by Molly Harper
“Aw, that’s so sweet!” I cooed, throwing my arms around her.
With me still attached to her, she pulled a rather large syringe from her bag and uncapped it.
“That is less sweet,” I said, pulling away. “What is that?”
“It’s a B-twelve shot,” she said quietly. “Perfectly harmless. In fact, it might help boost you up, considering your hours, but it’s also a plausible treatment for pernicious anemia. Though, technically, you would need injections on a regular basis.” With no warning, she jabbed the needle into my arm.
“Ow, sonofabitch, Nola!” I yowled. I hissed, “Why would you actually give me a shot? You could have just put a bandage on my arm and faked it!”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby!” she shot back. “And I gave you the shot because you’re not an awesome liar, and I’m worried about you, keeping such weird hours and working so hard and dating a vampire. The B-twelve can only help. Here, have a lollipop.” She waved a big shiny red sucker in my face.
“Don’t patronize me,” I whined, as she slapped a Monster High bandage on my arm. Nola shrugged and returned the lolly to her medical bag.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t take it,” I said, snatching it out of the bag. I unwrapped the sucker and shoved it into my mouth. “Now what?”
“Now you pretend not to be able to get me out of the office because the floor layout is just so confusing, while I try to get a read on some of your coworkers.”
She took out a tiny brown bottle and unscrewed it to reveal a dropper top. When she squeezed three drops on each palm, the conference room was filled with the sharp, green scent of bay laurel. I wrinkled my nose and waved a hand in front of my face as she massaged the oil into her hands.
“Yeah, I know, it’s pungent,” she said, waving her hands around to make the oil evaporate faster. “It’s a blend to encourage psychic openness, and the main ingredient is bay laurel. The smell will go away in a few minutes, and this will keep me from having to make physical contact with your coworkers to read them.”
“You are an evil genius,” I said, sticking the sucker into my cheek. “Shall we start with the yogurt thief in accounting?”
• • •
We wandered around the office, and I pretended to be unable to find an exit, as Nola scanned the yogurt thief, who was still pissy but showed no “spectral evidence” of casting spells. She scanned the operations department, including poor Joseph McNichol, who spoke with an exaggerated lisp around his missing fangs. She scanned my coworkers in the coding pit of despair; each one of them was pronounced clean as a whistle. This included Marty, who spent most of Nola’s visit explaining how he didn’t need modern medicine because he stuck to his mother’s holistic diet and medicinal plan.
“Nothing,” Nola said, as we approached Ophelia’s office. “Not a thing. This place is completely free of magic . . . and whimsy . . . and colors besides gray. I mean, really, how do you not get seasonal affective disorder the moment you walk in the door?”
“I plan on having a nice case of rickets by the end of the summer. Guys dig rickets, right?”
“So clearly, your next injection will be a massive dose of vitamin D.” She sighed.
“Miss Scanlon, who is this, and why has she been wandering around this office for the past hour?” Margaret asked, bearing down on us like a hall monitor from hell.
“Margaret, this is Nola Leary. She’s a representative from my doctor’s office. She was providing me with medical treatment, an exception to the no-visitors policy, which is outlined on page thirty-four of the employee manual. I was just escorting her out.”
Margaret’s whole face clenched at once. She hated it when people outpolicied her. I had known it would be worth it to peruse the employee manual very carefully. “What sort of treatment? Is your condition contagious?”
“I believe that falls under HIPAA law,” Nola said cheerfully.
Margaret gritted her teeth so hard I practically heard them crunching under the enormous pressure of her jaw. “Just get her out of the office, Miss Scanlon. And I will count this time as your lunch break for the day,” she sniped.
“It was so nice to meet you,” Nola said sweetly. She stretched her hand out to shake Margaret’s and let it hang there until it was so socially awkward for Margaret not to shake her hand that I felt sorry for Margaret. And I really didn’t like Margaret, so that was saying something.
