Performance Review

Clarissa Malone savored the first mocha-flavored mouthful. Sighing in ecstasy, she relished a second mouthful as Stewart Mulligan sat down opposite her at the small round table, mumbling, “Hello.” Clarissa sighed. The man was socially inept, never mind awkward and his behavior in her presence was evidence he was interested in her. She cherished another mouthful before getting down to business. Clarissa had opted to hold their meeting in a more relaxed setting rather than at the more formal and anxiety-inducing office. 

Conducting performance reviews was one part of her job as the Head of Personnel at the law offices of Krenshaw, McDonald and Morrison she hated. 

“Good morning, Stewart. Thank you for coming. Can I order anything for you?” 

“No, thank you,” he replied, looking everywhere but at her. 

“Then let’s get started. You had your yearly performance review and it was deemed necessary to discuss a few things. Once our meeting is over, I’ll type up a summary of today’s meeting for you and a copy will go into your personnel file. Do you have any questions before we get started?”

“What did I do wrong?” He asked anxiously. “Am I in trouble?” Clarissa noticed his hands were shaking. He was obviously nervous. 

“You’re often late to work for no valid reason, but more importantly, I’ve received complaints from a number of female staff members who said you made them feel uncomfortable by asking them to go out with you after work.”

“I didn’t mean anything bad by it. I was just being friendly.” He protested, wiping his clammy hands on his black pants. 

“I understand and it was very kind of you for wanting to be friendly but from now on, please keep your attempts at being friendly more professional and restricted to the office. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He stared down at the empty wooden table in front of him, his face bright red, refusing to meet her gaze. 

Clarissa took pleasure in another flavorful sip. “Aside from those two issues, you’re doing an excellent  job and the lawyers are happy with your job performance. If you arrive on time and maintain professional behavior with the female staff, you’ll receive a letter noting your improvements for you and your file and will receive a raise. The lawyers felt you merited a second chance given your excellent job performance as the head paralegal. How does that sound?” She smiled at him.

“Thank you for giving me a second chance. You won’t regret it.” He stared her straight in the eye. Cassie shivered. There was something unnerving about the intense look in his emerald-green eyes behind his brown tortoise-shell glasses that made Clarissa uneasy.

She reassured herself she was being overly dramatic.

Nevertheless, she wrapped up the meeting. “Do you have any questions of comments? If not, I’ll see you back at the office. I’ll email you a copy of the letter I’ll write regarding our meeting and we’ll meet again in six months and re-assess your punctuality and behavior. I’ll have Pam call you to schedule our next meeting. Sound good?”

Stewart nodded in agreement. Then he practically bolted from his chair and out the door to his twenty-year old clunker. Getting into the car, he barely missed hitting another car entering the parking lot and sped off in the direction of the law offices. 

Clarissa enjoyed one final sip before packing up her supplies and heading out to the parking lot and her black Mercedes SUV. 

Back at the law offices, Clarissa was surprised when Pam told her Stewart had yet to return from their meeting. Unbelievable. He fucks off right after we discussed his tendency to arrive late to work. Clarissa sighed and rubbed her temples, feeling a headache starting.

“Pam, I’m taking the rest of the day off. You can forward any important calls to my cell. You can leave whenever you finish your work. Just be sure to remember to change the outgoing message on voicemail.”

Like an adoring puppy dog, Pam followed Clarissa into her office to try to get details about how the meeting had gone, but Clarissa was too much of a professional to take the bait. Sending her back to her desk, Clarissa packed up everything she would need to work from home. Saying goodbye to Pam and the colleagues she passed on her way out of the expensively-decorated law office, she stopped at a small specialty boutique to pick up a selection of various different cheeses with a variety of different crackers, and a bottle of white wine. 

Clarissa pulled into her long circular driveway and parked directly in front of the stairs leading to the wraparound porch on the first floor. Juggling her purse, briefcase and books she’d brought for research, she struggled to get the right key into the right lock.

“Let me help you with that,” said a masculine voice, strong, firm, commanding.

Clarissa whirled around and dropped everything she was holding, prepared to defend herself. She’d been mugged years ago and taken martial arts classes ever since. The bottle of wine shattered as it hit the ground, the wine soaking Clarissa’s purse and briefcase. She found herself staring into intense emerald-green eyes which felt as though they could see directly into her soul. She instinctively put her right hand over heart to slow its beating.

“Oh My God! Stewart, you scared the shit out of me! Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”

“Open the door, Clarissa.” A shiny metallic gun appeared in Stewart’s gloved left hand. 

“What are you doing? What do you want from me?”

“First, I want to go into the house. We’re too conspicuous just standing here.”

“Then?”

“I’ll tell you inside.” He wrestled the door keys from her hand, unlocked the door and pushed her inside. Without talking his eyes or the gun off her, he picked up Clarissa’s things and threw them into the house, closing and locking the door behind him. Clarissa was backing away, her mind racing, wondering what she could use to defend herself besides martial arts, in which she was lethal. She knew how to kill a man, but could she go through with it?

