Knitting in the City 01 Neanderthal Seeks Human (10 page)

“What? Do you think I should get into the security guard business? I am pretty tall, for a girl. And I can be fierce when needs be.”

He tilted his head to the side in the same way I was becoming used to then handed me the card, “I don’t doubt it but my company always needs someone good in the business office.” He closed his pen and set it on the counter, “I
’ve written down the name and number of our Director of Business Operations. You should call him, send him your resume. I can get you the interview- if you want- but you’ll have to get the job on your own.”

Viki returned with our food as I studied the card. I turned it between my fingers and read the front:

Quinn Sullivan- Cypher Systems, Inc.

Under his name was his phone number and business email address. I flipped the card to the back and stared at his handwriting rather than the name and number and information he’d written. His letters were all capitals, severe and precise; he put little dashes through his sevens but not through his zeros; his words were in a straight line rather than drifting up or down in the absence of lined paper. I liked his handwriting. I imagined reading a handwritten letter from him. I thought about him writing it, taking the time to sit and write and think of me. It made a volcano of warmth erupt in my stomach.

When I looked up he was frowning at me, his gaze guarded, “Of course you don’t have to apply if you don’t want to.”

I placed my hand on his arm without thinking, “Oh, no! I’m going to apply. Really, thank you. Thank you for thinking of me.” I withdrew my hand when his eyes moved to my fingers and I tried to tuck my hair behind my ears as I turned to the plate of greasy food left by Viki. I stared at the plate for a moment before I spoke, “I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me. Last night and-” I swallowed a building lump in my throat, “and this morning and now this.” I gestured to the card on the counter. I met and held his gaze as I added with a thankful smile, “You’re a really nice guy.”

His frown deepened as though I’d just insulted him. His attention moved over my face, hair, neck, then stopped; he closed his eye-lids before he sighed and looked upward in an almost stealth eye-roll.

He half said, half mumbled, “I’m not that nice.”

~*~

Despite one more extremely awkward moment where Quinn wanted to drive me home on his motorcycle and I somewhat freaked out, stubbornly refused, and insisted on taking a cab, the rest of the breakfast was actually really nice. Rather, more precisely, it was as nice as it could be considering I spent most of our time together distracted, attempting to think of a way to get him shirtless again. During one weak moment I contemplated throwing my coffee at him.

Later that night, as I lay on the couch in Elizabeth’s apartment trying to concentrate on reading my book and failing, I thought about my debate with Quinn about the motorcycle. If he’d offered to drive me home in a car I likely would have said yes.

As it was, he owned a motorcycle.

I’ve never been on a motorcycle and, since my mother died on one, I have absolutely no desire to ever ride on a motorcycle. Obviously, I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t like to think about much less talk about my mother’s death and I doubted Quinn, already thinking I was a complete nutcase, much wanted to hear about it.

“Janie? Janie, are you here?” I heard Elizabeth burst through the door just as I w
as getting up to brush my teeth, for the tenth time that day, and go to bed. There was an unexpected urgency in her voice so I met her at the hall.

“Yeah- I’m here, are you ok?”

When she saw me she stepped back and closed her eyes, her hand was over her chest; “Oh God. I’m going to kill Jon.”

I lifted my eyebrows in confusion. “Jon? My Jon? What happened?”

Elizabeth let the bag on her shoulder fall to the ground and she sighed, “He called me, like, eleventy thousand times today, he kept paging me. He said the two if you were supposed to meet today and you didn’t show up.”

It took me approximately five seconds to remember my meeting with
Jon, that I’d promised to meet him, and realize that I completely forgot all about it. The sight of Quinn’s bare chest must have wiped my memory.

“Oh geeze, I totally forgot!”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, “You need to get a cell phone. I’m blocking his number from mine.”

“I am so sorry, Elizabeth. I’m sorry he bothered you at work.”

