Calamity

CHAPTER1

The morning Rose left, she stood at the doorway of her grandmother's room for a long time and did nothing but watch her sleep.

Grandma Lou was lying on her side as she always slept. Knees bent up, with hand curled under the cheek. The morning light filtered through the curtains in slender strips and fell softly over the bed, over the lines of her face, over the gradual swell and fall of her chest.

She was smaller than Rose thought. Thinner. The blanket had fallen at nighttime down to her waist and Rose walked quietly across the room and took it and pulled it up around the shoulders of her grandmother. Another moment she was standing there with a hand on the back of the old woman, and the breath of her being was passing through her.

Still here. Still breathing.

It was the prayer she knew how to pray, not words, but only counting the breaths.

One. Two. Three. She counted to ten, then made herself step back.

Two weeks earlier the doctor had been clear. The d**g which was holding the lungs of Grandma Lou together was not cheap and at the rate of three more weeks at most of what was left in the brown prescription bottle on the nightstand.

Then that gentleness, that wretched, courteous number he had made himself write on the back of his card would have to come out of something. Every night, Rose had looked at that number before going to sleep. The savings had been looked into by her. She had counted numbers too many times. It had one answer and it were in the city.

She came out with her bag when Tobias was already awake.

He sat, with his elbows against his knees, on the front step in the grey morning, feigning to observe something in the distance which was not.

He was 16 and had already inherited the stubbornness of his grandmother, so he would prefer sitting in the cold than go inside and say he had been waiting. Rose sat down beside him. Their arms touched. You need not wait up after me, she said.

"I wasn't waiting." He paused. "I just woke up early." She said nothing to that.

The sky overhead the rooftops was pale ash, the type of morning that had not yet decided whether it was going to be beautiful or grey.

"How long will you be gone?" "I don't know yet. Until I get something to hold on to.

"What if " He stopped. Started again. "What if it takes long?"

Rose looked at him, at the tightness of his jaw with which he was trying so hard to conceal himself. And he was trying so hard to be the man of the house when she was away that it hurt her in her chest.

He was sixteen.

He ought to have been worrying about school and football and whether his friends believed he was cool.

Rather he was in the early morning counting the same impossible numbers that she had been counting. She leaned forward and rubbed her palm flat on the top of his head just as she always did when he was little.

I will call every day even though it will be long.

And you will give Grandma Lou her medication at seven in the morning, and at night at nine, just as the doctor told her to.

Not when you remember. Not when it's convenient. Exactly.

"I know."

"And eat breakfast. Real breakfast."

"Rose…"

"Tobias…"

He exhaled a breath, and turned his head, yet his jaw had fallen loose. The stiffness came out of his shoulders a little. Often the promise of everything being all right could be the most reassuring, but in some cases it was just someone knowing things needed to be done and being sure of them. Rose stood up, tightened the strap of her bag, and kissed his head. She walked to the gate. She did not look back. Had she seen behind her the small house with its slightly tilted gate and the curtain swinging in the window of her grandmother she would not have left.

And so she passed, and the city was there awaiting her.

Central Bus Terminal was stifled with diesel and fried food and a kind of rush of everyone going everywhere at once. Rose got out of the bus into the midst of it and she could feel herself being surrounded at once by crowds.

They were not hostile, they were merely indifferent, and that was rather worse.

Nobody bumped into her. Nobody acknowledged her. She was merely living in a stream of flux and nothing in the stream of flux slowed down.

The address of a boarding house was in her bag. She had two months of rent and basic food but then she had to work.

There was no third option.

She stood on the pavement outside the terminal with her bag at her feet, and gazed up at a skyline that was not interested in her at all, and in one careless moment she had known what it had meant to commit herself to a course of action that she had chosen.

It was enormous. It was terrifying. She picked up her bag and began to walk.

"Rose? Rose... wait!"

Somewhere behind her came the voice.

She turned and it took her a moment; a full, confused moment before she became aware of having recognized something. The woman going through the crowd towards her was not the Elle she remembered at secondary school.

This Elle had a tight-fitting blazer and snapping heels. Her hair was cut and her walk had that special assurance of one who had long since resigned herself to the direction in which she was moving. But the grin, broad and half-lopsided, with that space between the front teeth which was the grin of fifteen years ago.

"Elle?" Rose said, astonished. Elle pulled her into a hug with the scent of something fancy and costly. She was laughing. "I knew it! I spotted you on the other end of the terminal and I had a thought... that walk, I know that walk. She drew away and gazed at Rose with keen, pleasant eyes. "You look exactly the same.