Margaret finally gripped Nola’s hand and shook it, giving the biggest cat-butt face I’d ever seen. Nola’s grin ratcheted up to crazy Grinch levels, while Margaret tried to yank her hand free.
Just as she did, Ophelia stepped out of the elevator, barking orders into her cell phone in German. She was wearing a slick black silk power suit and a pink sequined T-shirt. She sounded angry. Then again, everything sounded angry in German; maybe I shouldn’t judge. She huffed out a question, rolling her eyes and pulling a small Hello Kitty notebook out of her purse. She spied the pen in the tiny penholder in Nola’s scrub sleeves and snapped her fingers at her.
Nola lifted one dark eyebrow. Ophelia rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers again, then pointed at the pen. Nola took the pen out of her sleeve and handed it to Ophelia. In the process, she let her hand brush against Ophelia’s wrist. She stared at Ophelia intently. But Ophelia just shot her an annoyed glare and marched into her office.
“Well, we will be moving along,” I told Margaret. “Have a nice night.”
“Make it a quick exit!” Margaret called grumpily.
As soon as we were out of earshot, I nudged Nola’s ribs. “So?”
“Come see me tomorrow morning,” she said. “We need to talk.”
“Well, that’s not cryptic at all,” I muttered.
“Just come see me,” she said again. “I’ll put the kettle on for you.”
“Why does my hand smell so weird?” Margaret yelled down the hallway.
• • •
I snuck back to my office, where Aaron and Jordan were hard at work. Marty, on the other hand, was pecking away at a “research paper” we’d asked him to do on potential fonts for our part of the projects. Never mind that the regional management had chosen the fonts weeks before. We didn’t trust Marty with anything we would have to undo later.
Marty’s work had not improved. He resisted all attempts by us to gently guide him through Basic Programming 101. And when gentle guidance failed, we tried blatantly telling him “You need to do this,” which also failed. He was completely immune to correction.
Aaron and Jordan were pretty unhappy about picking up his slack. Marty was friendly and helpful and always engaged, but he was also slow and didn’t meet deadlines. He always had an excuse, of course. There was always a perfectly good reason for him not to have completed something he was assigned. But it was starting to get on everybody’s nerves, particularly my own.
And no matter how many times I reported the problems to Ophelia or the HR department, nothing happened. We were all given our benefits packages, including Council-leased, environmentally friendly cars and “grand prize showcase” salaries. And I couldn’t help but be irritated on my team’s behalf. Jordan, Aaron, and I had earned our perks. Marty, not so much.
Marty was our group’s “missing stair”—the problem we all knew about but could do nothing to resolve. I wondered if Marty was related to a vampire or had incriminating pictures of Ophelia or something. It was hard to imagine what sort of act Ophelia would be too embarrassed to reveal publicly, but surely there was something she wouldn’t do.
Oblivious to our passive-aggressive pack maneuverings, Marty kept trying to take on new areas of the project. He wanted to prove himself with more responsibilities, but we had to keep routing him back to the things he’d already done. He was unhappy and griped constantly about how he could do more, but we were getting pretty good at changing the subject.
“Hey, y’a
ll, how’s it going?” I asked.
“I’m three pages into my research,” Marty said, with as little enthusiasm as was humanly or inhumanly possible.
“I hit my benchmark for next week!” Jordan told me with a grin.
“Awesome!” I exclaimed. I jogged over to her desk and gave her an enthusiastic high-five and a gummy candy shark.
“I fixed that issue with the, er, last-name search window,” Aaron called over his partition. I nodded, knowing that he was referring to the spreadsheet of surnames Marty had somehow deleted. Aaron had managed to pluck it from the ether with his magical file-retrieving ways.
“I’d say our technical wizardry deserves a caffeinated reward,” Jordan said, her Rainbow Brite hair peeking out from behind her cubicle. She grinned winsomely. “Hint, hint.”
I laughed. “OK, OK. Sammy’s not at his post, though. So it’s Perk-U-Later, my treat.”
