The Ice King's Chubby Fixation

Chapter 4: A Desk in Ice

POV: Elowen Hart

The room I rented had a window that faced a peeling brick wall. I stared at that wall every morning for three weeks. It was the colour of old rust, stained where the rain had run down in long, grey lines. No sun came through that window. The brick wall blocked everything but I kept the curtain open anyway. I told myself it was better than looking at the empty room. The room had one bed, one chair and one small table with a kettle that took ten minutes to boil water. The landlord said the building used to be a hotel thirty years ago, before this part of town went bad. Now it was just rooms stacked on top of rooms, full of people who did not want to be found and i was one of them now. After that night at the bus shelter, I did not go back to my parents' house. I could not. My mother's text was like a nightmare on my phone. "Do not come home. I cannot look at you right now." I read it seventeen times before my battery died. Then I sat in the dark with no phone, no shoes, and a torn dress, and I waited for the sun to come up. When it did, I walked to a payphone I had seen near the bus station, I called a number from a paper pinned to a board outside a grocery store. A man with a tired voice said the room was two hundred a month cash, no questions. I had three hundred left in my bank account. The first week, I did not leave the room except to buy bread and tea bags. I sat on the thin mattress and listened to the people in the next room fight about money. I listened to the pipes rattle when someone above me took a shower. I listened to my own breathing and told myself I was still alive. The second week, I started crying less. I do not know if that was healing or just numbness. The tears had been the only thing that felt real for so long. When they stopped, I worried I was disappearing. By the third week, I got a call from a woman named Cleo from Voltaire Holdings saying I had been selected for the position of executive secretary. Her voice was quick and professional. She told me the start date, the salary, and the dress code. The salary was three times what I made at the law office. I said yes before she finished talking. I did not ask why they chose me, I was too scared to hear the answer or make them change their mind, maybe they made a mistake, maybe they would look at me on the first day and realize their error but until then, I had a job. That night, I stood in front of the small mirror above the sink and looked at myself. The woman looking back had circles under her eyes the colour of old bruises. Her hair was flat and dull. Her cheeks had lost some of their fullness from three weeks of bread and tea. I pinched them hard, until the colour came back to them. "You are still here," I said out loud. My voice sounded strange and echoed in the empty room. "You are still breathing and that is enough for now." The next morning, I left as early as possible to the thrift store close by, where I bought some of the clothes I was managing when I came here earlier, they didn't cost much and their clothes were still in good condition ... I needed to get some clothes, underwear, and a pair of cheap shoes for work. Monday morning. The Voltaire Tower stood in the middle of the city like something that had grown there before the city even existed. Black glass, sharp edges. The kind of building that speaks command. I stood on the pavement outside and looked up until my neck hurt. My beige jacket was too tight across my shoulders. I had tried to cut out the seams with a needle and thread from the corner shop, but the stitching was ugly and uneven. I told myself no one would notice. I was invisible, remember? That was the plan. The doors were glass and so clean they looked. I pushed through and the cold hit me first, not just the temperature, the whole feeling of being there. The air inside the Voltaire Tower felt different and rich. Everything was white marble and silver metal. The floor shone so bright I could see my own reflection looking up at me, my pale, round and scared face looking back at me. People walked past in sharp suits and thin heels. They moved so fast, nobody was looking or talking to each other. They did not look at me, everybody was simply minding the business that pays them. I kept my eyes down and my hands in my pockets so no one would see them shaking. The front desk was a long curve of white stone. The woman behind it was slim and beautiful, with hair pulled back so tight it lifted her eyebrows and her overall faicals. Her nails tapped on a keyboard as I walked up. She did not look at me until I stopped in front of her. "The service door is at the back," she said quietly, her voice was flat, like she had said the same thing a hundred times that morning. My face burned with shame. I felt the heat climb up my neck and spread across my cheeks. For a moment, I was back in the engagement party, standing in my torn dress while people laughed and made fun of me. The same heat that made me want to disappear. "I am not here for service." I made my voice steady, though my heart was hammering against my ribs. "I am the new secretary for Mr. Voltaire." Her eyes moved to my face, from my face to my shoulders, from my shoulders to my waist and from my waist to the place where my jacket pulled too tight. She did not hide the look on her face, she did not need to. Women like her had been looking at women like me that way our whole lives. "Oh." The word hung in the air. She held it there like she was tasting it. "You???." I did not answer, I had no answer that would not get me fired on my first day. "Top floor." She said, looking back at her screen. "The lift is on the left. Do not touch anything on your way up." I walked to the lift, my heels made too much noise on the marble floor. Each step echoed loudly. I could feel her eyes on my back the whole way. When the lift doors closed, I let my breath out in one long, shaky rush. My hands were wet. I wiped them on my skirt and tried to remember how to breathe. The lift went up and up and up that my ears popped. The numbers on the screen climbed past twenty, past thirty, past forty. I had never been this high up in my life. When the doors finally opened, I stepped into a world of glass and silence. My desk sat outside a set of double doors so big they looked like they belonged in a church. Dark wood, heavy handles and a gold plate that read "E. Voltaire, CEO." The desk was small and made of the same cold silver metal as everything else. The chair behind it was hard and new. When I sat down, it made a small sound that was a bit loud and I froze at the spot. The silence swallowed the sound and went back to being perfect and cold. No one came to show me around nor to tell me what to do. I sat in the hard chair with my hands folded in my lap and waited. At 8:57 AM, a piece of paper slid under the double doors. It was a typed note in white paper and black ink with only four words. Coffee. Black. No sugar. 