THE OFFICE
408 Words
Chapter Three: The Office
IPG Construction occupied a small, cramped room on the third floor of a building that smelled of old paper and ambition. The desk wobbled. The cabinet in the corner was held closed by a folded piece of cardboard. The single window let in a rectangle of light that moved across the floor as the day progressed, the only thing in the room that moved with any reliable consistency.
Bryan sat with his head in his hands.
Ifeoma, his secretary — his only employee, in truth, though he gave her the title because she deserved at least that — sat in the corner filing her nails. She was twenty-six, sharp-eyed, and had been with him for eight months without receiving a salary in the last two. She hadn't left. He wasn't sure why. He wasn't sure he deserved that kind of loyalty.
How will I survive if I don't get this contract?* he thought. *House rent is due. I haven't paid Ifeoma in two months. And Mama is asking me to get a wife.
He almost laughed at that last one. A wife. With what he had to offer right now, what woman would look at him and see a future?
He glanced at Ifeoma, guilt moving through him like a slow tide. She hadn't complained. Not once. She came in every day, made calls on his behalf, filed things, kept up the appearance of a functioning operation, and never said a word about the money he owed her. It made the guilt worse.
Maybe I should close everything down*, he thought. *Move back to the village. Stop this.
And then the phone rang.
He grabbed it fast, the way a drowning man grabs a rope.
"Hello... yes sir..."
He listened. His face changed the way faces change when something long awaited finally arrives — not dramatically, but in small ways, the jaw unclenching, the shoulders dropping a half-inch.
"Okay sir. I'll be there. Thank you sir."
He was on his feet before the call ended. "Ifeoma! Get me those files. I need to leave now."
She was already moving, something quickening in her too, because she had learned to read him and she could tell by his voice that this was real. "Okay, boss," she said, and for the first time all day, the room felt less like a waiting room and more like a place where something might actually begin.
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- Writer
