They Never Saved Me a Seat, So I Built My Own Table novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: A Chair With My Name

In Austin a card on the best chair at the team lunch has Paola's name, then Tommy posts a photo with a fifth cannoli on an empty cushion.

Austin in December smelled like warm pavement and breakfast tacos.

I had spent one night in a corporate apartment with a bed, a kettle and one wooden chair, and the only person I had called was my mother, who hung up without saying goodbye.

On Tuesday morning I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor of the company's building with my laptop bag held against my chest.

A tall man in rolled-up shirtsleeves stood outside the glass doors with a paper cup in each hand.

"Paola Gentile?" he said. "I'm Seth Hartigan. I'm the one who sent you all those emails."

"The three emails," I said.

"The third one was pushy. I apologize. Do you take milk?"

"Yes."

"Good, because the first cup was a guess." He handed me the cup with the lid already off, so the steam came up first. "Come in. Everyone's been waiting to meet the person who said no twice and still turned up."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

It was the first time I had laughed in four days.

The team had eight people, and they were all in the conference room when Seth pushed the door open.

A long table had been set with paper plates and a stack of foil trays.

Every chair had a folded card on it with a name in marker.

Nobody was looking at me, and nobody was waiting for me to find the one chair left over.

"Yours is by the window," Seth said. "Third one down."

I found it.

The card said PAOLA, with a small star drawn next to the P.

The chair was the good one, the one with arms, and someone had put a seat cushion on it.

I stood there with my coffee and could not think of anything to say.

"Is this for everyone?" I finally asked.

"We do a card for every new person," said the woman at the head of the table, who was unwrapping a tray of enchiladas. "Otherwise they stand there holding a plate while we all pretend not to watch."

"Window was my idea," Seth said. "You told the recruiter you work better with daylight."

"I did say that." I had said it in one line, in a form, in October.

I had forgotten it, and he had not.

I sat down.

Lunch was loud in the way I had not heard in a long time.

The team argued about whether the old routing tool should be rebuilt or patched, and nobody waited for permission to interrupt.

When I said the patch would break the delivery windows for the northern routes, the table went quiet for about a second.

"Say that again," the woman with the enchiladas said.

I said it again, and she pulled a laptop toward her and started typing.

"That's the bug that cost us two weeks," she said. "You found it in four minutes."

"I only looked at the diagram you sent me."

"Nobody else did," Seth said.

He had taken the seat across from me, and he was eating with his sleeves pushed up, not looking at me too much.

I noticed that.

I noticed it because everyone I had known for four years looked at me the least when I was right.

After lunch the team went back to their desks, and Seth walked me to mine.

It was a corner desk, with a window, and a small green plant in a chipped mug.

"Last person left it," he said. "I didn't want to throw it out until you said so."

"I'll keep it."

"Good." He stood there with his hands in his pockets. "You can say no to things here, you know. Anything. Meetings, lunches, me. It doesn't cost you."

"Is that a rule?"

"It's the only rule I have," he said.

I didn't know what to say to that either.

He nodded and went back to his own desk, and I sat down at mine.

My phone buzzed against the wood.

It was a notification from the campus photo account that Tommy ran, the one with three hundred followers, where he posted all of us.

I opened it with my thumb already trembling.

The picture was the dorm lobby couch.

Four of them sat in a row, smiling at the camera, with their new pens lined up on the cushion in front of them.

A fifth cushion sat empty at the end of the couch.

On the cushion lay one more cannoli, and the name across it in dark chocolate read PAOLA.

Under the photo Tommy had written: Still saving yours. Come home.

Someone had ordered that cannoli after I left.

They had never once ordered one while I stood in the room.

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