Arlo stared down at the phone in his hand for a long moment before looking back up at Phil with a steely glint in his eye that Gillian had never seen before but that made a warm little knot form in the middle of her stomach.
“How do we know that you won’t just make the door vanish again once I give it to you?”
“I keep my bargains,” Phil said.
“Do it, Arlo,” Gillian said.
“Excellent choice, Frost,” Phil said as Arlo passed his only link to the outside world to the little Accountant in the three-piece polyester suit.
“What about Roger?” Arlo said.
Phil snorted. “I wouldn’t worry about Roger. He’s made his bed a thousand times. He’s quite happy to lie in it. You, on the other hand only have another ninety seconds before that door disappears.”
“What?!” Gillian and Arlo shouted together.
“You said you kept your bargains!” Arlo yelled.
Phil nodded. “And I do. I said I’d show you the door. It’s not my fault that you never asked how long it would stay open. Tick tock.”
Arlo just stared with his mouth hanging open, frozen with shock. Gillian, in contrast, was a flurry of movement. She hitched up her tight pencil skirt around her waist and pulled off her high heels, holding them in one hand.
Phil’s eyebrows rose in surprise at Gillian’s state of semi-undress.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Miss Frost?”
“This,” Gillian said.
She flung the high heels at Phil’s face. As he ducked comically from the spinning shoes flying toward him, Gillian spun on her bare heel, and yanked open the front door to the street. She shouted over her shoulder at Arlo, “Run!”
It should be noted that Gillian is one hell of a runner. When she was in high school, she placed first every time in Track and Field. This was not necessarily because she possessed a natural aptitude for sports, but more due to the fact that her natural aversion to people made her exceptionally good at outdistancing them at all costs. Her long legs served her well in this capacity, as did her complete lack of concern for how ridiculous she looked with her skirt hiked up around her waist and her bare feet slapping loudly against the sidewalk.
Arlo was not nearly as fast as Gillian and she had a head start. He didn’t catch up with her until she was at the door.
“This is it,” Arlo said, breathing heavily from the short sprint.
“I never could have done this without you, Arlo,” Gillian said as she grasped the knob.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “You’re really smart, Gillian. I’m sure you can do anything. But we do make a great team. I wouldn’t want to go through this door without you.”
For a man with narcissistic tendencies, the mutual sharing of accomplishment was a huge step. Gillian smiled and gave him a small nod, accepting the compliment and offering no snarky remark in return. Instead, she leaned into his chest for a side hug, completely obliterating her own personal space bubble with a tight wrap of her cold arm around his warm back.
Arlo was not prepared for the feel of Gillian’s side pressed against him. Before he could lift his own arms, she’d already broken away. The hug was brief but everything he could have hoped for. For a woman that literally cringed at an elbow brush, it was a huge step. He gave her a wide smile and remarkably, he didn’t even feel the ghost of an awkward laugh.
She reached for his hand hanging at his side, lacing her fingers tightly in his. They faced the doorway together for one impossibly long moment before taking a deep breath and stepping through it, hand in hand.
PART VI
The classically handsome young man ran a hand down the pink silk necktie. The smooth fabric caught the light from the overhead cans, casting a beautiful sheen. The light wool of his charcoal gray suit made a faint shushing sound as he walked, a thin sheen of sweat just beginning to form on his skin from the unrelenting heat of the not so great outdoors.
The fingers of his left hand fiddled with the no-frills flip phone in his pocket. The thing had no apps, a teensy tiny screen, and no camera feature. Corporate-issued. His job at the firm required him to be reachable at all times. He just wished that the higher-ups could’ve sprung for something a little less Cold War era.
He approached the coffee shop, his feet slowing at the sight of a long line of customers stretching out the door and down the sidewalk. Ugh. This could take a while…
He was already dreading another day at the office. The billing firm where he worked exemplified the idea of an evil and corrupt business. They employed a multitude of minimum wage, minimum hour men and women. They offered no benefits. And they operated under the umbrella of a shady corporation whose headquarters took up an entire block of Downtown.
The young executive thought of himself as a creative, free personality who lived outside of the strict box of societal norms. He would much rather spend every waking moment experiencing art installations and introducing interested Insta followers to local goings on, than sitting in a glass box in a concrete office building nine hours a day, but meh. It was a living. Sort of.
His flip phone vibrated in his pants pocket and he pulled it out to glance at the tiny LCD display window on the scratched black cover. An orange pixel shaped like an envelope was accompanied by the words: 1 new message. He flicked his wrist to open the phone with a flourish- the only cool feature to owning the clunky thing, and read the text:
‘Knowing isn’t even a quarter of the battle.’
He blinked and checked the
