The Resort's Dirty Little Secret

I'd been at The Frangipani for about forty minutes and I already hated it. Not the resort, the resort was gorgeous. Hibiscus everywhere, an infinity pool that spilled into the ocean, bungalows with little private porches. It was the people I hated, or hated being around. Forty accountants and sales people from the office, and I was the only one who had flown in alone and didn't know anybody.

Okay, that's not totally true. I knew Joel from payroll. He waved at me once from the pool and then went back to his beer. So basically nobody.

The welcome email had said business casual for the retreat, which on a tropical island apparently meant linen shirts and shorts and sandals for the sales team, and me in slacks because I misread the whole thing. I was sweating through my blazer before I even found my bungalow. I changed into the one dress I'd packed for the nice dinner, a navy wrap thing, and then I went straight to the open-air bar because that's what you do when you don't know a single person at a work event. You find the bartender.

The bartender was a guy named Ross, 28, tan, flirty in that practiced resort way. He had worked there six years, he told me, and he could make anything.

"What'll it be?" he asked, leaning on the bar like we were old friends.

"Whatever's coldest and strongest," I said. "I'm here for a work retreat."

"Ouch." He laughed and started pouring. "Say no more. On the house for the first one. Well, on the company, they're paying, but it feels like on the house."

"You're a good man, Ross."

"I'm a tips-motivated man, but thank you."

I took my drink to the far end of the bar and did the thing I always do at these things, which is stand slightly apart and count the exits. There were six other people at the bar. Two guys from sales I vaguely recognized, a woman from marketing, and a cluster of three who turned out to be the entire analytics team. My team, technically. Nobody had come over to say hi. I'd been at the firm five years and I still felt like the new temp, and honestly some of that was on me. I kept to myself. Being trans at that office meant I'd learned early to keep my head down, and now the head was basically fused to the down position.

At six sharp, Gladys got up on the little stage by the pool and gave the welcome speech. Gladys is my boss's boss, senior vice president, 42, single, childfree, and famous at the firm for being able to end a meeting with one raised eyebrow. She wore white slacks and a cream blouse and she looked like she'd been air dropped in from a corporate photoshoot.

"Welcome to The Frangipani," she said. "Three days, one goal. Remember that we are a company, and companies that play together, well, statistically they bill together. I looked it up."

Everybody laughed. It wasn't really a joke but it was delivered so dry it worked.

"There's a schedule in your bungalows," she went on. "Team activities in the mornings, free afternoons, and tonight, karaoke. Attendance at karaoke is, I'm told by our events coordinator, mandatory. She outranks me here, apparently. Her name is Gertrude, she runs this place, be nice to her or we don't get invited back."

Then her eyes did the thing. She scanned the crowd, the way you do, and her gaze stopped on me for maybe a second longer than it stopped on anyone else. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she was just reading the room. But she looked at me and something in my stomach did a little drop, like the first hill on a rollercoaster. Dread, mostly. Curiosity, a little. I finished my drink.

* * *

Karaoke was in the main pavilion at eight. Gertrude, the events coordinator, is a whirlwind, 39, divorced, loud in the fun way, and she had a binder of songs and a microphone with a scratchy cord.

"Everyone sings," she announced. "I have a list. I checked it twice. Ross is here to cut you off if you're terrible, and also to sell you drinks."

"Both services available," Ross said from the bar.

The sales people went first and were predictably fine, all energy and no shame. Then somebody from legal butchered a country song. Then Gertrude herself did a Shakira thing and it was genuinely good, which felt unfair.

And then my name came out of her mouth.

"Nara! Where's Nara? Accountant. You people are quiet, I've been watching you all day."

I looked at Gladys, who was sitting at the front table with a glass of wine, and Gladys looked back at me with an unreadable little smile. Not a smirk. Not encouragement either. Just watching. It made my skin prickle.

"I don't sing," I said, standing up anyway, because refusing would have been worse.

"Nobody sings," Gertrude said, shoving the mic at me. "That's the beauty of it."

The screen showed my song and it was a cheesy 80s ballad, the kind with a key change and a saxophone solo, and I have no idea how it ended up in the queue because I definitely didn't pick it. I sang it badly. Really badly. I missed the first note entirely, I came in late on the second verse, and when the key change hit I just kind of swayed and pretended I was emotional. The crowd, being coworkers and mostly drunk, cheered every mistake like I'd done it on purpose.

By the last chorus I was actually having fun, which is the trap of karaoke, and I hit one big note by accident and the room yelled and I did a small bow and sat down with my face on fire.

"Not bad," said a voice beside me, and it was Gladys, who had somehow migrated from the front table to the empty chair next to mine without me noticing.

"I was terrible," I said.

