Over Her Dead Body — Someone Should Check on the Author

Emma’s office light is on.

Even now, she expects someone else to finish things.

Her badge no longer works. Her clients have been reassigned. I switch the light off.

She will need another office. I would prefer she had some difficulty finding one.

Her coffee cup is beside the monitor. A jacket hangs behind the door.

I take the jacket down.

Cream. Good fabric. The lining has come loose beneath one arm. Emma spends money on things people see and postpones the rest.

I fold it over my arm and bring it to my office.

✦

I have listened to the first voicemail twice.

The second contains very little beyond the fact that she is coming to the office. The first is more useful.

Emma tries to describe what happened in Lisbon without sounding like the sort of woman it happened to. She gives me the location. The sequence. What she did to get out.

Once, she loses her place.

I go back and listen to that part again.

There is a breath. Then another. She starts the sentence over, more carefully this time.

I know that voice.

She used it during her first disputed valuation. Again when a collector threatened to move his account because she refused to call a workshop picture an original. She called me from a bathroom in London once, whispering because she had nowhere private to ask what to do.

I told her to wash her face and go back into the room.

She did.

She has always been good when she has someone sensible to obey.

This time she had already got herself out of Lisbon.

Then she called me.

That is worth remembering.

✦

On my desk, I place her jacket beside the copy of her termination letter.

The two things look wrong together.

I move the letter.

My assistant knocks and asks whether Emma’s belongings should be boxed.

“Yes. Leave the jacket with me.”

“Should someone let her know we have it?”

“She knows where she left it.”

The assistant stays in the doorway.

“I thought, with her hand—”

“We’ll take care of it.”

That satisfies her. People find the plural reassuring. It suggests someone else has already agreed to help.

After she leaves, I turn the jacket inside out and examine the loose lining. Four stitches, perhaps five. I have a travel sewing kit in my bag.

I thread the needle.

Emma can afford repairs. That has never been the issue. She saves her care for clients and expects the smaller arrangements of her life to manage without her.

Well. Some arrangements have managed.

I pull the first stitch tight.

✦

The first stitch is too visible. I remove it and begin again from the other side.

Emma is very good at her work. Firing her does not change that. Another house could take one look at her sales figures and decide my loss is their opportunity.

I put the jacket down and take out a pad.

Three calls to begin with. A recruiter who places senior specialists. The directors of two competing houses. I write their names beside their numbers.

There will be others if necessary.

Beside the recruiter, I write: Undisclosed commissions.

Beside the first director: Valuations revised for a preferred buyer.

Neither happened. Emma would have reported the first and resigned over the second. She has always been tiresome about professional standards.

I underline both.

For the other director, I will say we gave her opportunities to correct the problem. Several opportunities. I will sound disappointed when I explain that she became hostile instead.

She was hostile this morning. I can use the part I enjoyed least.

I leave the pad beside the telephone and pick up the jacket.

Of course she will need work. Rent continues. Insurance becomes expensive. Friends express outrage, then return to jobs they have been sensible enough to keep.

Margot has her own clients.

Owen has his own life.

I would like Emma to exhaust the people she considers alternatives to me. Send the applications. Take the meetings. Follow up until even she finds the silence humiliating.

Then, when the bills have become more urgent than her opinion of me, I could have something small.

A day’s cataloguing. Paid by the hour. No client contact. Certainly no discussion of restoring her job.

I would make sure she understood I was putting myself out to offer it.

✦

The needle catches my finger.

A bright point of blood appears beside the nail.

I put the jacket down before I stain it.

For a moment, I think about Emma’s hand.

Not the account she gave us. The hand itself. I would have preferred she kept it out of sight.

She wanted us to see it.

She also wanted us to pretend we hadn’t.

There are limits to what one can ask of an employer.

I press a tissue against my finger until the bleeding stops. Then I finish the lining.

The repair is neat enough that Emma may not notice.

That would bother me more than it should.

✦

I take a card from the drawer.

Emma,

I stop there.

I could write that I am sorry about her injuries. That would be misunderstood. Emma is very good at finding room inside a sentence for what she would prefer it to mean.

She would read the card twice. Then she would call someone and say Celeste apologized.

No.

I try again on a fresh card.

Emma,

I had this repaired.

Too small. Too easily dismissed as something an assistant handled between more important tasks.

I put that one aside too.

In the version I prefer, she comes back to discuss the one day of work. She has already asked whether there might be two.

I explain that I cannot promise anything. She nods. She has learned to leave room for me to finish.

Then she sees the jacket.

She turns the sleeve inside out and finds what I have done. Such a small thing. With everything else I had to manage, I noticed.

Her face changes.

That is the part I keep returning to.

✦

I put both cards in the wastebasket.

I put the jacket over the chair facing my desk. For years, it has been where she sits when she needs something from me.

I smooth the shoulder once and tuck the loose thread from my sewing kit out of sight. Then I put the list of calls in my bag.

I will make sure Emma never works in this industry again. Stitching her jacket was the least I could do.

On the computer, the voicemail is still open.

I play the first few seconds before I leave.

Emma’s voice saying my name. The careful effort to sound all right.

Whatever she said when she walked out, she still knows who to call when it hurts.