Audrey Colombe | 2009 Fiction Honorable Mention

Excerpt from Get Out

How do I say I love you, especially when I never will? I want to tell Jana that I’m not the one who goes to church on Sundays and prays to the big guy, loves numbers, and despises dissent. But this time I held my tongue. We’d been meeting Wednesdays and Fridays at 5:30. The task force still had to get through a mountain of retreat pamphlets and finalize our presentation in less than a week. At lunchtime, I bought a pack of cigarettes.

Then I got called into the Director of Operations’ office. Or, to be perfectly honest, I called her secretary about one thing and she called me back about another.

Right. This Director is another closeted lesbian. I went in and listened to this Director. We sat at her table. I didn’t talk but admired the calming color-scheme of her office suite interior. She went through fourteen emotions in less than five minutes, complete with a short speech that everyone has heard before about her love of fairness and shared decision-making. Workers and management hand-in-hand for lasting solutions.

“So why am I here?” I said, interrupting—so that I didn’t say Ok, we’ve decided you’re a closeted dyke, here’s your collar and microchip, get out. I tried to smile, my soul failing while it glanced around for a handcart.

She turned to me. “We’re here,” she said and smacked her lips. “We are gathered here today to agree on a course of action.” Oh brother. Then she called me a troublemaker. Then she mentioned emails, and Jana, and some information on budgets that we never get to see because they aren’t yet completed because they are never completed and we all know that once these budgets are mentioned a barrier has been erected, a management decision made, and there will be no more discussion. Something has been finalized. Adjusted. And this time, it’s me.