Chapter 5 - The Desk Remembered It Differently
The marble was still tacky under my shoes when we drifted toward the reception desk. I hadn't moved my phone from the counter. I didn't want to touch it with coffee still drying on my fingers, and I didn't want to give her a reason to say I'd reached for anything again. The stain on my blouse had gone cold against my skin.
My husband stayed half a step between us, his hand lifted, not quite touching either of us. The pendant lights threw hard white circles on the marble. I could hear the elevators ding somewhere behind us and the front glass doors sighing open and shut.
The younger receptionist kept staring at my blouse. She had her hand paused over her keyboard. Her nameplate said Dana.
"You grabbed her first," Dana said, and her voice shook a little when she said it. She looked at the woman in the red blazer, then quickly back at her screen. "I saw it. You came around the counter side and you put your hand on her arm."
I felt my shoulders drop one inch. I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath.
"That's not how it happened," the blonde said fast. "She walked straight into me. Ask anybody."
A man in a gray sweater who'd been standing by the reception with a visitor badge in his hand cleared his throat. He wouldn't look at either of us directly. He looked at the broken cups on the floor like they were safer.
"The cups broke on collision," he said. "I heard it. You both had— I mean, she had papers, and you— there was coffee, and then they hit the floor. It wasn't like somebody threw them."
The maintenance cart was still parked by the pillar. Nobody had touched the spill. The brown liquid had found the grout lines and settled there, and the two crushed white cups lay on their sides with the rims bent in. My papers were still scattered near them, the bottom edges curling up from the wet.
I bent to pick up the top sheet. It stuck for a second to the marble. The ink had bled where the coffee hit it.
"Leave those," my husband said quietly, without looking at me. "Don't move anything else."
"They're my copies," I said.
"Leave them."
The blonde laughed once, short. "You hear that? Even he doesn't believe you."
Dana's older coworker, a woman with short dark hair and a headset around her neck, leaned forward on the desk. She'd been quiet through the whole shouting part. Now she folded her hands.
"I didn't see the first touch," she said carefully. "I heard voices raised. By the time I looked up, you were holding her sleeve." She nodded toward the blonde. "And you had your phone up." She nodded toward me.
"Because I was calling him," I said. My voice sounded thinner than I wanted it to. "She had hold of my arm while I was trying to call."
"You shoved into me with those papers," the blonde said. Her cheeks were red now, not pale. "You provoked me. You came in here acting like you owned the place, dropping stuff everywhere."
She said the last part louder, for the desk. For the small half-circle that had formed near the elevators.
My husband turned his head toward security by the entrance. The guard had his radio up, waiting.
"Hold the lobby footage," my husband said. "From ten minutes before the spill through now. Full wide and the counter camera. Don't let it loop over. Save it and send me the file number."
The guard nodded. "Yes, sir. I'll lock it."
Dana typed something fast, then stopped. "It's still recording," she whispered, like that settled it. "So it's all on there."
The blonde crossed her arms over her red blazer and lifted her chin. "Good. Play it. You'll see she started it."
May you like
I looked at the cups, at my phone sitting dark on the counter, at the wet papers I wasn't allowed to pick up. My hand had a faint red mark where her fingers had been.
"Play it," I said.
