Performance Review

Performance Review: The Intern Came Back -- Chapter One

The email came in at 9:14 on a Monday, and by 9:15 I had read the name four times.

Please join us in welcoming Sofia Reyes as our new Regional Director, Mountain West. Sofia joins Northgate Home from Calder & Voss, where she led the turnaround of their retail division. She will oversee the upcoming restructuring of our Denver office and will be meeting with each manager individually over the coming weeks.

There was a photo. Of course there was a photo. Dark hair cut sharp at the shoulders, a charcoal blazer, a small closed-mouth smile that looked like it had been approved by a legal team.

Sofia Reyes.

I knew that smile. The last time I'd seen it, it had been trembling.

"Megan?" Hannah hovered at the edge of my desk with a paper cup held in both hands like an offering. "They were out of oat, so I got you almond, but I asked for it extra hot, so--"

"Almond." I didn't look up from the screen. "Hannah, what did I say this morning?"

"Oat milk. Extra hot."

"And what is that?"

She looked at the cup. "Almond."

"So you heard me, and then you decided you knew better." I finally turned to her, and she shrank half an inch. She was twenty-two, fresh out of CU Boulder, round glasses, a cardigan she'd clearly bought for this job. She reminded me of every intern I'd ever had. "Take it back. Get it right. And next time don't come back until you have."

"It's raining," she said, very softly.

"Then take an umbrella."

She went. I watched her go, and something cold slid down my spine, because I'd said those exact words before. Same office. Same street. Same weather.

I looked back at the photo on my screen.

Then take an umbrella.

*

Five years ago, Sofia Reyes was twenty-three and my summer intern, and I had not liked her.

That's not true. I hadn't disliked her. I had noticed her, and I had hated noticing her, which is worse. She was quiet and polished and too good at everything I gave her, and she had a way of standing in my doorway--straight-backed, ankles together, patient--that made me feel watched.

So I watched her back. I gave her the worst tasks. I rewrote her copy and presented it as mine. I sent her across 17th Street for coffee four times a day.

And one afternoon in October, with a client in the conference room and rain coming down in sheets, I sent her for a flat white from Bluebird--not the lobby place, Bluebird--and when she came back soaked to the skin, holding the cup inside her jacket to keep it warm, I looked at the trail of water behind her heels and said, in front of everyone:

"You're dripping on the carpet like a wet dog. Take those shoes off and clean that up."

She did. She knelt on the carpet in her stockings and blotted the floor with paper towels while the client pretended not to see. Five weeks later she was gone. No goodbye, no two weeks' notice. A resignation email with one line in it.

I told myself I'd done her a favor. That the industry was tough and someone had to toughen her up.

I'd told myself a lot of things over five years. I was very good at it.

*

The restructuring rumors had been circulating for a month. Everyone knew someone was coming to cut. Nobody knew who.

Now I knew.

At 11:02 my calendar pinged.

1:1 -- Sofia Reyes / Megan Price. Tuesday, 4:00 PM. Corner Office.

Organizer: Derek Lam on behalf of Sofia Reyes.

No agenda. No note.

I closed the laptop and opened my banking app, the way other people bite their nails. The mortgage payment for my apartment in LoDo--thirty-one hundred a month, a number I'd signed with champagne in my veins eight months ago, the week I got promoted--sat at the top of the screen like a gravestone.

The promotion was the only reason the bank had said yes. Senior Marketing Manager. Take away the "Senior," and the math stopped working. Take away the job, and there was no math at all.

"You look like someone died," Claire Dunn said, leaning into my cubicle wall with her coffee. Sales Manager, thirty-six, red hair cut short, black-framed glasses, and the only person in this office who had ever beaten me to a promotion. She'd wanted mine. She hadn't gotten it. She'd been smiling at me ever since.

"Just reading," I said.

"The new director?" Claire's smile widened a fraction. "Didn't she used to work here? I feel like I remember that name."

"I don't think so."

"Hm." She took a slow sip. "Guess we'll find out."

*

Tuesday, it rained.

Of course it rained.

I wore the navy suit, the one that made me look like I'd already won. I did my makeup twice. I rehearsed in the elevator: Sofia, it's so good to see you. You've done incredibly well. I always knew you would. Warm. Professional. Past tense. Nothing happened, and even if something did, we're both adults now.

At 3:58 I stood outside the corner office.

It had belonged to Gary for eleven years. Gary had a putting green in there and a signed Broncos helmet. Now the door was frosted glass, and through it I could see the blinds half-drawn and a single figure at the desk.

Derek, at the assistant's station, glanced up. "She's ready for you."

I knocked. I don't know why. The door was open.

"Come in, Ms. Price."

Her voice was lower than I remembered. Calmer. It had the texture of something expensive.

I came in.

The putting green was gone. So was the helmet. The office was nearly empty now: a walnut desk, a gray rug, two chairs, a window full of rain and, somewhere beyond it, the Rockies. Sofia sat behind the desk with her legs crossed, a tablet in her lap, and she did not stand up.