“Don’t worry about it, I was more worried about you.” She laughed lightly, pulling off her work clogs, “But you might want to send him an email or call him on Skype. He said something about calling in a missing persons report.” She stopped to give me a brief hug before walking to her room, “I’m glad you’re ok.”

I nodded and turned to my laptop. It was already ten. I knew he would be up but didn’t particularly want to speak with him so I opted to send him an email instead. When I opened my account I saw that he’
d already emailed me five times, each message progressing in level of anxiety, the last was sent less than a half hour ago and read:

Would you please call me and let me know you are ok? I am going crazy with worry. I love you, Janie, and just want to know you are ok. I get that I hurt you and that you are mad, but please don’t punish me like this. This isn’t like you. If you’re trying to make me upset then
, you’ve succeeded. If you don’t want to see me then you can just say so. I’m scared to death that you are somewhere hurt. If you get this and you are ok then we really need to talk about getting you a cell phone. Please call me. –Jon

I sighed and gritted my teeth, annoyed both by his presumption that ‘we’ would talk about cell phones as well as at the pinch of guilt that I felt, as I typed my email:

Jon- I’m ok. Honestly, I forgot about meeting you today. I’m sorry I didn’t call, there is no reason to worry. Elizabeth just came home and said that you were calling her at work. Please don’t do that again. You know that I usually check my email at least once a day and you also know how I feel about cell phones. I have no problem meeting you, I don’t want to upset you, and I’m not punishing you. I really do want us to be friends. Let me know if you want to try to meet up next week sometime. Talk to you soon, Janie

I stared at my
cursor
and re-read my email. I decided to delete “
Talk to you soon
” then I sent it. I didn’t want him to think I was promising to speak with him soon. I took a moment to read through my email and noted, with a great degree of frustration, that my inbox did not contain any responses to the hundreds of employment queries I’d sent.

My thoughts drifted back to Quinn and I remembered the card he gave me at breakfast. I reached to the coffee table in front of me and pulled out the card, letting my thumb caress his name before flipping it over to the Director of Operations’ contact information on the back. My mouth curved into a wistful smile when my eyes met with the image of Quinn’s handwriting. I really was ridiculous.

I clicked the ‘compose’ button and attached my resume, typing a quick letter of introduction in the body of the message. As an afterthought I decided to cc-Quinn on the email. I wanted him to see that I was actually very interested in the position and thankful for his recommendation.

Just as I hit send on the email my account chimed with a new message from Jon. I stared at the subject line:

“I’m sorry, I love you.”

I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. Shaking my head I closed my laptop without opening his message. I was tired. I huffed again. I wanted to brush my teeth and go to bed.
I didn’t like how uncomfortable, and guilty, Jon made me feel when I was certain- well, mostly certain- that he was the reason we were no longer together.

“You keep sighing- I can hear you in my room.” Elizabeth came around the couch and flopped down next to me, stretching her arms over her head as she did so; “What happened with Jon?”

I shrugged and unthinkingly expelled another loud breath; “I emailed him. I don’t really want to talk to him right now.”

“You need a cell phone-”

“No. If I had a cell phone then I’d have to talk to him. Since I don’t have one I get to put that conversation off until I’m ready to have it.”

“Fair enough.” Elizabeth lifted her hands as though she surrendered, “I don’t want to talk about old soggy pants anyway.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes; Elizabeth started calling Jon soggy pants when he sat in a wet seat at a movie theater once, accidentally, and spent the whole movie with wet pants after confirming the liquid was soda.

“So...” Elizabeth wagged her eyebrows at me, “I have something for you.” She pulled a card out of seemingly thin air and squealed as she forced it into my hand, “Look! It’s Quinn’s card! He gave it to me last night before we left the club.”

I stared at it for a minute before I responded, “Oh. Are you going to call him?”

