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Secret

  By James R. Edgerton

  Copyright © 2009-2013 by James R. Edgerton

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Beginnings

  Ellen had a secret. In all of the world, it was something only she knew. That was how she wanted it. And her worst fear was that somehow, someday, her secret might be exposed. And her most secret desire was that somehow, someday, her secret might become known--and no longer be her secret any more.

  * * *

  Ellen Sanders looked up from the book she was reading, still chewing a bite of her sandwich. Outside of her cube was a young man. He seemed to be about her age, twenty-three. Judging by the cube walls, he must be about 5'8" tall, which was how tall the cubes were. He was wearing slacks and a nice button down shirt with a solid color tie. In other words, he dressed like all of the other men she worked with who had not ascended the management ladder. A management position seemed to require a jacket. She had actually checked the employee manual once and there was no mention of ties or suit coats.

  Ellen sat in the last cube furthest away from the windows in one row of many identical rows of cubes. She could think of no reason for this man to be here. She knew the occupants of all of the other cubes nearby.

  "May I help you?"

  The young man had been looking at something in his hands. He looked up at the sound of her voice.

  "I am lost," he said. "According to several recent articles that I have read, admitting that makes me 'sensitive'. I am afraid that I am not enjoying the feeling." He gave her a disarming grin before continuing, "Could you direct me to 12-125?"

  Ellen thought for a moment and then answered, "You are on the right floor. Last I checked, there was a sign on the cube indicating this is cell 140. 125 must be on the next row, or perhaps the row beyond that," indicating with her hand the direction she thought cube 125 would be in.

  The man looked down at his map and up at the small rectangle of paper on the cube wall.

  "The cubes have numbers on them?" he said. "Where then can a modern man find adventure?"

  He stuck out his hand and said, "I am Kris Meyers."

  Fortunately, Ellen had been eating with her left hand. She set the sandwich down and took Kris's hand with her clean hand. "Ellen Sanders."

  "You are now officially my hero," Kris said as he shook her hand. "You have saved me from a horrid death in the maze." Ellen wondered if Kris played Dungeons and Dragons. Her older brother had, and his sense of humor had been more than a bit strange. On the other hand, she had always found nearly everything about her older brother to be a bit strange.

  As he left, he said, "Thanks. Perhaps we will meet again."

  "That would be nice," Ellen said. She was being polite. She was not really sure whether she wanted to meet him again. She had certainly met enough men whom she would never want to meet again. She did not consider herself terribly great looking, and most men tended to see only her chest. Kris had glanced down at her body only briefly and then looked back at her face. That seemed like a positive.

  The building held four thousand people. She would probably never seen him again.

  * * *

  "Who was that?" Millie Peterson asked?

  "Kris .... Oh, shoot. I have forgotten his name already. Apparently he was lost."

  "New guy?"

  "Uh," Ellen responded blankly. "Perhaps. I didn't ask. He was looking for cell 125."

  "Not bad looking."

  "Is that all you care about?" Ellen chided her friend with a grin.

  "Of course not. How rich they are is much more important. In his case, no jacket means not management. You know as well as I do that there's only poor people here and management. And maybe the sales guys. There's no way he's in sales."

  "Too true. Too true," Ellen responded. The comment was part of a well-rehearsed give and take between the friends. However, the statement was not far from truth. She certainly wasn't making a lot of money. Millie wasn't either. Ellen could only presume the partners who owned the company were rolling in it. Based on the cars in the parking lot, most of the sales force was also doing pretty well.

  The company sold advertising. They found clients who wanted to advertise products and other clients who had places to advertise. In the past this had been magazines, newspapers, radio and television. Now, those were being joined by web ads.

  Her job was contract preparation. She took boiler plate text based on input from sales and assembled it into a contract. The basic contracts were all nearly identical. The contract she assembled was fed to the law department and the salesman who owned the sale. They would feed her changes. She would make those. In the dark old days before her mother had died, this might have been done by secretaries or perhaps a word processing pool as computers moved into the business. Now, it was done by "business administrators".

  "Is he coming back?" Millie asked.

  "I don't think so," Ellen said with a laugh.

  "Too bad. He seemed like your type."

  Ellen wadded up a random piece of paper and tossed it at her friend. It hit the cube behind her friend and bounced onto the floor.

  "Maybe he can throw."

  Office Party

  Ellen's prediction was holding true. A month had gone by since Kris had wandered down her aisle, and she had seen nothing of him since. She had wandered over to cube 125 once "just to see". There was a computer and some pens and pencils neatly contained in a small cup. That implied that someone used the cube. However, there was nothing to indicate who was the current occupant of the cube nor what their function might be.

  * * *

  Ellen was sorting through the stack of mail that the postman had stuffed through the slot in her front door. Her jacket lay over the back of a nearby chair. Today's mail sat on the coffee table in the living room, slightly segregated from the opened and discarded residue of the last few days of mail.