Five years had done things to her. The softness in her face had gone somewhere else, into the line of her jaw, into the stillness of her hands. She wore a cream silk blouse and a black pencil skirt and her dark hair fell straight to her shoulders. She looked like the kind of woman people lowered their voices around.

"Sofia." I put my hand out. "It's so good to see you. You've done incredibly--"

"Close the door, please."

I closed the door.

When I turned back, she was looking at my extended hand, still hanging in the air, with mild curiosity, like it was a pastry she wasn't hungry for. I lowered it.

"Sit," she said.

I sat. The guest chair was lower than hers. I noticed that. I think I was supposed to notice that.

"How long have you been Senior Manager?" she asked, reading from the tablet.

"Eight months."

"And before that, Manager for four years. You've been in this department for nine years total." She scrolled. "Strong numbers. Aggressive campaigns. Three formal complaints from junior staff, none of which went anywhere." She looked up. "That's an interesting balance."

"Those complaints were--" I stopped. Started again, smoother. "I run a demanding team. Not everyone is built for it."

"No," she agreed. "Not everyone is."

The rain ticked against the glass.

"I'll be direct, Ms. Price, because I think you'd prefer that." She set the tablet down. "The Denver office is carrying three more managers than it needs. By the end of the quarter, it won't be. I'll be making those recommendations. Richard will sign whatever I give him."

My mouth had gone dry. "I understand."

"Do you?" She tilted her head. "Because I'd like you to understand everything. It will make this easier for both of us."

"I'm not sure I--"

"It was raining," Sofia said. "That day. Do you remember?"

And there it was.

I had rehearsed for this, and none of the rehearsals survived.

"Sofia--"

"You wanted a flat white. Oat milk, extra hot. Not the lobby." She said it evenly, like she was reading from a file. "You had a client from Portland in the conference room. You told me to take an umbrella, and you didn't give me one, so I didn't have one. When I came back you said I was dripping on the carpet like a wet dog. You told me to take my shoes off and clean it up. I did. The client watched. You went back into the meeting and presented my deck." She paused. "It was a good deck."

My face was burning. I could feel it in my ears, in the back of my neck.

"I was--I was a different person," I said. "I was under a lot of pressure. That's not an excuse, I know it isn't an excuse, but I--"

"I didn't ask for an explanation."

"No." I swallowed. "No, you didn't."

She waited. She didn't fill the silence. She simply sat there, one leg over the other, and waited, the way she used to wait in my doorway.

And I heard myself say it.

"I'm sorry."

The words came out rough, too fast, and then kept coming.

"I'm sorry, Sofia. I was cruel to you. I was cruel to you because you were better than me at everything I gave you, and I knew it, and I hated it. You didn't deserve any of it. I've thought about that day more times than I can--" I stopped. My hands were shaking in my lap. "I'm sorry."

Sofia studied me for a long moment.

"Thank you," she said at last. "That was more honest than I expected."

I let out a breath that I'd been holding for five years.

"But it doesn't change the numbers, Ms. Price."

"I know." And then, before I could stop myself--because the mortgage was in my head, and the word Senior, and the empty apartment with its beautiful floors--"I'll do whatever it takes."

Something moved in her face. Not a smile. The ghost of one, arriving and leaving.

"Whatever it takes," she repeated softly. "That's a very broad phrase."

"I mean it."

"People say that." Sofia uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way, slowly. "Usually they mean 'whatever is convenient.' Sometimes they mean 'whatever doesn't embarrass me.'" She let the silence hang. "Which do you mean?"

"Whatever it takes," I said again. My voice sounded very small in that big empty room.

She looked at me for a long time. Then she glanced down.

I followed her glance.

Her shoes were wet.

Nude patent leather, a thin four-inch heel, the red flash of the sole just visible where it pressed against the rug. There were beads of rain on the toes. A dark wet line ran along the edge where the leather met the sole. She must have walked in from the parking garage without an umbrella. Or maybe--

Maybe she'd walked across 17th Street. From Bluebird.

There was a paper cup on her desk. I hadn't noticed it before. Bluebird's blue logo, a lid, a little steam still curling from the opening.

"Terrible weather," Sofia said. "I went out for coffee. I didn't have an umbrella." She tilted her foot a little, turning it in the gray light from the window so the raindrops caught. "You had strong opinions about wet shoes, as I recall."

My heart was beating in my throat.

"Would you like me to call someone? Derek could--"

"Derek is busy." She set her foot flat on the rug again, very precisely. "And I didn't ask Derek."

The room was so quiet I could hear the building's air system breathing.

I understood what she wanted. I understood it the way you understand you're falling before you hit anything--not with your mind, but with your stomach.

This is insane, said a thin voice at the back of my head. Stand up. Walk out. Call HR. Call a lawyer.

And say what? The new director mentioned her shoes were wet?

She hadn't asked for anything. That was the brilliant part. She had only remembered something out loud.

I thought of the mortgage. I thought of Claire's slow sip of coffee. I thought of a twenty-three-year-old kneeling on this same carpet in her stockings while a client from Portland looked away.

