Page 44 of The Book of Lost Hours

MOIRA, HER NAME WAS Moira.

Lisavet said this to herself dozens of times in the week before she started her job, trying to get it to stick.

She practiced saying it out loud as she paced in her new bedroom, unable to sleep as always.

Her apartment was hardly bigger than her room in the psych ward had been, but to her it was heaven.

A bed of her own with soft white sheets and a quilt.

A dresser to put clothes in. A vanity with an actual mirror.

The room had two windows and was in close proximity to the bathroom she shared with three other girls.

In the boardinghouse, nearly everything was communal, but she was one of just a few residents who did not have a roommate.

Something Jack had arranged for her, apparently.

She dressed in a knee-length black skirt and a collared shirt in pale green that had been made for her by the seamstress. Jack had ordered her an entire closet’s worth of clothing; five shirts, six dresses, a number of skirts, and three pairs of heeled shoes.

“The director’s secretary needs to look sharp,” he told her when he saw the look of surprise on her face. “I know you’re just a poor girl from Brooklyn, but I can’t have you dressing like one.”

The boardinghouse matron called up the stairs to tell her that the car was here for her. Lisavet… no Moira, her name was Moira… took one last look in the mirror and went downstairs, locking the bedroom door behind her. On the front steps, she stopped short when she saw who had come to pick her up.

“Look alive, Donnelly,” Patrick Brady said, waving for her to hurry up.

She started to get into the back seat, and he shook his head.

“I’m not your chauffeur. Sit up front.” He tapped the passenger seat with one hand, smirking at her as she got in. “What’s with the face?”

“Nothing. I just assumed that Jack would be the one taking me. That’s all.”

Brady shot her a look. “Now, now. You’re his secretary, not his girlfriend. You have to call him Mr. Dillinger.”

“Oh. Right.”

There were so many things to remember.

“Besides, he’s the director. He doesn’t have time to be checking in on you all day, so he asked me and Collins to give him a hand. We’ll be around if you need any help.”

Moira studied him out of the corner of her eye. Be around or be watching her?

Brady took her into the office and introduced her to one of the other secretaries. A bright-eyed blonde named Shelley Watts.

“What happened to Suzanne?” Shelley asked.

“Gone,” Brady said with a shrug. “Do me a favor and show Miss Donnelly what’s what.” He left them alone.

She turned to her and smiled. “Well, then. Welcome, I guess. That’s your desk over there.”

Shelley pointed to the desk closest to the corner office. She went over to it and dropped a nameplate that read Suzanne Tomlinson into the garbage.

“Were you and Suzanne… close?” Moira asked tentatively.

“Oh, no. Not at all. She was only here for a few months. Most of Mr. Dillinger’s secretaries don’t last long.” Shelley grimaced at her own words and gave her an apologetic look. “He has high standards. But I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Shelley gave her a tour of the office and helped her obtain an ID badge with her name and photograph on it, warning her that she should keep it on her at all times.

“You’ll need it to get in the building,” she explained. “And if you’re ever working late, they’ll ask for it on your way out too.”

“Do you stay late often?” Moira asked her.

“Only on occasion. Some of us do more than others. Amanda and Pauline are both general secretaries, so they stay late fairly frequently.”

“General secretaries?”

“Yeah, as in they work for the whole office. I work for the senior staff members like Mr. Collins and Mr. Brady. Mr. Dillinger is the only one important enough to have a secretary of his own. Well, I guess Mr. Duquesne technically could have one but he’s never hired anyone.”

At the first mention of Ernest, Moira felt her face go numb. In all her worry about getting here and figuring things out, she’d almost forgotten she might be running into him today.

By the time Shelley finished the tour, more people had arrived. Three men in brown suits, all on the younger side, were loitering near Shelley’s desk. One of them, a bulky young man with dark hair looked Moira up and down as they approached.

“Can I help you gentlemen with something?” Shelley asked.

“Morning, Miss Watts,” the young man responded, eyes on Moira still. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is the new secretary, Moira Donnelly.”

“Well, well, new secretary,” he said, sidling up to her and giving her a flirtatious smile. “Don’t you look sweet.”

“Leave her alone, Fred,” Shelley warned, taking her seat. “She’s not here for you, she’s Mr. Dillinger’s new secretary.”