  The rest of the room was neat, though not spotless. On an end table was a display of silk flowers in a vase and a paperback book splayed face down. A floor lamp provided light for the room. A blouse that needed mending lay roughly folded on its base. The sofa on which she sat faced a black rectangle. The LCD TV had seemed wonderful on the display room floor, however, when she had brought it home, it displayed the same lack of network creativity as had its predecessor. The generally mindless programming did seem to be displayed a bit more brightly and it did have the advantage that it took up less floor space.

  "Come to the Annual Christmas Party!" ordered a brightly colored flier. Beneath that it said, "Ohlman's and Olsson's Thirty First Annual Christmas Party" Near the bottom of the page, it said, "6:00 PM on December 15th. RSVP by December 9." A glance at the calendar on her phone indicated that the date was on Tuesday a week from today. And that she needed to RSVP by tomorrow.

  What if I actually had a life? she thought to herself. I might need more than a week's notice.

  Nonetheless, she dutifully sent an email to the email address indicated, noting, as required, that there would be only one of her and no guests.

  Then, per a tradition she had inherited from her parents, she turned on the TV to the evening news. She despised the news and wondered for the hundredth time why she could not make dinner without a supplementary dose of bad news.

  * * *

  Ohlman's and Olsson's had chosen to host their party at a downtown hotel. It was a very
ritzy hotel, however, the building code for parking buildings seemed to require that they were all ugly, scary and filled with odd echoes. Tires squealed as a car came around the corner ahead of her.

  Ellen looked around nervously. Perhaps her nervousness came from watching too many horror movies. Or was it the official announcement that had come out the previous week from the Ohlman's and Olsson's security department about the dangers of being alone in a parking garage?

  A number of people she recognized from the office were moving from a couple of cars toward the elevator. She quickly moved toward the familiar faces, though she didn't actually know any of them by name. The comfort of being with people she recognized helped her to ignore the squeaky echoes of expensive shoes walking across dingy concrete floors.

  The door to the elevator opened. Before her was another world. Highly figured wooden panels lined the interior. Brass hand rails glistened from a recent polishing. She stepped forward and the parking garage was forgotten. Under her feet, the carpet was deep and lush. Someone pushed a button, the doors hid the image of gray concrete, and the fantasy was complete.

  * * *

  The illusion was maintained when the elevator opened again. The lobby of the hotel was filled with fine furniture, polished wood and elegant floral settings. A large sign said, "Ohlman's and Olsson's Annual Christmas Party". The arrow on the sign was a bit vague, however, the group she was following seemed to know where they were going. In a few minutes, they entered a large ballroom. Two vast crystal chandeliers lit the room. At one end was a stage and a live band. The sound system was turned up way too loud. A conversation with anyone would be completely impossible.

  Tables were laid out with fine china and linens around a wooden floor area. At the moment only a few people were dancing. The music was classic rock of the seventies and the people on the floor were in their fifties and above. They were elegantly dressed. Ellen thought that one of them was Dr. Olsson himself. She had not met him, but he been identified at some previous company function.

  Ellen momentarily imagined herself entering the ballroom on the arm of a handsome man in a tuxedo. As in Cinderella, every eye would be on them as they moved to the dance floor. Is that what she really wanted? Not exactly. However coming in alone and looking for the only person she really knew at the company, her friend Millie, was fairly far from her dreams in the other direction. What about an anonymous entry with a nice man in a suit? The lost man, whose name she couldn't remember drifted across her mind's eye.

  Kris? Maybe. Maybe not, she muttered to herself.

  Ellen scanned the room for a familiar face. There were hundreds of faces, however, while many of them were familiar, none of them were people she knew well enough to consider a friend.

  Someone yelled into her ear, "Looking for your cube?"

  The voice sounded familiar, however it was hard to tell over the near-deafening thump of the music. Turning she saw the "lost man" as she had taken to calling him. His face she remembered.

  "Hello!" she yelled back.

  "I'm Kris Meyers," he said. "Remember me?"

  "I remember. The man lost in the maze!" The song ended just about the time she said the word, "lost". "In the maze" came out loud enough that everyone in the room must have heard her. Ellen blushed.

  Another song started up. This one didn't seem to be quite as loud.,

  "Yes," Kris responded. "However, I was rescued by a beautiful fairy princess, to whom I am eternally grateful."

  Was he flirting? Or was he hooked up on fantasy scenarios from too many video games? Ellen didn't mind flirting. A bit. It was after that that things started getting difficult.

  "In any case, did you find what you were looking for?" Kris asked a moment later, his hand motioning vaguely toward the large room.

  "No. I was looking for some of my friends. I don't see anyone I know yet."

  "A shame. Perhaps we could stake out a table. I am afraid I know only a few people at work myself. That day we met was my first day at work."

  Ellen hesitated. Other than Millie, she didn't actually know anyone specific who was coming. She had just assumed that out of the several hundred people who might come, she would know some of them.

  "Ellen!"

  She turned at the call. The person she had actually been looking for was coming toward her.

  "Hi, Millie."

  "Hello. How are you doing?" Millie asked, giving her an affectionate hug.

  "Fine. Kris, this is my friend Millie. We work in Contract Preparations. Millie, this is Kris."

