2

I liked Niska. She considered every problem before offering an answer and therefore almost always did a good job. But I wasn’t in the mood for good service or comradeship. That morning I had a yen for isolation. Just hearing her footsteps down the hall wore on me. When she went to the restroom a second time I had to put down the book I was reading because of the whining of the pipes and the sound of the door clicking shut. Even the faint whiff of her essential-oil perfume seemed to crowd my space.

By 10:17 I made a decision. It took a few more minutes to tamp down the unreasonable anger before going out to the front office.

Niska was typing at great speed on her IBM Selectric. She typed, organized, and filed away our notes, correspondence, and case journals. At seventy-five words a minute, the rapid-fire clack of the letter ball on paper set my teeth on edge.

“Niska.”

“Yes, Mr. Rawlins?” She stopped the racket, looking up innocently.

Behind a forced smile I asked, “You like that Transcendental Meditation stuff, right?”

The surprise pushed her head back two or three inches.

“Um,” she said. “Yeah. How come?”

“They have those two-week-long getaways where everybody does yoga, right?”

“There’s some exercises but mostly they meditate. I went to two weekend retreats but the week-longs are very expensive. And I only get two weeks’ vacation anyway. I was thinking of going to one around Christmas maybe.”

“How expensive is it?” I asked.

“Hundred and thirty dollars—a week.”

“What if I gave you two weeks off and enough money for the retreat—on top of your salary? You could call ’em and go right up there this morning.”

“But what about the files and the phone?”

“Files can wait and I learned how to answer a phone before you were born.”

This was something new for the receptionist/office manager. Her eyebrows creased and her freckled nose scrunched up.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“I want to be alone, honey. That’s all. Whisper and Saul are already out, probably for a while. I think it would be good for both of us.”

“So you just want me to pack up and go?”

“Right after I draw the money you need out of the safe.”

She hemmed, hawed, and argued mainly because there was little precedent for a boss letting employees off from work on a whim back in 1969. And two hundred and sixty dollars plus two weeks’ salary for doing something you loved was unheard-of. But the offer was too good to pass up, and so by noon she was off and I could return to my office in solitude.

I leaned back in my ample oak throne and sighed deeply.