by R. R. Banks
“But still. I’ve worked with him since I graduated. I’ve spent more time with him in the last few years than I’ve spent with my own family. Besides, aren’t the weddings of socialites supposed to be the events of the season with guest lists that are a couple thousand people long? I didn’t even get to sit at the table beside the kitchen and look at them through binoculars while people they barely know make toasts about them?”
“Apparently there wasn’t a table by the kitchen,” Robin said, looking back at the screen and reading through the announcement. “There wasn’t even a reception. There was barely a wedding.”
“What do you mean?”
Poking the cake had made me want a bite and I moved it around on my tongue so that he wouldn’t call me out for talking with my mouth full.
“It says that they had a spontaneous destination wedding on his private island.”
“Does that mean that she smuggled herself onto his jet and then plied him with little umbrella drinks until he agreed to marry her?”
“I think it might. That would explain the red dress.”
“Maybe. Of course, if she had tried to put on a white dress it would likely have burst into flames before she could get all the way down the aisle.”
“Ah. So, our friend Lucille is in the Dirty Eight Club?”
“She makes the Dirty Eight Club look like a Carmelite nun drum circle.”
Robin got an expression on his face like he was thinking through what I had just said.
“I think that we just found our Halloween costume for this year.”
“So, what am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“What do you mean what are you supposed to do? I didn’t think that you were involved.”
“Of course, I am. I have to walk into the office Monday morning and face Mr. Royal. What do I do?”
“I think that the only choice that you have is to plaster on a smile and say congratulations. Maybe bring a muffin basket.”
“A muffin basket?”
“Do whatever you would do for anyone else who suddenly got married. Do what you would do if you found out that I frolicked off to the islands and up and got married.”
“I appreciate the advice, but I really don’t think that Mr. Royal would appreciate a basket of flavored condoms and body glitter. Besides. I’d kill you if you did that so the gift wouldn’t be necessary.”
“That’s true. Alright, so we go back to the plastered smile and the muffin basket. It’s a nice gesture and he would appreciate knowing that you support him and are happy for him.”
“But I don’t support him and I’m not happy for him.”
“Of course, you aren’t. Ninety percent of people who go to weddings or congratulate people after weddings aren’t happy that those weddings happened or think that the people made massive mistakes. It’s one of the great beauties of our culture.”
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
“Lie, Snow. You lie.”
Chapter Two
I was running late when I got to work Monday morning because apparently it is far more difficult to pack fifty tiny chocolate chip and banana nut muffins into a basket than I thought that it would be and the bakery was simply not prepared to work in my timeframe. Juggling the basket under one arm and my briefcase under the other, I struggled to squeeze them against my body hard enough that they wouldn’t slip as I tried to sign the card I held. The elevator doors opened and I curled forward to try to guide the pen cap in my mouth toward the pen in my hand without dropping anything. I couldn’t quite make it work so I tossed the pen aside and spit out the cap before anyone noticed me.
Scurrying as fast as I could, I made my way down the hallway toward Mr. Royal’s office. Before I could get to the door, though, I saw Cindy, Mr. Royal’s secretary, waving me down. She had a phone pinned between her ear and her shoulder and she finished the call before dropping the receiver back to the cradle.
“Morning, Cindy,” I said. “I just wanted to bring this in to Mr. Royal.”
“He can’t be disturbed right now, Snow,” Cindy said.
I looked at her quizzically. Never in the years that I had worked with him had Mr. Royal been inaccessible. Usually his office door was standing open and more often than not he was standing in the doorway looking up and down the hallway for someone to talk to. Now I glanced over at the office and noticed that the door was firmly closed, the blinds over the large window beside it pulled down tightly.
“He can’t be disturbed?” I asked, thinking I might have heard her wrong. “Is something wrong? Is he alright?”
“He’s fine,” she said. “He just asked that he not be disturbed this morning. There’s going to be a meeting at 10 and he said that he is not to be disturbed until then.”
“But I wanted to bring him this,” I said.
I knew that I had reduced myself to sounding like a whiny teenager, but, like Robin, I had already committed and was going to see it through. I held up the muffin basket, hoping that the puffy red and blue bow I had chosen specifically to match the picture that I had seen on the announcement would sway her.
“You can put it in the first conference room,” Cindy said.
The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up, gesturing toward the conference room like she was shooing me away. I had been dismissed. I turned around and took a few steps toward the conference room. Before I even stepped inside, I got a glimpse of the table inside and sighed, hanging my head for the last few steps. Pushing a few of the other of the baskets on the table aside, I settled mine into the fray, trying to get it positioned so that Mr. Royal would see it first when he came into the room.
“Stupid Robin,” I muttered to myself.
