The Voting Machine

Heavenly Objects

The way that Chang and Weisbein looked at one another as their beautiful associate left them made me a little suspicious. There was something funny going and it wasn't entirely work-related.

"Can you take us back a year ago, Temo?" Chang said. "I think the last time we saw you, it was shortly before you won the Employee of the Year award."

That was exactly twelve months ago, the point where my whole life started to unravel.

It started the night I received the Employee of the Year award at Passion Financial, a check for one hundred thousand dollars. Gina Hill delivered the prize in a palatial office on the top floor of the company headquarters.

Gina was a good friend, the one in the call center who helped me get the job at Passion. During our time working together, we shared many secrets. 

The first secret was the time she kissed me after a fight with her ex-husband.

I was flattered at the time, but I knew it wouldn't go any further.

"You're wonderful and beautiful," I told her. "But I can't be that guy. If I was him, I would be on my hands and knees begging you to tell me how to make things right. If I were him, I would do whatever I could to make you happy. But I am not him. I can only love one woman with all my heart."

Maybe she didn't believe me. I knew that Gina and I had different ideas about how men and women were supposed to be together. I was raised to be a romantic, the kind of naive fool who believed in the idea of one true love, a dreamer who believed that a husband and wife could revolve around each other in heavenly orbit until the end of time. I'd had a hard life and took no blessing for granted. I believed that my wife Suzy was my one true chance to make things right.

Gina rejected the idea of a soul mate or a lifetime partner. For her, love had no fixed orbit; there was no permanence. People were hurtling through time and space alone, each with a unique course and destination. They may impact and love one another for a period of a time. This impact on each other may change the course of their lives. But the impact was temporary. Ultimately we were all on our own. For Gina, the universe was not governed by the rules of love. It was based on the laws of self-preservation.

During the last year we worked at Passion, Gina left her ex as he became increasingly dangerous. One time, I defended her from his attack in the Executive Parking Space in the basement of the Passion building. Another night, I helped her move out of her apartment after her husband tried to break in.

That night her college graduation photo went missing. That picture was her most prized possession and a symbol of everything he hated. Gina had climbed out of a desperate place with no support and made a career for herself. She'd risen from an entry-level job to one of the most powerful positions at Passion.

When Gina handed me the Employee of the Year award, it was her last night in the United States. She was set to fly to the other side of the world for the most important assignment of her career. Under Passion's new CEO Chet Castle, she'd been promoted to Vice President of Operations and tasked with establishing a call center in India to replace the one in LA.

On that final night, Gina and I shared another secret from our work at Passion. I knew that Gina carried heavy regrets about that thing that no one else could know. It weighed on her to the point where she wanted to die. I could feel undying anger for the position she had put me in. Or I could try to see the world through her eyes and forgive her.

It seemed certain on that evening that Gina was leaving my life for good. I figured she was one of those heavenly objects hurtling away into infinite. 

I was wrong about this. Gina still had a part to play. It would shake the foundations of my life at the very core.