How to enjoy your torrid affair with the boss, when you already are having a torrid affair with the boss.

But before you weren’t. You were just you. A temp. Data Entry. The lowest of the low. And top it all off, you were almost forty. And worse. You were a man, with a degree in art history.

He’s fifty or was at the time. He was bald and really liked himself and you liked him for it.

So there he was passing you by the front desk where you entered data and he’d stop by and say things like “Boy are you cranking.” And “Have a good night.” and “I’m expecting the VP of sales to come in around noon. Can you show him to the boardroom?”

1. Grab a CEO’s mundane phrases, wrestle them to the ground and kill them and then bring them back to life with your superhero sense of hope.
2. Hope. You’ve heard of hope. That thing with the nostrils at the end of it that sucks in air, attempts to enliven you, with just enough oxygen for your brain to seed thoughts of What-if? And Could it be?
3. Bake hope. At a low temperature. Let it rise and crust. Peek in and observe its crumb. Then for a few seconds, crank up the heat.  Watch the tan spread, the crust harden.
4. Pull it out. Slice into it. Watch the steam rise
5. Enjoy the smell.
6. But don’t taste.
7. Not just yet.

Because you didn’t know where the boardroom was. But you certainly knew where your attention was.

The office manager was tall woman named Rae who looked down at me for being so flirtatious at the CEO. Not “with” the CEO, “at” the CEO

What? I’d say with my eyes. What am I doing wrong?

Her eyes spoke back. Silver gray slits of enmity. She was so frustrated with me she called the Temp Agency and complained.

They called me on my cell phone. I had to explain myself.

I’ve fallen in love, I told them.

With the office manager?

With the CEO.

That was it. I was let go.

I started to grab my things, feeling so light-hearted at being fired, for the very first time, for having a crush. Just a crush. Without eating the bread of hope I’d baked.