if Anna was already this hostile at eight in the morning.

When Eddie returned, three more people were seated at the table. The only missing participants were their boss and Jill. Eddie checked his cell phone for the time. Seven minutes past. Anna couldn’t very well criticize Jill for being late since the director of marketing, Carl Phillips, was also missing in action. Eddie settled in his chair and blew at the surface of his coffee, just to feel like he was doing something. The conversation of the others flowed around him, but he didn’t join in. If things could get rolling without Anna hurling snide comments at Jill, he would be happy.

Carl entered the room, shoving the door open so hard it banged against the wall. He strode to the far side of the room, dropped his laptop case on the credenza so it bumped against the glass bowl, sending it skittering dangerously close to the window sill. Eddie felt his stomach clench, worrying the bowl would chip or crack as it slid to the back. That bowl was just a dusty white elephant to most of the people in the company, but Jill loved it. An award from a partner when one of her most successful products was announced. It was an award to the entire team, but she behaved as if it were hers, dusting it from time to time, fondling the polished stones, making sure it was centered on the credenza so the others were forced to pay attention to it.

“Let’s get started.” Carl slurped coffee through the plastic lid of his cardboard cup and put it on the table. He settled in the chair at the head.

“We’re waiting for Jill Madison,” said Anna. “As always, she’s late.”

Eddie didn’t understand why she had to say those things. It would have been fine to acknowledge they were waiting. Jill did her best, and it wasn’t fair to make her look bad in front of Carl, especially when she wasn’t there to defend herself. “She’ll be here any minute,” Eddie said.

“You talked to her?”

“Put up the spreadsheets and let’s at least start looking at them,” said Carl.

“I don’t have them. She didn’t email them to me.”

“Then re-schedule.” Carl stood and slurped his coffee again.

“This was the only time on your calendar this week,” said Anna. “Eddie, call Jill and find out what the problem is. You should have already done that while we were waiting.”

Eddie located her number and pressed the button to dial. After a few rings, the phone went to her voice mail. He stood and walked out of the room and a few steps down the hallway. He spoke in a low voice into the phone, “Jill, where are you? Hurry up.” He knew his message was foolish. Certainly she was trying to get there, and if she was stuck in traffic she couldn’t get there any faster.

He slipped the phone back in his pocket and looked up. Jill was strolling down the hallway.

“Hurry,” Eddie called, his voice louder than he’d intended.

“I am. Traffic was horrible.”

“They won’t care. You’re fifteen minutes late.”

“Nothing I can do about that. I can’t make the traffic move faster.”

“Carl’s angry. Anna isn’t going to miss a single chance to make you look bad.”

“I had to drop off the kids. I can’t leave them earlier than the school allows. What am I supposed to do?”

Eddie sighed. He wished she would at least act anxious, as if she was concerned what they thought. He opened the door and held it for her.

“Where the hell were you?” snapped Anna. “You’ve kept us all waiting. You should have sent your spreadsheets to me last night.”

“I was stuck in traffic.”

“We all have traffic,” said Carl. “Stop talking and get your laptop connected.”

As if she had all the time in the world, Jill unzipped her case and gently removed her laptop. She waited for it to power up. “I had to drop my kids off. And I didn’t send the spreadsheets because I was working on them until four this morning. Jared had an upset stomach and threw up carrots and potatoes all over his bed. I was too tired to log on to email.”

Eddie looked at Carl who appeared a bit queasy at the graphic description. Anna put her hand over her mouth as if she was also going to vomit. “That’s disgusting.”

The meeting was a painful barrage of challenges to Jill’s analysis. When Carl left the room, he once again knocked his laptop case against the glass bowl, sending it sliding in the opposite direction. One day that bowl was going to end up on the floor.

The others scurried out the door after Carl, heads down, holding their collective breath hoping not to get roped into the tension that knifed the atmosphere.

“If you put me in that position ever again,” said Anna, “you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”.

“Are you talking to me?” Jill’s face sagged as if all her worries dripped down the skin, pulling it toward her jaw.

Eddie felt like the child in the fairy tale, needing to shove his finger into a small hole  in a dam he couldn’t possibly shore up, but he had to try. “It was a fluke. We accomplished what we needed to, let’s move on.”

“It was most definitely not a fluke,” said Anna. “It was the same crap I have to deal with day after day. No one wants to hear about your kids, no one cares what your life is like after hours. What matters is being on time and doing good work.”

