Chapter 3

GROUP CHAT: “THE COVEN”

AKILA: Where are you???

KAALIA: COMING SORRY

KAALIA: I LOST AT THE GAME AND THEN BUMPED INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN EVER

KHAJEE: ???????????

LOUISE: DETAILS NOW

KAALIA: I’LL TELL YOU WHEN I GET THERE

LOUISE: You better. Also I’m tracking your location so you don’t end up in Connecticut again

***

My brain could no longer tell the difference between my first day at work and being held at gunpoint. My hands trembled more and more with every passing hour. I kept misspelling common words to the point where I couldn’t understand what I had even been trying to say in the first place. 

I’d worn a multitude of intricate gold bangles, like usual. They clicked against each other as I trembled. I kept smoothing my skirt, a colourful pink-orange pattern. But it didn’t help anything. My sweat was making my thighs chafe together painfully. And everything, from my jhumka hoop earrings to my nose ring to the curls I’d styled as voluminously as possible, added to the unbearable anxiety of seeing Roman again. Even my burgundy ballet flats. Even the layers of my anklets. Even my bra. My chest ached for pre-colonial times when having my boobs out was acceptable because women’s bodies weren’t inherently sexual. 

It was almost noon. For my first few hours at Bloom Press, I had been onboarded by an Arab woman named Layli and an East Asian woman named Iseul. They were perfectly kind—if not extremely concerned for me. 

“You look afraid,” Layli said. “Do you need a cigarette? A vape? A fidget toy?” 

“A snack?” Iseul added. “A sun lamp? A plant? A vitamin gummy?” 

The head of the woman in the office across from mine popped up. I hadn’t met her yet, but Iseul had mentioned her name was Jazmine. “Hey, new girl! You need Xanax? Ativan? Weed? A micro-dose of shrooms?” 

Layli rolled her eyes. “Didn’t Roman say no to drugs in the workplace?” 

“She said I could use drugs sometimes if it made me a more creative editor. All the greatest artists were using.” 

“So were idiots like Freud,” Layli called back. 

Jazmine shrugged. “I personally identify more with Pink Floyd.” She sank back into her chair and disappeared behind her giant desktop computer. I was pretty sure I saw faint swirls of smoke follow her. 

Lali and Iseul both focused back on me. I stared at my computer as if I was investigating something very important. 

“So, do you want to join us for lunch break or what?” 

I was terrified that at any moment Roman was going to show up to work and realize she had given me a giant stuffed panda last night and then fire me because I had gratefully but inappropriately told her I loved her. The visions had been playing in my head nonstop. 

The first vision went like this: Roman would see my face in the reflection of my computer, realize who I was, tell everyone else in the office about me and then, while all of my coworkers were laughing at me behind my back, hand me a letter that said I was terminated, effective immediately.

The second vision was worse. Roman would come into work, realize I was her new assistant editor, and disgustedly say that I was the weirdo freak obsessed with stuffed pandas. After she fired me, she would tell everyone she got a me a panda out of pity. “She was just so pathetic,” Roman would sigh. “It was charity work.” 

The third vision was the worst. This one kept flashing in my mind every time the door to Bloom Press chimed open. Roman would come in, looking beautiful, sexy, and cool as hell, see me and grimace painfully, and immediately yell: “Who hired this girl? You and her are both fired!” 

I didn’t want to join Layli and Iseul for lunch. I wanted to hide in my office and sink into the depths of the swivelling chair like Jazmine, in the chance that Roman wouldn’t see me when she walked in and fire me immediately. 

“No, sorry, too busy for lunch,” I said, typing furiously fast without thinking, hoping to seem hard at work. 

Iseul craned her neck to see my computer screen. “You just typed I’m hugnaery. Correct me if I’m wrong but I feel like your brain is trying to subliminally tell you you’re hungry?” 

My vision had blurred. I forced myself to actually look at what I was typing and realized she was right. 

“I can’t eat lunch,” I said, more than a little desperately. I pulled at random strings of excuses. “What if Roman comes in and sees me and thinks I’m a slacker?” 

Layli and Iseul moved behind the desk and each grabbed one of my arms, hauling me to my feet. 

“First of all,” Layli said, “Roman understands that humans need sustenance. She’s not a fan of starving her workers, like some corporate CEOs.” 

“And second,” Iseul added, “Roman is literally on vacation right now. She’s trying to get a writer in Nepal to sign a contract with Bloom and she won’t be back for another three weeks. She left this morning.” 

The fight left my body. I sank gratefully into their arms as if all my bones had vanished then and there. Layli and Iseul stumbled a little under my dead weight. Roman would be gone for three weeks.

“Aren’t I her assistant editor?” I asked. “What do I do while she’s gone?” 

“She left a list of manuscripts for you to work on,” Iseul explained patiently. 

My visions of Roman firing me evaporated in a cloud of smoke. Those could go in reserve for a couple of weeks. Right now, I was free. 

I bounced to my feet. I felt light and airy. “You know what? Lunch sounds great after all!” 

I had brought a container of butter chicken. As soon as I microwaved it, the sweet, spicy smell filled Bloom’s employee kitchen and every person in a three-mile radius seemed to perk up. 

“What is that? Butter chicken?” Layli asked. 

Another woman I hadn’t met yet seemed to drift towards me. “Smells like butter chicken,” she confirmed. 

“Can I have some?” Iseul said shamelessly. “I’ll bring you pan-fried dumplings tomorrow. Please.” 

“Has no one here ever brought Indian food before?” I demanded. I glanced at two of the other brown women in the office. 

“I was whitewashed by my parents,” said one mournfully. “They were full of internalized racism and made me eat burgers and pasta like the other white American children.” 

