Chapter Text
A knock on the door.
"Come in."
Rey pushes the door open, enters, and closes it behind her. The sounds of hands typing away at keyboards, phones ringing and mindless chit-chats between cubicles fade out.
Meyer's sitting at his desk in his white short-sleeve shirt, slightly turned away from the door. He pivots on his chair and lifts his nose up from his phone.
"Doriot. What is it?"
"Can I have a minute with you?" She asks, standing by the door.
"Um, of course."
Rey takes a seat in the chair facing her manager's desk. She rapidly looks over the letter she's holding, then hands it to him.
Meyer takes it with a small frown.
"I quit," she comments.
He freezes, letter in hand.
She thought maybe her heart would be beating faster, even if just a little bit more than usual, but no, not at all.
So strange how seemingly important decisions can be made with such ease. She might not even need a whole minute after all, because there isn't much more to say.
But seeing how Meyer is staring at her, she can safely assume he has a few questions.
Still she doesn't expect his first one to be this:
"... are you sure?"
She blinks.
Then shrugs.
"Uh, yeah. I'm sure."
"You... you---" Meyer sits up and rubs his eyes.
She's been working for eight years for this man, and she hasn't seen him once this confused.
And seeing him confused confuses her. A lot. She didn't think he would care in the slightest.
"Uh..."
He covers his mouth with his hand for a few seconds, reading the letter, before mumbling:
"You're gonna have to bring one of those to HR--"
"I already did."
"You already did..." He repeats to himself. "Rey ---can I call you Rey?"
She's been working for eight years for this man.
"Yes, Meyer, you can call me Rey."
"May I ask... why, you're quitting?"
She stares blankly at him.
She's completely numb inside, as usual, so calling to mind all the reasons she has to quit is a challenge in and of itself.
Mainly, she quits because she has a really hard time getting up every morning, hence having to do so to sell supposedly organic cough syrups to the ederly doesn't help.
She always thinks to herself that every day she shows up at work is a day she hasn't thrown herself from her third floor window instead.
She's pondering whether she should tell him that or not, until she realizes he must not be trying to find out why, as much as why now.
She sighs quietly.
"Some notary called me yesterday--"
"Some? notary?..." he repeats, incredulous.
"...to tell me that I apparently have a great-aunt in France... "
"...apparently..."
"Well, had. And apparently she died. Now I have a house there. So... Yeah." She shrugs again. "I'm moving to France."
She's aware that her tone is flat, and she'd like to be more present, animated, anything really, but no matter how much the circumstances require her to care, she doesn't have it in her to behave accordingly.
She doesn't have enough energy to put on a show.
To act like this is some life-changing decision when nothing is going on inside her.
The look on Meyer's face is telling.
"...yesterday?"
Rey inhales deeply, narrowing her eyes, then looks up, to try and focus.
"...was it yesterday? Or two days ago? Uh..."
She hesitates, scratching her chin. "Yeah. Yesterday."
She zones out for a few seconds. Then scrunches her nose, cocking her head to the side.
"--you know what? Maybe not. Did Lombardi call in sick yesterday, or on Monday? I don't remember."
Meyer's disbelief deepens. His eyes narrow some more.
"He called in sick yesterday," he confirms.
"Ah," she nods. "Yesterday then. Got the call at lunch."
He lets out a nervous chuckle, rubbing his forehead.
"Isn't the decision a bit... premature?"
Weird how the question sounds rhethorical and genuine at the same time.
She actually takes a few seconds to reflect on that.
"Yeah," she finally says. "Probably."
"Don't you want a bit more time before--"
She cuts him off:
"Uh, no, no need. I won't know what's good for me in a week any more than I do now, so..."
"I was more thinking a month, but okay--"
He stares at her letter again, without really reading it, because there's nothing to find there that she hasn't told him out loud. But he's not dismissing her, so he's buying some time: what for? Hard to say.
"That's... that's a... dangerous way to live," he ends up saying.
She frowns.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that..." A pause. "That's a precarious future you're setting for yourself, don't you think?"
Rey's trying.
She's really trying to care, but most times she's only able to vaguely sense that she should care.
It hasn't always been like this.
When she was little, she was something. That's what all the adults who would enter in contact with her would say.