“I do better work than anyone in this group.” Jill’s voice rose precariously, her bangs shook across her narrow forehead as her entire body trembled. “And I do more work. The deadlines are impossible. I have to hunch over spreadsheets for hours in the middle of the night.”

“If you didn’t talk all day about nothing, you’d get your work done during business hours,” said Anna.

Jill stood and pressed her hands on the table. Her knuckles and tendons gleamed white as her skin pulled tight across the backs of her hands.

Eddie opened the door. “Let’s go. We’re not accomplishing anything.”

“I’m leaving,” said Anna. “And when I meet with Carl tomorrow, I’m going to talk to him about this problem. This industry is too competitive for this kind of behavior.”

“What problem?” said Jill.

“You.” Anna grabbed the handle of her bag to hold it close to her thigh as she turned and marched out the door. In her navy blue suit with squared shoulders, clutching her bag like a sword at her hip, she looked like an officious soldier, headed off to report an act of treason.

Eddie let go of the door and it swung shut after her.

“I hate that woman,” said Jill.

“It looks like the feeling’s mutual,” he muttered. “But you need to work together. Unless you’re going to find another job.”

“Why should I find another job?” Jill slumped into the chair and folded her arms on the table. She laid her head on her wrists, and her voice came out in a soft moan. “I was hired first and I have more to offer. I’m just not appreciated.”

“You kind of shoot yourself in the foot,” said Eddie.

“Now you’re turning against me too?”

“I’m not turning against you. I’m just saying, you need to get along with her. You made her look unprepared in front of Carl.” Why couldn’t she understand such a simple concept? Eddie wanted to slap her face. He shoved his hands in his pockets to make sure they stayed under his control.

“It’s not my fault. I told you Jared threw up. All over the bed. It took me over an hour to clean it up. Then I had to get him soda and try to get him back to sleep. And I really shouldn’t have even taken him to school. But I knew this meeting was important.”

“No one wants to hear about things like that.”

“No one understands how hard it is for me. They don’t appreciate me. I should just quit.”

When Jill threw out these idle threats to quit, it just made things worse. He had to figure out a way to knock some sense into her, to get her to keep her complaints just for his ears. He was happy to listen; the others were not.

At nine forty-five the next morning, Jill breezed past his office, clutching a very large cup of coffee in one hand, laptop and purse slung over her shoulder.

“Hi Eddie, I’m late. Traffic was unbearable and Justin couldn’t find his shoe so he threw the most incredible tantrum in the driveway.”

Eddie nodded.

“Gotta go. Eight voice mails, I called from my cell, but didn’t think I could remember all eight, so I just hung up.”

She disappeared from view and he went back to reading the web page plastered across the screen in front of him. Why couldn’t he concentrate? He was losing his bearings. Until Anna, fresh from MBA school came along, he knew what his job was. Now she acted like she was his boss, and Carl never objected. He was starting to feel unnecessary at work. And he was certainly unnecessary to his wife. His ex-wife.

Soon Jill was back in the doorway. “Carl wants to see me at ten. It’s already five past. Damn. Now I wish I’d listened to all the voice mail in the car, I would have gone directly to his office.”

When she returned thirty minutes later, he felt as if the last piece of solid ground gave way. Jill stormed down the hall and slammed open the door to her office. He could feel it vibrate through the cardboard thin walls from one end of the hall to the other. Loud sobbing, approaching a shrieking quality shattered his ears. He pushed back his chair and stumbled out the door. In three long strides he reached Jill’s office and was greeted by a three inch thick black binder slamming against the toes of his shoes.

Jill’s face was red and glossy like a plum. She grabbed two soft covered computer manuals and threw them on the chair. The force caused the chair to roll a few inches and the heavy books crashed onto the floor. “I told you no one appreciates me here. I’ve been let go.”

Let go? Could they do that? He thought there were rules, organized processes for eliminating employees. “That can’t be right,” he said.

“It’s right. Isolated cuts, every organization has a percentage. We’re ten and I’m the ten percent.”

“Just like that?”

“You’ve been in this business long enough. You know it’s always “just like that”. But why it’s me is totally unfair. Some kind of phony story about being able to get technical expertise from the engineers themselves, they don’t need a technical person on the marketing team.”

