The Ignored Read Free Page B

friendliness in
that smile. It had been a while since I’d been available or looking, and maybe I
was misreading the signs, but it occurred to me that she was genuinely
interested. I thought of the light pat on the shoulder in the conference room,
thought of the way she’d bent over in front of the TV. She handed me the
insurance brochures, and for the briefest of seconds, our fingers touched. I
felt cool skin, lingering a beat too long.
    She was definitely flirting.
    I noticed for the first time that she was not wearing a bra, that I
could see the outline of her nipples against the thin material of her blouse.
    My face felt hot, but I tried my best to cover it by smiling, nodding my
thanks, and backing smoothly away from the counter. I was flattered but not in
the market, and I didn’t want to give her the wrong impression.
    “Mr. Banks’ office is on the fifth floor,” Lisa said. “Do you want me
to show you where it is?”
    I shook my head. “I’ll find it. Thanks.”
    “Okay, but any problems, you give me a yell.” She waved at me, smiling.
    “I will,” I said. “Thanks.”
    I stood by the elevator, waiting, willing it to hurry, not daring to
look back to where I knew Lisa was still standing, watching me. Finally the
metal doors slid open, and I stepped inside, pressing the button for the fifth
floor.
    I waved good-bye as the doors closed.
    I had no trouble finding Ted Banks. He was waiting in front of the doors
when they opened, and he reached out and shook my hand the second I stepped off
the elevator. “Glad to see you again,” he said, although he seemed anything but
glad. I remembered him now. He’d been the surly older man at my interview, one
of the two who’d sat silently through the proceedings. He stopped shaking my
hand and smiled at me, but it was a pretend smile and did not reach his eyes.
Not that I could see his eyes very clearly behind the thick black-framed
glasses. “What do you say we walk over to my office so we can get acquainted?”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Good.”
    I followed him to his office. Neither of us spoke along the way, and I
found myself wishing that I had taken Lisa up on her offer to accompany me here.
I could not see Banks’ face, just the back of his head, but he seemed to me to
be angry. There was something about the way he carried himself that seemed…
hostile. I found myself wondering if I’d been hired over his objections. I got
the feeling I had.
    In his office, he sat behind his desk in a high-backed leather chair and
motioned for me to take the seat opposite him. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
    We talked. Or rather he talked, I listened. He told me about the
corporation, about the department, about my job. Automated Interface, he said,
was not only an industry leader in the development of commercial business
software, it was also a great place to work. It offered a comfortable yet
professional working environment and limitless opportunity for advancement for
those with ability and ambition. The most important department within the
organization, he said, was Documentation Standards, since it was by the clarity
of the software documentation that customers tended to judge the
user-friendliness of a product. Documentation was in the front lines of both
public relations and customer support, and the continued success of the
corporation rested in large part with the quality of documentation. In my
position, according to Banks, I would be directly affecting, for better or
worse, the statue of the department and, by extension, the entire company.
    I nodded as Banks spoke, agreeing with him, pretending like I knew what
the hell he was talking about even though I had only a vague idea of what was
being discussed. Software documentation? User-friendliness? These were not terms
with which I was comfortable or familiar. These were phrases I’d heard but had
always made an extra effort to avoid. This was someone else’s