Tightropes

Chapter 1: Keeping the Job a Little Longer

Before I met Harry Osborn, several people hinted he would fire me. None of them knew him personally. The thought followed me ever since my phone call with the Osborn's lawyer, Pamela Krasinski. She called my office phone soon after I arrived, setting my folded and wet umbrella on the unoccupied coat hook. My dark brown hair was pulled into a ponytail, but the rain managed to frizz my bangs.

The phone's quiet ringtone trilled as I set my blonde roast coffee on the desk's white surface. I let it ring once more while sitting down and taking my wrapped bagel from my work tote.

The third ring lasted a short second before I grabbed the phone. "Norman Osborn's office."

The irony of Mr. Osborn not visiting his office in over a year was not lost on me. My office was also seventeen floors below his CEO suite.

Krasinski placed an appointment to see Mr. Osborn about finalizing his will –for the third time that April.

Before hanging up, she sighed wearily as if the idea of that visit taxed her. She threw in, "If Norman doesn't change his mind about Harry, you might be out of a job." The call end tone struck my ears.

Between responding to queries and finishing breakfast, I wondered if my boss had said something to Krasinski or someone else on the board of directors. To my understanding, Mr. Osborn and his son were estranged. Minor details like what to do with the personal assistant wouldn't come up.

The question faded from my priorities by the afternoon, when I attended a presentation in Nanotech Division C. They used an interactive hologram projector, an Oscorp staple, to demonstrate nanoshells attacking cancerous tumors. Vice President Menken and several other executives sat at the head of the table while I wrote notes from the far end.

If Mr. Osborn were well, he would have attended. Instead, that past year had me taking notes for a largely inactive CEO. By that spring, Mr. Osborn's remaining instructions involved preparing an easy transition for Harry. My concise and high-lighted notes would go to him.

Menken's personal assistant, seated beside me, zipped shut his padfolio at the presentation's end. Looking at me through his black-rimmed glasses, the slightly older man asked, "Nervous about your new boss?"

I never made it a point to befriend coworkers, let alone gossip. "Should I be?" I fished for anything he might have heard while pretending to glance over my notes.

He shrugged nonchalantly, as if we weren't discussing so serious. "Who knows? He might not want someone who was his dad's favorite."

My eyes slowly dragged from the paper to his unassuming, inquisitive brow. Only then did I bother looking at the nametag clipped to his lapel – "Chad Pendleton." Looking to be in his early 30s, he had a distinctive nose and coiffed black hair. We had crossed paths before in Oscorp, but we never spoke. Now that he'd opened his mouth, I felt glad we didn't normally talk.

"Mr. Osborn isn't much of a people person," I insisted before smoothly standing and escaping to the stairway, my office only four floors higher.

There had been two other PAs, both older men who spent years working for Mr. Osborn. When his health declined, he let them go but kept me. At 25-years-old, I was the youngest personal assistant and, even worse, a woman. To my coworkers, this evidence meant Mr. Osborn wanted to sleep with me. Chad wasn't the first to suggest it, just the first to say my boss' son might fire me for it.

With this on my mind, I stayed in my office with its glass walls, leaving me exposed to every curious look. I felt hyper aware when I wanted to be obliviously engaged in sorting Mr. Osborn's e-mails. Months ago, he set his account to forward all incoming e-mails into mine. Again, more information and decisions I organized for Harry's visit to Oscorp on Monday.

He spoke with his father yesterday. No one knew what was said.

At six o'clock, the lock to my office clicked into place as I left for the day. I wanted to stop by the grocery store and be back at my apartment before dark. My dry umbrella hid in my black work tote as I exited the glass elevator and went into the lobby.

My e-mail alert's chiming went off as I passed through security. The guard scanned my ID's barcode and waved me through past a large, bullet-proof glass wall with the Oscorp logo emblazoned on it. I moved aside from the stream of exiting personnel to check my cell phone.

Preethi had sent a message from her work e-mail at the Daily Bugle. As a page designer who never wrote headlines, she liked to make up for it in sensational subject lines like today's "Hello Hot Young Boss!"

Keeping my phone screen angled away from any curious looks, I opened the e-mail and saw his face.

The first, and for years only, time I saw Harry was in a magazine. My senior year of college, I still had time to read magazine subscriptions. The person in the photo I saw now looked different from the seventeen-year-old strolling arm in arm with a popular French actress in Cannes. They looked good together, smiling coolly as a breeze off the water ruffled her dress.