Elizabeth frowned at me then hit me on the arm, “What? No! You left the club so fast. He stopped me and asked me to give it to you.” She nudged me with her shoulder, “He wants you to call him. Ah! Janie and McHotpants, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g and f-u-c-”

“Wait-” I cut her off, “No, no- he gave you the card because he wants to help me find a job. He thinks there might be an opening with the security firms he works for.”

Elizabeth smirked, “Oh, reeeealy? That’s preposterous! What would give you that idea?”

I pulled an identical card from next to my laptop and handed it to Elizabeth; “Because he gave me one too; he wrote the name of a business manager on the back and told me to apply for a job.”

Elizabeth looked from one card to the other, briefly speechless, then demanded, “Wait- when did he give you this?”

“This morning.”

“When did you- ok, start from the beginning. What happened? When and where did you see Quinn this morning?”

I proceeded to tell her about going back to the club last night and everything that proceeded: the black out, the waking up in Quinn’s sister’s apartment with no clothes on, the fact that he’d wanted to be sure I knew he didn’t make a move on me, breakfast and the business card. Elizabeth listened- frowning in disapproval, surprise, or confusion mostly- and didn’t interrupt even when I knew she was anxious to get to the origin of my matching business card.

“So...” she contemplated me for a moment after I finished, “So did you pick up the test? To see if you were drugged?”

I shook my head, “No, I meant to but-” I sighed, let my head fall back to the couch, “When I got home I was so tired.”

“Oh! Thank God Quinn found you!” She squeezed my hand with hers, “Wait- did anything happen? How did he find you? When did he bring you home? Did anyone... are you ok? Did you go to a doctor?”

“Yes- I mean no.” I sighed again, “Yes, I am ok. No, nothing happened. No, I didn’t go to a doctor. I think Quinn found me before anything happened.”

“Oh.” She squeezed my hand harder then let go and rubbed her eyes, “This is a lot to process. I’m exhausted. I can’t believe you went back to the club. He obviously likes you- he was flirting with you. Why would he take you to his sister’s place? Who does that? And what was with the reserved seating at breakfast? Did this waitress woman really have a unibrow? I’m really glad you’re ok.”

I could tell she was tired because her usually well-ordered thoughts were bouncing all over the place. I smiled at her, “You need sleep, we can talk about it in the morning.” I pulled her up and she gave me another hug.

“I am glad you’re ok. Jon really scared me.” She released me from the hug and held my shoulders as she pinned me with her pale blue eyes, “If something happened to you who would help me finish the pitcher on mojito Mondays? Who would be my partner in Trivial Pursuit? Who would clean my bathroom?”

We both chuckled as I pushed her towards her room, “You did just fine cleaning your bathroom before I moved in.”

“No, I didn’t. I hadn’t cleaned it in several months before you moved in. I told everyone it was my bacteria wet-lab.” Elizabeth yawned, “Goodnight, Janie. I love you.”

“Goodnight, Elizabeth. I love you too.”

Bing, bang, boom- I got a job.

To my surprise and, quite frankly, utter disbelief, I received a return email from Carlos Davies, the Director of Business Operations at Cypher Systems, Sunday morning followed by a rapid-fire series of events: Carlos responded to my message a
nd requested that his secretary, also included on the email, arrange an appointment for Monday morning. His secretary, Olivia Merchant, responded Sunday afternoon requesting that I be at the office by 10AM.

Olivia
also included in her email directions to the office, an informational packet on benefits, and instructions for my arrival. I immediately noted that Cypher Systems was located in the Fairbanks building, the same building as my previous job. I responded Sunday evening confirming my appointment for Monday at 10AM.

The benefits package sent by Olivia contained a salary offer for the position of ‘
Senior Fiscal Project Coordinator’
which I read three times before I actually comprehended the number was real and not me misreading the placement of the decimal point in relation to the zeros. I tried to Google Cypher Systems but, other than a very slick, graphics heavy web page facade and an inquiry form for potential clients, the search results were unhelpful.