Page 12 of The Allure of Ruins

From the very first moment when I walked into his office—the wrong place, as it happened, as I was supposed to be reporting to another ASA—I had looked at him and thought, He’s drowning. He needs me .

Walking over to his desk, I read his name off the plate I had to unearth from the paperwork covering it, realized I was in the wrong place, but pressed the button and answered his line anyway.

“You’ve reached ASA Colton Gates’s office,” I rushed out, pulling out my phone and typing as I listened. Once done, I promised that either Mr. Gates or his assistant would get back to them. I then did the same with the other six lines, taking notes as I did so.

Once it was blissfully quiet, I turned to him.

“Who the hell’re you?” he barked at me.

“I’m in the wrong office. I’m not your assistant. I thought I was. I’m not,” I clarified, searching for his cell phone on the desk of doom. “The girl I met in orientation is probably yours, and she seemed very nice.”

“What?”

“I’m in the wrong place,” I reiterated, speaking slower, as he was clearly having trouble parsing my words. “I’m sure the right person will be right along.”

“What?”

I squinted at him. “Listen, I have no idea how you’re not grasping what I’m saying, but more importantly, where is your mobile device?”

“What?”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Why?”

“I took notes,” I said like he was dumb, and really, I was starting to wonder about him. “And I need to get them to you.”

“What?”

“No, not again,” I snapped, seeing the phone under a coil-bound report and picking it up.

“Gimme that,” he ordered, rising out of his chair and trying to grab it out of my hand.

I eluded him easily, taking a step back, and when he came around the desk, I slipped around the other side, barely avoiding getting tangled in the lamp cord precariously draped between the outlet and his desk—the layout was not only poorly executed, but dangerous.

“Stop moving,” he growled.

“You first,” I volleyed, calling my phone from his and storing his number, all the while keeping one eye on him.

Of course when I focused on my phone for a moment, that was the second he tripped on the lamp cord, fell over, and had the really ugly brass lamp come crashing down on his head.

“Fuck!” he roared.

Text sent, I put his phone down on the nightmare of a desk—I had no idea how he found anything on it—and darted for the door.

“Don’t you dare leave me!”

Not where do you think you’re going , or stay where you are , or don’t take one step out of that door ! Instead, what came out of the man’s mouth was don’t you dare leave me ! He had no idea how important the me was, but I heard it loud and clear.

At which point I spun around, went back, and crouched down beside him. “Please let me take a look at you and make sure you’re not bleeding.”

“Oh, now you’re worried?” He was both surly and sarcastic at the same time. It was impressive. “I thought you were running?”

I exhaled sharply. “Just let me see,” I ordered, reaching for him.

He leaned away. “The lamp’s not even heavy, I’m fine.”

We were both quiet a moment.

“You are aware that your desk is where paperwork goes to die.” He needed to be told and perhaps no one ever had.

“I am,” he snarled. “Why do you think I need an assistant?”

Picking up the undented, unbroken abomination of a brass desk lamp, I watched as he sat up and crossed his legs like he was about to do yoga. Both the man and his office were a rumpled mess that needed help.

“This lamp is hideous.”

“Yes.”

“I’m hoping it was a gift.”

“It was.”

I was glad to hear it. At least I knew his taste didn’t run to horrible.

“The layout in here makes zero sense,” he muttered. “It’s a wonder I’m not dead.”

“Perhaps not dead, but certainly concussed.”

He shrugged.

“I think her name is Georgia.”

“What?”

I glared at him. “You must begin to make quicker intuitive leaps or this can never work.”

“What makes you think?—”

“Faster,” I gave the command, snapping my fingers.

It took him only a moment. “Oh, the other assistant.”

“Very good.”

“Is she an ass like you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He gestured at me. “You know you’re a dick. Come on.”

I tsked at him.

“Pass me the phone.”

“Your cell or the monster on your desk?”

“The monster.”

I stood up and passed him the phone that could have twelve lines holding at once—it was a beast—and watched him as he first put it in his lap and then picked up the handset.

I was then informed that he was calling HR.

“Hey, is this Rebecca? It is Rebecca, isn’t it?

” He listened a moment. “Tanya. Really?”

“Oh dear God,” I groaned. The man didn’t even know who the head of HR was?

“Zip it,” he growled, then, “Oh no, not you,” he advised Tanya. “Okay, so, I would prefer to have—” He looked up at me in question, eyebrows raised.

