Page 22 of Pride and Protest
“How rude of him to scuttle out of here without a word. Like we’re taking up his time,” Jennifer said.
“Is he always so...?” Liza searched for the right word.
“Stern, glacial, disaffected?” Jennifer guessed.
“Unknowable,” Liza finally settled on.
Jennifer stopped short. She looked like she was about to agree, then shook her head vigorously.
“Oh, I don’t know... Once you get to know him, he’s just a great big old teddy bear,” Jennifer said. The lie must have tasted foul coming out of her mouth, because she made the slightest frown when she said it.
Liza walked with Jennifer around the dark side of the building. Jennifer’s face suddenly lit up.Uh-oh, she’s scheming.Liza didn’t know what she was about to be a party to. They walked outside the hallway and back into the cubicle space.
When they saw Dorsey again, looking less troubled and a bit refreshed, Jennifer asked him, “Do you want to use the office workout space downstairs, maybe do some yoga?”
“Why would I do that?” he grumbled, apparently still annoyed.
“To stretch your limbs, exercise. Relax,” she said pointedly.
“There are two reasons you would ask me that, and not one of them is to relax,” Dorsey said smugly. He was responding to Jennifer but looking in Liza’s direction—trying to get a rise out of her, she knew. She wouldn’t take the bait.
Jennifer smiled coyly and elbowed Liza. “What is he talking about? What is he trying to say?”
Liza shrugged. “Please don’t pretend to be curious,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s bursting at the seams with some cockeyed theory.”
Dorsey’s full attention was rattling Liza. “Are you the only one allowed cockeyed theories, Liza?”
Jennifer pushed her way back into the conversation. “What did you mean, Dorsey?”
“Two reasons you would ask that. You want to seemedo yoga, and if so, you can look at me all you like right here. Or you want to do yoga in front of me—”
“Dorsey!” Jennifer hit his shoulder. The false outrage made Liza want to hurl. This man needed no extra boost to his sense of self-importance.
“And if you want to show meyourdownward dog now, I won’t object. Either way, I’m better served sitting right here.”
“You are terrible.” Jennifer turned crimson. “I’ve never heard you talk this way. How often are you watching me do yoga, you Peeping Tom?” She pretended to be scandalized. “Liza, don’t you have that feminist blog? Are you going to write about his chauvinism?”
Liza blinked. She walked around the table, conscious of his dark eyes following her. “Hmm, nothing so obvious as that. I’dwrite about his ego, and his assumptions that everything is about him.”
Jennifer scoffed, but Dorsey’s eyes fixed on Liza and did not move. Liza could only meet his gaze in quick glances. The atmosphere of the room was thick. They were doing this, somehow changing the very chemistry in the air.
“You accuse me of ego because I use discernment in whom I choose to downward dog with?” He paused. “Or dance with?”
Jennifer’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Oh, is this personal? Are you talking about each other?” When no one acknowledged her, she cleared her throat. “Dorsey has a very particular taste, you know. It’s not just in friendships, but also relationships and business deals. His standards are so high because he holds himself to a perfect standard as well.”
“And what happens when one of those friendships or relationships falls below his standards?” Liza asked.
“I drop it,” Dorsey said without blinking. “Never look back.”
“Well, thank goodness I’ll never meet your particular standards for friendships,” Liza said. “It seems like maintaining your high regard is a full-time job.”
Dorsey’s voice had dropped a register, and he leaned in, giving off a kind of energy that Liza had never felt before. “I can assure you that the benefits are excellent.”
Liza swallowed. “With such a tiny applicant pool, it’s a wonder you have any friends at all. As for the ones you do make, god forbid they make a mistake...” She drew a line across her neck.
Jennifer thrust herself between them, blocking their intense eye contact. “Oh, Dorsey has many friends. And if he chooses to not slum it for friendships,” Jennifer said pointedly, “then that’s his prerogative.”
“I didn’t know friendship was something one could slum for,”Liza said. Why did Jennifer need to come to this grown man’s defense? Couldn’t she see he held her in the same contempt he held everyone else?