9:05 AM exactly. That was all, there was no greeting, no welcome to Voltaire Holdings, no good morning, Miss Hart. It was just coffee. Black. No sugar. 9:05 AM exactly. I found the kitchen down a short hallway. It was full of machines I did not know how to use. Shiny silver things with buttons and levers. I pressed buttons until something made a grinding sound and black liquid came out into a small white cup. The cup was so thin I could see light through it. It probably cost more than my rent. I carried the coffee back to the double doors. My hands were shaking when a little black drop spilled onto the white saucer. I wiped it away with my finger, then wiped my finger on my skirt. I knocked on the door but there was no answer and I knocked again... still nothing. In the end, I left the cup on the small table beside the door, exactly where the note had told me to. At 9:05 AM exactly, the door opened just enough for a hand to reach out and grab the coffee. It was a man's hand with long fingers, clean nails and no ring. The cuff of a white shirt, so white it hurt to look at. The hand took the coffee and disappeared and the door closed. I did not see his face all day. At lunch, I took my sandwich to the stairwell. It was cold there, the concrete steps bit into my thighs through my skirt. The walls were unpainted grey cinderblock, rough to the touch. There were no windows. The only light came from a bare bulb that flickered every few seconds like it was about to die. I unwrapped my sandwich. Two slices of bread and one egg. I had made it that morning in my small room, standing over the kettle while it boiled. I did not have money for anything else until my first pay came. I ate slowly, making each bite last. In the silence of the stairwell, I could hear my own chewing. I could hear the flicker of the dying bulb. I could hear, far below me, the distant sound of a door opening and closing. This was my life now. A cold desk, a silent boss and a sandwich eaten alone at a stairwell with no windows. I told myself it was enough for now. It had to be enough because I don't have any way or help. ~~~~~ At exactly 3:45 PM, the lift doors opened, and someone Livia Monroe tepped out. I heard her heels before I saw her. The sharp click of expensive shoes on the marble floor. Then the smell of her perfume, sweet and heavy, the kind of smell that stays in a room long after the woman has gone. I knew that smell. It was the smell of my engagement party dying around me. She wore a white skirt and a silk shirt the colour of fresh cream. Her hair was pulled back in a low twist. Her lips were painted a soft pink. She looked like money and like a woman who had never been told no ever in her life. She walked past my desk without looking at me. She had a keycard in her hand, and she used it to open the door next to my desk. The door had a new gold plate on it. Marketing Director Livia Monroe. I sat frozen, my thumb found its way to my mouth, and I started picking at the skin around the nail. A small piece tore away. I tasted my blood before I felt the sting. Livia worked here? She had an office ten feet from my desk. Livia, who had kissed Julian in front of everyone and humiliated me, The same Livia that smiled at me at my engagement party while my life fell apart. I wanted to run, I wanted to stand up and walk to the lift and ride it down to the ground and keep walking until I was back in my small room with the brick wall but where would that leave me? Another job lost, another failure to add to the list my mother kept in her head. No, I would stay. I would sit at this cold desk and do this job and let Livia Monroe walk past me every day if I had to. She had taken Julian, she had taken my pride but I won't allow her to take this too. At 4:03 PM, I started to pack my things. My hands were not steady, the day had worn me down to something thin and brittle. I reached for a folder on the corner of my desk, a plain manila folder with nothing important inside. I just wanted to put it away and just go home but a hand slapped down on it at the same time. A slim finger, the nails were painted the colour of dried blood. I looked up to see who owns it and Livia stood over my desk looking down at me. She was smiling the same smile she wore at the party. Cunning and sharp at the same time. A smile that could cut you before you knew you were bleeding. "Fancy seeing you here fatty," she said. Her voice was light, almost friendly. "So you are my new coworker hmm... were you missing me already?" My throat closed, the words I wanted to say went down my throat, I was speechless.. I could see the way her eyes moved down my body, the same slow look the woman at the front desk had given me. "I have to say," she went on, "I was surprised when I saw your name on the staff list. A woman like you, working for Mr. Voltaire? What a funny little world we live in ." She leaned closer, her fingers were still on the folder. We were both holding it, and neither of us was letting go. "Careful with those," she said, her eyes dropping to my hands. The torn skin around my thumb, the small dot of blood. "You do not want to stain the papers. Some things are very hard to hide." I opened my mouth, I did not know what was going to come out, a scream, a sob or maybe everything at once but before I could speak, the small speaker on my desk crackled to life. "Miss Hart, my office now" the voice said and the speaker went silent. The voice was low and cold. It came through the speaker like winter air through a broken window. Livia's smile froze. Something moved behind her eyes like a flicker of jealousy. She hid it fast, but I saw it. For a second, her mask slipped, and I saw the real Livia underneath. The one who could not stand the thought of a woman like me being noticed by a man like him. Livia pulled her hand off the folder like it had burned her. She straightened up and smoothed her skirt with two quick, sharp movements. "Well," she said. Her voice was tighter now and the sweetness was gone. "You should not keep him waiting. Mr. Voltaire does not like to be kept waiting." She walked back to her office, the door closed with a soft click. I stood up, my legs did not feel like my own. They felt like something I was borrowing from a stronger woman. I smoothed my jacket with my wet hands. I wiped the blood off my thumb with a tissue from my bag. I walked to the big doors, put my hand on the cold handle, and pushed without knowing what waited for me inside.