Gaseous Tyrant

The elevator doors slid open on the fourteenth floor and I stepped out into air so cold it made my nipples hard through my blouse. Michel liked it that way. Sixty-two degrees year-round, he'd told me during the interview, as if climate control were a personality trait. I'd smiled and nodded and thought about how the heating bill alone could feed a small village.

"Miss Almeida." His voice came from behind the reception desk, which was strange because receptionists usually sat there. Not Michel. He stood, arms crossed, watching me like I was a spreadsheet with a formula error. "You're seven minutes early."

"Is that a problem?"

"It's unexpected." He uncrossed his arms and checked his watch, a heavy silver thing that probably cost more than my mother's house. "I value predictability."

I wanted to say something clever. Something that would make him see me as more than the girl who'd answered his ad on a job board. Instead I said, "I'll try to be more boring tomorrow."

His face didn't move. Not a twitch. Not a blink. Then he turned and walked toward the corner office, and I followed because that's what you do when you're the new personal assistant and your boss has the emotional range of a filing cabinet.

The office smelled like leather and lemon cleaner. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city sprawled out like it had given up trying to impress anyone. Michel's desk was enormous, mahogany, completely bare except for a laptop and a single pen. No photos. No plants. No evidence that a human being spent sixty hours a week in this room.

"Sit," he said, pointing to a chair across from his desk.

I sat.

He remained standing. That's when I noticed how tall he was. Six-three, maybe six-four, with shoulders that seemed to have been designed for blocking doorways. His suit was navy, perfectly fitted, and he wore it like armor. Dark hair, graying at the temples. A jaw that could cut glass. Handsome in the way that expensive things are handsome, the kind of beauty that comes with a warranty.

"Your responsibilities," he said, "are simple. You will manage my calendar. You will screen my calls. You will ensure that my coffee is exactly one hundred and forty degrees Fahrenheit. Not hotter. Not colder. If I find a single fingerprint on my laptop screen, you will be terminated."

"One hundred and forty degrees. Got it."

"You will not speak to me unless spoken to."

"That seems reasonable."

"You will not make personal calls, personal appointments, or personal observations about my character."

I nodded. "No observations. Understood."

He stared at me for a long moment. I stared back because I'd learned a long time ago that looking away first was a kind of surrender, and I wasn't ready to surrender to a man who talked about coffee temperature like it was a constitutional amendment.

"Your desk is outside," he said finally. "There's a training manual. Read it."

I stood. "Anything else?"

"No."

I made it to the door before he spoke again.

"Miss Almeida."

I turned.

"You're wearing the wrong shoes."

I looked down at my heels. Sensible black pumps. Nothing fancy, but professional. "What's wrong with them?"

"They squeak."

I took a step. They didn't squeak.

"They will," he said. "By Thursday."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I left.

---

The training manual was three hundred pages. I read it in two days. Most of it was standard corporate nonsense, dress codes and confidentiality agreements and flowcharts for expense reports. But there were sections that made me pause. A page about Michel's allergies (shellfish, lavender, incompetence). A paragraph about his preferred pen (Pilot G2, 0.7mm, black ink only). A full chapter on "Managing Mr. Voss's Moods" that read like a field guide to dangerous animals.

I learned that he'd built the company from nothing. That he'd fired three assistants in the past year. That he didn't drink alcohol, didn't eat sugar, didn't smile in photographs. That his father had died when he was twelve and his mother had remarried a man Michel refused to name. That he ran five miles every morning at 5 AM. That he'd never been married, never had children, never been photographed with the same woman twice.

The manual didn't say why he needed a new assistant every four months. It just listed the qualities he required: discretion, efficiency, thick skin.

I had all three. I'd spent my whole life developing them.

---

The first week was uneventful. I answered phones. I scheduled meetings. I learned to make coffee that tasted like burnt regret but registered exactly 140 degrees on the thermometer he kept in his desk drawer. I didn't speak unless spoken to. I didn't make observations. I didn't look at him any longer than necessary.

But I noticed things.

I noticed that he rubbed his temples when he thought no one was watching. I noticed that he ate lunch alone, always the same thing, grilled chicken and steamed vegetables, consumed at his desk while he read reports. I noticed that he never laughed, not once, not even when a client told a joke so bad it made the receptionist snort.

I noticed that he was lonely. He would never admit it. Probably didn't even know it. But there was something in the way he stood at the window at the end of the day, watching the city lights come on, that looked like hunger.

On Friday, he called me into his office at 6 PM.

"Miss Almeida."

I stood in the doorway. "Yes?"

"Close the door."

I did.

He was standing by the window, backlit by the setting sun. His tie was loosened, just slightly, and his sleeves were rolled up to his forearms. I'd never seen his forearms before. They were muscular, veined, dusted with dark hair.

"I need to discuss something with you," he said.

"Okay."

"It's sensitive."

"Okay."

He turned to face me. His expression was unreadable, but there was something different in his eyes. Something almost human.

"You've been here a week," he said. "You haven't quit."

"I wasn't planning to."

"Everyone plans to. They just don't know it yet." He walked toward me, slow, deliberate. "You're different."

I didn't know if that was a compliment or an insult. I didn't ask.

"I have a condition," he said. "A medical condition."

I waited.

"It's not dangerous. It's not contagious. But it's... inconvenient."

"What kind of condition?"

He stopped a few feet away. Close enough that I could smell his cologne, something woody and sharp. Close enough that I could see the tension in his jaw.

"I have excessive gas," he said. "Intestinal. Chronic."

I blinked. "Okay."

"It happens without warning. Especially when I'm stressed."

"Okay."

"And when it happens," he said, "I prefer to be alone."

I nodded. "I understand."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

He studied my face for a long moment. Then he turned away and walked back to his desk.

"You can go," he said.

I went.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it. About him. About the way he'd said *inconvenient*, like it was just another item on a to-do list. About the way his jaw had tightened when he'd said *alone*. About the way I'd wanted, for just a second, to tell him that everyone was alone. That being alone wasn't a condition. It was just Tuesday.

I sat at my desk and stared at the wall and wondered what I'd gotten myself into.

The answer came on Monday.

I was leaning over his desk, pointing at a scheduling conflict, when it happened. A sound like a balloon deflating. A smell like something had died in his intestines and been buried in a shallow grave.

He didn't flinch. Didn't apologize. Just looked at me with those cold, gray eyes and said, "You were saying?"

I straightened up. My eyes were watering. My throat was closing.

"The meeting," I managed. "It's at three."

"Reschedule it."

"To when?"

"Whenever."

I nodded and walked out of his office and stood by the water cooler for five full minutes, breathing through my mouth.

That was the first time.

It wasn't the last.