Even with the shitty set of cards she was dealt, she was a wild fire, feeling everything intensely -essentially going through life like it really was worth living.
Despite her Momma's addiction.
Despite not knowing her father, despite the money lacking.
Despite her Momma's overdose when she turned eighteen.
What ends up wearing her out isn't any of those things.
Until she gets her first solid, serious job, she still feels like life has a lot to offer.
It's a cold, treacherous realization that rolls over her then, the first weeks she spends doing a nine-to-five while persisting to project all kinds of silly dreams onto the future.
Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years.
Reality hits her hard.
All this time up to that point, she hung in there with the promise that eventually, she'd get her piece of the cake.
The desillusion when she discovers that the cake is a full time office job that barely leaves her the energy to drool over the remote control on the week-ends and that this is it, this is what she'll have to settle for, it doesn't get better than this -that desillusion is unforgiving.
A precarious future.
Yeah no shit.
She thinks about Devon, a nice boy she meets at a bar when she's twenty, whose relationship with her lasts four years but ultimately doesn't survive her desillusion.
Meanwhile, friends figure it out, get married and move away.
And she can't be bothered to make new ones, preferring to nurse her desillusion instead.
Oh yeah, precarious could definitely be one way to define her social life.
She spends all of her time outside office hours at her flat.
On her couch, to be more specific.
Living the simple life.
...eating whatever's left in the cupboards of her kitchen, until there's really nothing left and she has to go grocery shopping, which obviously she does every now and then but not before starving herself for whatever length of time -because she'd rather go hungry than get out and be around people.
Whatever she does -not much- she does it alone.
She's incapable of making small talk with her colleagues, incapable of flirting with strangers who hit on her -and she can't even face her neighbors, people who have the audacity to be all neighbourly and come knock on her door to include her, or some other friendly shit of the kind.
When that happens she just turns the lights of her living-room off and stop moving and breathing completely to be sure that no noise betray her presence -even though it's most likely that they always hear her before they even knock.
She wills them away as hard as she can until they do leave.
All the while muttering things like fucking unbelievable and what do they want from me? in the dark.
Can't they just pretend like she's dead?
That's just her luck, having neighbors who check on her -how fucking rude.
A precarious future.
She sighs heavily.
"Boo," she starts, because she's quitting so who cares- "...Life is precarious. Alright? The sun will burn up the earth one day. There is no point in any of this," she goes on, gesturing to his office around them, "...like, none, absolutely zero."
Funny how the only thing she can get passionate talking about, is that there's no good reason for anyone to be passionate about anything in life ever.
"How any of us get up in the morning to do anything, is a mystery. You're trying to find meaning in me quitting, but what's the point of me working here?"
She's still using her hands? Damn.
"There is no point. Life is meaningless, and then one day we die."
Meyer's predictably at a loss for words.
"...o-kay."
"...I'm unhappy here, I'm going to check what it's like to be unhappy in France, and that's it, really."
"Wow."
She clasps her hands with another sigh, and gets up. "Okay, so... It was nice knowi---well," she interrupts herself, searching for something more accurate: "--it was nice sharing numbers with you, and... following your directives, I guess."
He straightens up. "Wait, you can't just leave, we won't transfer you your pay. There's a prior notice to respect---"
She cuts him off.
"It's okay, Meyer----Rolland? Can I call you Rolland? What a ball we're having. Keep everything, I don't care. God knows the big chief needs it more than me, right?" She asks, pointing at the ceiling.
"Why don't you give him the money?"
She turns and opens the door.
"Alright, see you."
...then walks out of Meyer's office.
How many minutes was that total? Three?
She goes straight to her cubicle.
Getting there, though, she winces when she looks at it -at her desk, her computer, her post-its and stapler and organizer ---she's nauseous.
She needs to go now.
So she leaves everything as it is.
Putting her jacket on, she sees Meyer standing in the doorway of his office, looking at her, clearly still confused but also resigned already, somehow.
She glances around.
Her colleagues are on the phone, or writing emails, or whatever the fuck, and no one is really paying attention to her. She won't be missed.
She walks up to the lift, and doesn't look back.
Fuck off, London.
Bonjour la Drôme.