This time, the camera caught him looking over his shoulder while climbing into a town car. Harry's tweed jacket blended in with the city's grey hues.

I tried figuring where the Bugle could have taken this photo. The photographer carefully framed Harry in the car door, its window blurring the buildings. It would be a good shot if Harry's dour expression and the bags under his eyes didn't age him.

Between the two photos, I wondered what sort of person I could expect for Monday.

The door's locks clicked into place, and I breathed easy at finally being alone. Setting my paper bag of groceries on the kitchen countertop, I fished my cell phone from its pocket in my purse. A voicemail popped up, so I let it play while unpacking my yogurts, pre-made wraps, and almond milk.

"Hi sweetheart, how are you doing?" Over the phone, my mother sounded far away. "I've been calling you, but maybe you're busy. Well, we know you work hard and make us proud." The tightness of her high voice made the cheeriness seem insincere.

I listened, unconcerned, while turning on my electric tea kettle.

"We heard about Norman Osborn dying-"

Whatever she said next eluded me. My mother wasn't a person for fine details and would mix up whether someone was near dying or already dead. If that had happened, someone would have notified me immediately.

"-doing okay? Paul said assistants and their bosses can get close…"

I stopped perusing the tea cabinet and turned my head to look back at the phone. The part of me still angry at Krasinski and Chad knew where this was going.

"Then he said they might let you go, that the new CEO might want to hire-"

The call mercifully ended when I tapped the delete icon. Even from Minnesota, my mother could prove how little she knew me. At best, it was a quirk. At worst, it was assuming I'd ever sleep with my boss.

Grabbing the tea blend I made for sleeping, I kept my expression impassive. Maybe a non-reaction would stop those little comments circling in my head, ready to steal my sleep later. With too much of the night left, I called Preethi while the kettle gave its first puff of smoke.

Hearing her hello, I launched into my first thought. "Hey, where did the Bugle get that photo of Harry Osborn?"

"That? Um, I think it was Saturday afternoon… I used it for tomorrow's edition." She spoke slowly, unsure.

The filled tea ball clinks against the mug's ceramic walls. "What's the story now?"

"No one told you? I figured you'd be giving me some insider info," she said in mild disbelief and, to my embarrassment, pity. "Norman Osborn just died. The call came in that he died right before seven."

Part of me felt a little empty, like I needed to eat.

"No, no one told me." I poured the water, careful not to spill. "Any news on his son?"

I noticed steam billowing from the kettle and turned it off.

"He's one elusive kid," Preethi lightly remarked, not sharing in the field reporters' plights. "At Sochi, no one could get a comment. He was at the closing ceremonies, dating some Spanish province."

"What?" I asked, holding my mug and dragging myself to a bar stool. With little effort, my dangling feet slipped out of my heels. "He brought a Spanish province? No wonder Mr. Osborn is - was concerned about that trust fund," I tried joking, but neither of us liked my humor.

"That would've actually been cool, but it was just a supermodel, Valencia Vitaly. She was in that perfume ad, the one in the subway, gosh, which one was it…?"

"I don't think he's dating anyone. Mr. Osborn usually complained when he was." I took the tea ball out and dropped it into the sink just behind the bar. "So nothing? Really nothing on him?"

Preethi's tone came off disinterested. "No. The main focus is Norman Osborn. The article mentions Harry, that he's been in Europe for years. Nothing we haven't printed before." She sounded done with the conversation.

"Did Jameson get you down?" I asked, figuring I shouldn't leave the conversation without asking about her life.

"You know, the usual with him. Well hey, I'm still at work and need to get home. Call me if you hear anything interesting."

We said goodbyes and ended the call. Our short phone calls fell flat more often those days. I wondered if our friendship was growing stale at half a decade.

Maybe New York had worn it down. Maybe I had.

The next morning, one very important thing was empty – the CEO suite. Being Harry's first day working at Oscorp, I needed to introduce myself and touch base. Menken scheduled a board meeting for today, and he certainly held no intention of helping Harry. Mr. Osborn once told me so much.

Deciding that updating him over the phone trumped no communication, I looked for him in my contacts list. My eyes glanced down the short list to read the office number, the apartment number, but no cell phone.

Then I remembered planning to get his cell phone number when we met. My mind jumped in two directions—try locating his number in the executive employee database and if this meeting was in a half hour, then Harry should be in the building. My attention remained split even as my fingers typed my personnel code into the database clearance to access executive info.

