"I'm sorry?"
His office suddenly felt very quiet. Beyond the glass, someone laughed over a printer jam, blissfully unaware that the CEO had just proposed to give his own assistant an assistant.
"A personal assistant."
"For me."
"Yes."
"Augustus, I am an assistant."
"An executive assistant."
"Oh, forgive me. That makes this completely normal."
He explained, in his most reasonable voice, that my work, my charity commitments, and my condition were becoming increasingly demanding. I explained, in mine, that an executive assistant hiring an assistant to manage her private life was the corporate equivalent of a snake eating its own tail. I knew exactly what an assistant did, because I did it for him, and I did it well.
Wonderful. Pregnancy had apparently reached the stage where the man wanted to assign me an administrative department.
He remained perfectly serious, which made everything worse.
"What exactly would this person do?"
