almost a relief. ‘If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,’ she quoted to herself, following his wizened steps into his office.
‘Have a seat, Bianca,’ he said.
In New York, everyone called her Bianca. Men, upon asking for her number in a terminally hip watering hole, would have to ask her to repeat it, and then, upon comprehension, would smile. Something about the name – and, honestly, few of them had the synapses to rub together at that point in the evening to make any sort of literary connections, so it must have been something else – made her even more attractive to them.
To us, however, she would always be Bean. And it was still the way she spoke to herself. ‘Nice going, Bean,’ she would say when she dropped something, and her roommates in the city would look at her curiously. But being Bianca was a part she played well, and she wondered if part of the sickness she felt inside was knowing that performance was coming to an end. Forever.
She perched on the edge of one of the leather wing chairs in his sitting area. He sat in the other. ‘We’ve been doing a bit of an accounting audit, you see,’ he said without preamble.
Bean stared at him. The pit inside her stomach was turning into fire. She stared at him, his beetled, bushy eyebrows, his soft, wrinkled hands, and wanted to cry.
‘We’ve found a number of . . . shall we say, anomalies in the payroll records. In your favour. I’d like to think they’re errors.’ He looked almost hopeful.
She said nothing.
‘Can you tell me what’s been happening, Bianca?’
Bean looked down at the bracelet on her wrist. She’d bought it at Tiffany months ago, and she remembered the strange seizing in her stomach as she’d handed over her credit card, the same feeling she’d gotten lately when she bought anything, from groceries to a handbag. The feeling that her luck was running out, that she couldn’t go on, and maybe (most terrifying of all), maybe she didn’t want to.
‘They aren’t errors,’ Bean said, but her voice caught on the last word, so she cleared her throat and tried again, louder. ‘They aren’t errors.’ She folded her hands in her lap.
The managing partner looked unsurprised, but disappointed. Bean wondered why they’d chosen him for this particular dirty work – he was practically emeritus, holding on to this corner office for no good reason other than to have a place to escape from his wife and while away the hours until he died. She considered trying to sleep with him, but he was looking at her with such grandfatherly concern the idea withered on the vine before she could even fully imagine it. Truthfully, she felt something that could only be described as gratitude that it was him, not one of the other partners whose desperation to push themselves to the top had made their tongues sharp as teeth, whose bellows of frustration came coursing down the hallways like a swelling tide when things dared not go their way.
‘Are you well?’ he asked, and the kindness in his voice made her heart twist. She bit her tongue hard, blinked back tears. She would not cry. Not in front of him, anyway. Not here. ‘It’s a great deal of money, Bianca. Was there some reason . . . ?’ His question trailed off hopefully.
She could have lied. Maybe she should have been picturing this scene all along, planning for it. She was good at the theatre of life, our Bean, she could have played any part she wanted. But lying seemed desperate and weak, and she was suddenly exhausted. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for days.
‘No,’ she said. She couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘No good reason.’
He sighed at that, a long, slow exhale that seemed to make the air move differently in the room. ‘We could call the police, you know.’
Bean’s eyes widened. She’d never thought about that. Why had she never thought about that? She’d known stealing from her employers was wrong, but somehow she’d never let herself think that it was actually criminal (criminal! How had it come to that?). God, she could go to jail. She saw herself in a cell, in an orange jumpsuit, stripped of her bracelet and her makeup and all the armour that living in the city required of her. She was speechless.
‘But I don’t think that’s entirely necessary. You’ve done good work for us. And I know what it’s like to be young in this city. And it’s so unpleasant, involving the police. I’d imagine that your resignation will be enough. And, of course, you’ll repay your debt.’
‘Of course,’ Bean said. She was still frozen, wondering how she’d managed to miscalculate so badly, wondering if she really was going to squeak out of here with nothing but a slap on the wrist, or if she’d be nabbed halfway out of the lobby, handcuffs on her wrists, her box of personal effects scattering on the marble floor while everyone looked on at the spectacle.
‘It might be worthwhile for you to take a little time. Go home for a bit. You’re from Kentucky, aren’t you?’
‘Ohio,’ Bean said, and it was only a whisper.
‘Right. Go back to the Buckeye State. Spend a little time. Re-evaluate your priorities.’
Bean forced back the tears that were, again, welling out of control. ‘Thank you,’ she said, looking up at him. He was, miraculously, smiling.
‘We’ve all done foolish, foolish things, dear. In my experience, good people punish themselves far more than any external body can manage. And I believe you are a good person. You may have lost your way more than a little bit, but I believe you can find your way back. That’s the trick. Finding your way back.’
‘Sure,’ Bean said, and her tongue was thick with shame. It might have been easier if he had been angry, if he’d taken her to task the way he really should have, called the police, started legal proceedings, done something that equalled the horrible way she’d betrayed their trust and pissed on everything she knew to be good and right in the service of nothing more than a lot of expensive clothes and late-night cab rides. She wanted him to yell, but his voice remained steady and quiet.
‘I don’t recommend you mention your employment here when you do seek another job.’
‘Of course not,’ Bean said. He was about to continue, but she pushed her hair back and interrupted him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
His hands were steepled in front of him. He looked at her, the way her makeup was smudging around her eyes, despite her impressive ability to hold back the tears. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You have fifteen minutes to get out of the building.’
Bean fled.
She took nothing from work. She cared about nothing there anyway, had never bothered to make the place her own. She went home and called a friend with a car he’d been trying to sell for junk, though even that would take nearly the last of her ill-gotten gains, and while he drove over, she packed up her clothes, and she wondered how she could have spent all that money and have nothing but clothes and accessories and a long list of men she never wanted to see again to show for it, and the thought made her so ill she had to go into the bathroom and vomit until she could bring up nothing but blood and yellow bile, and she took as much money as she could from the ATM and threw everything she owned into that beater of a car and she left right then, without even so much as a fare-thee-well to the city that had given her . . . well, nothing.
Because Cordelia was the last to find out, she was the last to arrive, though we understand this was neither her intention nor her fault. It was simply her habit. Cordy,
