Page 5 of Catch a Kiwi
“Yes.” She sat down. Tidily, the way Esther did most things. She had to be—what? In her late thirties? Around my own age. I’d aged, though, while she looked almost the same as she had when she’d first walked into my office fifteen years ago, gazed around at the desk made of an old door and two sawhorses, at the milk crates that served as filing cabinets and the profusion of sticky notes, and told me I needed to hire her. Same dark hair pulled back into a low knot, so tightly that you could barely see how curly it was, same conservative dark dresses, same nearly unlined skin, dark enough that you guessed at her ethnicity, but not so dark that you knew the answer. Somewhat like me.
The woman hadn’t got any less composed over that time, either. “I watched him to the lifts,” she said. “And waited for the floor indicator to show he’d left.” She pulled a check out of an envelope and set it in front of me. “Sign it, and I’ll nip into the post office so he’ll have it Monday. I should just have time.”
“Pissing down out there,” I commented.
“Sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”
I grinned. “Raining pretty hard.”
“I won’t melt,” she said. “Before I leave—your flat here will be all right”—it was at the top of one of Dunedin’s many hills, so it had better be—“and the cyclone didn’t cause much damage in Auckland, but there’s flooding starting down in the Catlins. Would you like me to have somebody check on it?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
She didn’t argue, just nodded.
“You don’t have an opinion?” I don’t know why I asked it. Curiosity, maybe.
“You don’t pay me to have an opinion,” she said. “You pay me to handle the results ofyouropinions.”
“True enough,” I said. “Maybe I want one, though.”
“I think hiring Jordan was a mistake, then,” she said. “He’s clever enough. Knows enough. Not much character, though. No mana.” The kind of follow-me grunt and performance that earned you respect without your seeking it, she meant. The kind that made you a leader.
“Could you see that?” I asked. “At the interview?”
“Yes.”
“Next time, if you think I’m going wrong, tell me.”
“All right,” she said, still unruffled.
“You’re not making a note,” I pointed out. I don’t know why. Teasing, maybe, though Esther was tease-proof. Now,shehad mana.
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I’ll remember.” And got up to go.
I knew she needed to leave to get that check into the post, but as she reached the door, I said, “I should sack you, come to that.”
She stilled, then turned. “Pardon?”
“It’s been fifteen years, and you’re still my assistant. Bloody hell—ah, crikey—but you could probably do that Director of Operations job yourself by now. What’s the problem? Confidence? Hard to believe. Love? Even harder. I’m not an actual troll, but?—”
“You pay me well,” she said.
“Too right I do. But I’d pay you more in the kind of job you should be doing. Why have you stayed?”
“Because you need me.”
“I could get another assistant.”
“Not as good as me.”
“Well, no, but?—”
“If that’s all, then,” she said, “I’ll be off. If you get to the house and need help after all, let me know.” And left.
I smiled, now, remembering. What would she do if I told her, “Up or out”? Would she take a promotion? Or would she quit? I wasn’t going to find out. Serve me right if she did quit. Everybody had the right to determine their own path, however mad it looked to me. And frankly, I had no idea what Esther’s path was. She’d never told me a thing about her personal life. She wore no ring and displayed no photos. If she kept so much as a cat, I didn’t know about it.
Up another hill, then down again on the shingled road. Around the hairpin turn, the sporty car gripping the roadway with satisfying competence, and the road sloping downward more sharply, the road narrower than ever. Not another soul out here, as I’d expected, and I wasn’t getting here a moment too soon. Thingsweregoing to flood before long, and the house?—
