The last two days at work were weird. Creepy. Ominous.
Like the scenes toward the end of a scary movie, where you’re supposed to think that the axe murderer is dead and gone—so the heroine is walking around her kitchen barefoot, listening to a Van Morrison song, talking on the phone, and telling her friend not to worry about her anymore. Then pouring herself a glass of wine and getting into the shower. The camera slowly pans over to the basement door that she forgot to lock. The movie lulls you into a false sense of complacency right before shit gets real.
I never fall for it.
I never walk around my kitchen barefoot.
I always keep every door and window locked.
And I will not be lulled into a false sense of complacency with Declan Cannavale.
I’m suspicious. He’s probably going to ask me to work through the night on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day or something. I won’t do it. I don’t care how good he smells. He stinks as a boss.
He didn’t make me stay late last night. He hasn’t texted me yet today, so I actually got to have a Saturday morning all to myself for the first time since I’d started working for him. And it’s been great. I slept in. I drank hot cocoa in front of my Christmas tree while listening to “Ave Maria.” Okay, I drank hot chocolate with peppermint Schnapps at ten-thirty in the morning while listening to Mariah Carey. I bought groceries. I’m able to walk down the sidewalk without bumping into people because I’m not busy responding to his texts.
And I don’t miss him one little bit.
I’m just enjoying freezing my tits off on this beautiful arctic day in the East Village. My landlady, Mrs. Pavlovsky, is out sweeping the stoop of our building, as she does every day of the year. The trees are bare, and there’s no snow or wind or even a speck of dust on the steps, but she likes to keep busy. And I love talking to her. This part of town is called Ukrainian Village, so it’s not uncommon to hear her accent in this neighborhood. But I’ve missed chatting with her on weekends, because she’s comforting to me in the way that her borscht is. She’s weird and colorful and nourishing.
“Mrs. Pavlovsky, you aren’t dressed warm enough,” I tease. She’s always telling me to put more clothes on, and now she’s wearing an old, worn-out wool coat, even though she owns a freaking building in Manhattan.
“Pah!” She waves her hand dismissively. “Zis is nothing. Here—no wind. In Ukraine—cold to my bones. Here—cold only skin deep. Meh.”
I wonder if my boss is only cold skin-deep. Maybe it just took him two months to warm up to me. Is that what’s happening?
“Oooohhh. Vat’s zis smile for, Magdalena? A man?” She calls me Magdalena, and she is about as good at pronouncing “w” and “th” sounds as I am at choosing boyfriends.
I wipe the smile from my face, walk up the steps, and open the front door to our building. “No smile. No man.”
She follows me inside. “Vy you don’t have man, Magdalena? Huh? Vy? You get man to go out on street vis, and I am not having to vorry no more. But now my heart is ache for you, alvays! Nyet. No good.”
She has asked me to “help learn better to speak ze English,” so I correct her. “You mean why don’t I have a man to go out with?”
“Yes.” She makes a great effort and manages to say, “Whyyyyy you don’t have man? Not all man is like one vis…with…long hair, alvays crying.”
The needy musician.
“Or man vis bags of avocado, alvays yelling about plastic.”
The angry vegan environmentalist.
“Some man is vonderful. Like my Vladimir.”
Her husband really was wonderful.
I pause by her front door and wait for her to unlock it. “You really don’t have to worry about me. I’ve got my hands full with work right now.”
“Pah! You know what your hands should be full of on weekend. Come. I have borscht and sausage for you. Come.”
“I’m really fine,” I protest. “I just bought groceries—but thank you.”
“You let me put more fat on bones, and good man vill come for you. You vill see I’m right.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m in my kitchen, biting into Mrs. Pavlovsky’s reheated sausage and definitely not thinking about anyone else’s sausage when my phone vibrates, and my heart starts racing. Because I’m hoping it’s not Declan. And it’s definitely not a sigh of disappointment when I see that it’s my sister calling me. It’s a sigh of relief. Because my sister Bex is my best friend and exactly the kind of person I should be talking to on a Saturday. Not my boss.
“I was totally just going to call you,” I say as soon as I answer.
“What are you eating?”
“A delicious sausage.”
“Interesting,” she says in a singsong voice. “That’s exactly why I’m calling you.” I can hear her collapsing onto a bed. “So, I’m tidying up Piper’s room because she’s out. And one of her notebooks just happened to fall on the floor.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you know how I discovered a few months ago that she writes fanfiction?”
“You mean how you discovered it by making her notebooks accidentally fall open on the floor?”
“I’m very clumsy. It can’t be helped. Anyway. Last time she was writing a very PG-13 Stranger Things fanfic story. Now she’s working on something about Maddie and Declan.”
Whaaaaat?
“Who is Declan, and why does your niece think you should be kissing him?”
“I have no idea, because I know for a fact that I should not be kissing him.” I scoff, very convincingly. “She met Declan the other day. He’s my asshole boss.”
“Really? Because he doesn’t sound like an asshole to me.”
“Let me guess—does he sound like a man with a perfect butt?”
“Yes, but he also gazes at you longingly with his beautiful amber eyes.”
“That