“But you …”

“You can be sure Anna had something to do with turning him against me.”

“Don’t blame Anna. Management makes these decisions, they don’t consult with people on our level.”

Jill slammed more books onto the chair. This time they stayed in place but the chair spun slightly. “I don’t mean she made the decision. I mean he was out to get me because she’s always blaming everything on me.”

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

“Whose side are you on?” shouted Jill. “I have no job. Do you get that? My family’s income is cut in half. In two months, I won’t be able to make my house payment.” She cried with painful sounding sobs heaving out of her lungs.

“You’ll find something else. You have a severance package. It’ll be okay.”

“No, it won’t. I’ve given this company twelve years of my life. I turned from a young woman into middle age in this company. It won’t be Oh-Kay, Eddie.”

Eddie was frantic to say something that would stop her pain. Her couldn’t bear to see her crying, it made him feel helpless. “You always say you should quit, that it’s too hard juggling everything.”

“And give up my career? That’s just talk. If I wanted to quit, I would have.”

“Then why did you say it all the time?”

“Are you arguing with me? I’ve been let go and you’re arguing with me that I should be happy?!”

“No. I just want to help.”

“Then help me pack so I can get out of here.”

Eddie scurried into the office and lifted up one of the flattened cardboard boxes that had miraculously appeared on Jill’s office floor while she was meeting with Carl. He constructed the box and began fill it with books.

The office was tight and hot with Jill standing just a few feet away, the steam of her tears sucking oxygen out of the air so he found it difficult to take a complete breath.

“What are you huffing and puffing for?” said Jill.

“I’m not I’m just looking for what I should pack next.”

She shoved three binders into his hands and he almost stumbled under the weight. “How much are you going to take? You won’t really need all this old stuff, will you?”

“It’s rightfully mine and I’m taking it. This is all I have to show for twelve years of my life.”

“You have your kids. You have your house. And think of all the experience you have. You won’t have any trouble finding another job.”

“I have nothing.” She said it so quietly he almost didn’t hear her, and the tone of her voice made him afraid. She didn’t want to be comforted or reassured.

He couldn’t stay silent, let those ominous words hang in the air like a swarm of locusts ready to descend and gnaw their way through her brain. “You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t keep talking just because you don’t know what to say. And don’t tell me what I mean. I absolutely mean every word I’ve ever said in my entire life.”

Eddie wanted to laugh. She talked too much to recall every word she’d said. “But you don’t mean that you have nothing. You just feel badly about your job, but you’ll find another, I know you will.”

“Go get the security guard. I’m done here and I want to get out before I kill someone.”

Eddie backed out of the office. “Please don’t talk like that when the guard’s walking you out. He’ll take it as a serious threat. Please.”

“I don’t care.”

Eddie almost ran down the hall. He told the guard she was ready to be escorted out of the building. Why did they have to make it so degrading? A guarded escort, as if she might steal something, or turn violent.

The guard wheeled his dolly to Jill’s office door. She had already removed her name plaque from the slot on the door. Eddie stood with arms limp at his sides while the guard stacked boxes on the dolly. Jill picked up her purse, laptop bag and her now cold cup of coffee. Then she set it down again and reached to the wall, yanking a glass encased certificate off the wall, tearing out the hook in the process. She dropped the certificate into the trashcan and the glass cracked.

“Why did you do that?” said Eddie.

“Why do you think? An award for my contribution? I don’t think so.”

They walked down the hall and around the corner in single file, the dolly leading the way, like a funeral procession, with Jill bringing up the rear.
In the main corridor they passed the executive conference room. Out of habit, he glanced into the conference room as he passed. The room was empty, the blinds closed so it looked almost dark even though the sun was bright outside. The guard was approaching the lobby doors and Eddie quickened his pace to catch up. He wasn’t sure why he was walking with them, but it seemed the right thing to do. He couldn’t let her go alone.

Suddenly he didn’t hear Jill behind him. She was standing at the door of the conference room, her hand on the door frame.

“Come on,” said Eddie.

“What’s the rush? I really should take that bowl. I’m the one who earned it.”

Eddie walked back and touched her shoulder. “It belongs to the company. Besides, you don’t want it. Where would you put that monstrosity?”

“I’d throw it in the parking lot and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. Sort of like my life.”

“Please don’t Jill. It’s not that bad.”

She whirled around and glared at him. “I thought you were my best friend.”

