Invisible Ellen Read Online Free Page A

Ellen couldn’t argue with the logic of canceling out their coarse commentary, though Irena still moved with the fearful slinking of a creature desperate to evade becoming lunch.
    The men had vacated the break room when Ellen went back through. They had left their wrappers and cans on the table under a sign reading CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF! She went down a long, L-shaped hallway to get a cart and gather cleaning supplies from the supply room. Turning the corner onto the last leg of the hall, she found herself in an eerie semidarkness. The nasty overhead fluorescent lights were sputtering through their last death throes, and the resulting feeble flicker was barely sufficient to illuminate the short section of the corridor.
    The harsh, acidic tang of ammonia and pine cleaners stored inside the supply room had given Ellen the habit of opening the door reluctantly, as though if she snuck up on it, the smell wouldn’t be so abrasive. She eased open the door and felt for the switch.
    From deep in the gloom, beyond the stacked metal shelving of toilet paper, scrub brushes, and floor cleaners, she heard whispered voices, one aggressively male, and the other female, pleading and afraid. Ellen held still and listened.
    Keeping a hand on the door so that it closed silently behind her, Ellen moved into the darkness. She recognized the smarmy, innuendo-filled male voice, the kind of voice that never missed an opportunity to turn any comment into a sexual reference. It was the Boss.
    â€œCome on, you know you like it,” the Boss was saying in his creepy whine. “You want to keep your job, don’t you? I know you have a baby and you’re not really married. I could get you better hours. Just make me happy—nothing you haven’t done before.” The Russian accent tinting the young woman’s plea to be released told Ellen that the voice belonged to Irena. No doubt the horny Boss had been able to sneak up on her because of the ever-present earbuds.
    â€œAre you even legal?” the Boss asked, a cruel tinge to his voice. “I’d hate to see things get difficult for you. Everybody needs friends in high places.” Ellen heard the sound of a zipper and then a sharp cry and a small scuffle. “Come on, I can be your friend.”
    Before tonight, Ellen would have blended in with the plaster and recorded the scenario with a nagging yet distant sensation of indignation, but now she thought of the satisfying slap of the bag snatcher’s palms on the cement and she craved more of the same. Muted outrage and personal distaste for the greasy Boss welled up in Ellen, and she decided to disrupt this current attempt to misuse his puny authority, this abuse that was only one on a long list of his offenses that ended in Ellen’s mind with three dots, as she’d seen in books when it meant the list went on and on. She backtracked to the door, grasped the handle, and threw it open as though she were just entering, letting it slam into the wall with a crash. She switched on the light and started rummaging through the cleansers closest to the door, on the bottom shelf, stooping down behind one of the carts. In a few seconds she heard the sound of a muffled sob and Irena’s feetrushing past her out the door and then the slower, heavier tread of the Boss. Ellen could see his dark, scuffed lace-up shoes between the wheels of the cart as he came around the shelving. They paused, then turned away, and the door opened and closed. Ellen straightened up. Good, now she could get to work.
    Wheeling the cart into the hallway, she spotted Irena coming back for her own cart, her startled face streaked with tears. Her eyes glued to the floor as she scurried past, a frightened mouse in a gray jumpsuit, scrambling for cover. There was no sign of the Boss, or the earbuds.
    Wishing she had seen his face when he was deprived of his toy, Ellen moved on, working her way to the snack-food section to replenish her