The Morning Nolan Removed My Name From The Delivery List

Nolan fired me while I was putting clean tabs on the well files.

"Leave those," he said. "We have people for that."

I looked behind me. No one else worked in the archive room.

Outside our Midland office, a truck hauled a pumping unit west along the frontage road. Dust made the morning light look used. Inside, Nolan had ordered white flowers for a deal worth $2.4 million.

My desk still had a cracked cup beneath one short leg.

I was twenty-five, a Pakistani American woman with brown skin, thick black brows, and a dark braid that reached the pocket of my blue work shirt.

My name was Areeba Siddiqui. My job was geophysical archive curator, though Nolan called me the data clerk whenever visitors came.

"Is something wrong with the catalog?" I asked.

"Nothing is wrong. We're moving beyond clerical work."

Nolan Wirth was a tall white man of forty-four with pale blue eyes, a pink scalp showing through fair hair, and shirts pressed flat as envelopes.

His smile usually lasted until somebody asked how a number had been made.

That morning, he set my termination letter across a field sheet before I could cover it.

"Your salary ends today. Payroll will handle the rest."

I earned $54,600 a year. Rent on my apartment was $1,180 a month. I noticed both numbers before I noticed my hands shaking.

"Who will explain the source records at the signing?"

"The software explains them."

Our startup, GroundLedger, sold tools meant to help buyers check abandoned wells. We did not plug wells. We sorted evidence about where wells were, what crews had found, and what still needed checking.

At least, that was what I thought we did.

Nolan tapped the termination letter.

"The Basin Lantern consortium comes at ten. I need you out before then. Don't make a small thing awkward."

The field sheet under his hand came from my mother's survey business. Its corner carried three pencil strokes shaped like a little gate.

Two posts. One bar.

That meant a test had not been done. It did not mean a well had passed.

I could name the crew that drew it. Gilbert's men used a flat bar. The Rosales crew made theirs slope like a roof. My mother had taught me that before she taught me to drive.

"Did you get the commercial rights cleared?" I asked.

He laughed once.

"They're old oil records, Areeba. Public information. We paid you to scan them."

"You paid me to build the catalog. The archive was supplied under an evaluation license."

"Please don't become difficult over vocabulary."

I put both palms on the desk.

"The rights folder is in your contract system. There's also a paper copy with your signature."

He glanced at his watch.

"Send it to legal."

Our outside lawyer had asked me for that folder twice. Nolan had canceled both calls because a prospect needed a demo.

I took my personal notebook, my cup, and the blue document envelope from the locked bottom drawer. The envelope had come from the woman who closed my mother's company. On its front, in my mother's square handwriting, were the words: Keep The Whole Chain.

Nolan watched me put it in my tote.

"Company files stay here."

"This is mine. Your copy stays on the server."

He did not ask what it held.

My mother had shut down Siddiqui Subsurface Surveys after a stroke weakened her left hand. Her company had debts, clients, and shelves of surveys nobody wanted to box.

I had taken unpaid weekends to label those shelves. I had also paid more than a year's savings for something the liquidation agent had been careful to list, page by page.

Nolan knew I brought the archive. He thought that meant I brought boxes.

At reception, Tessa Bell from data operations saw my tote.

"Are you going to a site?"

"Apparently, I'm going home."

Her face changed. She looked toward the conference room, where a wall screen showed green circles across a map of West Texas.

"He said you were handling source questions."

"He just fired the source questions."

She almost smiled. Then she didn't.

I asked for a receipt for my returned badge. The receptionist found a pad and wrote one. I waited until she put the time on it: 9:18 a.m.

Nolan came down the hall, carrying a box of pastries.

"You don't need a receipt for everything."

"This one protects both of us."

The front door opened before he could answer.

A Black woman in a tan field jacket stepped inside with a hard case and a rolled map. She looked about forty. A younger man carried a stack of contract binders behind her.

"Keisha Langford," she said. "Basin Lantern. I'm early."

Nolan's smile returned at once.

Keisha looked at my work shirt, then the badge receipt in my hand.

"Are you the archive curator? I sent three questions last night."

"I was the archive curator until eighteen minutes ago."

She unrolled her map on the reception desk.

Beside a well I knew by its pencil marks, GroundLedger had printed a bright green shield.

Keisha put her finger on it.

"Then before you leave," she said, "tell me who decided this one was safe."