Exsanguination and Other Love Stories

II. Mr. Blue and Omri

"Okay," I said.

I had little to no intention of ever actually doing so, but I thought it might be rude to refuse him outright.

As I glanced curiously around, I noticed some photographs on the back wall. Most were of Mr. Blue at parties with lots of keen-eyed people with professional makeup jobs and expensive-looking clothing: many had predatory smiles, and faces which had been subtly bloated and stretched by surgeon's knives.

"Very good," said Mr. Blue, his gaze following mine. "Let's just go to the conference room and review your employment contract, and then I'll have Omri set you up in an office."

"All right," I barely had time to say, before he showed me out of the small room. I wondered whether he had been displeased by Dustin's decision to bring me directly there. With his lack of intonation, it was hard to tell.

"I noticed you had a picture of my great-aunt up in your office," I blurted out, on our way down the hall. We were going right back the way I had come with Dustin - he'd definitely messed up - and I was certain I had seen Cordelia among the posed crowds on the office wall.

Mr. Blue laughed.

"I do," he said, glancing back at me with sphinx-like eyes. "I'm glad you're not under the impression I hired you because of your relevant work experience or extracurricular resume."

"Oh," I said. It took me a moment to digest that. "No, not at all."

I'd been shocked to learn I'd been hired, honestly. I'd done a lot more job applications during my time at Florence's than I'd ever had time to hear back from. Now what had seemed an improbable instance of good luck – getting the first one I'd applied to - made sense.

Learning this also made me feel rather uncomfortably indebted to Mr. Blue, which may very well have been his intention in bringing up the subject in the first place. Besides distracting me from asking how exactly he had known my great aunt, of course.

"You're a very ordinary girl, Sabilla," Mr. Blue continued, "Not that that's a bad thing."

"Thank you for looking beyond that," I answered, and hesitated. "Barabbas."

As someone who'd grown up being told that everyone was unique and special and awesome, when I knew very well that I was just Bill – not particularly beautiful or clever or special to anyone but my immediate friends and blood relations – I found his assessment to be something of a relief. Bruising, perhaps, but still a relief.

(After all, as my mother used to say, we can't all be shooting stars, or the sky would be pretty empty on moonless nights. She, however, had a much more politick way of putting things than did Mr. Blue.)

As we entered the conference room, Mr Blue raised an arm in the air and made a sort of circling motion. Expensive lighting dimmed, and a holographic stream of blurred letters danced across the long, blank wall facing us. They looked sort of like the first line in a legal document, if you squinted hard.

Then a loading animation flashed on over the table, hovering in 3D. It looked like a radioactive blue inchworm trying to catch its own tail. Someone had obviously spent a lot of time on it. A muscle in Mr. Blue's jaw began to twitch after we had watched the inchworm spin for a while. Practically every segment looked like it had been individually animated.

"Do you have a paper copy?" I suggested.

"OMRI!" roared Mr. Blue, into thin air.

We waited several minutes in extreme silence. Mr. Blue still had not answered my question. You could have heard a pin drop.