He led her into the family room easily making his way through the enormous three-level manor, causing Clarissa to wonder if he had been there before without her knowledge. “Sit,” he ordered, pointing at the grey suede sectional that lined one side of the room, pushing her toward it. 

Clarissa stumbled and fell into the couch seat, but managed to remain upright. 

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” said Clarissa. “You’re not at all like the person you are at work.”

“That’s because at work, I act like the bumbling, socially awkward and inept IT guy you’ve come to know. But that’s an act, a performance to entice people to open up around me. You’d be amazed what people will talk about in the presence of others, especially if its just the lowly, nerdy IT guy the rest of the employees tolerate because they need me. You never want to piss off the guy who can access your computer at work…and at home.” He grinned.

Clarissa’s mouth dropped open but no sound emerged. After the shock wore off, she asked, “So, you’ve been spying on employees and hacking into their computers at work and home?”

Stewart shrugged. “It’s easy for me to do - why shouldn’t I? You’d be amazed by some of the information people keep in their computers. You’d be surprised and likely a little concerned at the contents of some of your employees’ computers.” He laughed. 

“What do you want from me?” 

Stewart knelt down on the floor next to Clarissa on the sectional. “I want your respect. I want your admiration. I want you to want me the way I want you. I’ve been waiting for this day since I was hired.” He stood and began pacing in front of her. 

“You want me to respect someone holding me captive?” Clarissa asked incredulously. “You’re delusional if you think that’ll work. I’m sorry but I can’t respect someone who kidnapped me.”

He backhanded her so hard she fell over, cupping her mouth and jaw which was rapidly beginning to swell with her right hand. She spat a bloody tooth into her left and looked at him with fear. “What do you plan to do with me?” she lisped. 

“When I act like ‘socially-inept Stewart,’ women aren’t interested in me romantically. When I act like ‘real Stewart,’ women aren’t interested in me romantically. I can’t win. So, I’ve decided to take what I want, whether or not the woman agrees,” he explained matter-of-factly.. 

“That’s rape, sexual assault!”

“You’ll be begging for more,” he declared proudly.

“As I said, you’re delusional. I’ll fight you the entire time.”

“That’ll just make it more exciting.” He licked his lips, as though tasting her pheromones. Clarissa could see his excitement in the growing bulge in the front of his pants. 

She would only get one chance to catch him by surprise. She had to be hyper-alert to his every movement so as not to miss her opportunity to disable him and escape. She didn’t want to kill him, but would if given no choice. She had to protect not only herself, but her unborn baby as well. No one knew she was pregnant; she hadn’t planned on revealing her pregnancy until she could no longer hide it. The father was no longer in the picture, but claimed he’d help her financially. So far, she hadn’t seen so much as a dime. Fortunately, she was well-off and could easily afford to raise a child. 

But that was provided she could save both herself and her baby.

Clarissa’s cell phone rang Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” Startled, Stewart looked away and Clarissa pounced, landing a kick to his groin that had him doubled in two, vomiting. Clarissa grabbed the gun then raced from the house calling 9-1-1 as she ran. 

“My name is Clarissa Simmons and my colleague is trying to kill me. Please hurry!  I’m pregnant! The address is 387 Brine Avenue, corner Madison. I disabled him and ran out of the house but he’ll be coming after me!”

“Can you go to a neighbor’s or someplace else safe?” Asked the 9-1-1 operator.

“I don’t want to place anyone else in danger. He just changed from a socially awkward IT nerd to a raging, controlling, commanding misogynist who plans to kill me!”

A roar of rage came from her second floor bedroom. “I’ll kill you, you bitch!” 

“He’s coming for me! Hurry!”

Clarissa ran around the side of the house and finally reached the row of hedges that served as a property line and cut through them to hide in the neighbor’s yard, watching her house through the wooden slats of the fence.   

Stewart stumbled out of the house, roaring like a wild animals at the same time a police car pulled up, lights flashing. He took off, trying to run from them but the two officers raced after him and tackled him to the ground, cuffing his hands behind his back as two more police cars with two officers in each pulled up.

Clarissa was loaded onto an ambulance but before they took her away, she made sure Stewart would be arrested and locked away, giving sher some peace of mind. She insisted on being allowed to talk to Stewart before being taken to the hospital. 

The officer interogating her motioned to the officers holding a handcuffed Stewart to bring him over. Stewart looked at Cassie with hatred in his eyes. 

“What do you want?”

She leaned forward. “I want to tell you you’re a pathetic little man that no woman will ever love. You might as well give up. You’ll spend the rest of your life alone and you’ll die alone. And you won’t be loved by anyone.” She lay back down and indicated to the paramedic she was ready to go, ignoring the psychotic screams of rage emanating from a broken, devastated and defeated Stewart.