Rude Boy USA by Victoria Bolton

the office to finish her initial cleanup. When she arrived, Ben was already there looking around at some of the progress she had made while straightening up the day before. He looked a bit disheveled smelled slightly of alcohol. “This place looks nice,” he said to her.
    “Thank you. I wanted to wait until you were here, but the guys told me to go ahead and start. You had a lot of things here that seemed out of order,” she told him.
    “Well, for your information, they were organized. My filing system is different from everyone else’s. To you this looks like chaos, but I can find and identify every single piece of paper in here,” he said.
    “OK, well, we have to make this work since we are sharing this office,” she said. “I wanted to clean the drawers, but I saw you had some personal things in there,” she added.
    “Well, thank you for your consideration,” he said with a bit of snark. He walked over by her and sat on top of the desk. “So what is the deal between you and John? Are you two still ‘dating’?” he asked while making the quotes sign to her. “Is that how you got this job?”
    A bit offended by what he’d just asked, Celia snapped back. “I shouldn’t even answer those questions; they’re personal. But for your information, we are not a couple. We are just friends.”
    “Well, yeah, because he has a wife at home, or were you aware of that? Oh, I’m sorry,” he said to her.
    “I know about that, and once again, we are just friends. Can we discuss work matters now?” she responded.
    “OK, fine. Just one more question. Why does he call you Bunny? Your name is Celia, right?” Ben asked.
    “Yes, my real name is Celia. He calls me that because he thinks it’s nice, as an alias. I’m not offended,” she answered.
    “Well, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, and excuse my language, but Bunny is the most stupid fucking thing I’ve heard for a name. I won’t call you that. I’ll call you by your real name, Celia is it? John must have made that up. He’s a prick. He thinks he can run everyone. Celia is a more decent name. I can’t have people know that I share an office with a colored girl named Bunny,” he said.
    Ben’s mini rant took Celia aback. It seemed that he had a problem with John, and it dawned on her that he might also have a problem with sharing a position with her. “OK, well, you can call me whatever you like, but please keep it respectful,” she said, trying to lighten up the moment. She continued to clean up for the day. She had Ben tell her the basics of what she needed to do with the books and numbers. Despite his uneasiness, he knew that business was the most important thing, and he could not be held responsible forsome woman messing it up. She got the gist of what he told her. From then the transition into Chimera became smooth for her.
    Over the course of the next few months, the office that had once housed Ben and his hurricane of mess became a neat and organized area, equipped with a brand-new desk and chair for Celia. It even smelled better. The mountains of paperwork now were organized, and each binder labeled according to Ben’s and Bernie’s specifications. She would need those papers neat and organized because she would be crunching numbers soon. She would view all the mail at the office, but not before her hired security inspected it. They knew of no immediate threats to them, but Bernie, John, and Jerome insisted that she stay safe, just in case someone wanted to send tainted mail to the office.
    Many of the envelopes were junk and some contained bills, which she also took charge of overseeing. She became the office management behind the scenes, much to the delight of Bernie, whose focus shifted to making deals with some people in the area. Bernie’s initial questions about her turned to adoration as he came to see her as one of his kids, the same way he looked at the guys.
    She would get flyers from the Jamaican tourism board, which