“I can’t cook,” the other woman said. “My wife cooks for me. And she gets up too early to make me lunch.” 

“Do you know how to make samosas?” Jazmine asked. She had appeared in the kitchen out of nowhere. Faint lines of smoke dissipated from her body. I couldn’t see a joint or a cigarette anywhere, so it looked like she was constantly, secretly, on fire. 

“Yes,” I said. I took my butter chicken out of the oven and watched everyone’s eyes follow it like a beacon. “Fried food is my specialty. I can make some mean tostones too.” 

One woman asked me what my ethnicity was. 

Usually I hated that question. Men—especially white men—loved playing a game with me. First, they’d ask where I was from. Then say something like, “No, no, don’t tell me,” before proceeding to guess my ethnicity wrong seventeen times. They would give up and make me tell them. At that point, cold and expressionless, I’d say half Punjabi and half Puerto Rican. Their eyes would light up and the response always ended up being: “Wow, so exotic.” 

If one more person called me exotic, I would backhand them. 

But this time I didn’t dread answering the question. Almost every person in this room was a woman of colour. I felt safer than I had in years. Maybe since I’d started university, even, where most students were white.

The only time I felt safer was home. Home in Sri Lanka, where my Punjabi family had immigrated years ago, and home in Puerto Rico, where my other set of family lived. 

Still, this was a nice second place. If only Roman wasn’t going to fire me in three weeks.

A few other women told me their ethnicities. I discovered Layli was Lebanese and Iseul was South Korean. Jazmine was half Bengali and half white. A few other coworkers were Thai, like my friend Khajee. One woman was Nigerian like Akila. 

For a second, I allowed myself to grieve the possibilities of working here and letting this become a third home.

A woman named Camilla must have noticed the change in my expression. We were all sitting around one large, circular table now. Colourful—and maybe even handmade—doilies were strewn all over it.  

“Why do you look so upset?” she asked. 

All the attention focused on me again. Bloom had a hundred employees, but only twenty-five were in-person. The rest were remote. And of the in-person employees, I was the newest one. It made sense I had become a kind of celebrity on my first day. I liked being the source of attention, but I really didn’t want to confess the details of last night. I hadn’t been so embarrassed by something in such a long time. 

And that was saying a lot, because after my ex-girlfriend had broke up with me, I had ugly-sobbed in the middle of a park in broad daylight. Mothers had literally shielded their children from me and covered their ears.

“We’ve been trying to figure it out all day,” Layli said to the other women. “One moment she looks happy and the next it looks like I killed her goldfish with my bare hands.” 

“You can tell us, we’re a family,” Jazmine coaxed. 

“Do not let Jaz fool you. She might seem like a nonchalant stoner, but she is the worst gossip in this office,” Iseul whispered to me.

“Come on, please?” Camilla asked. “We’ve been looking forward to having you for a month. Roman herself approved you. Usually she’s not too involved with the hiring process, but Eva said she read your CV and was really impressed.”

Eva was the white woman who had interviewed me. I didn’t see her at the office; I’d learned her position was one of the remote ones. 

“We’re all friends here. Mostly,” said Jazmine. She glanced not-so-subtly at two women sitting as far from each other as humanly possible.

Iseul leaned closer to me again. “The mostly part is referring to Moya and Eliyah. They had an office romance but broke up a couple weeks ago. It’s still really fresh.” 

I looked at the two women again and realized they were glaring at each other. 

“Eliyah said she still had feelings for her ex,” Iseul whispered, even more quietly.

I winced. 

“Please?” Camilla asked again. “Please tell us why you look so upset?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” I said. It seemed I had cracked under barely any duress. I’d be a bad torture hostage. “But you have to promise not a word leaves this office.” 

“Deal.” The vow echoed around the kitchen.

I told everyone the story about the carnival and the giant panda and the I love you. I also told them about my suspicions that Roman would fire me as soon as she saw me. A few gasps and eyebrow raises confirmed I was not, in fact, crazy and that the encounter actually was worthy of overthinking.

My new coworkers reassured me that Roman would never fire me over something like that. They did say she would make my life a living hell, but that it would be nothing personal. 

“She’s crazy,” Jazmine said. “And I mean really crazy. Like crazy, crazy. She has razor-sharp attention and an insanely cutthroat editing method.” 

“She’s a genius,” Layli said. 

“No one is denying that.” Jazmine bit into a chocolate-studded granola bar. “But three of her last assistant editors quit. One of them quit crying. She really is just that mean.” 

“But, I mean, she’s nice to you guys, isn’t she?” 

“Yeah, because we’re not working with her intimately. We have our own genres we’re in charge of editing and publishing,” Iseul explained. “She acknowledges we have our own expertise. But the people who work directly under her? Well, she’s trying to make you just as capable as she is, and that’s kind of impossible, because, like Layli said, she’s a fucking genius. It’s a doomed job.” 

My mouth fell open. Did everyone think that I was going to be a temporary hire? Was I so popular right now because they knew I’d be gone soon? 

“But hey, maybe you’re the one,” Moya chirped. She said the one like the word unicorn or fairy princess. Across the table, her ex, Eliyah shot daggers at her with her eyes. 

“Anyone want to place bets?” Jazmine said.

“If you bet against me, you’re going to lose,” I announced, standing up. “I’m here to stay.” 

Jazmine shrugged as if I’d said nothing important and turned back to the table. “Fifty dollars that Kaalia will be gone as soon as this year’s June bugs have hatched.” 

***

Hi my lovely readers, 

I’m so excited for Roman and Kaalia to meet again. How are you feeling about the work environment? 

Love,
Meera