Page 29 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“What are you doing?”

“I’m reading an important text.”

“Well…don’t.”

“Just a quick look.”

She frowns. “You can’t be looking at your phone.”

“I can’t be looking at it?” I ask, mirroring her, just to draw her out. Will she enforce even this?

Her nostrils flare. “You need to watch the program.” Then, as if there might be some confusion on the issue, she adds, “This is a court-mandated program.”

“But these are extremely important texts. How do I assure my team on the ground that I’m here for them whenever they need me if I can’t respond to their texts?”

She frowns, thinking.

Negotiation 101: make your problem their problem.

I add, “How am I to give this movie my full attention when I know deep down that I might be missing important communications? How can we work together to allow me to stay in touch with my team?”

“You can’t,” she says.

I’m surprised, to say the least. I expected her to fold on this one. She’s some kind of low-level worker who has presumably been paida bonus by Corman to make the program extra annoying. What does she care if I look at a text? She gets her money either way.

My lastcourt-ordered coach gave in on the occasional phone checking with no problem at all. By the end of three days, our sessions lasted all of a minute and a half—just long enough for him to give me an assignment that I could pass off to my assistant. It was perfect. Plausible deniability all around.

“You’re asking me to be incommunicado for a full hour?” I ask. “I’m never unavailable to my people—not even when I sleep.”The fact is, this text bit is one of the little battles I need to win.

She looks back and forth between my eyes—the left, the right, the left. We’re close enough that I can see that the army green of her eyes is cut with pale gray striations. Like light shining through the cracks. Close enough that I can smell her coconut-berry shampoo. Close enough that I can almost feel her thinking.

She says, “No interruptions.”

I tried to hide my surprise. “But all executives keep tabs on multiple things. What if there were an emergency?”

“Wouldn’t Walt get you? He’s your PA. Or your admin, Lawrence?”

“Not necessarily.”

She blinks, unsure what to do with my resistance.

I wait, aware of this strange, excited energy in my chest, a sort of enjoyable lightness. What will she do now? What will she say?

She straightens up. “Can’t you make it so? Like...one of those messages that says if there’s an emergency, contact my assistant Walt?Just for the hour that we’re in a session?”

“I really can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t simply go dark.”

“But my program requires your full attention,” she says.

“Does it, though?” I ask.

“Yes, my program absolutely requires your full attention,” she says.

“It’s not complex material, Elle.”

“I mean it. You have to watch it with your full attention.”

I blink. Why fight me over such a small issue? Everybody checks their phones—even during the most important meetings.

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