The Devil Wears My Lipstick

The Message

He responded at eleven forty-seven.

Not to my yes. That message he had apparently decided to let sit in the thread like a question that had already been answered and didn’t need a response. What he sent at eleven forty-seven was a new message entirely.

My office. Noon.

Three words. No context. No indication of whether this was about work or about the red dress or about the five seconds of eye contact across the open plan floor that I had been trying and failing to stop thinking about for the last three hours.

I stared at the message for a moment.

Typed back: Is this about the Meridian account briefing? I had some notes.

His response came in forty seconds.

Noon, Ms. Mensah.

Not answering the question. Just repeating the instruction with my name attached to it like a period.

I closed the message.

Looked at the glass office.

He was on a call, standing with his back to the floor, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the phone. The back of him was almost as distracting as the front and I was not going to examine what that said about my current mental state.

I looked at my screen.

Simone had texted four times since I arrived.

Did you wear the red dress

Nova answer me

ZARA

I’m going to assume you wore it and I’m going to need a full report by lunch

I typed back: I wore it. Also my boss just summoned me to his office at noon and gave me no reason.

Her response was immediate.

SUMMONED???

Zara Amara Mensah

What did you do

Nothing, I typed. I just wore the dress.

THE DRESS IS NOT NOTHING she sent back in capital letters.

I put my phone face down on the desk and tried to concentrate on the Meridian briefing document for the remaining forty minutes I had before noon.

I read the same paragraph six times.

At eleven fifty-eight I saved my document, straightened my dress, and walked across the open plan floor to Dominic Blackwell’s office.

The glass walls meant I could see him before I knocked. He was at his desk — seated now, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the forearm, reading something on his screen with the focused intensity of a man who gave everything his complete attention or nothing at all. The rolled sleeves were new information I did not need and was now in possession of.

I knocked twice on the glass door.

“Come in,” he said. Without looking up.

I opened the door and walked in and stood in front of his desk with my hands at my sides and my face arranged into the expression I used for situations where I needed to appear significantly more composed than I actually was.

His office smelled like him. Cedar and something darker underneath. Of course it did.

He finished reading whatever he was reading. Closed the tab. Looked up.

His eyes went to the dress first. One second. Then to my face.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I’m fine standing,” I said.

A pause.

“Ms. Mensah,” he said. Slowly. “Sit. Down.”

I sat down.

Not because he told me to. Because my heels were not designed for prolonged standing while being looked at like that and I had my own reasons.

He leaned back in his chair. Crossed one arm over his chest, rested the other elbow on it, and looked at me over his own hand the way people look at things they are trying to categorize.

“How are you finding the accounts,” he said.

I blinked.

“The accounts,” I repeated.

“The three client accounts you were briefed on this morning,” he said. “How are you finding them.”

I looked at him.

This was about work.

He had summoned me to his office at noon on my first day for a completely routine check-in about work.

I felt several things in rapid succession — relief, followed immediately by embarrassment, followed by irritation at myself for the embarrassment, followed by the specific annoyance of a woman who had spent forty minutes constructing composure for a conversation that required none.

“The Meridian account needs a full communications audit before we touch anything external,” I said. Pivoting into it cleanly because the alternative was sitting here feeling things and that was not an option. “Their current messaging is inconsistent across platforms. I have notes.”

“Send them to me by three,” he said.

“I’ll have them to you by two,” I said.

Something moved in his jaw. “Two is fine.”

“I know it’s fine. That’s why I offered it.”

The office was very quiet.

Dominic Blackwell looked at me with that expression that I was beginning to understand was not irritation and was not amusement and was not performance of either. It was the specific look of a man encountering something that did not behave the way he expected things to behave and finding that more interesting than he wanted to admit.

“Is there anything else you need from me,” I said. Professional. Clean.

“No,” he said.

I stood up.

“Ms. Mensah.”

I stopped. Did not turn around immediately. Made him wait exactly two seconds.

Then I turned.

He was still in the same position — leaned back, one arm crossed, looking at me with that look.

“The notes on Meridian,” he said. “Include your recommendation for the audit structure. Not just the problems. The solution.”

“I was already going to do that,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I’m telling you because I want you to know I expected it.”

I looked at him across the desk.

He looked at me.

The glass walls threw the open plan floor behind me in full view of both of us — everyone out there continuing their Monday, completely unaware of whatever was happening in this specific cubic footage of air.

“Two o’clock,” I said.

“Two o’clock,” he confirmed.

I walked out.

Pulled the glass door shut behind me.

Crossed the open plan floor back to my desk with my face completely neutral and my pulse doing something I was going to have a serious conversation with it about later.

I sat down.

Opened my document.

My computer pinged.

Internal message.

I opened it.

The dress is a problem, Ms. Mensah.

I stared at the screen.

Looked up at the glass office.

He was not looking at me. Back on his phone, turned away, completely occupied.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Every reasonable, sensible, employed and electrically connected part of my brain said — do not respond to that. Close the message. Do your work. Send the Meridian notes at two o’clock and be a professional person.

I typed: Then stop looking at it, Mr. Blackwell.

Sent it.

Watched the delivered receipt appear.

Picked up my coffee.

Took a long slow sip.

And waited.

The response came four minutes later.

Long enough that I had almost convinced myself he wasn’t going to respond. Long enough that I had opened the Meridian document and written two actual sentences and started to feel like a functioning professional again.

Then the ping.

I opened it.

Easier said than done.

Three words.

I read them once. Read them again. Set my coffee down very carefully on its coaster because my hand had developed a slight instability that I was not going to acknowledge.

Four words from this man and my entire nervous system was behaving like a teenager.

I was twenty-three years old. I had a Communications degree. I was going to audit the Meridian account and send my notes at two o’clock and I was going to be a completely professional person who did not read into internal messages from her boss —

My computer pinged again.

Don’t respond to that. It was inappropriate. I apologize.

I stared at the screen.

Then I looked up at the glass office.

This time he was looking at me. He hadn’t looked away fast enough or hadn’t tried to. He was sitting forward now, elbows on the desk, eyes on me through the glass with an expression I had not seen on his face before.

Something that looked like a man who had just made a mistake and knew it and was not entirely sure how he felt about knowing it.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I looked back at my screen.

Typed slowly. Deliberately.

It was. But you meant it.

Sent it.

Closed the message thread.

Opened the Meridian document.

And did not look up at the glass office for the next forty-seven minutes even though every single cell in my body was pointing in that direction like a compass that had found its north and was not interested in my opinion about it.