Chapter 63 - The Avenger (2/2)
Mary gazes at Claire. ”You know what, you said something strange this morning in the copy room.”
Claire's heart skips a beat. ”What do you mean?”
”In the copy room. About your dinner date with Jake. You said you don't remember how the date ended. Were you serious about that?”
Claire fake-laughs. ”Oh, that? I was just kidding. I mean, I had forgotten about the date because it was too awful to even remember. Jake was so insufferable.”
”Really? You're not the first person who ever said that!”
”Yeah,” Claire says, her mind on over-drive, trying to make shit up. ”Err, I mean, I didn't know what I was thinking in the first place, saying yes to that jerk. I immediately regretted having agreed to the date, but I thought, maybe I could learn something from him about the culture of the company, things like that.”
”And then?”
”Well, I was wrong. There's nothing Jake can teach me. He was all about himself, from the very first moment he sat across me at the table. I was bored to death that my brain tried to forget that date even while it was happening. Ha ha ha!”
Mary shrugs. ”Well, at least, he brought you to a nice steak house. I haven't even tried it there, yet. It's too expensive.”
”Wait a minute,” Claire says, her curiosity mixing with irritation. ”How did you even know about these details? I don't remember telling anyone else about that date.”
”Sorry,” Mary whispers, glancing behind her. ”It's all the office chatter. Whenever there's a new girl, everyone expects that Jake asks her out. People make bets. Money changed hands when you actually said yes. I don't really know, but I just overheard. People talk at the water cooler, you know.”
Claire stares at her, uncertain of what to feel. This is her first job, her first exposure to a corporate setting. And it bothers her that the culture of an otherwise modern organization seems no different from the gossip-loving culture of a small village in the countryside in the boondocks. It's small-minded. ”People are the same wherever you go,” goes a line from an old song her mother loved singing, ”Ebony and Ivory.”
”What else have you heard?” Claire asks.
Mary pauses to think. ”Hmmm. I think everyone wonders whatever happened to your date. Jake usually regales his boys the morning after with an exciting story. But he never came back. And then we got word about his termination. So that's an incredibly strange turn of events for everybody.”
”And speaking of Jake,” Claire says, composing herself. ”Would you know how to contact him?”
”Why?”
Claire fake-sighs. ”I don't want to have anything to do with him, but Gabriel, he asked me to call Jake up and relay a message.”
”Well, I can have Jake's former secretary relay the message to him, if you want.”
”It's important, Mary, that I personally call him up. Gabriel Tan's specific instructions.”
Mary gazes at her for a long moment, probably trying to glean the truth. ”Okay,” she says after a while. ”I think I have his contact details from the documents I've been processing. Give me a moment.”
Much later, in Gabriel's empty office, Claire dials Jake Magno's phone number. Her hands slightly tremble, but she steels her resolve. She has to do this. Her soul is dying to do this, to find closure. She imagines a hundred ways this could go.
”Hello,” a man's voice speaks coldly on the other end. ”Gabriel?”
”No, it's Bella Xavier, Jake,” Claire says, in the sweetest voice she could muster. ”Forget about Gabriel. Let's have a little heart to heart chat. And who knows, maybe I could actually let you do to me what you were not able to do that night.”
The man's voice trembles with initial disbelief. Is this really THE Bella Xavier? Maybe, because she's using Gabriel's office phone number. But like all men who tend to think with their smaller heads, Jake Magno, despite the utter weirdness of the message, agrees to a time and place, his suspicions drowned out by his eagerness to finally have his hands on Bella's smoldering hot bod.