Page 22 of My Boss

“Yes. This is where I live.”

“So presumably you have your business computer here, with access to the server. I can’t log in from my cell phone.”

Hearing his footsteps behind me, I glance surreptitiously over my shoulder. And if I notice even a small glance towards my ass, I’ll sue him for harassment. But he has his gaze fixed on his phone. He is typing something, moving his thumbs efficiently.

“Watch your step, Maria, or you’ll stumble. And I have no desire to look for anyone to take your place while you are on sick leave.”

I clench my teeth.I hope you will trip and hit your teeth against the step. You… You… wooden stick with an abacus instead of a heart.

I turn the key in the lock, open the door, and it glides on the rustling plastic sheeting that I haven’t cleaned since the morning after finishing my wing chair renovation. I step inside, toss mykeys and my bag on a table in the narrow hallway, and approach the desk. I type in my password and see my website appear on the screen. The sight of pictures of the armchair I put up for sale a few hours ago immediately makes me feel better. I minimize the windows with the website, e-mail, Photoshop and the Excel file where I run the calculations for my company’s business plan, and log on to the company server.

“Here you go. You can sit down.” I glance in Jan’s direction, and he’s standing like a bump on a log, staring at the floor as if he’s looking for something. Did something fall on him or what? I strain my gaze, carefully following the plastic sheeting step by step, and suddenly I have an epiphany. I can hardly restrain myself from laughing. The entire film is stained with white paint, and Jan the Spotless is apparently afraid of getting his shoes dirty.

“Right leg on green, left hand on blue.” I can’t help myself.

“Excuse me?” Jan looks at me.

God, what a numbskull.

“Have you never played Twister?”

“Played what?”

Jan-on-the-spot.

“Twister. A game. A large plastic mat spread out on the floor? Big colorful dots?”

He looks at me. He hasn’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about.

“Have you played?”

He shakes his head.

Of course he hasn’t. The game requires you to bend, squat and twist, which is unfeasible for someone who has a rod stuck so far up his ass that it reaches all the way to his cervical vertebrae. It was hard, but he somehow got it in.

“Long strides, Mr. Engler. Right foot at two o’clock, left foot at eleven o’clock, then right foot at three o’clock, and you are safe,” I say.

Jan glances at the sheeting. He looks as if he is about to walk through a minefield. I can almost hear his right hemisphere boxing with his left. Creativity fights logic. Engler may have finances at his fingertips and be a well-organized boss, but plays and movement games for kindergarten kids are out of his depth.

Finally, he takes three long strides according to my instructions and stands right in front of me. He is so close that I almost touch the tip of my nose to his chest. My heart speeds up strangely. I can smell his scent, the warmth emanating from his broad shoulders, and I watch the chest on which the black tie rests rise and fall.

“Are you renovating?” he asks in a low voice.

I can feel his breath on the top of my head. I can hear him draw in air deep through his nose. Wait, is he sniffing my hair?

I lift my gaze and encounter a pair of steel eyes. This is the first time I’ve seen them so close up. I always thought they were gray like fog. Now I notice that they have a shade of sea blue in them. He has nice eyes, damn him. And for a guy, he has impressively long eyelashes. That’s not fair, no man should have eyelashes longer than a woman!

I involuntarily look at his face and, horror of horrors, I’m ashamed to admit, but I like what I see. Shapely, slightly raised eyebrows, neatly combed, dark hair sprinkled with the first gray hairs at the temples, slightly defined wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and on the forehead, a straight nose with a sharp ridge, a strong jaw, a barely noticeable trace of stubble, perfectly cut, narrow lips… I stop my gaze on them. My heart is beating faster and faster, I’m getting hot, butterflies are fluttering in my stomach… Fucking butterflies! Holy shit, it’s been ages since I felt them. The last time they nested in my guts was when I wasin the third year of high school, and Tom W. (the object of my desire on a black racer) kissed me in the parking lot outside the school.

Holy shit. Maybe I have a stomach flu? Or the sun overheated me today, fried my brain and I’m hallucinating (not to put it bluntly—I’m off my head!)?

After all, he is Jan the Stiff! OK, he’s handsome, but that’s about it as far as his assets go. The guy is on the south side of forty, he’ll probably start smelling like a memorial candle soon. And that personality of his—the only person in the world who would be able to accept his stiff disposition is probably his birth mother. Although, from the way he is and his distancing from people, one could make the assumption that she abandoned him as an infant at the baby hatch. Well, okay, I exaggerate. I feel remorseful for thinking that. Because what if it’s true? Maybe Jan is so cold because no one loved him when he was a baby? He was raised by nuns in an orphanage… Kept at a distance, he never experienced maternal love and tenderness. Maybe that’s why such coldness emanates from him?

By God! What am I battering my stupid head with? I definitely got too carried away with my fantasy. Besides, I don’t give a damn. Why am I even thinking about it? He’s my boss. He probably has rich parents who paid for his education, and now he drives a Beemer worth big bucks and walks around in tailored suits.

ENOUGH!

“I don’t renovate,” I reply and step back a safe distance of two meters. “I do furniture restoration.”

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