Thor- The Science of Lies No. 36

In Loki Odinson’s beachside home was a massive king size bed with deep green silk sheets and pillows lined with gold embroidery.  The mattress cost him several thousand dollars and boasted top-notch comfort and support.  If Loki ever slept on it, he was sure to get a full night in.  It would surely be more comfortable than the couch in his office.

But sleeping in his bedroom would require spending the night in his home.  He wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.  That house still smelled too much like Odin’s freshly laundered shirts in the closet, or Frigga’s seasoned rump roast fresh out of the oven, or Thor’s five hundred dollar cologne that he used to suffocate everyone with because the fool could never figure out how to apply it correctly.  Every corner of the house offered up some new scent and a memory.  That was why Loki fell asleep every night in a pile of pamphlets for real estate agents with numbers scrawled on the covers that he would call back tomorrow for sure.

**

He had been the President and CEO of Odinson Corp for six months.  Six months for those on the board who hadn’t been in on the coup to come to terms with the new order of things.  Loki couldn’t for the life of him understand how his father had fostered such undying loyalty among the withered old farts.  They still looked upon him with uttermost loathing whenever they encountered him, be it in the halls or at a meeting. 

One of them even called him a cheap upstart to his face.  Or rather, they hissed it out the corner of their mouth at the door following an arduous quarterly report.  Loki’s reaction had been to complete his filing and then exit through the back, thinking about what he should get for dinner and wondering if his father ever had a friend with an ounce of cleverness to him.

Because really, an upstart?  Was that the best they could do?

Loki could think of so many better words to describe himself.

**

There was a new girl in the executive department.  A mousy yet pretty secretary.  She typed up letters and retrieved coffee for some of the higher-ups.  Never for Loki.  He was much too far above those higher-ups.  He only saw her once a day, on the way to his office after breakfast, when she was inevitably fumbling with some xerox-ed papers in front of his door.  Rarely does she say good morning to him.  Even more rarely does he answer her back.

She wouldn’t have his attention at all, except he’s pretty sure he saw a grainy black and white photo of the side of her face on the news a few months ago, in the middle of a report about some other company head divested of a quarter of a million dollars in bonds and other assorted valuables, all from the personal safe in his office.  

(That was why Loki never bothered with that old hunk of metal Odin left behind.  They were so unreliable with all those sneaky little thieves around.)

Then there was the day an old college friend came to visit; a rotund little man who had gone on to be a litigator with a caseload the size of a planet.

"I’m telling you, that’s her!"  He had poked furiously at the glass window, drawing circles around the secretary at her desk.  "Her hair is different, but that’s definitely the girl I hired three months ago. She cleaned out my office.  My safe, my tin of petty cash, even my gold Rolex that I’d taken off to clean!  Thousands of dollars gone in the blink of an eye, and now, here she is!  It must be fate."

Loki had listened to the story without a word, and then spent the next hour and a half convincing his friend that it was simply not possible for that girl to be his thief.  She’d been working at the company for at least a decade.  Clearly, she just had one of those faces.  It was an honest mistake, really.

After his friend had left, disappointed, but reassured, Loki had watched the woman through the ring shaped smudge left behind on the glass.  On the computer screen was her resume, most of it falsified.  Her listed name was at the top of the page.

Nina Sayers.

Apparently, she’d been hoping no one had been to the movies in the last five years.

On his desk was the profile from his private investigator, bearing her true name.

He had not been the one to hire her.  That person no longer had a job.  Why Ms. ‘Sayers’ did when her intent was obvious was something Loki was still trying to discern.

**

He woke up at his desk chair, as he was wont to do on long work days.  His business email was open on the screen.  Behind it was a tab for his personal mail, the one he stopped using six months ago.  The email from Thor was still at the top.  Nobody else had ever bothered to message him before the coup anyway.  Why should they start now?

The email was unopened.  It had been from the time it was sent.  Loki didn’t know what his brother would have to say to him about losing his gilded throne and he didn’t care.  He really didn’t.  He only kept the email because of how immaterial it was to him.  He cared so little, he couldn’t even be bothered to delete it.

Loki woke up only because there was someone else in the office with him.  It had been several weeks since he discovered Ms. ‘Sayers’ dirty little secret.  Weeks of waiting for her to make a move, and planning what he would do when the time came.  He had begun to lose hope that any of those plans would come into fruition, that his words to his lawyer friend had been truer than he realized.  Maybe she really did just have one of those faces.

But of course, here she was.  Just as he knew she would be.  It was about time.

How she had found the combination to that safe did not concern him.  Odds were good that she’d found her way in here at some point while he was taking lunch, perhaps under the guise of picking up some paperwork for delivery to a department head.  That slip of paper taped to the bottom of the drawer with the numbers stamped across it simply would not come off in spite of Loki’s best efforts.  Of course, Odinwould use Thor’s birthday.  The old fool.

The room was so dark when all the lights on the floor were off.  So dark that poor little ‘Nina’  could be forgiven for believing herself alone.  She was certainly meticulous.  A quick glance at the wall clock, and Loki knew that now was the time that security changed shifts, and the janitors had long gone to work on a lower level.  His door was wide open, the lock expertly picked.  His acute hearing picked up the faint squeak of latex gloves.  This was a woman who knew what she was doing.

He waited for her to open the safe, and feel around inside and realize there was nothing to be found.  He waited for the moment when her fluid motions came to a grinding halt, and then he flicked the desk lamp on.  In the warm light, she was crouched in the corner by the safe, curling into herself  like a small, terrified animal.

He grinned down at her, like the predator life and circumstance had forced him to become, and he knew now why he had kept her around for so long and would continue to do so.  All this time, he had needed the company, and really, he could do worse.

"Miss Foster… good evening.”