That's unfair, by the way.

"You look" Rose waved at her all. You have changed into a different person altogether. "The city does that." Elle had taken the bag in her hand before Rose could object.

"Come. Around the corner there is a place. You look as though you have not eaten since last night.

"she hadn't"

Rose told Elle everything over tea. Not all of it at once. It was broken, the hard things generally are. The back of the card has the number of the doctor. The three weeks prescription bottle. Tobias sitting on the step attempting to appear older than he was. The farm which had not given sufficient this season. The arithmetic kept on coming out wrong.

Elle listened without interrupting. And without the special pitying look which Rose was holding on herself ever since she began to speak. She was simply listening with her hands together around her cup and her eyes straight.

Rose was lighter and heavier when she had finished. The peculiar ease of having taken off a load, and the realization that she had felt it all the more actual by putting it into words.

"What are you looking for?" Elle asked. "Work-wise."

"Administrative. Executive support. I have my diploma in Business Administration and two years of experience as an office assistant back home." Rose straightened slightly. "I'm good at it. I'm organized, I'm fast, and I can manage difficult situations."

Elle's expression shifted. Something contemplative followed behind her eyes pensive, and a little mindful. Have you ever heard of Orchid Empire?

"No"

"Most people outside the city haven't." Elle set her cup down. It is one of the most influential privately owned companies in the city. Real estate, finance, private equity, agriculture. They do possess more of this city than most people know.

She paused. "They have a secretary position open. Has been open for almost two months now."

Rose experienced the little, cautious flutter of hope with which she had been taught to be watchful. "What's the pay?" Elle told her. Rose made no movement, though something was going on back behind her sternum. It was, as close to the first breath of relief she had taken in weeks. "That sounds almost too good," she said carefully.

"It would be."

There it was. That careful pause again. Rose was familiar with Elle to the extent that she knew that something was being chosen.

"Tell me the rest," Rose said. Elle exhaled slowly.

The man who owns it, Williams Orchid. I do not want to scare you before you even apply.

"He is brilliant. Genuinely, nearly terrifyingly brilliant. And has built something real, but he is also difficult. Five secretaries have been through him in two months, Rose. Each one has left or been dismissed in weeks." She looked at her directly. "Nobody knows exactly why. But the word about the corporate circles is the same."

"What kind of rumors?"

That he does not raise his voice. He does not lose his temper, at least not physically. He merely sets standards which are close to impossible to keep, never once gives you credit when you have done it and at the end you are either burnt or he thinks you are not worth the trouble. There was a moment of silence between them.

"Send me the application," Rose said.

Elle blinked. "I haven't finished. "

"Elle." Rose held her cup with both hands. The medicine of my grandmother expires in three weeks. My brother is 16 years old, and he is trying to be a man since there is no one around this house. And two months will buy me time to begin making impossible decisions. She looked directly at the eyes of her old friend. "Difficult I can manage.

Send me the application." Elle gazed at her a while. Then she reached for her phone.

The interview took twenty one minutes.

The HR director was a very exact woman by the name of Mrs. Osei, who wore her glasses at the tip of her nose, and who had the air of someone who had long since ceased to be surprised by anything whatever. Rose responded to all of them without filler, without rambling, without the nervousness of trying to over-explain that could feel like surfacing. Mrs. Osei was doing this with a cold reluctance of a person who read twenty applications before breakfast and did not have a special feeling about any of them.

When Mrs. Osei raised her eyes at the end of the twenty-one minutes it was to the last page.

"Monday. Eight o'clock." Rose nodded. "Not eight-ten. Not five past.

Eight o'clock."

Mrs. Osei was already turning back and looking at her screen. "Mr. Orchid does not wait and hold the door open to late people. What he does is deduct them from his payroll.

"Understood," Rose said.

She got on her feet, thanked her, and headed to the elevator. Until the elevator shut its doors, she held her expression together. Then she pushed against the wall, and put the back of her hand against her mouth, and exhaled. She had the job.

She called Tobias first. He took the second ring, and when she informed him, he made a sound he would later deny was close to crying and immediately changed the subject to whether she had eaten today.

She laughed.

She called Grandma Lou next. The phone rang six times before the old lady answered, still a little out of breath, evidently having scrambled wherever she was sitting and when Rose told her that, Grandma Lou was silent a moment, and then, she said, "Baby, I knew. I prayed for you there."

