This Crazy Rich Boy

Claire couldn't think straight. She's pounding away on her computer, typing whatever comes to mind. It's a good thing nobody can see her computer screen, with her back directly on the wall, because they'd know she's just faking it.

Gabriel had to leave immediately—there was a phone call, and even though he didn't tell her what it was about (and it's not really her business, anyway), she felt it might have something to do with Jake Magno again. Apparently, it turns out, Jake is a festering problem Gabriel has yet to solve. And she had no idea.

"If I were a bad person," Gabriel told her, "I could have ended his life, right then and there. But I thought of giving that decision to the authorities. And now here we are."

Jake is suing Gabriel. Not only that, he is threatening to make a grand spectacle of his departure from the company. "Which means shit can hit the fan," Gabriel said. "And we could attract the kind of attention that we've been trying to avoid."

Claire is thinking of calling up Jake. Give him a piece of her mind. That ȧsshole. Each time he crosses her mind, Claire is overcome with an urge to put her hands around Jake's neck and squeeze it so hard until the little bones break. She wants to claw his eyes out. She basically wants to absolutely, utterly, and inexorably kill him for what he did to her.

She's so riled up, she can't focus. Good thing she doesn't have to do any actual work. This morning, she was just typing "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG" over and over, but now she's writing her heart out, although in a totally structure-less way. She wants to expunge this pain in her heart, this anger. Learning about Jake's crime too late only made her angrier.

"Something seems to be eating you, Bella," Mary says, concern on her face, as she walks by.

Claire tries to smile. "I'm just not feeling well."

"I have a bottle of Tylenol, if you need it."

"Thanks, but I think I'll be fine," she says. "Maybe I just need to finish typing this letter."

"What are you working on?" Mary asks innocently, as she maneuvers in order to see what's on Claire's computer screen.

Claire panics—on her screen is nothing but a jumble of words that basically describe how to skin Jake Magno alive—and in one desperate move she stamps with her palm the screen's power buŧŧon. The screen dies instantly.

Mary's brow knits in confusion. "How are you able to write there? Your screen's off?"

Quick, Claire, think! "Uhh, Mary! I have a little joke for you. Say, you and your boyfriend are about to ride a rollercoaster, but before the ride even starts, your boyfriend breaks up with you! Imagine that! But then, the ride begins, and you bet on board the rollercoaster anyway, even as you watch your boyfriend walk away. Now the question is, what do you call that rollercoaster?"

Mary looks at her funny. "Uhh, I'm not sure. What is it, then?"

"It's called an emotional rollercoaster! Get it?" Claire laughs at her own joke.

It takes Mary three seconds to get it. She laughs, too. "That's so bad it's good. Only problem is I've never had a boyfriend."

"Never?"

"Never ever," Mary says, yet she smiles. "I don't mind, though. There's a right time for everything."

"You're absolutely right," Claire says, glad that Mary's mind is elsewhere and not on her mysteriously dead computer screen.

"I don't want to be like the girls you see here, so desperate to have anyone, just anyone, that they're willing to hook up even with a married guy."

"You don't say!" Claire's eyes go wide. "Are you talking about actual persons in this office?"

"Yes," Mary whispers conspiratorially, looking around her. "You'll never believe the unspeakable lows some girls here would stoop. It's a good thing Jake's gone. He kept hitting on everyone."

Claire pretends she's too shocked. "Oh, my God! Is that true?" Then she shuts up because the conversation has just entered awkward territory—after all, Claire was among the women who actually said yes to a date with Jake. So technically, she's no better than anyone else that Mary considers "too desperate."

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.