"You were terrible," she agreed. "Confidently terrible, though. That's rarer than you'd think. Most people are terrible and ashamed."

"That's basically my whole professional brand. Confidently wrong in quarterly meetings."

She laughed. Gladys laughed. I filed that away like a weird little data point.

Before either of us could say anything else, Gertrude appeared at our table like she'd been summoned.

"There you are," she said to me, grabbing my wrist. "You're coming with me. Gladys, don't hog the accountants, I need her at the quiet bar, the one past the pool. The rowdy crowd is ruining the vibe of my pavilion."

"She's all yours," Gladys said, and Gertrude hauled me up out of my chair.

"Ow, okay, I can walk," I said.

"I know, but it's faster if I steer. I like your dress, by the way. Nobody else dressed up. This crowd dresses like they're going to repaint a fence."

"Thank you? I overpacked for the wrong event, I think."

"No, you dressed for the right event. They underpacked." She walked me across the pool deck, past the infinity edge, to a smaller bar tucked behind a wall of hibiscus, all candlelight and low wooden stools. It was almost empty. "Sit. Ross will be over in a minute, he covers both bars, it's a crime, the resort understaffs him terribly."

I sat. The candles made everything look softer and I felt my shoulders finally drop about two inches. Maybe the night was turning around.

And then, of course, Gladys came around the hibiscus wall.

"Room for one more?" she asked, though there were about six empty stools.

"It's my bar," Gertrude said. "You can't invite yourself."

"I just did. I'm a senior vice president, I invite myself places."

"Ross," Gertrude called, not even turning around. "Tequila. Three shots. And the good bottle, not the one you give to honeymooners who won't know the difference."

"Who says I won't know the difference?" Gladys asked.

"Ross will say you won't and then pour the good one anyway. He likes you. He likes everyone with a company card."

Ross arrived with the shots and a plate of lime wedges and salt, set them down with a little flourish, and said, "Just so you know, I would never serve honeymooners the bad tequila. I serve them the bad champagne." Then he left.

We picked up the shots. I looked at mine and thought about the promotion I'd been chasing for two years, senior analyst, more money, an office with a window, and about how drunk was maybe not the state to be in front of the person who could give it to me.

"One," Gertrude said, raising hers. "To a memorable retreat."

"To billing together," Gladys said, deadpan.

"To surviving the weekend," I said, and they both laughed, and we threw them back.

The good tequila is a completely different animal from the bad tequila. It went down warm and clean and it hit about ten seconds later. Gladys watched me over the rim of her empty glass the whole time. Not my glass, hers. Watching me. Same unreadable smile from karaoke.

"So, Nara," she said, setting the glass down. "Tell me something true. Gertrude says accountants are incapable of it after nine pm."

"That's slander," I said. "We're incapable of it before nine pm too."

Gertrude cackled and flagged Ross down for another round, and Gladys turned her stool toward mine and settled in like she had nowhere else to be all night.

It got later. We had one more round, and then Ross brought water without being asked, which I've learned is what bartenders do when they think you're fun and would like you to stay fun, and I switched to water and so, after a look at me, did Gladys. Gertrude got pulled away at some point by a couple arguing about a sunset cruise, and that left just me and Gladys at the candle bar with the hibiscus smell and the sound of the pool filter going somewhere in the dark.

"So," she said, turning her empty glass in a slow circle on the bar. "Tell me something true, then. It's after nine. Test the theory."

"Any true thing or a work true thing?"

"Any true thing."

I looked at the candle, because looking at her while saying it felt like too much. "I've wanted the senior analyst job so bad that I practiced my answers in the mirror before every review for the last two years. Like, out loud. In a mirror. That's the true thing."

"That's a good true thing," she said. "I believe it."

"What about you? Something true."

She thought about it, or pretended to. Then she looked straight at me and didn't do the smile, just looked at me flat and ordinary, which was somehow worse. "I find you very attractive, Nara. I have since you presented the Q3 numbers in March. I'd like you to come to my bungalow later, if you want to. That's the true thing."

I made some kind of noise that I'm glad there's no recording of. "I. Wow. Okay. That's, um."

"Take your time," she said. "I'm not asking for an answer right now. I'm telling you the offer exists. You can say no and we never speak of it and Monday is Monday."

"Monday is Monday," I repeated, like an idiot.

"Exactly. Drink your water."

Here's what went through my head over the next twenty minutes, in no particular order: she's my boss's boss, which is two bosses up. She's 42, I'm 34, that's fine. She's been completely normal to me for five years. She knows I'm trans, everyone at the firm knows, and she has never once made it a thing, not a joke, not a careful face, nothing. She could fire me with an eyebrow. She has never once given me a reason to think she plays dirty.