The Secret Lives of Married Women Read Online Free PDF

the space was little more than a hole in the wall. It had industrial carpeting and the walls were cracked and stained. A row of grimy windows provided a view of the building’s airshaft.
    An aisle divided the office, which was otherwise partitioned into cubicles. Bryce was at the far end of the room, talking on the phone; he motioned for me to take a seat. By the near wall was one small table with a folding chair, and I could see nowhere else for a visitor to sit. But no sooner had I settled there than Stas entered the room, his arms full of computer equipment. I didn’t know his name yet, of course. And he did not introduce himself. What he said, in a heavy Slavic accent, was: “Please remove yourself from this table.”
    I stared at him.
    “Stas,” Bryce said, laughing. He had just hung up the phone. “That’s fucked up. Don’t mind him,” he told me. “He’s not trying to be rude. That’s just the way he talks. He’s a Siberian brute.”
    Stas looked taken aback but said nothing further. I rose from the table and gathered my things as Bryce waved me over. “Come on back, I’m ready now anyway.” He stood and nudged his own chair toward me before seating himself on the edge of his desk.
    Finally Stas spoke again. “What I said was rude?”
    “That’s okay,” Bryce told him. “We’ll buff up your act yet. All in good time. Did you know I was the headmaster of a charm school before I got into the I.T. business?”
    Stas ignored this. “What would an American say?” he wanted to know.
    Bryce turned to me. “Lisa. It is Lisa, isn’t it?”
    “Leda.”
    “Leda, right. Leda, what would an American say? A polite American.”
    I smiled gently and somewhat apologetically at Stas, hoping he wouldn’t hold this little etiquette lesson against me. “I guess if I needed to get someone out of my way, I might say something like...oh... I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’m going to need this table. ”
    “I’m sorry to...trouble you?” Stas repeated.
    “Yes.”
    I’m sorry to trouble you, he repeated in a murmur. I’m sorry to trouble you... And he turned back to the jumble of equipment.
    Bryce grinned broadly. “Okay, great. I’m sure you’ll have a perfect phone manner and this’ll be the easiest money you’ll ever make. We don’t have any clients yet, so the phone only rings like once an hour. The pace will pick up soon, but for now you can read a book, surf the net, do whatever you want between calls.”
    He explained that Marcus and Stas were in the process of building a proprietary server. When they were done, the company would sell its custom network to corporate offices. In the meantime, Bryce was placing his first few ads, and if any prospective clients called, he wanted to sound like a legitimate business.
    “Now here’s what I want you to say when you answer the phone. No matter how dead it is. Even if it’s the only call all day. Pick up and say, Kaiser Tech, can you hold? Like you’re super busy and juggling a bunch of customers. Make them wait for like thirty seconds before you come back and talk to them.”
    It would be hard to explain why I felt such a sense of consolation in that shabby room. But I did; somehow the hardscrabble space seemed to offer reprieve, deep cover, even an unlikely cheer. It was like a sheltered little cove where I could drift as mindlessly as a cork, expending no effort and incurring no censure: someone workaday and sensible, blameless and safe—someone else altogether. It had something to do with the anonymity: none of these men knew me, or knew anything of my failure. Also, they were glad I was there; this was unmistakable. It had something to do with the close, cozy quarters, the snow falling outside the windows, the space heater that Stas set beneath my desk. It had something to do with the banter, which went on all day and was comforting and enlivening, and something to do with Bryce, who was a life-force unto himself. Maybe even something to do