Rose stood on the pavement outside the Orchid Empire Building with her old bag and her phone pressed to her hear, and she left herself feel the relief fully for exactly thirty seconds.

Then she put it away and started thinking about Monday.

She arrived at seven forty-eight.

The first floor of Orchid Empire at seven forty-eight on a Monday morning was already running. Heels on marble floors. The low hum of printers and conversation and air conditioning set to the precise temperature of professional efficiency. The lobby alone was larger than Grandma Lou's entire house's walls were panelled in dark wood and glass, a massive orchid insignia mounted behind the reception desk in brushed silver. It was the kind of space designed to make a person feel small without making them feel unwelcome, which was perhaps its own kind of intimidation.

A junior staff member walked to her workstation on the executive floor, spoke efficiently about the systems, the filing structure, the coffee preference of the floor manager and left before Rose had finished writing her third note. She settled in, aligned her notepad, tested the computer, and was reviewing the calendar software when she heard it.

At the far end of the floor, the elevator opened.

Williams Orchid stepped out, and the floor responded before anyone said a word. Conversations lowered, postures straightened almost imperceptibly. He was taller than the photos, broader through the shoulders. He wore a dark grey suit that had clearly been cut for his specific body. He moved through the open floor the way water moves around a stone not aggressively, not gently, simply as though the concept of obstacles did not apply to him.

His face was striking in the way of a landscape that is beautiful but offers no shelter, sharp jaw, dark eyes that moved across the floor in a single, quick sweep, and a mouth set in a line that suggested the permanent suspension of unnecessary expression.

He did not look at her.

He walked to his office, closed the door and the floor seemed to exhale.

Rose looked down at her notepad, looked at her pen, told herself that she had managed difficult situations before and this was simply another one in a better shoes.

At eight fifty-three, his PA appeared at her desk. He was a compact, cheerful-looking young man in a slim-fit navy suit who introduced himself as Norman and had the energy of someone who had made peace with his environment through the strategic use of humor.

"Welcome to the sixth circle," he said pleasantly and handed her a folder. "He wants this by 10."

Rose opened the folder. it contained a set of correspondence that needed drafting, a set of meeting summaries that needed consolidating, and a document flagged for urgent review that ran to ninety pages.

she looked at the clock.

One hour and seven minutes.

"Is this normal?" she asked.

"For a Monday?" Norman considered this with genuine seriousness. "This is actually a light Monday."

he walked away, and Rose could have sworn she heard him start quietly humming.

she turned back to the folder. Set the correspondence aside. Opened the ninety-page document.

Began.

By the time she knocked on his office door at nine fifty-nine with everything completed, she had fielded three calls, rescheduled a conflicting Wednesday meeting without being asked, and noticed an error in the invoice summary that Norman had told her was already filed. She had corrected it and printed a clean version.

She placed everything on his desk; the correspondence drafts, the meeting summaries, the reviewed document with her notes flagged at the margins, and the corrected invoice summary with a brief handwritten explanation of the discrepancy.

He did not look up.

He picked up the stack, and she watched his eyes move across the first page. Then the second. His expression gave her nothing, not approval, not disapproval, not acknowledgment that she was standing two feet away waiting.

she was almost at the door when he spoke;

"the invoice error"

She turned, "yes"

He was still reading. He did not look up. "Where did you find it"

"Column four of the secondary breakdown. The VAT figure had been applied twice, once in subtotal and once manually below it. The filed version reflects the duplicated amount."

A pause. He turned a page.

"The previous five secretaries did not catch it," he said. It was not a compliment. It was stated as a fact, the way the weather is stated simply because it was true.

Rose said nothing. she waited.

He set the last page to the right side of his desk, the side she would come to understand, in the weeks ahead, as the side for things that were acceptable and finally looked up.

His eyes were darker than she expected. And for the span of three seconds, he looked at her with an expression she could not read; not coldness, not warmth, simply the careful assessment of a man who learned to look at things very precisely.

Then it was gone.

"There will be a briefing at two o'clock," he said. "I will need the Henderson contract summary before then."

He looked back down at his desk. She had been dismissed.

Rose walked out and closed the door with a quiet, precise click. She sat back at her desk, straightened her notepad, thought about a small brown prescription bottle on a nightstand at home, and a boy sitting on a front step trying not to look worried.

She thought about the number on the back of a doctor's card.

"I will not be the sixth."

She pulled up the Henderson contract and began to read.