Free Hot Properties by Rafael Yglesias Page B

Jumpers, we’ve suffered lower sales in every department because of the recession. Everything’s gone wrong that possibly could. We have to cut down on staff and you’re the choice.” He said all this very quietly, embarrassed. He said it all as if she knew it.
    “I don’t understand.”
    Gelb sighed and looked away. “You know that someone has to suffer when things go bad. It isn’t personal. Double-day let a third of its staff go yesterday. You aren’t the only one here who will lose a job.”
    She went numb to sensation, as if being in his office were a dream. Colors blurred, his voice came from a distance. FAILURE —punched onto the page of her brain. The word dominated— FAILURE . She felt as if she had been sentenced to die. All her life, she had dreaded this sort of occurrence. Getting a failing grade in school, being caught with drugs, not being accepted into a good college, meeting boys you like who reject you, and getting fired from a job. At last, FAILURE had struck. She had managed to avoid all the other calamities, she had even begun to lower her defenses … FAILURE . Gelb considered her so pathetic that not only was he firing her, he was doing it nicely!
    “Please don’t do that!” Gelb stood up. “There’s no reason to cry.”
    She hadn’t realized she was weeping. She put a hand on her cheek and her fingers slid on the wet surface.
    “You can stay here for a month while you look for another job. I’ll give you great references. There’s unemployment insurance. It’s a paid vacation.”
    “You just said there are no jobs,” she whined.
    “I did?”
    “If things are so bad, then no one’s going to hire me.”
    “Oh, there’ll be jobs in a little while. Besides, you’re what? Twenty-five?”
    “Twenty-six.”
    “You don’t have to stay in publishing. I think you might be happier in … advertising. Or maybe working in publicity at a publishing house.”
    “You don’t think I’m any good at editing.” Through her tears, she had the bitter voice of a heartbroken child, a girl on Christmas morning discovering she has gotten no toys. She hated herself for this weakness. It wasn’t her real self.
    “Of course you are,” Gelb insisted. He wrinkled his thick brows together. This made the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. “You need a jolt. A fresh start.”
    She whined and complained for more than an hour. Gelb canceled a drink date and took her downstairs to an Indian restaurant where she ate so many hors d’oeuvres that she didn’t need any dinner. Gelb offered to buy that for her as well.
    Now, as she stared into David Bergman’s mirror, what her mind retained was the shameful memory of her childish reaction to Gelb dismissing her. And her gullible acceptance of his story that firing her was part of a general cutback. Within a month after she left, the new assistant was given her old job, and last week Patty had learned from Marion that Gelb seemed to be having an affair with Patty’s successor. Only then did Patty realize how completely naive she was: Gelb had often asked her out on evening dates that she casually refused. Gelb took her rejections so calmly that Patty convinced herself he didn’t mind. She hadn’t put out, so he fired her. This conclusion amazed her. She had grown up reading in novels and seeing in movies exactly that scene played out, but it seemed a part of the fictional world, not the life she saw and experienced. Her father never had any affairs, she believed. And Gelb merely seemed like another version of her father: a big, disgruntled man who was frightened by tears and emotion in others. To think of him as a sexual being was both impossible and slightly revolting.
    I’ve been a fool, she told herself, bringing her relentless replay of the scenes in Gelb’s office to a close. She got herself out of the bathroom and found the pot of coffee David Bergman had made for her. He’s sweet, she decided. And he wants sex, she reminded herself.