My Secret Lover Is Actually My Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Crayon Room

Della overhears that the buyer will close the studio and make Lyle a VP, tells the whole staff, and demands sixty days; Leon agrees if she reports to him alone every night at seven.

Lyle and the Halvern man were still slapping each other's backs when Leon came through the stairwell door behind me.

"You two know each other," Leon said.

"Industry's small," Lyle said. "We've had a few dinners."

"Have you."

Norma kissed the air beside her nephew's cheek.

"Darling, you look exhausted. Let's do the tour and get you back to the hotel."

The tour took all morning.

Norma led it in her camel coat, pointing at things with her sunglasses.

The shipping room. "Redundant."

The accounting pod. "Kansas City has a whole floor for that."

The old man's corner office, wood-paneled and dark. "Nobody's touched it. Morbid, really."

Then she stopped outside the studio and smiled through the glass at the eleven of us.

"And this is the crayon room."

Pip, at the lettering table, very slowly capped her pen.

The Halvern man laughed. Lyle laughed louder.

Leon didn't laugh. He didn't do anything. He just looked at the drawings pinned to our wall.

I stayed at my desk and wrote nothing for two hours.

At half past twelve I went to the supply closet for printer paper, because it was that or scream.

The supply closet backs onto the small conference room.

The wall is cheap. Everyone on thirty-one knows the wall is cheap.

I was reaching for a ream on the top shelf when I heard Lyle's laugh through it.

"She'll calm down. She always does."

"She'd better," the Halvern man said. "My board doesn't want a mess in the trade press."

"There won't be a mess. There won't be a studio."

I stood very still with the paper in my arms.

"Walk me through it again," the Halvern man said.

"We keep the Winship name on the box. Writing and art move to Kansas City, under me. Chicago closes by August."

"How many?"

"Forty, give or take. The studio, shipping, most of accounts."

"And the eleven creatives?"

"I'll bring two. The rest are expensive and sentimental."

"And you're comfortable as VP."

"I've been comfortable since January."

They both laughed.

A chair creaked. Ice moved in a glass.

"The grandson's the only vote that matters," the Halvern man said. "Can you keep him on track?"

"He's a numbers guy. He hates this place. His aunt says he hasn't set foot in this building in twenty-four years."

"And the girl? The one who stood up?"

"Della's a writer," Lyle said. "Writers cry and then they update their résumés."

I put the paper down on the shelf very gently.

Then I walked out of the closet and across the floor to the kitchen.

Friday lunch at Winship was a tradition.

The old man used to buy the pizza himself, every week, for forty years.

Since he died, everyone chipped in.

Thirty people were crowded around the long counter with paper plates.

Pip saw my face and put her slice down.

"Del?"

I climbed up on the kitchen chair.

People stopped talking.

"I just stood in the supply closet," I said, "and listened to Lyle tell the buyer how they're going to close us."

Nobody moved.

"They keep the name on the box. Everything else goes to Kansas City. Chicago shuts in August."

"How many?" one of the shipping guys asked.

"Forty."

The word went through the kitchen.

"The studio goes. Shipping goes. Most of accounts."

One of the women from accounts sat down on the counter, right in the pizza.

"And Lyle?" Pip said.

"Lyle becomes VP of Creative. He's been talking to them since January."

Pip said a word the old man would have fined her a dollar for.

"He said he'd bring two of us," I said. "The rest of us are expensive and sentimental."

The junior writer started to cry, quietly, into a napkin.

"That's not your call to announce."

Leon was standing in the kitchen doorway.

I had no idea how long he'd been there.

Thirty heads turned to him.

I stayed on the chair. Standing on it made me taller than him for once, and I wasn't giving that up.

"Is it true?" I said.

He looked around the kitchen at all of them.

At the cold pizza. At the woman sitting in it.

"Halvern has offered forty-one million dollars," he said. "The offer expires on June first. Their plan is the one you just heard."

"And you're going to take it."

"I came here to take it."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have today."

I got down off the chair.

I walked right up to him, close enough to smell the hotel soap I knew far too well.

"Give me sixty days," I said.

"For what?"

"To prove the studio is worth more open than closed. To you, to a buyer, to anyone."

"With what?"

"With the line Lyle just stole. With the booth your grandfather already paid for at the Stationery Show. With us."

He looked at me for a long time.

The whole kitchen watched him look.

"Sixty days takes you to June first," he said.

"Then don't sign anything before June first."

A muscle moved in his jaw.

"Fine," he said. "On one condition."

"What?"

"You report to me. Not to Lyle, not to my aunt. To me, alone."

"How often?"

"Every night. Seven o'clock. The old man's office."

Pip made a small choking sound behind me.

Every night. Alone. In a room with a door.

He knew exactly what he was asking.

So did I.

"Fine," I said.

"Seven," he said. "Don't be late."

He turned and walked back toward the corner office.

Behind me, thirty people seemed to start breathing again at once.

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