Aaron’s head popped over his cubicle like a groundhog. “Mocha latte, triple shot, with three sugars and extra whip.”
I checked the size of his already-dilated pupils. “It’s decaf for you, my friend.”
“Nooo!” He fell to his knees and shook his fist at the ceiling in outrage.
“Maybe some nice chamomile tea,” I said, shaking my head.
Jordan rolled her eyes. “I’ll take a vanilla latte, extra whip. Thanks, Geeg.”
“Marty?” I turned around to find Marty standing right behind me. I jumped and stepped away. “Yipe!”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“Oh, no, that’s OK,” I told him. “I don’t mind going on my own.”
“Nonsense! I could use some fresh air. Besides, I’d hate for you to walk around the block in the dark on your own.”
Before I could object more, he exited the office and was halfway down the hall.
“Oh . . . OK.” I sighed. Jordan shot me an apologetic look. I drew my thumb across my throat in the international sign of “Imma cut you!”
Retrieving my purse, I caught up to Marty, who was walking past Margaret’s desk. She gave him a thumbs-up and a big grin, which was weird.
We walked out of the building and crossed the Council parking lot. I seriously hoped Nik didn’t accost me in the lot, because that would be difficult to explain to Marty. Then again, it was going to be difficult to explain my coffee run with Marty to Nik. So maybe it was better that we didn’t see Nik either way.
We managed to order the coffee without incident. I refused to order Aaron’s liquid crack, but I did get him decaf and one of the shop’s saucer-sized chocolate chip cookies to make up for it. I found myself antsy to grab the coffees and get back to the office. For some reason, being alone with Marty made me uncomfortable, even in the cozy, coffee-scented interior of Perk-U-Later. He wasn’t talking. He was just staring at me intently, as if waiting for me to tell him something. I sincerely hoped it wasn’t a performance evaluation for the job he’d done so far, because that was not going to end well for him.
Cup carriers in hand, we walked back to the office in awkward silence for a few minutes. “Nice night,” I commented, reaching for any topic of conversation. “I hope it cools off soon. It seems the buildup to August is always the worst.”
Marty didn’t respond, which was, again, weird.
Suddenly, he stopped and grabbed my arm. “I’m glad we had a chance to get out of the office together,” he said, his dark eyes shining earnestly by the light of the streetlamp. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“Marty, if this is about taking on more responsibility, I just don’t think you’re ready for anything new—”
“Gladiola, I just wanted you to know that I love you. I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”
Shit. My mouth fell open, and I made a little squeaky noise. I only held on to the coffee carrier through some sort of miracle of muscle memory.
“You’re really pretty and funny and smart. And I feel really strongly about you. I think we would make a really great couple. And I was hoping that you might go out for dinner with me or something this weekend? I sent you some texts the other night to try to arrange a date, but you didn’t respond.”
Double shit. I would so rather give him a performance evaluation.
Suddenly, all of the coffee cups, the Facebook friending, the candy on my desk came together in one horrible puzzle. Marty wasn’t a nice, incompetent guy. He was “nice guy-ing” me—a condition that occurred when a guy’s definition of friendship was “I’m nice to you because I think there’s a chance you’ll have sex with me. And when I realize that won’t happen, I reserve the right to accuse you of using me.” Each of Marty’s considerate gestures had a bunch of invisible strings hanging off it, strings meant to pull me in and make me feel obligated to him. After all, Marty was such a nice guy—what sort of horrible girl would refuse to date someone who had made so many thoughtful gestures?
Maybe I could convince him that I was engaged to someone else or being deported? Any excuse that would let him down gently, because the last thing anybody wants to do is say “I don’t find you attractive.” I would scramble for any excuse besides that. I didn’t understand how the simplest answer was the hardest to give. But I didn’t want to give it, either.
“How did you get my cell number?” I asked.
“Oh, Margaret gave it to me. She got it from your employee file.”
Margaret really had to stop giving me reasons to be mad at her. In the face of my flabbergasted silence, Marty just kept on going. Oh, my God, did he keep going.