I stood up.

Sofia's eyes followed me, unhurried.

I came around the corner of the desk. My heels sounded very loud. I stood beside her chair and for a second I was taller than her, looking down at the top of her dark head, and that felt wrong, it felt upside down, and I realized my knees were already bending.

The rug was thin. I felt it through my skirt. I was on my knees in the corner office at 4:09 on a Tuesday with the blinds half open, and my face was eighteen inches from a pair of wet Louboutins.

"Oh," said Sofia, with polite surprise, as if I'd offered to take her coat. "That's very kind."

"I don't--" I looked around. There were no paper towels. There was nothing. "I don't have anything to--"

"You have that scarf."

I touched my throat. Silk, blue and cream, Hermès, a gift to myself the day the promotion was announced. I had worn it today on purpose. It made me feel expensive.

I untied it.

My fingers were clumsy. The silk slid through them like water. I folded it into a pad the way you'd fold a napkin, and I looked up at her one more time, and she only looked back at me with that faint, patient interest, waiting.

I lifted her right foot.

I hadn't planned to lift it. I had meant to kneel down and pat at the shoe where it rested. But my hand went under her heel on its own, cupping it, and her foot rose into my palm like it had been waiting for exactly that. It weighed almost nothing. It weighed more than anything I had ever held.

I dried the toe first. Small, careful strokes. The rain beaded and disappeared into the silk. Then the side, the arch, the edge of the sole where the water had pooled. I could smell the leather, faintly, and something under it, warmer, a lotion or a perfume, vanilla and something green.

"You're gentle," Sofia observed. "I wouldn't have guessed that."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I was concentrating very hard on the stitching along the side of the shoe, and on not thinking about the fact that the blinds were only half closed.

"The heel," she said.

I dried the heel. The thin spike of it, all the way down, the little rubber tip.

"Now the other one."

I set her right foot down on the rug as carefully as if it might break. She lifted the left before I reached for it, and held it out in the air, a small effortless extension of her calf, and I took it.

This time my hands shook worse. I think it was because she was watching me more closely now. I could feel it on the top of my head like sunlight.

"You kept that scarf very neat," Sofia said. "Hermès?"

"Yes."

"It'll be ruined."

"It's fine."

"Is it?"

I looked at the scarf. It was dark in patches, wrinkled, a streak of gray from the street on the cream. A four-hundred-dollar rag.

"Yes," I said. "It's fine."

"Good."

When I was done I sat there on my heels with the wet silk in both hands and her shoes shining in front of me, and I didn't get up. I don't know why I didn't get up. Nobody had told me to stay down.

That's the part I kept thinking about later. Nobody told me.

"Thank you, Ms. Price," Sofia said, and uncrossed her legs, and set both feet flat on the rug side by side, and looked down at me with her coffee in her hand. "You may get up."

You may.

I got up. My knees ached. There were two faint gray prints on my navy skirt.

I went back around the desk and sat in the low chair. Sofia sipped her coffee. The rain went on.

"I want to be clear about something," she said, "so that you don't leave here confused. This is not a punishment."

"No?" It came out as barely a breath.

"No. I'm not interested in punishing you." She set the cup down, precisely centered on a coaster. "Punishment is fast. It's over quickly, and then everyone gets to feel they've paid. I don't want you to have paid."

"Then what--"

"This is a review," Sofia said. "Of your performance. Your conduct. Your character, frankly." She folded her hands. "Reviews take time. We'll meet every Tuesday at four. Derek will send the invitations. You'll come prepared."

"Prepared how?"

Her mouth curved. It was the first real smile I'd seen from her, and it was worse than all the others. It was small and warm and utterly confident, the smile of someone who already knew the ending of a book I'd only just started reading.

"You'll figure it out," she said. "You're very good at your job, Ms. Price. That was never the problem."

She picked up the tablet again. I thought I'd been dismissed. I actually started to rise.

"Oh--one more thing."

She opened the desk drawer and took out a small cream card, the heavy kind with a deckled edge, and slid it across the walnut toward me with two fingers.

I picked it up.

It was a reservation card. Guard and Grace. Thursday, 12:30. Party of two.

Guard and Grace was the most expensive steakhouse in the city. Lunch for two there, with wine, was the price of a car payment.

"I haven't had a proper lunch since I moved," Sofia said, already looking at her screen. "You'll join me."

"Of course." I turned the card over. It was blank on the back. "I'd love to. My treat, obviously. It's the least I--"

"Yes," she agreed. "It is the least."

I stood there holding the card, waiting for something else, a softer word, a sign that we were done.

Sofia glanced up once more. The rain was getting heavier behind her. Her shoes gleamed on the gray rug, dry now, perfect, as if nothing had ever happened to them.

"Same time next week, Ms. Price," she said. "Don't be late."

Her gaze dropped to the ruined scarf still clutched in my hand, then lifted back to my face, and she smiled that small warm smile.

"And bring your card."

* * *

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