Shit.

And just to make sure I heard her; Viv announces it again. “Effi, to my office.”

Kendra’s head pops up over the top of her cubicle wall and mouths, “What’d you do?”

I shrug my shoulders and act like I’m oblivious but really, it’s just a matter of which thing did I do: the mug or Mike? I screw the cap back onto my tumbler of piping hot coffee and walk quickly to my desk. I toss my bag on top of my desk and set my tumbler down. My knees are shaking at the thought of this impromptu meeting.

The stairs seem to go on forever as I make my way up to the crow’s nest that Viv fondly calls her office. My knuckles rap twice on the door and Barbie beckons me inside. Once I enter the room and close the door, I hear Barbie’s phone go off.

“Barbie, you can send Effi in and please leave. This is private. Go buy yourself a coffee or something. And don’t come back until I call for you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Barbie flashes a curt smile across the room at me as she picks up her Louis Vuitton bag and click clacks her way out of the office and down the stairs. I think it’s safe to say that Barbie is well compensated for her secrecy of Viv’s affairs. Well, most of them. Apparently not this one.

I raise my hand to knock on the door to Viv’s office but then decide that would be redundant since she already told Barbie to send me in. The doorknob is cold against my palm as I turn it. Everything feels like it’s in slow motion. I feel the grinding of the pieces inside the knob work together to gain me entrance into Viv’s lair.

My doom room.

Viv is sitting behind her desk typing on her computer. When she sees me, she barely takes her hands off the keyboard to motion me to sit down in one of the chairs in front of her desk. A few more clickety-clacks and her right hand leaves the keyboard momentarily to push something on the side of her desk. A whirring noise comes from behind me and when I turn around, I see giant floor to ceiling curtains begin to close, blocking any sight of my fellow employees below.

Oh no.

I’ve only heard stories about these curtains being closed. That was before I came to work at the publishing house. And if the rumors are true, it didn’t end well.

As soon as the curtains are closed and the whirring stops, Viv stops typing, closes her laptop, and leans back in her chair. The chair I’m sitting in is incredibly uncomfortable and I can feel my butt bones pushing through the barely-there cushion. I readjust in my seat and try to cross my legs, but nothing seems to make the chair more comfortable or me more at ease.

“So, Effi, how are you? We don’t really talk much.” Viv crosses her arms over her chest and looks at me as though she has the world’s best secret.

“Uh, fine, I think? Um, I didn’t know you had curtains in here. That’s a nice touch.” I could almost kick myself for my lame attempt at small talk. What I should’ve done is just called a spade a spade and asked her what the hell is going on.

“Yes, they are very nice. Especially for times like this when I’d rather not have anyone be able to read my lips. Or see your reaction.”

My throat goes dry, and I choke as I try to swallow what little saliva I have in my mouth. “M-my reaction. What do you mean?”

“I’m guessing you don’t really understand how this building is wired.”

“Wha-what do you mean?”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Effi. I know about Mike. I’m not exactly sure how you did it, but I did see you carefully drag him downstairs. I bet that was a bitch to clean.”

I feel the blood drain from my face and the room spins. My back hits the back of the chair with a thud. My knuckles turn white as I grip the arms of my executioner’s chair. I cough, trying to clear my throat, but since my saliva has decided to stop producing, there’s nothing to cough but dust. “How? How do you know? I turned off the cameras.”

“You did cut the power to the upstairs cameras, correct. However, the downstairs system was added much later and has its own breaker box. Everything down there is on a totally different system. Didn’t you notice that the lights still worked down there?”

“But the lights still worked up here too. I didn’t flip that breaker.” I don’t even know why I’m talking about this stuff with her. What if she has this room bugged? I’ve already confessed to it. I’m for sure headed to prison. I hope I can talk to Kendra before the cops get here.

“Did you notice anything else working downstairs? Say, perhaps, the air conditioning?”

Oh no. As the memory reel plays back in my head, I did notice that the air kicked on in the file room I stuffed him in. Shit! How could I be so dumb??

Viv must be able to see it on my face that everything is slowly clicking in my head. An eerie grin comes across her face as she sits up in her chair and leans forward. “Relax. I’m not going to turn you in. Mike was a douchebag.” Viv cocks her head to the side as the look on my face must reveal that I’m shocked at her choice of words. “What? You couldn’t possibly have thought that I would put up with his shit. I knew what he was, an abuser. You just did my dirty work for me.”

“You…you knew? He…did he do…when?” My words come out as jumbled as my brain.

“He only did it to me once.” Viv stands up and begins pacing around the room. I turn in my chair to follow her with my eyes, but I really wish this was a spinny chair, or on wheels.

Viv continues, “It was last week. He was mad that I wouldn’t buy him a boat. A boat of all things.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“He doesn’t even know how to swim,” I interject.

Viv whirls around and throws out her arms. “I know! When I confronted him about that, he apparently didn’t like it. He got mad, and I don’t take that kind of action from anyone, least of all a man who is trying to accompany me in my bed. I told him that if he was going to behave like a toddler, then he can just leave.”

“Ooooh, that’s not good.”

“No, it definitely wasn’t. He grabbed me by my shoulders and slammed me against the wall. My head hit so hard that I literally saw stars.”

“I’ve been there before. It ends in a nasty headache too.”

“Yes, it did.” Viv walks back over to her desk and sits back in her chair. “It was that moment that I decided that this man needed to be taken care of. I hired a new cleaning crew that works for me as a, shall we say, a clean-up crew. They do clean the building on a regular basis, but they are also on the books for other…messes. The night of your mess, I couldn’t sleep. A motion alarm started going off on my phone when you went downstairs here. When I turned on the camera, I saw Mike sliding down the stairs. If you can call it that. The moment he landed in a pile at the bottom, I dare say, I laughed out loud.”

