Molly O'Keefe - Pencil Him In

“What’s wrong?” Anna put down the bag of candy and leaned on her desk.

“Well, Anna, I was going to wait and make an announcement in a few weeks, but I don’t think things can wait that long.” Camilla stood and walked over to the windows. She was a thin red line against the backdrop of the city. And Anna had the strange and terrible feeling that change was in the air. She wasn’t a big fan of change.

“Oh, my God.” Anna stood up. As a rule she jumped to the worst conclusions. It always seemed to get to the heart of the matter. There was very little beating around the bush in Anna’s life. “You’re sick.”

“No,” Camilla said quickly with a reassuring smile. “I am healthy, my family is healthy…”

“But?”

“I am retiring after the New Year.”

Anna collapsed back hard into her chair. She had no idea what to say. Arsenal was Camilla’s company, built out of a spare room in her house twenty-five years ago. Camilla had created, built and nurtured one of the biggest advertising agencies in the city. Even more, Anna felt like Camilla had created, built and nurtured her right along with the company. Anna had started working for Camilla ten years ago as a receptionist and now, she was sealing the deals that would ensure the future of the company. But Camilla was leaving. It was all just too much to take in.

“Anna,” she said firmly and Anna’s eyes darted back to her face. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“I know,” she tried to relax. “It’s just a surprise. But…why are you leaving? You’re at the top of your game.”

“No, sweetheart, you are at the top of your game. I’m just tired.” Camilla chuckled but Anna couldn’t find anything funny in this situation.

“What…?” Anna couldn’t help feeling lost. She looked down at her fingernails and wanted nothing more than to bite them. “What about Arsenal?”

Camilla shrugged. She looked back out the window, her face in profile against the fading blue California sky, and tried to hide a smile. “I think you’ll take good care of it.”

“Me?” Anna asked, floored.

“You.” Camilla turned to face her and Anna could feel the explosions going off in her head. Fireworks and cannons.

Holy shit! Anna Simmons, president of Arsenal Advertising. It was a dream come magically true.

Anna leaped up, grabbed Camilla around the waist and squeezed, lifting her off the ground in her crazed enthusiasm. “This…oh, my God…I…” She was stuttering and laughing and at some point she felt herself crying. It was all just too much.

The day. Goddess. And now this, president of Arsenal. Camilla trusted her enough, believed in her enough to give this to her. Anna could hardly make sense of it all.

“Drinks, definitely drinks!” Anna said, laughing. “Cosmopolitans for everyone!”

“I’m glad you’re so excited, but there’s something we need to talk about first.” Camilla put her cool hands on Anna’s flushed face and made her look at her. Really look at her.

“Okay,” Anna said carefully, the crazy joy subsiding in her chest. Something else was sneaking in, something that felt like dread. Camilla looked worried. Nervous and sad.

Uh-oh.

“Please sit down,” Camilla said, gesturing with elegance and poise to the chair Anna had erupted from just minutes ago. Anna sat and, without thinking, grabbed the bag of chocolate while Camilla perched on the corner of the large mahogany desk.

“What’s going on, Camilla?” Anna asked. “My heart can’t take all this in one day.”

“I am very excited about leaving you Arsenal. I believe in you and I trust you….”

The pause. The dreaded pause. Anna felt panic like a wave in her throat. Why is she pausing there, she believes in me. Trusts me. No pauses!

“But…”

“No, Camilla no buts…”

“But,” Camilla talked over her. “I can’t in good conscience allow you to take over the company the way you are right now.”

Anna jerked, baffled. “What does that mean? The way I am right now?”

“It means you are killing yourself for this company and, at the rate you are going, if I give you Arsenal, you will be dead before you are forty.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Anna said. The hard work, the weeks on the couch, the stress of the past five hours and now this…Anna felt a headache blooming behind her eyes. She pinched her nose.

“I know you don’t.” Camilla leaned forward. “For months I have been trying to get you to take a break. A vacation…”

“I will, I know,” Anna sighed, relieved. This was just about a vacation. “Tomorrow. I promise. I’ll book a cruise. I’ll book two cruises. I just had to get this job…”

“Sweetheart, there is always a job. That’s the nature of this business.”

“Right, so…?”

“So, I’ve taken this upon myself.”

“You’ve booked me on a cruise?” Anna asked, confused.

“No, but that’s not a bad idea.” Camilla seemed to consider it for a split second and then she pushed the silver hair off her face and took a bracing breath. “Until I retire in six months, you are, in essence, fired.”

Anna blinked. Her mouth opened, words rushed through her brain but died in her throat. She shut her mouth. Opened it again. “Wh-what? What do you mean fired?”

“I mean you will not be working for six months. It’s a forced, but paid, sabbatical.”

The explosions from earlier came back. Canons in her head. And not the good kind. “Are you joking?” She started laughing incredulously. “Because I have to say, if you are, good one. Really. You had me going.” She shook her finger at Camilla.

“I am not joking.”

“Then I must have fallen asleep on the couch again, because there is no way—” disbelief had her on her feet “—no way the woman who just cemented the future of this company for you is getting fired!”

“Anna, sit down,” Camilla urged calmly.

Anna sat. “Tell me this isn’t real, Camilla. Please.”

Camilla’s unlined patrician face fell and she stood up. “It’s very, very real and it’s for your own good.”

She was elegant and calm and as serene as she was in every situation. It was the end of Anna’s world and Camilla might have been ordering lunch.

Anna’s eye started to tick uncontrollably.

“Listen to me,” Camilla said. “You have six months. A sabbatical.”

“I don’t want a sabbatical,” Anna spat.

“Well, that’s too bad, sweetheart, because you need one.”

“I don’t need one!”

Camilla’s lips pursed for a second. “Anna,” she said carefully. “Yesterday you threatened to shove chopsticks up Andrew’s nose.”

Well, Anna slouched a little bit in her chair. She had been working hard, she had been stressed out and Andrew, the little rat, had thrown out her leftovers. Perhaps holding the chopstick to his throat that way might have been a little much, but…

“Okay, that was too much,” Anna admitted. “But that hardly translates into me needing six months off. Camilla, this is crazy.”

“It’s six months off. You come back and Arsenal is all yours. It’s your company. President, just like we agreed.”

“What if I say no?” Anna asked, her brows furrowed and the pain behind her eye nearly blinding. This was a nightmare. This day should have been a celebration and now it was hell.

“Then you’re fired for real,” Camilla told her in dead seriousness and Anna felt her heart stop for a moment. “You need these six months to get a life.”

“I have a life!” Anna protested, hotly.

“Really?” Camilla asked and the pity in her eyes sent Anna to her feet. The chair spun out behind her and hit the glass of the window.