  Kris held out his hand, "Kris Meyers. I seem to work in your department."

  "I haven't seen you around," Millie answered.

  "Well, I was the new guy, and there was a need. I got loaned to sales for a few weeks to cover an emergency there. I should be back in my cube next week."

  "Glad to have you aboard," Millie responded.

  "And I am glad to be working here. Shall we sit?" Kris asked.

  Invitation to Dance

  They moved to an empty table. Each round table could hold six people. After a moment's hesitation, Ellen sat with Kris to her right and Millie to her left.

  "What's the plot?" Kris asked.

  "What?" Millie yelled, as the new song was louder than the last. "I couldn't hear you."

  "What happens next?"

  "Typically, they torture us with music for awhile and then feed us," Millie responded. Ellen rather wished she had thought of an equivalently funny comeback. "Then more music. Sometimes there are door prizes if anyone is still sober."

  "You don't like the music?" Kris asked.

  Millie shrugged.

  "What music do you like?" Ellen asked him.

  "This is OK. I heard a lot of this growing up. Do you like it?"

  Ellen did. It reminded her of the time before her parent's divorce. And even more of good times with her father. Times before that fight. She clamped the thought off. Anger and fear had flooded into her even in that ever so brief moment of memory.

  "Yeah. I do," she said aloud hoping neither anger nor fear colored it. "It reminds me of better times." She couldn't believe she had said that last part out loud. Millie knew about her parent's divorce, and the difficult relationship she and her stepmother had. However, she did not want the conversation heading in that direction with a man she hardly knew.

  "I think that is what Rock 'N Roll was always meant to do," Kris responded.

  The song playing was a cover of "Stairway to Heaven." It was not, in Ellen's view, as good as Led Zepellin's. However, she had heard the song butchered, and this group was at least not butchering it.

  "I wish it wasn't so loud," Kris said. "I tend to get headaches at these things."

  "You too?" Ellen yelled back.

  Kris simply nodded.

  "Stairway to Heaven" ended and the band launched into a version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles.

  "Do you dance?" Kris asked.

  Ellen wasn't sure if it was a general question for her and Millie or if he was asking her specifically. Millie responded, "I love to." Reluctantly, Ellen added, "It is OK. Depends on the music." She actually liked dancing well enough. She just wasn't sure she wanted to dance with Kris. Well, not Kris so much. With a man. Any man.

  "Well, you let me know what music you like, OK?"

  Ellen couldn't think of any polite way to refuse. "Sure," she answered.

  A few minutes passed during which a waiter came by with a tray of jumbo shrimp. Everyone took a couple.

  "Time in a Bottle" started playing over the speakers. All of the music was covers. This one was actually pretty well done. She loved the song. She remembered hearing it in the car riding with her dad. She was maybe twelve. It was before ... She shook her head. She would not go there. She remembered enjoying the song. Such a romantic song for a twelve year old girl who didn't know how innocent she w
as. To find someone who wanted to spend all of their time with you. Someone for whom you satisfied all of their dreams. Someone who didn't ... She felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  "This one?" Kris asked.

  "Say, 'No,'" one part of her mind screamed. Another encouraged, "Just say, 'yes.'"

  "Yes," she heard herself say.

  "No!" screamed the losing voice.

  Kris got up and pulled her chair out for her. She rose as he did. Together they walked onto the dance floor. There were perhaps a dozen or so people there. All of them early comers. More than half were clearly in their fifties or above. Probably all VP's. She felt more than a bit self-conscious.

  Kris was a decent dancer. More importantly, he didn't seem to be bothered by her dancing. He smiled at her as they danced. She slowly relaxed a bit, letting herself feel the music and watching her partner. It was a comfortable feeling.

  When the music finished the dancers clapped and Kris led her back to the table.

  * * *

  During dinner, Ellen stole glances at Kris. She re-discovered that it was not easy to do when you are sitting next to someone. Several of her discreet glances met his eyes. Too many for chance. She felt strangely warmed and pleased by the attention. However, she was not sure that she wanted him knowing she was checking him out. Not yet, at any rate. He seemed like a nice enough man, however ...

  And only once did she catch him looking at the "V" of her low cut party dress. Which was a lot less than the middle aged man sitting across from her. As far as she could tell, that man had yet to see her face. Ellen was not completely happy with the body she inhabited. It was slightly too big everywhere. This meant her hips and waist always bothered her when she caught sight of herself in a mirror. However, while large hips were bad, being large in the chest was generally a plus. It could be hard to get men to look her in the face. However, it was generally not too hard to get help. At times she felt just a bit naughty and more often felt guilty about taking advantage. It never seemed to stop her.

  Tired of getting caught, she managed to resist glancing in his direction through the rest of dinner and dessert. This year, the musicians played on though the meal. It was nearly impossible to talk due to the combination of full mouths and loud music. After dinner, both Mr. Ohlman and Mr. Olsson themselves spent a few minutes talking about the bright future of the company and how each person present was to be credited with that success. They had mastered what Ellen thought were the important skills for such presentations: they sounded sincere, they were funny, and their talks were very, very short.