I walked quickly, closing the distance between us. I'd almost caught up to him when it hit me. What the hell was I going to say to Michael? Not only that, but it would look like I was following him, mostly because, well, technically, I was was following him. following him.

I had to take control of the situation. I wondered if there was a way I could create a disturbance, turn around, and walk the other way. That way he'd be following me, which would put me in the power seat.

I looked down at the shoe box I was carrying. I held it behind my back, then lobbed it away from me. When I turned around, Rosie's shoe box was sprawled on the pavement, one shoe in and one shoe out. The top had turned into a Frisbee and was just coming in for a landing on the hood of a shiny silver sports car.

I twisted my head just enough to assess the situation behind me. The guy had turned around, too, but instead of Michael, it was a perfect stranger who was glaring at me. I didn't have to know him to tell he was not a happy camper.

I gave him a little smile.

He scowled at me for a long moment, then looked in the direction of the shiny car. "There better not be one single scratch," he said.

"Ohmigod," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But it's only cardboard, and I'm sure...."

"You better have good insurance," he said.

"Oh, I do," I said. "I have great insurance, and I even know a terrific auto body shop, if you need a referral. Once, a few years ago..."

I took a step back as he stormed past me. He picked the box top off his hood with two fingers and flicked it onto the pavement. I scrambled for it and tucked it under my arm. I started rifling in my purse for my license while he ran his finger slowly over the hood of his car. I assumed he was feeling for scratches, but it looked like he was trying to read something in Braille.

His silver baby must have turned out to be scratch free, because he gave me one more mean look and started walking away.

"Sorry," I said to his back.

"That's an understatement," he said, without turning around.

By the time I got to O'Malley's, I really needed a drink. Carol had staked out the head of our usual table and was flanked by several Wednesday regulars. I ran my eyes quickly around the table. I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until I started breathing again when I didn't see Michael.

"Well," Carol said perkily. "If it isn't Reeny, Reeny, Redundancy Queeny."

"Hi, everybody," I said. I sat down, leaving an empty chair on one side, just in case Michael showed up. Not that he would. Not that I cared.

A waiter was just delivering drinks, so I ordered a glass of wine.

"So what's it like to be a free woman?" somebody asked.

"Great," I said. "I'm loving it."

"You look good," Beth from Accounting said.

"Thanks."

"I didn't know you wore dresses," Lena from Marketing said.

My wine came and I took a big gulp. The conversation had already moved on. They were talking about a big interdepartmental meeting they'd just had, and I suddenly felt like I'd been away for a century instead of a week and a half.

"You're awfully quiet, Noreen," somebody said eventually. "Tell us what you've been up to."

I took another sip of wine and put the glass down on the table. "Well," I said. "It turns out I've got some nice neighbors. We've started walking together. We're even thinking-"

"Must be nice," Josh from Customer Relations said. "Hey, did you hear what happened in IT yesterday?"

Their conversation floated in one of my ears and right on out the other. It was as if I couldn't even process the words I was hearing. I hadn't been myself since I'd set foot on Balancing Act property.

But if I wasn't myself, then who was I? The old Noreen certainly wouldn't have behaved like that in the Balancing Act store. The first rule of negotiation, in this case a simple, if slightly illegal, shoe exchange, is not to volunteer too much information. Bring the shoes up to the register, give the salesperson a confident, non-adversarial smile, and tell her matter-of-factly that you're making an equal exchange.

And that guy in the parking lot. I mean, come on. When you're dealing with an asshole, you keep your mouth shut. You make him do all the talking. You don't start hemorrhaging apologies all over the place. And what the hell was I doing, hallucinating Michael and throwing a box of sneakers across the parking lot like a love-sick teenager?

It had taken me a long time to learn to thrive at Balancing Act. I'd spent the first few years under the control of a really tough supervisor. I kept thinking I could please her if I worked just a little bit harder, came up with an even more brilliant idea, flattered her some more. But the more I tried to please her, the more she withheld her approval, and somehow it always ended up feeling like it was my fault.

She completely controlled me. She said jump; I asked how high. I didn't make a single decision without wondering what she would think of it. Just the thought of my quarterly employee evaluation was enough to send me into a full-blown anxiety attack.