If Harry was in Oscorp, then he'd have visited his office. With the meeting at nine, there would be no time for him to explore anywhere else.

My search came up with his name, title, and office phone. Every other information box was blank, including the photo. He certainly hadn't been getting his employee card this morning.

A few swigs of coffee warmed my insides and soothed some of my nerves but not enough. Without that employee card, he wouldn't be inside Oscorp. We used those at almost every door.

I bit into my morning bagel and checked the time. I was five minutes closer to the meeting and what felt like miles from finding my new boss.

Unwilling to think Harry as the irresponsible trust fund kid the board pegged him, I called the office of the man most against him. Important information tended to end up there.

"Donald Menken's office," Chad's deep, slightly nasal voice came over my speakerphone.

"I'm calling to confirm Mr. Osborn's meeting this morning."

His tone sounded skeptical. "Shouldn't I be confirming with you? That kid sent out an e-mail this morning about changing the meeting location. You should know that," Chad condescended.

I forced myself not to get defensive, not with nine o'clock getting closer. "Where is the meeting now?"

Chad let time pass as he slowly mulled over the answer. "Menken took a town car to the old Osborn penthouse, the same place Norman Osborn did meetings while he was sick but not quite halfway in the grave yet."

I could only guess who encouraged his lack of respect for the Osborns.

"This meeting doesn't really need us PAs there," he drawled conversationally.

"Thanks." I curtly ended the call.

Menken didn't need Chad for tearing down Harry. The board stood behind him for that. So, I tucked my breakfast into a drawer and grabbed my purse. Twenty minutes separated me from that meeting.

I locked my office door before rushing down the hallway and around a corner to the elevators. A small cluster of people milled around, hanging back to board one of the four elevators. The doors nearest to me opened. I threw myself ahead of everyone and stretched my arms out, blocking the entrance.

"This elevator is first floor only." The looks I received ranged from confused to irritated, possibly angry.

An intern with a back-pack tentatively raised his hand for permission. My arm dropped long enough for him to scurry inside.

Finally, someone found their voice. "You can't dictate who can and can't ride the elevator." A black haired woman in a lab coat took an authoritative step closer.

I dropped my arms to my sides and retreated into the elevator. My shoulders squared as my head tilted up defiantly.

"I'm the Osborns' assistant," I said, causing her eyes to dart to my ID badge. "And this is an executive matter."

The doors closed before anyone could do more than try killing me with glares. A small wave of relief swept over me while I leaned against a glass wall and released my breath. The intern, avoiding me, watched the floors go by. Another person had already been on the elevator and was now looking at me in bemusement.

The woman leaned an arm on her mail cart and, in her Staten Island accent, asked, "You nervous?"

My lips pressed together. Surely she didn't think I was getting fired too. I forced my paranoia beneath planning how to get to the meeting faster.

"No."

She nodded, looking at me with mild disbelief.

The doors swept open, freeing me from one painful social situation so I could race to my next.

Bribing the taxi driver with a twenty dollar bonus for arriving on time was worth it. 9:00 shown on my cell phone while I trotted up a grand staircase in the Osborn residence. With the board room so close, I focused on those double doors and only slowed down to open them.

Over a decade before I was born, Norman Osborn outfitted this room to be where the future of his burgeoning company developed. A large window, framed with blue curtains, cast warm morning light down the long table, to the unused fireplace. The wood-paneled walls looked almost golden in the light.

I surreptitiously glanced over the board of directors, all familiar faces. Our aged Chief Operations Officer, Jim Donhowe, pondered too deeply over his glass of water to give his usual nod 'hello.' Several seats down from him, Krasinski sat with her back straight and lips in a thin line.

Whether this upset was from Norman's going or Harry's coming, I supposed it was both.

I discreetly took the seat beside the fireplace, farthest from the notably empty head of the table. I set my tote on the floor, leaned up with notepad in hand, and there he was, taking his place far from me. Harry appeared with no more warning than that.

The first time I saw Harry in person, I disliked his haircut. His brown hair was cut short and styled straight with bangs swooping to the right. He wore his suit well, though.

Menken, accustomed to being in charge, opened by discussing the company stocks and investors. I kept my head down and wrote meeting notes, the only purpose I had there.

He sounded every bit like he was helping someone, like a kid, who needed his judgment. "Harry, Oscorp's been under intense public scrutiny in the wake of Dr. Connors' recent breach of trust."

Harry, seemingly pondering a small black box in the palm of his hand, faced away from Menken. "You mean people are pissed off 'cause he tried to turn everyone in New York City into giant lizards."