The memory turns my stomach but only for a moment. The crazy realization that I’m not going to go to prison yet is what finally settles my stomach. I wipe the sweat off my forehead and smear it on my pantleg, leaving a smudge of makeup on the black material.

“I watched you for a while and when I saw which room you put him in, that’s when I called my clean-up crew. I knew that no matter how hard you tried to clean that up, there was no way you’d be able to get it all. One of your fatal errors was that you didn’t turn on all the lights so that it would be bright enough to see all of the blood.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know that I was in there. And I definitely didn’t want anyone calling the cops.”

“Oh, I get it. I know exactly why you did what you did. What I want to know is what happened to make you kill him. And how did you do it? That part I didn’t get to see.” Viv takes a sip of her coffee from her company mug and while I’m thankful that she’s this nice over Mike, I’m not going to tell her about my mug. That seems like I’d be pushing my limit.

Now it was my turn to fill in the gaps for her. I fidget in my chair and lean forward. “Did you know that Mike turned off the cameras upstairs?”

Viv nods her head. “I knew someone did. I had a notification on my phone come through that the cameras were offline. I had Frank go and check the breaker and he said that the breaker upstairs was flipped, so I figured something was going on.”

“Frank?” Was she talking about Barbeque Frank?

“Frank is a longtime confidante of mine. He and I go way back. I’m sure you know that he was my first employee, correct?”

I fumble to utter a simple “yes”, but I manage.

“Frank knew about Mike. He kept an eye out down there for me and said that he saw Mike acting really strange around the maintenance closet. When the cameras were offline and the breaker was flipped, it didn’t take much for Frank and me to put together that it was Mike who did it. However, we didn’t know why, so we chose to sit back and see what would happen. Anyway, please, continue.”

“Uh, huh. I didn’t see that coming with Frank. Anyway, the day Mike flipped the breaker to the cameras, that was the day that he had apparently chosen to kill me.” I twine my fingers together and untwine them.

“Kill you?” Viv is visibly surprised. I didn’t think I could surprise her at this point.

“Yeah, well, okay, so he broke into my house, and we got into a fight.”

Viv is quiet for a moment, and I can see that she’s thinking. “Wait, were you the reason why he had that bruise on his face?”

I can’t help but giggle. “Yeah, me and a baseball bat.”

Viv spins slowly side to side in her chair. “Hmm, not my choice of weapon but I guess you have to do what you have to do.”

“So, I was surprised to know that he told you that he got jumped in an alley.”

Viv grins. “I knew he was lying. Mike does this weird twitch with his left eye when he lies.”

“Right? I’ve seen that a million times! Most recently was when he started seeing you…” Boy do I know how to kill the mood in the room.

Viv sets her elbows on her desk and leans forward, looking me directly in my eyes. “I’m deeply sorry for that. Not because now that I know he’s a jerk, but because that’s not who I am. I don’t steal other women’s men. Other women’s businesses, yes, but not their men.” Viv laughs as she leans back in her chair again and I don’t know what to do. Before I can think too hard about it, she motions with her hand for me to continue with the part that wasn’t caught on camera.

“Right. Um, thanks for the apology. Right. Anyway, so I was busy editing a book that Kendra gave me to work on and when Mike came down, everyone had left. It was just him and I. He got pretty rough with me, knocking me out of my chair and onto the floor. In the process of doing that to me, my Christmas gift from you came out of my hand.”

“Oh, your mug? I saw that was missing.” She nods her head as though she thinks she’s right.

I point my finger at her and smile. “Um, no. That’s something else. The pen. The company pen you gave to everyone.”

“Oh, yes. I remember.”

“Anyway, I grabbed the pen and when he pulled me up, I kinda shoved it into his neck. And then, I kinda pulled it back out.”

“Oooooh,” Viv leans her head back against her chair and spins side to side. “That explains the splatter on the wall my crew found! There was a lot of blood from the sounds of it.”

I rub my hands together and then wipe them on my pants, smearing the makeup a little more. “I honestly thought I got it all.”

“Yeah…nope. You sure didn’t. In fact, had I not had the crew come in when they did, there was no way you’d be able to hide that carnage. I didn’t want you to know anyone was onto you though. I wanted to see what you would do next. So, when I saw you attempt to turn off the cameras again, I watched and saw you trying to clean up downstairs. I did have the crew come back after you had finished that to do a thorough cleaning.”

“You just had them go behind me afterwards?”

“Most definitely! From the sounds of it, you are a bit delusional in how much you think you actually cleaned. There was a lot left behind. It’s okay, I got it.”

And then it hits me. “Yeah, but what’s the price?”

Viv grins and looks at me as though she was waiting for this moment. “Well first, we aren’t done cleaning up the mess we currently have, correct?”

I nod my head as I think about Mike’s body slowly turning to sludge downstairs.

Viv nods in unison and then continues, “You’re going to go to Connecticut and taking your dog, right?”

I again nod my head.

“Good.” Viv stands up and walks over to the curtains. She moves a flap of the curtain out of the way for a moment as she peeks downstairs at her little minions working away. When she’s happy with what she sees, she turns back to me. “While you’re away, I will have the crew finish cleaning up here, and dispose of our little problem. I will need a key to your house so they can clean there. I can only assume that you did as good of a job cleaning there as you did here. Am I correct?”

I shyly look down at my lap and my hands as I’m wringing them together. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Right, then they will clean there. Then this mess will be behind us.” Viv walks past me, squeezes my shoulder before walking behind her desk and sitting down once again.

“Why are you doing this for me? I mean, I get that having Mike out of your life is a win-win for anyone who ever knew Mike. But why not just let me hang for this?”

Viv grins at me once more, leans forward in her chair, places her arms on her desk and whispers, “Because, I have a job for you.”