Sorry

“I’m here to apologize to you,” he says.

“You?”

“Me.”

“Why you?”

“My agency represents Hessmann. Since we took on the commission, it’s a personal thing for me if my client makes mistakes. I’m something like his conscience. And you can bet that someone like Hessmann wants to have a clean conscience.”

She doesn’t react, she looks at the card.

“Hence Sorry?”

“Because we apologize.”

“For other people?”

“For other people, yes. Do you want to tell me what happened in your own words?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

Julia Lambert nods and clasps her hands. The card is in front of her on the table. Kris shouldn’t force it now. Her gestures are unambiguous. But it’s a good sign that she set the visiting card down on the table faceup. Kris can see the logo, he’s very pleased with the logo. They look at one another. Kris will keep his mouth shut until Julia Lambert speaks first. She needs time to think about his words.

Her history is typical. Since Sorry took on its first commission, there have been several such cases. Her boss had an affair with her and fired her when he craved fresh meat. You could call that the end of a career. The secretary, of course, put it differently.

Julia Lambert is someone who learns from her mistakes. Kris can see that she will get back on her own two feet all by herself. But he also sees that she’s still preoccupied by her humiliation. Not being able to defend herself, being totally subject to the word of someone who was first her boss, then her lover, and finally her boss again.

Where the emotions are concerned, we all cave in sooner or later, Kris thinks, and is glad to keep the thought to himself.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Julia Lambert says after a minute.

“No one said anything about having to,” Kris replies. “Hessmann knows he made a mistake. And you know that he would never personally admit it to you. People like Hessmann make things easy for themselves. He changes his women as often as he changes his tie.”

Her eyebrows contract, Kris could bite his tongue. How can I be such an idiot? What is this? A chat over a glass of beer? He has universalized Julia Lambert, and made a crude mistake.

“I’m sorry. The image was inappropriate.”

“Keep talking.”

“I’m not here to offer you money,” says Kris, although that’s exactly why he’s here. “Money is comfortable, and I think you’re concerned about more than comfort.”

Bull’s-eye. She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t shake her head, her right hand has found the business card again, and is turning it around in her fingers. She waits for more.

“As you know, Hessmann has contacts. The business listens to him. And when I see where the job center has sent you …”

Kris sums up her office with a wave of his hand.

“… then I think you deserve better.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

“I like it here.”

“No, you don’t.”

She stops turning the business card around. She doesn’t contradict him.

Thank God.

“Where do you want to go?” Kris asks.

“Simple as that?” she asks back.

“Simple as that. I’ll find you a better position in a different company, in return you accept Hessmann’s apology and leave the fury and hurt behind you; that’s my offer.”

Kris knows it’s never that easy to leave fury and hurt behind. But he thinks Julia Lambert ought to hear that the possibility exists, and that a better job than the last one represents a good kind of revenge.

The phone rings. Julia Lambert lets it ring and presses two buttons so that they can have some peace. The phone falls silent.

“From when?” she asks.

“Hessmann gave me carte blanche where you’re concerned. That is to say, whenever you like. No one wants to live with guilt. Not even Hessmann.”

Julia Lambert laughs for the second time since Kris has been with her. It’s a restrained laugh, but it’s still a laugh that comes from deep down.

Good.

“He’s been able to live with it pretty well for the last six months,” she says. “I doubt he had any sleepless nights.”

The sarcasm is clearly audible. Kris is still not on safe terrain. It’s the way Julia Lambert sits there. Tense, suspicious.

The whole thing could be one big joke.

“Here’s my suggestion,” Kris says and gets to his feet. “I invite you out to dinner now, and while we’re eating, you tell me which companies you’re interested in, what position you think you could do or would like to have, and what an appropriate wage might be.”

Kris stretches out his hands so that she can see he isn’t hiding anything, that he’s on her side. No tricks.

“What do you think?”

Her nostrils flare, her mouth has opened a crack, not a word comes out. Enough sarcasm. She’s excited, she’s understood. Kris can see that Julia Lambert likes his offer. It has happened. She belongs to him.

“You did what?” Wolf asks in the evening when they’re sitting in the villa’s conservatory.

“I had dinner with her.”