“Paxton Walsh.”

“—Paxton Walsh be my assistant.”

He was quiet, taking in whatever she was saying, and then pressed the handset to his chest instead of putting the call on hold. “Apparently Georgia—good memory, by the way?—”

“Better than yours.”

“What?”

I stared at him, waiting for him to catch up.

“Oh, yeah, well, I was eighty percent sure her name was Rebecca.”

“There has to be an organizational chart here somewhere,” I said sadly, glancing around at the boxes on the floor and then at the mess on his desk.

“It’s probably under something.” He pointed over his head at the same horror show I was eying. “But I guess Georgia came up here fifteen minutes ago, heard me curse out a police officer, and ran back to HR. She’s too scared to come back.”

“You are loud.”

“I fell!” he yelled defensively.

“Modulate,” I ordered him.

“I fell,” he repeated with much less volume.

“You scared her before you were chasing me around the desk,” I reminded him.

“Oh yeah.”

“You need to take a beat here,” I cautioned him. “From the few mere moments of interaction we’ve had together, we can already assume that if I work for you, I’ll probably drive you insane.”

He tipped his head sideways, pondering that. “But I’ll be organized, won’t I?”

“You will be that.”

His sigh was long. “It’s bad in here.”

“Yes, it is. The layout of this office, as you’ve already pointed out, is really atrocious.”

“Yeah. And?”

I shot him a look.

“I’m asking what you’re gonna do.”

“For starters, there will be bins and binders and plants. I see bookcases and a coatrack and more plants. My God, man, there is nothing alive in here, and there’s no windows and no fan. What are you doing to circulate the air, and what creates oxygen?”

“Already this is too many questions.”

“We need things like an air filter, a fan, new lamps, and again, plants. So very many plants.”

“Do you need me here for any of that?”

“Of course. It’s your office. You need to make the?—”

“No. It will take another year if I have to make decisions.”

“Fine. Then all I need is a credit card.”

“Okay,” he sighed, and got back on the phone with Tanya Howard from HR, who was really lovely and long-suffering.

She didn’t just have to make sure that Colton had an assistant, but that lots of the ASAs had help, as well as taking care of all the judicial personnel, from paralegals to court reporters to victim advocates.

She was swamped. “Yeah, so, Walsh will work for me, and whatshisname can have Georgia.” He was quiet a moment.

“Yeah, Irwin. That’s right. Irwin can have Georgia.

He’s pretty chill. I’m sure she’ll love him. ”

Before I left that day, he passed over his platinum American Express.

“I was kidding,” I told him. Already, even after three hours, the piles on the desk at least appeared manageable, half the documents having gone into his fancy cross-cut shredder because it was all old information.

“You have to make decisions on colors, and textures, and what kind of decor you want, and?—”

“No. You do it.”

“What if you hate it?”

He gestured around him. “This is worse.”

It was true. His office resembled a prison. Gunmetal-green walls were uglier than I thought they would be. Maybe it was called institutional green . Either way, a sad color.

I was given the keys to his office, and my badge would get me inside the building, even on the weekends. He had no idea how excited I was. He trusted me, and it had been ages since I’d cared enough to want that from anyone.

It made no sense, but when I was standing and he was sitting on the floor, even though he was the boss and I was the assistant, he didn’t seem to care how it looked; he was utterly confident in who he was.

He didn’t need to talk down to me or make me feel small so he could feel big.

People who didn’t know him only saw the rough exterior.

They didn’t hear his voice when he was soothing a child, didn’t see a man who would sit in silence with victims, never rush them to hear their stories, instead simply waiting.

I had transformed his office so much so that when we left the state’s attorney’s office, a friend who took over his office asked him to leave everything as it was.

I felt really good about that, and though I did leave the décor, I brought all the plants with us.

As though my yucca cane, my bird-of-paradise, or my five-foot snake plant could even live without Colton.

I was certain they all needed his frenetic energy for life.

“What are you thinking about?” Colton asked softly.

“Sorry,” I said, stepping free of him, smiling sheepishly. “I don’t know why I’m being so sentimental today, thinking about the past. That’s not like me.”

“I know why,” he replied almost sulkily, taking my hand again, not my arm like normal, and walking me down the street.

“Why?”

“Because this thing with your ex is scaring the crap outta you.”

I nodded. “Yes, that seems well reasoned.”