“Is she? Jack always did have taste,” Fred said, winking at her.

Moira looked away uncomfortably and moved over to her own desk. Fred and the two other boys snickered.

“You’re supposed to smile,” Shelley said when they were gone.

“Huh?”

“When they flirt with you like that. You’re supposed to smile.”

“But I don’t want to.”

“Doesn’t matter. Didn’t you learn that in secretary school?”

“I didn’t go to secretary school,” Moira said. She immediately regretted it when she saw the look on Shelley’s face. Was she supposed to say she had gone? Jack hadn’t mentioned anything about secretary school.

By the time Jack showed up, Moira had already worked herself up into a proper panic.

So much so that she stood up as soon as she saw him walking in, the way she had been taught to stand for teachers at school in Germany.

He pretended not to notice, pausing to say hello to the other girls before addressing her.

“Morning, Miss Donnelly,” he said with a covert smile. “How are you settling in?”

“Good,” Moira squeaked.

“Why are you standing?”

“Oh, I…” She sat back down, aware of Shelley and the other girls watching her. “Just stretching my legs.”

“Right.” He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here. First assignment for you. This is the week’s calendar. I wrote it all down on Friday and I can’t read my own handwriting. Would you type it up for me?”

Moira’s eyes slid to the typewriter at the top of the desk.

It was electric. Not manual. She had never used an electric typewriter before.

Actually, she had barely ever used a manual one.

They were common enough in Germany when she was a child, but she’d been too young to learn, and her father had always done everything by hand anyway.

“Problem?” Jack asked, noting her long pause.

Moira lowered her voice. “I don’t know how to use this thing.”

Jack frowned. “Ahhh. I see.”

Behind him, Amanda and Pauline started whispering tensely. Jack’s eyes slid in their direction. He clapped his hands together once and came around the other side of the desk.

“Well, let’s fix that,” he said.

He showed her how to load the paper and then gave an uncharacteristically patient demonstration of how to do other things like change the ribbon and correct mistakes.

All the while, Moira could feel the other secretaries watching her.

Of course they were confused. In their eyes, Jack had just fired a perfectly qualified girl and replaced her with a technologically stunted imbecile.

An imbecile he was now wasting his own precious time to train on the most basic of secretarial functions.

Eventually, however, all three of them got called away to take notes or write up reports of their own, leaving them alone.

“Tough crowd, those girls,” Jack said under his breath in their absence.

“They know I’m not qualified for this,” Moira told him. No point in trying to deny it.

“Who gives a shit about them? They’re just secretaries.”

“So am I.”

“Yes, but you’re not like them.”

“I’m worse than a secretary?”

Jack snickered and set his left hand on the desk beside her, gesturing to the watch on his wrist. “I’m saying you’re the only secretary who knows what this department really is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Jack leaned in closer and set his other hand on her shoulder. “Here at the TRP we don’t tell our secretaries the truth about what really goes on.”

“You don’t?”

“Nope. They think we’re just another intelligence agency, trying to track patterns across history to get ahead of future wars.

Not even my last girl knew the truth. Which meant she couldn’t take notes for me in department-wide meetings or handle any of the more sensitive paperwork I get as the director.

Kind of defeats the whole point of a secretary, don’t you think? ”

“I guess.”

“But you, my dear… well, you’re something special. That’s why I hired you. All that other bullshit you can learn.” He straightened up, adjusting his suit jacket. “By the way, you can stop watching the door like that. He’s not here today.”

Moira felt some of the tension in her shoulders loosen. “He’s not?”

“He’s out for the next two weeks. Some family situation. He’s working out of the Boston office.”

“His sister?” Moira asked, feeling anxiety bundle in her stomach.

Jack gave her a strange look. “No. Something about his mother being sick.” He tapped two fingers on the sheet of paper he’d given her. “Type that up for me, will you? It’ll be good practice.” He left to go to his office, calling back over his shoulder. “If you need anything, just knock.”

The door closed. Shelley gave Moira a confused look. “Are you dating him or something?”

“N-no. Why?”

“I’ve never seen him be that nice to one of his secretaries before. Especially not one who doesn’t know how to use a typewriter. No offense.”