The Girl and Her Boss
by Eleanor Levine
The therapist told the patient: quit calling your obsession. She lives with her grandmother and has no interest in you.
The girl, however, didn’t want to drop this one. Her crush worked in Rutherford, NJ, where William Carlos Williams wrote poetry and chased women.
This girl, whose name was Bianca, had a crush on her boss.
It began when Bianca went for an interview. She had another interview in Rutherford the same day. In fact, the companies were competitors. This made the little brunette, who weighed a mere 115 pounds look better on paper. Her interview with her future supervisor, who was blonde and weighed 160 pounds, lasted more than an hour.
Bianca wanted to be just like Gertrude Stein. She memorized vast sections of Mrs. Reynolds, which was her favorite novel about World War II. Mrs. Reynolds knew Stalin and Adolf Hitler, who lived in her world. The girl also admired Leni Riefenstahl, but this was not reciprocated, because Leni Riefenstahl would never meet her—unless Bianca went to Germany and introduced herself, which she contemplated until reading Riefenstahl’s obituary.
In Rutherford her future manager and phantom asked Bianca if she’d like a piece of gum. Bianca accepted, and that acceptance of the piece of gum, she believed, was the reason she got the job.
The supervisor kept her in that office for sixty minutes and Bianca sensed that someone stuck a vacuum cleaner into her head. This was done to see if she would be worth hiring. Some people, in fact, have great resumes; others are born with great minds. The girl had both.
Bianca felt drained from the interview. She would take a bus some day, but for now, she took a cab home.
Bianca began working for this woman, her controller, and everything seemed okay until she discovered that her supervisor was good looking. The boss resembled a blonde rabbit with tinted eyeglasses, and was intelligent like Sartre, Camus and Simone. She wore Ann Taylor brown dress suits, whereas Bianca came in pantsuit ensembles that had been in her closet for more than a decade.
The manager had an uncanny ability to tell the truth. When Bianca, whose glasses made her resemble a petite Fran Lebowitz, brought jellybeans to the office, the exec said I don’t like them. When Bianca drew attention to herself—pointing out she didn’t wear dresses—the overseer said we all know you don’t wear dresses.
This person in charge lived on a farm in Toms River, NJ, and had no desire to nurture anyone’s frail ego. She wanted to raise goats and feed the occasional deer. That’s why she chose Rutherford. New Yorkers are draining, she surmised, and not since her days at Harper Collins had she traveled among “these needy souls.” Thus, when she saw the damsel, who was far less erratic than New Yorkers she actually liked, she hired her. Bianca was also good at proofreading literature about eyeballs, and this was definitely a plus at the job.
Bianca wore a violently abrasive shirt from the Banana Republic. The master said, wow, that shirt makes me dizzy. Well, the maiden couldn’t strip because the shirt made the manager dizzy, so she said she wouldn’t wear it again. If this is what I have to do to keep this position, she said aloud, then fine.
Everything was great: Bianca ensured the slides had no errors, and took the trash out when they asked her. She also agreed to go to Seattle for the company, but then it was decided that someone with little experience should not travel to Seattle. Bianca might flake out and say the wrong thing to the client, the owner surmised, especially after the “loud shirt” incident.
Apart from Seattle, the girl was doing well. They loved her, and she was great at proofreading ophthalmologic terminology. However, one day she tripped on her shoelaces. This caused an opinion of her to go abruptly down.
Don’t you tie your shoes? the manager asked. The girl agreed that in the future she’d tie her shoes
What would Gertrude Stein have said? Gertrude was too cold to have any patience. Besides, Gertrude related only to men. She had no time for women and all of her friends were modern painters and writers who were geniuses. To Gertrude, the word genius was a male word. Stein had no more time for this girl than she had for a comma in a 1000-page opus.
Eventually, to make more money, Bianca got a new job in Manhattan where nothing happened. She sat at her desk and read novels hidden behind a Roget’s International Thesaurus.
Bianca e-mailed and phoned her old master who was always busy. It wasn’t like eating pad thai in the East Village, where you could be at peace when you’re done eating. Or the pasta in Little Italy, which lets you soak in your sorrow. Or watching the movie The Bicycle Thief, which makes you feel worse.
The boss said they needed help. Bianca was gone and did she know anyone who might replace her?
The Rutherford folks hired Bianca’s pal, and Bianca was thrilled that she had placed a spy, her supposed best friend, in their organization.
You have no life, her other friend—not the one now in Rutherford—told her.
Bianca dialed the 1-800 Rutherford number over and over like it was a suicide hotline. She couldn’t stop. God put her on this mission. However, the only response she got was voice mail.
She didn’t hear any news from her pal, the detective, whom she imagined impressing everyone in Rutherford, just as she had done months before.
Bianca discussed her unrequited love at twelve-step meetings. I’m fixated, she said, with this rabbit/brilliant scholar who gets off balance looking at my shirt—does that mean she digs me? Will she leave her grandmother?
The twelve-step recovery people were not amused by Bianca’s tirades about this woman, who, obviously, only wanted to be with her grandmother and corporation, and not have a psychotic relationship with Bianca; who was now replaced by her best friend, who was not so much a foreign agent but a usurper of Bianca’s rightful place in the Rutherford conference room.
God is dead, her friend said. Your God is dead because she doesn’t want to be your God. She has resigned from the position.
Bianca saw a movie about a guy fixated on the baker’s wife; and he, too, had nothing to show for all of those painful hours.
What do you do when God is dead?
Her therapist recommended that she start dating real people. But she was not attracted to real people any more than she was attracted to plastic lunch boxes.
One day, after getting a mammogram, Bianca visited Rutherford. She had summer Fridays off, when she wasn’t busy doing nothing at her office in Manhattan.
Bianca walked into her old boss’ office.
Hi, the manager said, we’re in the middle of a meeting. May I speak with you later?
Bianca went to see the woman who had replaced her. She, too, was engaged.
The girl walked outside to the clothing store nearby. She purchased a suit from Calvin Klein. Bianca did not return to their building because she did not feel they wanted to see her.
When Bianca got home, she put on her suit and excitedly dialed the 1-800 Rutherford number to see if her supposed friend heard them say anything about her.
I’m sorry, her friend replied, I’m still too occupied.
But did the chieftain say anything?
No, she’s still in her meeting.
Don’t you love it there?
It’s work, the friend replied, and I have to get off the phone.
Bianca heard the phone click. She sat on her bed for a while and sulked. She saw tears stain her suit.
Bianca dozed off but felt slightly emancipated since the spy would no doubt report back to her on the events of the day. She succumbed to the sleep and dreamed feverishly about life in Rutherford.
Eleanor Levine has been published in Fiction, The Denver Quarterly, The California State Quarterly, Prime Mincer, Penumbra, The Toronto Quarterly, Happy, Midway Journal, Milk Magazine, Facets Magazine, OVS Magazine, The Coachella Review, Red Booth Review, New York Sex (anthology), Downtown Poets (anthology), Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Blade, and has work forthcoming in Gertrude, Prime Mincer, and the Atticus Review. Eleanor received her MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. She is currently a copy editor and lives with her dog Morgan in Philadelphia.