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She laughed. “I’m just saying. Two giant mafia families are left in New York, and you just happen to be the assistant to a big player in the Vitelli family. I don’t want to see you get it, you know?”
When she said that to me, the ocean of sincerity in her eyes took the fun out of the whole outing for me. It was like when a mom warned you to be careful before you left the house. You wanted to have fun and enjoy yourself, but at the same time, you heeded her warning and had it in the back of your head. And that was the case with my friend’s words.
So, in the days leading up to my first day at work, I had two prominent thoughts that kept tugging at my brain. The first one was, of course, Tomaso's purpose for that phone call. It was on my mind even more after thinking about the mafia stuff that Chelsea had brought to the forefront. At no point was either thought stronger than the other. The only thing that might have been stronger was the fact that I was antsy to just get to that office. Those three days dragged on and on.
Eventually, that fateful Monday morning came, where I took the express bus from Staten Island into Manhattan. It wasn’t like your typical city bus. It was pricier, only made stops on the two islands and had cushioned seats. On any other day, I would not have cared about the express bus, but it was kind of soothing, given my mind. I had no idea what I would be in for regarding the job. It was a completely blank slate. My friend's words did not help my imagination.
I stopped off for a cup of coffee and made my way toward the office building on 57th Street once I was off the bus. I really enjoyed being a morning person. I loved seeing the hustle and bustle of tired New Yorkers marching their way to their jobs. Probably thinking about when lunch would be. I didn't have any food on my mind. I just wanted to get my day started and convince myself that I wasn't working for a mafia boss
I checked in and settled myself at my desk with a to-do list of things that needed to be accomplished throughout the day. The list consists of a lot of different emails, spreadsheets, and boring, mundane things that somehow excited me because I knew that I was on my journey to doing something new.
I arrived at 8am, and Tomaso was nowhere to be found. That made my leg shake beneath the desk. It was one thing to start my day and get into the groove of what working at the company was going to be like, but it was a whole other thing, waiting to see what our dynamic would be like in terms of boss and assistant. Then again, he wasn't just any boss. He was the boss that randomly called me one night and made me feel like I was somehow part of his mafia business. I could probably blame my friend Chelsea for that.
I was proud of myself because I got a good head start on everything I needed. Within twenty minutes, I had already finished my email tasks. A half-hour in, and I can handle a lot of his paperwork.
Just as I was calming down and feeling like things were going good, the curveball of his coming into work occurred. It was nine-thirty when he finally decided to come in. I knew he was the CEO. But I don't know. It rubbed me the wrong way that he came an hour and a half later after me. I knew he wasn't in a meeting before arriving because he had come with his briefcase and coffee. His cologne filled my nostrils but in a good way. He had a cinnamon-type smell. It also reminded me of the beach.
" Good morning." He said.
He gave me his eyes. I didn’t think he would give me eye contact, and I didn't know why. All I knew was that I was caught off guard by it. But I kept my cool. I could still act normal, even though nothing was normal about my situation. "Good morning."
He sat down, opened his laptop, and said nothing else. This was weird to me. I felt an ocean of discomfort wash over me. It wasn't the typical type of discomfort, though. It was this strange discomfort that kept me interested in the man. I kind of wanted to poke. I kind of wanted to get him to talk. And I most definitely wanted to know about that phone call.
" Why did you call me the other night? It was really strange. I hadn't even started my first day at work, and you were calling me rather late. And then, on top of that, you didn't even say goodbye."
He chuckled. " If I had said goodbye, would that have made the conversation on the phone normal?"
So he did know that it wasn't normal. Then why did he do it? It was like I asked one question and suddenly had a million others. " Yes. It would have made it a little bit more normal. But again, what was with that?"
He shrugged. " This is your first day on the job, and you're being rather inquisitive. You're being inquisitive about everything but the job."
I pursed my lips before saying. " I think the phone call had everything to do with his job, though. Call me crazy."
" You're crazy."
I smiled. I didn't want to smile, but it happened. He just had a way of penetrating my layers. Part of me was super defensive while sitting at my desk. But he had this ability to break through.
" Okay. I'm not going to push it anymore. I'm just going to sit here since you're not being honest. That's all." I said to him. I was shocked by how forthright I was. If I was him, I would definitely fire me on the spot. And I had no idea where my confidence was coming from with this man, but it kept rolling off my tongue. It was kind of fun to antagonize him. There was joy in trying to poke through his layers. Tit for tat. He was breaking down my walls without trying. I was actually going to try. There was no harm in trying to make the day go by quicker.
" You know you really shouldn't be speaking to me like that. I called you the other night and asked you about work, and that's it. There's nothing more to it than that. I don't appreciate the sarcasm, and I don't appreciate being spoken to in the manner that you're speaking to me."
His voice had a bite to it. There was an edge that cut deep. He had honestly put me in my place, as much as I didn't want to admit it. My eyes shot down to my desk, and I said nothing. Maybe I should have apologized, but even those words didn't want to come out.
To say that I was embarrassed and awkward after that was an understatement. There was nothing but silence that filled the room. I had this huge concern that moving forward, this was going to be our work dynamic. Because how do you come back from such a moment? Especially after having such a moment with your new boss, whom you barely knew. I guess, yeah, I had crossed the line. And I didn't know how to come back from it.
So, I buried my head in my work and didn't make any conversation after that little incident. Every now and then, I would look up from that computer out of habit just to see what he was doing. It was as though I wasn't even in the room. His eyes were trained on his laptop, and his fingers clicked away. It was kind of hard to believe that he was in the mafia. He seemed so normal. Sure, he was gorgeous with a jawline that looked like it was made out of stone. But I saw such a human side of him. I couldn't compare him to the person Chelsea had brought up at the bar. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't imagine it, even when he snapped at me.
As I sat there, letting my eyes drift upwards and toward him, maybe I was just a bad judge of character. Maybe I was just thinking with my vagina and hoping for a man to be more civil than he actually is. But again, how could a man who runs the mafia also run a huge company? There were so many questions about this person that I shouldn't have been there, and maybe I was naive.
It was lunch that was my turning point. I guess the time away had given me some sense. I went to this panini shop up the block to clear my head. Being alone helped to ground me.
The panini shop was like any other sandwich shop. I had cheesy paintings of sandwiches on the wall, light music from the '90s, and not enough space for anything other than sitting down and eating. I would have considered it a place I could go to every day for lunch because their prices were reasonable enough to not break the bank. But it wouldn't be my everyday spot because I had decided at lunch that I was not going to continue working at Vitelli Co. That's right when I looked at everything from every angle, my friend Chelsea was correct, and the day itself had proven to be weird enough for me to quit. I also was very unsure about that phone call. Something in my gut just wasn't sitting right.
As I ate my panini, this flat sandwich filled with salami, my breath grew quick, thinking about quitting so soon. Suddenly he did feel like a mafia man. Because I guess I was scared. I was scared to have to face him down. Especially after how he spoke to me before. But whatever, such was life. There was no way around those hard moments. Sometimes you just need it to rip the band-aid off, no matter how many hairs it is going to take with it.
So after my forty-five-minute break, I marched myself back to the office where Tomaso had been sitting at his desk. I had to briefly wonder whether he had left for lunch. It didn't seem like he had moved from the position he had been in.
He didn't look at me as I walked through the door. I guess he had been well equipped to tell who was entering his office with just his peripheral. He was going to have to look at me eventually, though, because I stood by his desk with my arms folded.