“Ms. Madison.” The guard glared at Jill, obviously tired of the prolonged exit.

Jill ignored him. Eddie shifted from one foot to the other, shoved his hands in his pockets then pulled them out. It seemed as if his whole body, all his organs were exposed and raw. He didn’t know whether he should urge her forward or let her grieve for a few more minutes.

Finally she turned and shuffled toward the lobby doors. Eddie followed.

In the weeks after, she called him daily. Sometimes several times a day. He could set his clock by her calls, right after she dropped her kids at school, lunchtime when he could imagine her seated alone at her twelve foot dining room table, eating a salad, nothing to occupy her mind. She sometimes called a third time from the soccer field, shouting into her cell phone.

Now their conversations were exclusively about CompuTech. The price of their stock, their new products, political gossip and most of all, the injustice that had been done to her. Repeatedly she reminded him that she’d been key to their most successful product announcement of all time. She outlined her accomplishments, ran through lists and timelines as if it was important he know every detail.

Then her calls took a disturbing track. She no longer recounted history, but wanted to brainstorm on how she might get re-hired. “You could help me,” she said. “It was so unfair, and you saw the whole thing.”

What should we do? Her question ran through his mind at night when he couldn’t sleep because he drank gallons more caffeine than ever in an effort to stay interested in a job that had become lifeless. How could he help her return? He had no influence over hiring and firing. What should we do? Are you thinking about it, Eddie?

It was a Tuesday. Jill’s number glittered on the phone display and the ring burbled through his small office. Eddie froze. He rested his fingers on the keys of his computer keyboard, each key cradling the tip of a finger. If he didn’t answer by the fourth ring, it would go to voice mail. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to her. He pushed the button to answer the speaker phone. Too shaky to clutch the handset.

“Hi,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Things aren’t moving forward.”

“How’s that?”

“I feel like you’re putting me off. I want to come over there for lunch. And then we can figure out a way for me to see some people, get them thinking about how much they need me back.”
Eddie pressed his fingers on the computer keys, hard. A random series of letters flew across the display. He lifted his hands and pressed them against his thighs where his palms left tiny moist spots on his khaki slacks. “They let you go. They aren’t going to talk to you about coming back. At least not this soon.” Why did he say that? She would leap on it as a promise of something down the road.

“What’s a good day for lunch? I really want to see you. I miss talking to you.”

“We talk every day.”

“Don’t you miss hanging out? Working together? I know you do.”

“Yes.”

“Then what day? Friday?”

“Sure,” muttered Eddie. “That sounds good.” It wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same.

He said good-bye after promising twice to think more about Jill’s situation. The moment the speaker was off, his door slid open.

“Did I just hear Jill’s voice screeching over the phone?” Anna stepped a good way into his office so that Eddie had to roll his chair toward the back wall, which wasn’t far. Now he felt pinned against it, an insect on a straight pin.

“You’re eavesdropping?”

“You can hear everything through these walls. Why are you talking to her? If others hear, it will hurt your reputation.”

“No it won’t.”

“It’s the odor of death, you know. The stink that wafts off the people who are dismissed and attaches itself to those who can’t let go.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“What did she want?”

Eddie felt the walls were closer than before, thicker somehow, tan metal shelves, overhead and against the wall, too many shelves, filled with the history of his job, books and binders he never looked at. His breathing was heavy. All he’d done was try to be a friend, and it seemed that he was being punished for that effort.

“We’re just going to lunch.”

“Not here, I hope.”

“Yes, here. She’s coming by on Friday. Do you have something specific you want to talk about? Because if you’re just here to issue some warning about how I better stay away from her, you’re wasting your time.”
Anna leaned against the door frame. Her thin body draped in a four hundred dollar suit that looked as elegant as an evening gown. He didn’t understand why she was so determined to manage his career too. Or at least this aspect of his career, making sure he associated with the right people. He didn’t really care. It wasn’t as if he had a chance to move up the corporate ladder like Anna did, eyeing a VP slot.

“She calls the rest of us, too. It’s not like you’re someone special. The difference is that we don’t pick up the phone.”

“I consider Jill a friend and I’m not going to cut her off because she was let go.”

“I’m just trying to look out for you, Eddie.”

“Go look out for someone else. I have work to do.”

She shrugged, the fabric of her suit moving gracefully over her body as she turned to leave. “You might think I’m being cold, but you’ll regret not taking my advice.”

