He called to say hello, or at least that’s what the receptionist said when I called in from the road, we all still in shock nearly a month after her resignation, he still mourning the loss as if she had died rather than just moved on.
I’m constantly doubting myself on all this, what really happened, and whether or not it was orchestrated or simply happened by accident.
She’s not the only one in our office that admires him, my manager at the auxiliary office gushing about him when ever his name comes up, about how much he has to offer, how good he is to work with, how much his talent is wasted working in a dump like this.
Some even sense how wounded he was at her leaving but stay silent as to not make matters worse.
I know he still talks to her in both private and her role as PR for the Virgin Mayor. Some things he’s said reflect her current aspirations, much of in the same line as to what she used to tell the office gossips, so I don’t trust any of it, even though he takes it all to heart.
Her stories vary from person to person, one gets the tale of her plans to move on to TV, while another – one of our other writers – heard all about the work load and how burned out she was, and how management wanted her to do even more, pushing her to do more hard news when she’s really good at features.
Our boss – since her return from her maternity leave over the summer – has been pressing for more investigative pieces, as if she has a grudge of her own to settle with the mayor from the neighboring town.
“She’s burned out,” the other writer said.
The gossips got a variation on the TV bit, about how our office was always just a stepping stone to bigger and better things, and that she found an opportunity and grabbed it, only it seems more like smoke, since she ultimately got a job as personal assistant to the Virgin Mayor – hardly the NBC gig she claimed she would get.
But not everybody in the office is sad about her leaving, some saw her as too arrogant for her own good, especially lately, after the owner got back from Europe, when she seemed unable to do anything wrong.
“She thinks she’s better than the rest of us,” one of the gossip’s told me.
“She didn’t start out that way,” I said.
Nobody in the rank and file, however, has anything bad to say about our former temporary boss, who as bitter as he’s become has only ever said bad things about the owners and the boss.
He did go off on her once early on, something she complained to me about, asking me why he didn’t like her, but that was early on as well, and since then, he’s come to admire her greatly, as someone special, someone he helped mold into a really good writer (although she clearly as a good writer before him).
For me, he seems immeasurably sad, as if her leaving took something hugely important from his life, something he won’t get back again – even though still in contact, even though she still confides in him.
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