I glanced down at my phone to check the time. Just long enough before the surprise meeting to grab a cup of coffee and scarf down a break room doughnut since I didn’t have a chance in my morning of muffin selection to eat breakfast. Fortunately, one thing that Mr. Royal did extremely well was stock the break room. Every morning the tidy little space filled with the rich, sweet fragrance of every flavor of doughnut offered by the gourmet shop just up the road almost by magic. At least, it would seem almost by magic if I hadn’t spent my first six months at the company doing the morning doughnut runs before I found out that that wasn’t actually a part of my job description and it was just Mr. Glass, the company advisor’s, way of not having to do it himself.
I adjusted my skirt as I walked into the break room, then stopped short, no longer caring that my zipper had wriggled its way from the back around to my hip. My eyes locked on the table in the center of the room and the blatant lack of light pink bakery boxes that were usually still staked high at this time of morning. I drew in a breath and noticed that there was no lingering fried dough smell that would indicate the rest of the office had just eaten all of the doughnuts before I could make it. Instead, there was a painfully clean disinfectant smell and in the center of the table a large bowl of fruit and plate of individually packaged granola bars.
What kind of shit was this?
Rosa stepped into the break room behind me and I saw her do the same scan of the room that I had. She looked at me with the expression of unique horror that came from being deprived of her early morning fat and sugar rush. I nodded at her in commiseration and we both stepped up to the table, staring down at the plate and bowl as if it was going to be one big joke and they were going to flip over and turn into our doughnuts and coffee.
We didn’t have much time to question the new craziness of the world. The crackling, old-fashioned PA system that Mr. Royal refused to upgrade told us that it was time for us to report to the main conference room for the big mysterious meeting. I had a bad feeling in my stomach as I settled into one of the blue-cushioned swivel chairs at the table and looked around at my colleagues. Everyone was exchanging questioning looks and there were a few mutterings about the wedding announcement, but it seemed that there was no indication that anyone knew why we had been brought there. We sat the
re for a few tense minutes, and exactly at 10, the door to the conference room swung open. I looked toward it and saw Mr. Royal step in.
“Good morning, everyone!” he exclaimed in his usual bold, jubilant style.
There was an extra sparkle in his eyes and I couldn’t help but think about what Robin had said. As much as I didn’t want to.
“Good morning,” we all burbled back to him.
“I’m so glad to see all of you here this morning because I have a thrilling announcement that I am sure that you will all be as excited about as I am.” He took a breath and I felt my stomach flip. Here it comes. “As some of you might know, life took me on an unexpected and enthralling adventure over the last few weeks and this weekend it reached its pinnacle when I married the love of my life.” The door opened again and Lucille stepped inside. “Please meet my wife. Mrs. Lucille Royal.”
My blood ran cold and I felt the same physical reaction toward her that I always did when we were in school. This was the woman who had done everything in her power to try to pull me down. From the moment that she met me, she was determined to stomp on me on her way to the top, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Fortunately for me at the time, that just pushed me to work harder and I was always enough ahead that she never had the opportunity. Now as I sat there at the conference table watching Lucille as she looked out over us with a stony expression on her face, I was starting to feel like her stiletto was on its way to my head.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice was just as icy as it had always been. “I look forward to getting to know all of you.”
Getting to know all of us? That sounds ominous.
“And she will have plenty of opportunity,” Mr. Royal said. “The primary reason I’ve called all of you together this morning, other than to share my wonderful news with you, is to announce that moving forward there will be a shift in the leadership of Royal and Company. I have been considering retirement for some time now and my lovely bride has convinced me that now is my chance. I will spend the next few days getting some loose ends tied up around here and then I will be leaving on a world tour. I will be handing over power of the company to your new president…Lucille.”
I felt like I was going to throw up. Lucille’s eyes seemed to darken slightly as they swept across the room toward me and a vile curve came to her lips.
“I know that we will work extremely well together and bring Royal and Company to new levels of success,” she said. “That will take effort and dedication from all of you. I know that there are certain ways and operations to which everyone is accustomed, and some of them will need to change. That means that we are all starting fresh. I don’t know you or what you are capable of, so you will need to prove to me that you are of worth to this team and the contribution that you can make. This is a beginning for all of us. Everyone is on level ground now.” She looked directly at me and I knew that that comment was for me. Lucille went back to looking at the rest of the group. “I will be shaking up things around here to make sure that we are all able to reach the potential that I know we have. You may have already noticed some of the changes that I have made in an effort to make our shared work environment healthier. A healthy work environment encourages a healthy team and I know that all of you will not just get accustomed to the changes, but will embrace them and the benefits that they will bring.”
Bitch, where are my doughnuts?
Chapter Three
Lucille
“Are you sure that these reviews are accurate?” I asked.
