I'll look into it. He stood there for a beat. Not certain whether she meant it or whether it was the kind of thing people said in the moment and forgot by morning. Thank you, he said. She nodded without looking up.
He left. He didn't go straight home. He should have. He had groceries to pick up and Maya's soccer bag to repair the zipper had been sticking for two weeks and a call to his mother-in-law that he'd been meaning to return for 4 days. Instead, he found himself standing on the sidewalk outside the Apex Meridian building at 5:24 on a Friday afternoon with the resignation letter still in his jacket pocket.
He hadn't submitted it, hadn't been able to make himself submit it after the conversation with Victoria, which was probably nothing, which was probably exactly the kind of thing that would evaporate by Monday, and he couldn't make himself go directly to the subway. He walked three blocks north and turned into the Copper Oak. He'd been coming here for about 2 years in the intermittent way of a man who needed somewhere to sit that wasn't his apartment, but didn't need company to do it. The bar was small and dark in a comfortable way, not in a shabby way. It had old wood and good lighting, and a bartender named Dennis, who knew that Adrien drank bourbon neat, didn't want to talk about sports and always tipped 20%.
There were six other people in the bar at 5:30 on a Friday. Adrien sat at the end of the bar where the wood curved around and he could see the whole room and he put his jacket over the stool beside him and ordered a drink and took the resignation letter out of his pocket. He set it on the bar. He looked at it. He thought about three years of mornings of getting Maya ready and getting himself ready and getting on the subway with both of them, dropping her at school, continuing on to the building, walking through the lobby with his badge, riding up to the executive floor, and moving through the day with precision and silence and complete invisibility.
He thought about what Victoria had said. I'll look into it. He thought about whether he believed her. He was on his second bourbon and hadn't reached a conclusion when the door of the copper oak opened and Victoria Sterling walked in. He almost didn't recognize her.
That was his first honest thought, and it shamed him a little, not because it was disrespectful, but because of what it revealed about how thoroughly he'd categorized her. In the office, she was the CEO, a function, a title with a woman attached to it. He'd known the CEO's coffee order and the CEO's schedule and the CEO's preferred room temperature. The woman who walked into the Copper Oak on a Friday evening in November was not the CEO. She'd changed out of her work clothes, or she'd changed her jacket, at least traded the structured blazer for something softer, and her hair, which she always wore pinned precisely, was partially down in a way that suggested she'd started to take it down and then stopped.
Or put it back partially like she'd made a decision and then reconsidered it halfway through. She was carrying a small bag and she had her phone in her hand with her thumb moving across the screen and then she stopped walking, looked up and took in the bar with the expression of someone who had been here before, which surprised him. She found a seat at the bar three stools away from him. He watched her in his peripheral vision for about 30 seconds, operating on the reasonable assumption that she hadn't noticed him and that the appropriate response was to let her have her drink in peace. Because walking up to the CEO of your company at a bar on a Friday night was not a thing that ended well for anyone.
He was picking up his glass when she said, "You caught the error in the appendix." He put the glass back down. She was looking at him. She'd known he was there. I did, he said.
How long were you going to sit there before you said something? He turned toward her then cuz not doing so felt actively ridiculous. I was planning not to say anything. You're I didn't want to intrude on your evening. She looked at him for a moment with that evaluating expression seed in her office.
What are you drinking? Bourbon Woodford Reserve. She looked at Dennis. I'll have what he's having. Dennis nodded and moved to pour it.
And then she picked up her glass of water, walked the three stools down and sat beside him. Just like that, Adrien Cole, who had spent 3 years mastering the art of invisibility, suddenly couldn't figure out what to do with his hands. She looked at her phone one more time, then turned it face down on the bar. The gesture was deliberate. He noticed it.
Buy me a drink. He stared at her. I'm sorry. The bourbon. She nodded toward Dennis.
I'd like it if you bought me a drink. It was the most socially ordinary thing he could have imagined her saying, and it was precisely the last thing he'd expected her to say, and he couldn't tell from her expression whether it was a joke. " Of course," he said. Dennis set the bourbon down. Adrien nodded at him.
Dennis nodded back and moved away with the tact of a bartender who understood what his job sometimes required. Victoria picked up the glass. She looked at it for a moment. Then she set it down without drinking and looked at him directly. How long have you actually been doing this job?
This specific job? 3 years 2 months. Before that, I was in operations at what I'm asking. She looked at him. How long have you been doing the job?
That's actually your job. Not the job title. The actual job. He considered this. The job that isn't in my job description.
Yes. Since about 2 weeks after I started when I realized the prior system wasn't catching things it should have been catching. And you just started doing it. Someone needed to. She picked up the bourbon and drank.
A silence settled between them that was not uncomfortable in the way he would have predicted. It had a weight to it, but a manageable weight. Nobody knows you do that, she said. It wasn't a question. No.