And then one day, in the midst of some snowballing departmental crisis, she really let me have it. We were sitting in her office, and there were no witnesses. She took off her reading glasses and placed them in front of her on the desk. She launched into an angry tirade about how she'd created me, how I'd be nothing without her. She belittled my past efforts, ridiculed the project I was working on, minimized everything I'd be likely to bring to the table in the future.

The odd thing was that as she ranted, I suddenly got it. She was a bully, plain and simple. Because she'd never shoved me into a locker, or held me upside down by my ankles and shaken the change out of my pockets, I just hadn't been able to see it until then. It was a huge epiphany for me, maybe one of the biggest of my life. In that instant, I stopped trying to please her, and she lost all power over me.

I think she knew it, too. Bullies need people to control, and when they can't play the game with you, they find another victim.

I continued to do my work, but I stopped worrying about whether or not she liked it. Eventually an opportunity presented itself in another department, run by a more nurturing, less abusive boss. I grabbed it and never looked back. In the years since, I'd run into other bullies, and I'd gotten pretty good at defusing them.

My behavior today felt like major backsliding. Was it possible I'd lost my edge in less than two weeks? Maybe without a job, all your skills just withered up because you no longer had a place to practice them. I looked around the table again, and I felt a total disconnect. It was like I was sitting with perfect strangers, and not only did I not recognize any of them, but I didn't even recognize myself. Maybe without a job, I didn't have a self.

One of the women, Sherry, was pushing her chair back from the table and saying something about having to get going because she was meeting someone for dinner. She stood up, placed some bills on the table, and looked over at me.

"Nice to see you again, Noreen," she said. "Call me if you want to hang out sometime."

I liked Sherry. She was about my age and had started working at Balancing Act maybe a year or two after I did. We sometimes shared a table in the cafeteria at lunch, and we'd gone to the movies and shopping together a few times over the years. She was a nice person, with a dry wit, and I'd always enjoyed her company.

"Thanks," I said. "I will."

The minute Sherry was out the door, Carol leaned forward. "I know who she's meeting," she actually sang.

"Who?" somebody asked.

"Wouldn't you like to kno-ow?" Carol was still singing. She was in her glory.

"I heard from a friend of mine in her department that she's thinking about taking a buyout while the VRIF is still on the table," somebody said.

"Come on, who?" somebody else said.

"Come on, Carol," somebody else said. "Play fair. You brought it up, so now you have have to tell us." to tell us."

Carol leaned back in her chair like it was a throne. We all waited. She tilted forward again, placed one elbow on the table, and rested her chin on the palm of her hand.

"Michael Carleton," she stage-whispered. "You know, Michael-don't-call-me-Mike from Olympus. They've been sneaking around practically since the takeover."

Day 11

462 steps

I STARED UP AT THE CRACK IN MY CEILING, THEN TURNED my head just long enough to watch 8:00 my head just long enough to watch 8:00 A.M A.M. come and go in slime green on my alarm clock. My entire body ached, as if a Mack truck had driven through my bedroom in the middle of the night and flattened me into my mattress.

I barely remembered the drive home from O'Malley's. While everybody talked about Sherry and Michael, I'd just sat there, feeling numb right down to my toes. I'd forced myself to wait until they'd moved on to another subject. Then I told everyone I had to get up early the next day, said my good-byes, and got the hell out of there.

I should have been relieved they'd never caught on to Michael and me. I should have been worried about Sherry, too, and whether Michael was going to manipulate her into taking a VRIF she didn't really know if she wanted. Maybe it was even in his Olympus job description: Eliminate overpaid female senior employees by seducing them and then nudging them out to pasture before they know what hit them. Eliminate overpaid female senior employees by seducing them and then nudging them out to pasture before they know what hit them.

I could have been quietly making plans to warn Sherry myself. Or I could have brought a rumor to the table for the group to feed on for dessert. Said something cryptic about Sherry not being the first, that I'd heard Michael was Olympus's secret weapon, that somebody really should do something about him. They would have swarmed like vultures, with Carol stepping up immediately to spearhead the Save Sherry/Kill Michael project.

But I didn't. As they picked up their forks and dug into the juicy gossip on the table before us, I just sat there like a lump and never said a word. Because the embarrassing truth was that the only thing that pierced the numbness was a blinding flash of jealousy. I couldn't believe Michael liked Sherry better than me.