“I don’t think so.” When she left, he stood and closed the door. Hard. It was funny, Jill was a burden, clinging to him, pulling him suffocating under the water with her. But after listening to Anna, his feelings raced in the opposite direction, full of compassion, or sadness – he couldn’t be sure what, exactly. He wasn’t going to turn his back on Jill just because her life got a little bit rocky. She needed him more than ever.

He was infused with a burst of energy he hadn’t felt in weeks. He straightened his desk, putting papers into the shredding bin, tossing away used coffee cups and old napkins. Maybe there was a way to help Jill come back. He should be more of a fighter, it didn’t seem to hurt Anna at all, walking around spouting her opinions.

When he saw Jill on Friday she was sunk deep in a soft, backless chair in the lobby waiting for him. The soft chair made her body seem shrunken, and her face was pale, more lined and her eyelids heavier than he remembered. She stood with a great deal of effort and he saw that she was thinner. Her arms looked bony at the elbow.

“It’s insulting having to walk in here and get a visitor’s badge  like I’m some kind of enemy of the company’s intellectual property. I should have suggested we meet outside for lunch.”

“But then you wouldn’t get to see people, say hello.”

“That’s a good point. Have you set up anything specific for me?”

“What do you mean?’

“Meetings with any managers? I now it wouldn’t be Carl, but some of the others.”

“You know I can’t do that.” They hadn’t even crossed the lobby and he felt the newly familiar crushing sensation on his chest. He couldn’t help her. He was useless. What she wanted was too much, it was outside his range of influence.

“But you just said if we went out I wouldn’t see people.”

“I meant casually.” He waved his badge in front of the card reader, waited for it to unlock the door, then grabbed the door and held it open for her.

They walked through the building to the outside courtyard. The entire time, and all through the food selection area, and on their way to hunting down a table, Jill talked. She talked about the people they saw, not bothering to lower her voice. “That guy is useless. I asked him to research a market segment for me once and all he sent me was three internet links to news articles.” She pointed at someone else. “Did I ever tell you about the time he actually removed my name from a presentation and replaced it with his own? The document ended up making its way back to me two weeks later, when some VP sent an email praising the quality.”

Every bite of food Eddie put in his mouth hit his gut like a lead pellet. The pressure built until he couldn’t finish his small salad. He pushed it away.

“If you don’t want that, I’ll eat it.” Jill pulled it toward her and started crunching lettuce which made him feel worse, the sound of her chewing magnified in his ears. She stared at him with hard, glittering eyes.

“What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you eating?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Good. Then you can devote your attention to the plan. Are you going to walk me around the building to chat in people’s offices?”

“No. I think that was a bad idea. I don’t know why I suggested it.”

“Because you’re my friend. You’re trying to help me.”

Her friend? Is this what friendship ultimately turned into? A one hundred-ten pound dead weight around his ankle? A request to humiliate himself in a futile effort to reconnect her with former co-workers and managers? “Can’t I help you by being a reference somewhere else? Why do you even want to come back here?”

“Because it’s my home.”

“That sounds morbid.”

“I built my career here. In spite of all its flaws, I love it. I believe in the products, I care about the people – most of them.”

“All you’ve done since you got here is complain about the people.”

“You know what I mean.” She reached across the table and wrapped her thin fingers around his wrist. She clenched it so tight he thought she was closing off the circulation. Did he imagine that his fingertips were getting a bluish tint?

He pried her fingers off his wrist and rubbed where the pressure had left actual marks. “Don’t grab me like that.”

“You’re such a whiner sometimes. I don’t understand why you still work here and I don’t.”

Eddie stood and gathered up the trash from their lunch. “Let’s go. I need to get back to work.”

“What about your plan?”

“I don’t have a plan. I have to do my job and I can’t help you.”

Jill remained in her chair. She folded her arms and leaned her forearms on the table, pinning her unused knife in place.

Eddie tried to loosen the knife blade from under her arm, but his hands were damp with sweat and he couldn’t get a grip. “Let me have that”

Even though he wasn’t supposed to leave her alone without an escort, Eddie no longer cared. He picked up what he could from the table, left the knife under the bone of her forearm, and walked toward the disposal area.

“Come back here,” she yelped. “You said you’d help me.”

