The Darlings by Cristina Alger

Instead, he wrestled through the nights, his thoughts pulling him in and out of consciousness. The constant mental fight made him irritable. He had never had a temper before. Some days, he felt as if his entire body were a raw nerve, its membrane receptive even to the smallest passing slight.
    â€œListen, Alexa, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just having a really bad day. I can meet. Not for long, but I can meet. How close are you?”
    He heard the plaintive wail of an ambulance through the phone, and then realized that he could hear it just outside his window, too.
    â€œI’m a couple of blocks from your building,” she said. “Near MoMA. Can we meet there?”
    â€œI’ll be right down,” he said. “I’ll meet you just inside the doors.”

WEDNESDAY, 3:06 P.M.
    M arina Tourneau stood in the doorway, watching her boss. Duncan was hunched over the light-box table in the corner of his office. It had been custom built to match his desk, and the glow from it illuminated his silver hair. Her eyes were instantly drawn south to his argyle socks. Duncan didn’t like to wear shoes while he worked. He typically took them off before entering his office and left them in the hallway, beneath the coat rack. No one knew whether this was a matter of comfort, or if he was trying to preserve the pristine white carpets that he had also had custom installed, or if it was simply one of his cultivated eccentricities. Duncan’s socks were like most men’s ties: a flash of color, a punctuation. Argyle was his favorite.
    The shoe issue had gotten his last assistant, Corinne, fired. Or at least, that was the water cooler version. After the carpets were put in, Duncan had suggested to Corinne that she should remove her shoes before entering his office. This was her last straw; a screaming row ensued. Corinne threatened to file a sexual harassment claim against him (the rest of the office found this very funny). Duncan promptly fired her, or threatened to and she quit, which was how Marina had gotten her job. Marina had been at
Press
for less than a week when someone told her this story. Overwhelmed, she had picked up a pint of frozen yogurt on the way home, eaten it for dinner in front of the television, and cried. All she could think was how embarrassing it would be if she were required to pad shoeless around her boss’s office, like some sort of geisha.
She had gone to Princeton, for God’s sake
 . . .
Would she have to buy new socks?
She certainly couldn’t afford to, given what
Press
was paying her.
    After eighteen months as Duncan’s assistant, this story had lost all shock value. Marina had grown accustomed to his peculiar brand of fastidiousness, and to his outrageous and sometimes morally questionable requests, and to the tantrums he threw when his world order was tampered with. She had become, she thought, a remarkably patient person.
    Duncan’s face was so close to the surface of the light box, and his arms were splayed out in such a way that for a split second Marina thought he might be dead. She stepped closer. He was looking at some photographs through a loupe. When he was working, Duncan had an uncanny ability to remain still for minutes at a time, far longer than the average person. It seemed to absorb him wholly. Sometimes, Marina found this inspiring. On the days she wanted to leave at a reasonable hour, it was profoundly frustrating. Holidays were the worst. It was almost as though he wasn’t aware of them. Marina often wondered if this was because he had no one with whom he could celebrate. That was sad, but not sad enough for her to feel anything but irritated by him.
    The sound of the cleaning lady’s vacuum filled the hallway behind her. Marina sighed.
    She had said good-bye to the last editor over an hour ago, and she was beginning to give up hope that she could leave the office in time to get her hair done. Her