She sat down in front of her computer, eager to do some real stock trading for once instead of sitting in stuffy meetings, and Chris slid in between her chair and her computer monitor. "What do you want now?" she sighed in frustration.
"What did I ever do to you?"
"What?"
"Why do you hate me so much?"
"Because you pull shit like this morning. Not showing up for meetings, being an hour late when you are there, keeping the file locked away in your desk so no one else could even cover for you. How am I supposed to keep this place running if you're off 'taking your mother to the hospital'?" she said, using air quotes. He sat on her desk and slipped out of his Armani jacket, tossing it to the side of her cubicle. "And that's another thing. How the hell can you throw around a fifteen hundred dollar jacket?" A wide grin crossed his face.
"You recognize Armani when you see it," he observed.
"Who doesn't?"
"Most people." He paused as she tried to reach around him to get to her briefcase, but failed. "You know, we're not that different, Taylor."
"Like hell we're not."
"Sure, we have different mannerisms, you show up at work on time, I don't, you go to meetings, I don't, but when it comes to this job, we're exactly the same. I work my ass off for this firm and you know it. You know it because you do the exact same things. This could be your off day, the one day a week you get to sit at home and supposedly relax, and I know exactly what you'd be doing."
"And what's that, Varick?"
"Glued to your computer screen or CNN, watching those numbers scroll across the bottom of the screen. Wishing you were here. You're just like me, Taylor. This runs in your blood. Even on Sundays, you're predicting what's going to happen on Monday."
"You forgot one thing," she said and tilted her head slightly to the side.
"What's that?"
"I'd be thinking about how much I hate you," she said and stood up and walked away from the desks, headed straight for the bathroom.
"That's total bullshit."
"What the fuck are you doing in here?" she asked.
"Talking to you." He locked the door and leaned against it. There was one thing she would give him; the man was built like a Manhattan club bouncer. Even if he had left the door unlocked, there was no way she would even try to match with him physically.
"I thought walking away and coming in here was a good enough clue that I was done with the conversation," she replied as she nonchalantly began reapplying her makeup.
"Well, I'm not. And unless I'm mistaken, a conversation generally works better with two people."
"In this situation, you may very well be mistaken."
"Cut the bullshit, Taylor." She glanced over, mascara brush poised just above her eyelashes, and looked back at the mirror.
"What are you expecting me to do? Magically drop the two years of harassment we so joyously have given each other? No way. Coming in and messing with you everyday is part of the routine."
"Why do you refuse to call me by my first name?"
"What?" she asked with a laugh and closed her mascara.
"Never in my life have I ever heard you call me Chris."
"And?"
"Just curious. Do you have something against the name Chris?"
"No," she scoffed.
"Then what's that about?"
"Maintaining professionalism," she answered.
"And again, I answer with 'That's total bullshit.' If you were going for maintaining professionalism, you would call me Mr. Varick, or stockbroker number 9, or something to that effect, you wouldn't call me Varick like it's a curse."
"Then what's your theory, Dr. Freud?"
"Avoiding relationships. You don't let anyone in your life."
"How dare you presume to know so much about me?" she demanded. "You don't know shit about my life."
"I'm about three seconds away from knowing everything about you."
"You think you know me?"
"Yes I do."
"Tell me five things about me that have nothing to do with this firm."
"Taylor, there aren't five things about you that aren't involved with your job."
"Wrong again," she retorted and ran an eyeliner pencil under her eye.
"Five?"
"Five."
"You love Italian food, your mother was a high school teacher, your dog, which is a Golden retriever, is named Bear, you let loose on Saturday nights, which for you involves dancing in clubs, and despite being incredibly attracted to males, you admit that you would sleep with Portia de Rossi if the issue was ever raised." She raised an eyebrow and as she put her makeup back in her purse, returned the favor.
"Despite being Jewish with a highly orthodox mother who gets pissed off about it, you date outside of your religion, you live in Brooklyn next door to a woman with seventeen cats, your last girlfriend, Rajah, dumped you because you were too infatuated with your career, you're a closet opera fan, and you have an addiction to strip clubs."
"I wouldn't call it an addiction per se," he said with a grin.
"So what was the point? We proved we could rattle off five things about each other. That doesn't mean that we know each other."
"Taylor, how many people in this building could you list five things about?" She didn't answer. "And that proves my point."
"What about you, Mr. Popularity? Jesus, you have these people crawling up your ass to ride on your coattails."
"I have friends here just like anyone else."
"And that, Chris, is where we're different." She blew past him and unlocked the door, letting herself out. As she sat down at her desk, she pulled on a headset and adjusted her hair, ignoring the glares of the other girls in the office. She didn't know why they all hated her, aside from the fact that she was a total bitch to them. Two hours ago, she would have said jealousy. Her little conversation with Chris, no, Varick, was fucking with her head. Why was she so standoffish to everyone else? Standoffish wasn't the right word. She stood up to the people in this building like no woman ever had before. She downright scared some of the men. Unsocial? Maybe that was closer to the truth. She purposely locked everyone in that firm out of her life. But why? Did she really think that keeping coworkers from becoming her friends would change the way she was seen by the partners? Just because she was a tough bitch, did that mean she couldn't make friends? She didn't know.