It seemed that every table he passed grew silent, the employees looking at him, waiting to see if he would return to the woman yelling at him, wondering if she would follow him, hoping there would be a drama.

Suddenly he heard her feet slapping the linoleum behind him. “Why did you walk away from me? Everyone lets me down, everyone walks away.”

He sighed. “You chase them away.”

“I don’t. Please don’t say such cold things. I can’t chase you away, you’re my friend. Right? Eddie?”

“I need to get back to work.”

“You’re scaring me. Slow down. Are you still going to help me find a job? Are you going to give me a good reference? Promise me you’ll still think about ways for me to come back here to work.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“Then you’ll call me? Tell me what you thought of?”

He kept walking. He crossed the courtyard and entered the building again, barely holding the door open long enough for her to pass over the threshold before letting it fall closed behind her. He hurried down the long hall, past the conference room.

“Wait. Let me stop here just for a minute.”

“What’s the point?”

“I just want to look, remember old times.”

“No.”

Despite the volume of his voice, she turned into the dark conference room and disappeared from sight. He had no choice but to follow her.

Jill was already at the other side of the room, fingering the stones in the center of the glass bowl.

“We need to go.”

She picked up a fistful of stones and held them to her cheek. “They’re so cold. Like ice cubes.”

He walked around the table. He wanted to grab her arm and drag her all the way to the lobby and out to the curb. All she wanted from him was help finding another job at CompuTech – the single thing he couldn’t help with.

She let the stones fall out of her hand into the bowl where they clanged so loud against the sides he was afraid she would chip the glass. Then she picked up the bowl and moved it slowly, letting the stones slide around the glass, spinning like drops of dark water splashing inside.

Eddie came up behind her. “Please put it down. You should leave before someone comes in for a meeting.”

“Don’t treat me like some unstable lunatic who’s going to break your precious glass bowl.” She moved it harder, and the stones slithered up closer to the edge.

He reached for the bowl. Several stones, gathering momentum, flew up and over the sides and onto the carpeted floor. Eddie bent to pick them up.

“I’ll get them,” said Jill, “You’re not my slave. Hold this.” She shoved the heavy bowl into his hands, damp from the extended, tension filled hour, wet with fear and exhaustion. Almost useless hands. The bowl slid in his fingers, and stepped to the side, pressing his hip against the table to stabilize himself.

Jill knelt on the floor, picking up stones.

“What is she doing here?” Anna’s voice from the doorway of the conference room was sharp and loud. “It’s against company policy to have former employees wandering around the building.”

Eddie turned too fast, caught his foot on the leg of one of the rolling chairs and felt his fingers lose their tentative, slippery hold on the glass. The enormous bowl slid from his hands like water, landing on the back of Jill’s head with a sickening thud.

She didn’t make a sound. Her body collapsed to the floor, her fingers still curled around black and amber polished stones, opened slightly.

“Oh, Eddie. What did you do?” whispered Anna. Without making a sound, she was suddenly right behind him.

He squatted next to Jill and shook her shoulder gently. She didn’t move or cry out. For once, her lips were silent. The flow staunched.

“She doesn’t look right. Do you think she’s knocked out?”

“Obviously. Or she’d say something. Or open her eyes. Something.”

He shook her again, harder, roughly. Angry, now. How dare she become such a burden, needing too much from him.

“Do you … do you think she’s dead?” said Anna.

“No. She can’t be.”

“That bowl is heavy.”

“I know that! She’s not dead.” He put his face close to hers, tried to feel her breath on his skin. His heart beat faster, he didn’t know what to do. He should call someone, do something. Why was he always so helpless? Gently moving her head, although he knew he shouldn’t, he pressed his fingers into the side of her neck, trying to find the wild, angry pulse that was always beating there.

“She’s dead.” Anna backed away. “It wasn’t your fault. I can see that. Everyone will see that. You invited her for lunch, and you shouldn’t have, and you let her wander around where she didn’t belong. But it was an accident. You didn’t mean to kill her.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.” His legs were like rubber. He pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.

“I don’t want to sound cold,” said Anna in a strained stage whisper, “But you’ve really done us all a huge favor. I think she was starting to lose her mind.”

Of course he hadn’t meant to kill her. He closed his eyes. But then, why did he feel so relieved?

"Talking Herself to Death" by Cathryn Grant, © 2008 by Cathryn Grant. This story first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.