The papers spread out on the desk in front of me were nothing short of infuriating and I could only hope that I would find out that they were as absurd as the rest of the way that my ridiculous new husband had run this company. New husband. That made my skin crawl and a chill run down my spine. There was no romantic motivation in the reaction. I had never been one of those women who envisions the perfect wedding and the dreamy man standing at the end of the aisle. Instead, I thought only of power. I always knew that I was going to marry the man who was going to put me in the best position in life, and it just so happened that I ran across Walter Royal. I had no difficulty convincing him that we were so perfect for each other that there was no point in dragging out our courtship or engagement. He was all too eager to jump on my offer of marriage during our visit to his island over the weekend. Exorbitantly wealthy and notoriously generous, he was exactly what I was shopping for when I attended the industry event several weeks before, even if he was more than twice my age and had the type of health philosophy that led him to believe strawberry ice cream counted as a serving of fruit. It was just an added bonus that he was the boss of my biggest rival.
Snow Whitman. Just the thought of that name made my muscles tense and my hands clench. She had been the bane of my existence since the first day of college when I walked into my first class and saw her sitting in the front row, already gazing admiringly at the professor. Glossy black hair and piercing blue eyes seemed to transfix the young male teacher and I knew in an instant that she was going to be intolerable.
“Yes,” Mr. Glass said.
That was it. Just “yes”. Fantastic advisor.
“How can she possibly have this many accounts?” I asked, sifting through the pages of her file and reading the names of the companies that she had worked with in the last few years.
“She is highly sought after,” Mr. Glass said matter-of-factly. “She has been an enthusiastic contributor to projects since she was first hired and it didn’t take long for her to start getting her own accounts. Now new clients often ask for her to be involved in their campaigns.”
“Why?” I asked. “What makes her so amazing?”
I didn’t really want to hear it. Actually, I already had. I had been hearing it for years. All through that first class when the professor couldn’t seem to get three sentences out of his mouth without praising her or asking for her opinion on what he was saying. In the classes that we shared in the years that followed when the professors just mimicked what the first had done, seeming to fall deeper and deeper under Snow’s spell. Out in the world as we competed for positions at the best agencies and then feuded for the highest-paying accounts. I’d had my mind set on working for Royal and Company from even before I went into the university. Even then it was the best advertising agency in the area and I wanted only the best. Of course, it wasn’t me who got the prime position. Snow walked into the agency and charmed Walter Royal into offering her the position along with a perks package that was far beyond anything that any other entry level position should have offered.
I looked down at my hand and saw the massive diamond on my finger sparkle in the light. Now I was the one with the perks package. There might be a few elements of the – job description that I wasn’t entirely fond of, but I could deal with it to get me right where I was right then. Besides, Walter was going to be away for weeks on his retirement vacation. I was only thankful that I had been able to convince him that he should go on his own rather than bringing me along so that I could get to know the company and the employees. I realized that Mr. Glass was talking, droning on about all of Snow’s attributes, and I forced myself to check back into the conversation. As much as I didn’t need to hear another speech about her perfection and all of the ways that she made the world a better place, I wanted to know what it was about her that had lured in these clients and landed their accounts. To me, she wasn’t an asset. She was the competition and a stumbling block in the way of my success. When I could identify what about her was so appealing and reflect it for myself, then I could eliminate her and finally take the success that was owed to me.
“Her creativity is unsurpassed by anyone else. She’s the best in the industry.”
“No, she’s not,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?” Mr. Glass said.
I looked up at him again, shaking my head.
“Nothing. So, she’s creative? That’s what makes all of these people fall all over themselves for her? Isn’t creativity a
basic job requirement of advertising?”
“There’s something different about her type of creativity. It’s like she sees things in a completely different way than other people. She’s able to grab the attention of the clients and convince them that she knows exactly what that specific demographic needs so that she can create a campaign that will be irresistible to them.”
“That’s it?” I asked, dumbfounded by the level of trust and confidence that that seemingly unremarkable skill had instilled in even stony, emotionless Mr. Glass. “She is considered the best in the industry because she can convince clients that she can make a good campaign? Silly me, I thought that that was what everyone in advertising was supposed to be able to do.”
“If you would like a more in-depth understanding, I can bring you the files for her most recent account.”
I felt my frustration increase.
“I thought that I specifically requested that you bring me all of the information about her. Why did you leave that out?”
“Miss Whitman is still working on this particular account. She just landed it two weeks ago and has been working on it intently since. The files on it are in her office.”
I drew in a breath to calm down, reminding myself that my goal was to try to appear as disarming and beguiling as Snow to these people.
“Could you please get them for me so that I’m able to look over them?” I asked as gently as I could. “I would really like to get the full perspective of all of the employees and projects within the company so that I can make the best plans for our team moving forward.”
Mr. Glass’s expression didn’t change. I didn’t know if it was because I hadn’t impacted him enough to have an emotional impact, or if this man simply didn’t have emotional reactions at all. He gave a single nod and turned, leaving my office without another word. I let out a sigh of exasperation as he closed the door.
I don’t think I’m cut out for this bullshit.