“We could go to the Noodle Palace, if you like. I know how much you like Japanese food, and I’m willing to make an exception to Mother’s meal plan just this once. But just so you know, the mercury levels found in sushi are very unhealthy. You’re risking serious neurological disorders if you continue to eat this way. I’d be glad to ask Mother to come up with a nutrition plan for you—”
“Actually, Marty, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go out. We’re not really allowed to date coworkers, according to the employee handbook.”
Never mind the fact that I’d literally played a game of grab-ass with one of our vampire colleagues not long ago. This was definitely a case for careful personal editing.
Marty brightened. “Actually, I checked with Miss Lambert’s office, and she said it was fine.”
“Oh, that Ophelia.” My teeth ground together as I tried to smile my way through this horrific moment. “Wait, did you check with Ophelia or Margaret?”
He gave a stilted laugh, as if I’d caught him at something. “Oh, I’ve been talking to Margaret about you for a little while. She assured me that we wouldn’t be violating the spirit of the office fraternization policy, since we’re only here temporarily.”
“Well, I’m not comfortable with the ‘spirit of the policy,’ Marty. I’d rather follow the actual policy. So it’s still a no. But thank you.”
He gave me a constipated smile and patted my hand. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Talk about it later? Had I not just given my answer? I’d said no, clear as a bell. Granted, I hadn’t given a genuine reason for why I was giving him a no, but my answer was still no. It wasn’t up for negotiation.
I couldn’t speak. I was honestly afraid that if I said anything more to him, a torrent of cursing and shouting like had never been uttered by a human in the Council office would pour out of my mouth and get me fired. Blocking out Marty’s steady stream of reasons we should date, I carried the coffee into our office, carefully placed it on Jordan’s desk, and swept back out of the room.
I couldn’t breathe.
As foolish and silly as I’d felt after my first contact with Nik, at least then I’d known that the only person I’d hurt had been myself. I may not have been super-close to Marty, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But still, what the hell? I bounced between feeling so
rry that I might have misled Marty into thinking I liked him and wanting to punch him in the neck. I felt stupid for not seeing the signs. I felt even more stupid for mistaking Marty’s “overtures” for sucking up to his boss. I felt bad for letting him down. I felt guilty for actively trying to get him fired when he had a crush on me. I felt angry at Marty for putting me in this position. I was a blender of messed-up emotions, and they were all aimed Marty’s way.
I needed some fresh air, a walk to clear my head. I had to get out of the office for just a few minutes, even though I basically hadn’t spent more than five minutes at my desk that night. I didn’t even stop to talk to Nik when I saw him coming out of Ophelia’s office.
“Are you all right?” I shook my head and dashed out the door, ignoring him as he yelled, “Gigi!”
I walked blindly around the block, my legs pumping across the concrete, anything to carry me away from the viper pit of embarrassment. The Perk-U-Later door swung open, and I had to duck left to avoid being smacked in the face with the glass.
“Oh!” I yelped, as two strong hands clamped around my shoulders and kept me upright. I gasped, glancing up into warm green puppy-dog eyes. “Ben?”
“Gigi!” My ex-boyfriend, Ben, had one of those sweet, all-American faces that practically screamed “Trust me with your daughter, and she will return to you happy, early, and un-impregnated.” He had a cute little upturned nose, high cheekbones, and a wide, smiling mouth—a mouth currently making that awkward Ben face, where he smiled without actually showing any teeth. “Hi!”
The next few moments were a ballet of misinterpreted social cues. He went in for a hug, while I reached out to shake his hand. I raised my outstretched arm for the hug, but by that time, he’d switched over to handshake mode.
Right now, I would give anything for Nik’s Swiss-cheese memory. Because I did not want to recall this later.
Despite our promises to stay friends, I’d barely spoken to Ben since we’d parted at winter break. It was difficult to recover from a conversation that started with “Let’s get married” from one party and ended with “I think we should break up” from the other.
