She knows that he isn’t a nice man, but when she sees him, something deep inside of her comes alive.
Nice is boring. Nice is accomodating and listens to excuses.
Shantay is used to nice. She is always the nicest receptionist at the company where she works and if she keeps it up, she’ll be promoted for sure. Everyone in the building knows her, they hate when they call the office and anyone other than her answers.
“When are you gonna come be my assistant?” the women and men who worked on the upper floors liked to ask her, and even though most of them were serious, she’d been hired by the manager of the business who wouldn’t let her take any other job. She was well compensated to ensure that never happened.
The company where Shantay worked manufactured brake pads and most of the employees in the building, where she was the first floor receptionist, were white collar workers who made decisions about the quantity of brake pads to manufacture, and also distribution of the product around the world to wholesalers.
Devon was a sales analyst and when he arrived to the building every morning where his office was on the fourth of five floors, he would lean onto Shantay’s desk, showing off the expensive cufflinks he usually wore on his perfectly pressed white button-down shirt, and run a hand through the thick brown hair on his head. He was clean shaven and Shantay noticed that his eyes were as expressive as his mouth – when he smiled with his mouth, his eyes somehow smiled too.
“I did it, and I got a promotion,” he says when he sees her this morning. He is wearing a light blue coat over his white shirt and his hair is neatly cropped on his head.
“I can’t believe you would do that to somebody,” Shantay says. She’s standing at the kiosk on the wall opposite the building entrance in the lobby, and because he leans onto the top of the kiosk bar, she looks down at him.
He stands and then sits on top of the bar to look into her eyes at her level – he is about a foot taller than her when they stand.
“I’m trying to get to the top, you know that,” he says. “And when I’m running this company, making crazy money, I’m gonna marry you and we’re gonna have beautiful beige babies together.”
Shantay laughs despite her disappointment in him. She shakes her head slowly.
“Devon, I love you,” she says slowly. She stops as a few employees enter. When they’re on the elevator, she continues. “But I was hoping that after we talked, you would make a different decision. We don’t have to have a lot of money to have beige babies. We could be doing that now.”
He puts a lightly tanned, white hand on her dark brown cheek and she touches his hand. She loves the way he touches her. He is always gentle but firm, and she could lose herself with the certainty that he would hold her.
“You trust me?” he asks her.
“I love you,” she says without hesitation, “but I can’t trust someone who would do what you did.”
Devon moves to kiss her and she lets him. The way he enjoys her, makes Shantay feel appreciated and wanted.
She pushes him away.
“We can’t do this here,” she says.
“It’s Friday,” he says, “it’s light work here on Friday. The phone hardly rings. Let’s take the day, we can talk. You have to understand by now, babe, I’m stacking for the future, and you know we’re going to need a lot to raise kids these days.”
“Fine,” she says and calls for a replacement at the front desk. They leave in separate cars and when they are at his apartment in uptown, she sits on a stool at the bar in his kitchen.
“I only left because it’s the only way we would actually have time to talk,” she says. “I don’t need to spend all my waking hours with you, but I think sometimes that I only love your body. The more I learn about your personality, I don’t know, I wonder if we make sense. How could you do that to someone, Devon? Even for money. You killed someone.”
Devon shakes his head. He leans against the sink with his shirt unbuttoned and open.
“You know what my job is?” he asks her.
“You analyze sales numbers,” she says, “and make estimates for each quarter.”
“Right, and the head of my department has consistently failed to maximize our profits because he’s meek with his projections to avoid surplus.”
“Yeah,” Shantay says, “you said that. I understand, Devon, I know how the company works by now. And even though it’s a rough business, it pays well and I guess I can ignore all the horrors for that reason. But Devon, I love you, and getting close to you like we have is making the abstract very real for me. I know how suites like you operate, you stand out by any means necessary to climb the ladder and the company will sacrifice anything for profits. You’ve made that reality very clear to me. And I don’t know if I can keep working for a company that consumes its employees for profit anymore. I felt removed from that, it’s how I slept at night, but I can’t anymore.”
“Do you know what my former boss’s salary was?” Devon asks her.
“I’m sure it was something crazy.”
“He made five hundred thousand a year,” he says. “Now, that’s me. It’s us. We can get married now, babe.”
“But you killed him,” Shantay says and a tear wells up in each of her eyes.
“I didn’t kill anybody!” Devon yells and slams a fist on the bar. He takes deep breaths to calm himself. “I showed the higher ups a better way to run my department and I got a promotion. It’s not my fault he lost his job. He should have worked smarter.”
“What happens when you fifth floor guys get fired?” Shantay asks.
Devon shakes his head and crossed his arms at his chest.
“You have to make sacrifices to the company,” she says, “the beasts must be fed. I can hear it, you know, in the basement. My first day, the lady that trained me told me about the noises I’d probably hear toward the end of the day before we left. The monster in the basement. I never quite understood why a company needs a monster in the basement, but you all agree to it when you take those jobs making absurd amounts of money. You give them your life in exchange for money because you care more about money than you do anything else. What happens when you get fired, Devon? It’s all good ’cause I’ll have money to raise our beige kids on my own?”
“Yeah,” he says sincerely. “If I get fired and fed to the beast, then you’ll have plenty of money. But I won’t get fired. Because I’m only going up. I will retire at the top. And I’ll send anyone to the beast to get there.”
Shantay shakes her head.
The two have sex for the rest of the afternoon.
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