I stopped writing to take in the uneasiness coming over the board members.

"Given that," our vice president continued, slightly perturbed, "all of the animal-human hybrid projects he was involved in have been destroyed to restore investor confidence."

Those had been high-profile projects, and Norman Osborn disagreed about discontinuing them. The best minds at Oscorp's disposal were poured into them.

With my head bent over my notepad, I heard the turn of a chair as Harry nonchalantly said, "That is the Osborn way. Whatever is inconvenient around here, just get rid of it, right?"

Intent hid beneath his flippant statement.

"Much of that scrutiny may fall on you now." Menken feigned sympathy. "We felt that plausible deniability was your best option."

"Sure, sure," he said, initially sounding like he agreed when really, he completely swept aside the older man's advice. "I get it. Twenty-year-old kid. Two hundred billion dollar company – what was dad thinking?"

I heard a few board members near me shifted uncomfortably at being called out on their very apprehensions about him.

"You're all lawyers, right? Surely someone must have questioned his sanity in the end," Harry continued, letting loose thinly veiled hostility. "Someone must have thought of having him declared legally incompetent – would've made this conversation a lot easier."

I peeked down the table, where Harry's striking blue eyes stared down Menken.

He smiled, like he expected as much. "Harry—"

But Harry was finished. "It's Mr. Osborn."

The arrogant, upturned edges of Menken's smile disappeared.

"We're not friends," he coldly reminded with an imperceptible shake of his head.

Menken kept his mouth clenched shut and slowly broke eye contact. No one looked directly at Harry. I didn't look at Harry.

A sense of embarrassment came over me. I had become stressed and bribed a taxi with the now silly notion that Harry needed my thought would seem funny later, I hoped while staring down at my notepad. My pen hovered over the next line, ready for the inevitable change of subject.

"Hi."

My first thought was, 'Not me.' It's like in school, right before the teacher calls your name. I knew it was me. So, I lifted my chin and allowed myself to hesitate before looking around the curtain of my hair.

At the end of the tunnel of confused board members, there sat Harry, watching me curiously.

"You were his assistant, right?" His voice came out softer, trying not to misdirect his anger at me.

Not trusting my voice, I nodded and gave a high-pitched "mhm."

"What's your name?" Harry spoke quietly as if this conversation could be just between us.

"Felicia." My mouth barely opened to say it, but I managed my name with dignity.

"Felicia," Harry said, testing and remembering it. He addressed the board. "From now on, everyone here works for Felicia, because Felicia works for me."

Krasinski gave me a bewildered glance through her round frames. He essentially called me their new boss. My chin tilted a little higher.

Addressing the board, his tone hardened again. "Would anybody like to speak up?" Satisfied to see men more than twice his age avoiding eye contact, Harry continued, "Well good. Then you can all keep your jobs a little longer."

Before the humiliation of the board could continue, a butler discreetly appeared at Harry's side and relayed a message. He spoke too quietly for me to hear, but Menken leaned in to listen.

Harry looked down thoughtfully at the tiny black box I suddenly recognized as a hard drive. His brow furrowed, making him look torn.

Reluctantly, he made his choice. "Felicia, I want to see every file on this list." His hand brushed over a paper in front of him before he stood. "Every single one of them."

Not even fifteen minutes passed and the meeting concluded as Harry left. Not wanting to stay and suffer any repercussions, I gathered my things.

Krasinski sighed and adjusted her glasses. "Plausible deniability. Really, Donald? Having an ignorant CEO wouldn't put the investors at ease either."

Taking her papers in one hand and briefcase in the other, she moved to leave. Her haughty outburst inspired a few quieter threads of conversation.

Menken hardly bothered to notice her comment. He already had his cell phone in his hand as I moved past to gather Harry's papers. Pretending to read over the file list, I ducked my head and better read "Oscorp Security Main Office" flash on his screen.

Not taking Krasinski's bait and contacting security – Menken clearly had something important on his mind as he left the table.

I carefully folded the file list and set my tote on the table. To everyone else, I – the cute, young thing the twenty-year-old just put in charge – was meticulously tucking away a simple little list. But I saw Menken quietly speaking into his phone while peeking through the same door through which Harry left.

When he slipped out, I silently followed.

You made it this far, meaning you read this first chapter. Thank you!

Drop a line in the review box if you're curious about Felicia's fabulous NYC life as Harry Osborn's personal assistant.