My doorbell rang at 8:07 A.M A.M. I ignored it, rolled over, pulled the covers up over my head.

At 8:10 A.M A.M., it rang again.

"Shit," I said out loud. I kicked off the covers, yanked the hem of my T-shirt down until I was relatively decent, and stumbled to my front door. I opened the door a crack but kept the chain lock fastened.

Rosie and Tess smiled up at me from my doorstep.

"Not feeling well," I said. I orchestrated a pathetic cough and started to shut the door again.

Tess grabbed the door handle from the other side. "Fever?" she asked.

I had the feeling that if I said yes, she'd whip a thermometer out of her back pocket just to be sure.

I shook my head.

"Any sign of infection?" she asked. "You know, swelling on one side of your neck or green mucus or anything?"

I shook my head again.

Tess smiled. "Okay, you're good to go. Throw your shoes on-whatever it is, the endorphins will help." She looked at her watch. "You've got three minutes."

My eyes teared up. "I just can't do it," I said. And then I slammed the door.

I SPENT MOST of the day in bed. I didn't want to think. I wanted to bury myself in sleep, remain unconscious, oblivious, pain-free. And it worked pretty well, at least for a while. of the day in bed. I didn't want to think. I wanted to bury myself in sleep, remain unconscious, oblivious, pain-free. And it worked pretty well, at least for a while.

At 3:22 P.M P.M., I had to pee so badly I finally got up. I took a shower, because it was such a great place to cry. The water washed my tears away almost as soon as they appeared, which somehow gave the whole thing an element of control, as if shower crying was slightly less tragic than stand-alone sobs would have been.

I was eating a bowl of cereal when the doorbell rang. "Geez," I said out loud. "Not again." I took another quick bite, then dumped the rest of my cereal down the garbage disposal.

Tess and Rosie were standing on my doorstep like they'd been there all day.

"Haven't we done this once already?" I asked.

Tess pulled a piece of white rope out from the round beige pulley she was holding. "Don't make me use this on you," she said.

I smiled. Behind them I could see a wheelbarrow filled with a bunch of small plants and three shovels. I pushed my door open. "Come on in," I said. "I just have to put some shoes on."

I probably should have looked for an old pair of sneakers, but it's not like I didn't have backups. I sat on the couch to tie my Walk On Bys.

"Have a seat," I said. "Thanks," I added. Not to get goopy, but I couldn't believe they'd cared enough to come back.

Tess and Rosie stayed by the door. "No problem," Tess said. "I wasn't sure if it was serious enough to bring wine."

"Or chocolate," Rosie said. "I could run home for some."

"Wine over chocolate," Tess said. "Any day."

"Not me," Rosie said. "I'm a total chocoholic in a crisis."

"Okay, we need a tie breaker," Tess said. "Come on, Noreen, wine wins hands down, doesn't it?"

"Tough call," I said. "If you two hadn't shown up, I'd probably be dipping chocolate in in my wine right about now." my wine right about now."

I stood up. "Thanks," I said again.

Tess opened my front door. A flash of white cut in front of me and made a beeline for my kitchen. Three smaller blurs of brown were right behind it.

I screamed. "Are those chickens?"

"Rod Stewart!" Rosie yelled. "Sorry," she said to me in a quieter voice. "Do you have a box of cereal handy?"

I pointed to my kitchen. My hand was trembling, I noticed, and I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

Rosie came out of my kitchen, shaking the box of Special K I'd left on my counter. The creatures followed her like the Pied Piper across my living room and out the front door. "I'll just run them home," she yelled. "I'll be back in a second."

Tess was checking out my living room. "Great window treatments," she said.

"Were those chickens?" I asked again.

"Yup," Tess said. "The brown ones were hens, but I think Rod Stewart's probably a rooster."

"Why is he called Rod Stewart?"

Tess shrugged. "You think he looks more like Barry Manilow?"

I followed Tess out to my backyard. A ladder I'd never seen before was tilted up against the back of my house. Maybe it was all that sleeping, or maybe it was the chickens, but I was feeling a little bit like Alice after she'd fallen through the rabbit hole. Not that I would have recognized a rabbit hole if I fell through it.