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The Administrator’s fingers drumming on her desktop were like the beat of a person’s heart before a firing squad. Exactly that rhythm. Fast, deliberate, running away without her, leaving her standing with a hollowed out feeling in the center of her chest. There was an open copy of the Teufort reader on the desk in front of her boss. An item in the classifieds had been circled.
It had been New Year’s Eve. She had popped open the bottle of wine that Spy had given her for Christmas. Expensive wine, French. He had laughed when she had asked where it came from, graciously pretended that she had been making a joke. It was from the vineyard down the road from the house in Normandy where he had grown up. They sent him a bottle every year, and every year he made a gift of it. Too many old memories, he’d said.
She had said, “Thank you,” outwardly. Inwardly she had said, “Yay! Fancy wine!”
New Year’s Eve had been the wrong time to drink it. New Year’s Eve made her feel lonely, weepy. Her parents’ New Year’s Parties had always been elegant, glamorous affairs, for which she had been sent to bed at seven. She always cried on New Year’s Eve, it was practically a tradition.
It hadn’t even taken a glass and a half, and she was bawling into her stationary, several crumpled, incoherent, and tear-stained love letters on the floor, when she had drafted the personal ad. She remembered writing it. She did not remember putting it in an envelope, addressing it, adding a stamp. She did not remember wandering to her mailbox and actually sending the damn thing.
"Miss Pauling." The Administrator had a way of smoking a cigarette, such that you could tell she was pretending it was actually your soul. "Are you able to recall Section Eight, Paragraph B of your contract? The third clause?"
Miss Pauling was. “I…am not allowed to keep a goldfish on my desk. Well, no, ma’am, I know that. I read the report, and freak accident or not, that poor janitor will never be able to hold his grandchildren now. I absolutely understand about the goldfish, ma’am.”
"The third clause.”
"O-oh."
The cigarette was stubbed out. “You are highly discouraged from any romantic liaisons outside of your professional life. Did you forget?”
"It was an impulse, ma’am." A lonely, drunken impulse. "N-nothing’s come of it."
"No, it wouldn’t have. This is the advance copy, I had the publication pulled, the Teufort reader ran Wednesday twice this week." The Administrator sighed, lifted the paper, reading the sad, lonely little ad. "Are you aware of why the prohibition was put in place, Miss Pauling?”
"No, Administrator, I’m not. It didn’t seem unreasonable, though, and I am sorry. I won’t do it again. I don’t really have time for dating anyway.”
Another cigarette glowed to life. Miss Pauling felt a little bit of her soul slip away with the first slow drag. “Your predecessor. Hannigan, Hannity, I forgot his name. Do you know why he was terminated?”
Oh, no. "B-because of a personal ad?"
"No, Miss Pauling. Because the mercs did not like him. When I say terminated, I mean, quite literally, terminated. Dead. He was the first corpse I had you dispose of, you shoud’ve kept a souvenir. Because the Demoman thought it would be funny to send him a pipe bomb and a pair of wire cutters.”
Miss Pauling giggled, involuntarily, and managed to turn it into an inelegant snort. “Allergies, ma’am. Umm. A live pipe bomb? You’ll excuse me saying, but that doesn’t sound like Tavish, Administrator.”
"No. A dummy. But the damn fool ran it out of the building and got bitten by a rattlesnake. He died a hero. An idiotic, fool of a hero who can’t tell a live pipe bomb when he handles one." She’d already smoked her way through the second cigarette. She flicked ash off the end. "My point, Miss Pauling, is that nine of the most dangerous men in the world are extremely fond of you. If you have a messy break-up? If you have a bad date? If you date a man who thinks you should go dutch at the restaurant? My nine, very expensive mercenaries will burn and murder their way to your beau’s doorstep, hogtie him, and drag him back behind a truck. In pieces.”
This was an extraordinarily good point. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that, ma’am. I promise it won’t happen again.” The Administrator seemed to be in a better mood than usual. Miss Pauling pressed her luck. “Just…a clarification, ma’am?”
"Yes?"
“Outside of my professional life?”
"…Don’t push it, Miss Pauling."