Enchanted, Inc.

by Shanna Swendson

  I didn’t have many personal items in my cube, so all I had to do was put my coffee mug and Dilbert calendar in my briefcase, then grab my purse and go. I had a sense of what the fairies must feel like as I walked out of that building for the last time, for my feet didn’t seem to touch the ground. I hadn’t realized how badly that job had worn me down.

  Ironically, although I would now be earning a larger salary and had just negotiated unlimited use of the public transportation system as part of my compensation, I chose to walk home. It was hard to feel weightless on the subway, and I was enjoying the feeling. The only thing I had to worry about now was explaining things to Gemma and Marcia.

  They wouldn’t be at all surprised or upset that I’d quit my job. There had been many times over the past year when they’d even offered to cover my share of the rent for a month or so until I could find a new job if I needed to quit immediately for my own sanity, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept their charity after they’d already given me a free ride for my first month in the city. But explaining to them that I had met with and accepted a job from the guy I’d been complaining about would be more difficult. Given Rod’s apparent propensity for popping up around town, I knew I’d better tell at least a version of the truth.

  By the time I reached Houston Street, I had a plan. I’d just say that he’d followed up after the uncomfortable encounter at the café with an apology and a much more professional job offer, one I’d considered worth exploring. The next challenge would be explaining what kind of company it was and what my job would be. I wondered if MSI had a standard cover story they gave their nonmagical employees. I supposed I could just say it was another admin position but with more responsibility, and I could try to remember the way Owen described the company in that first meeting, which seemed like it had happened at least a year ago. So much had changed since then.

  This time I didn’t veer off before Grace Church. Now that I knew the gargoyle was supposed to come and go, it wasn’t nearly as disturbing. I think part of me also wanted to see if he’d be there, to see if it had all been real. Or had I just quit my job for nothing?

  No, there was a gargoyle perched on the chapel roof. As I approached, he waved a wing at me. “Hey doll, welcome to the club.”

  I stepped into the churchyard and craned my neck to look up at him. “Hi, Sam. And thanks. I’m looking forward to it. I think.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll do great. They’re good people, and they need you, so they’ll treat you right. You picked a good time to join, too. Things are about to get interesting.”

  “Interesting?” I asked, the nervousness returning.

  “Oh, it’s always interesting, but with the big boss back from retirement, this is a particularly good time.”

  I wondered if he meant that distinguished gentleman who had been at the interview, but I decided to wait and learn the ropes at the office rather than quizzing a gargoyle. “It was nice to see you again, Sam,” I said, turning to head back out to the street. “See you Tuesday.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  It was a measure of just how much my life had changed this week that I didn’t feel the least bit odd about having a conversation with a gargoyle. It felt a lot less odd than avoiding that stretch of street because the gargoyle was inexplicably coming and going.

  When I got home, my roommates were already there, which was unusual, even for a Friday. I knew I’d have to tell them my news right away, or else they’d accuse me of holding out on them when they found out. “You’ll never believe what I just did,” I said as soon as I got through the front door.

  “You quit your job,” Gemma said without looking up from her magazine. She sat with her feet out in front of her, cotton between her toes, like she’d just polished her toenails.

  I put my purse and briefcase on the dining table and joined her on the sofa, feeling a little limp now that she’d taken the wind out of my sails. “How’d you know?”

  “The answering machine was full of messages for you when we got home,” Marcia said from the bedroom, sticking a head covered in hot rollers into the living room. “Your coworkers were worried about you, and Mimi didn’t think you were serious. She wants you to come in over the weekend to finish a project.” She disappeared back into the bedroom.

  “I put it in writing,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t know how much more serious I could be.”

  “You quit, just like that?” Gemma asked.

  “Yeah, angry snit and all.”

  “She finally pushed you too far.”

  “That, and I already had another job lined up. I’d planned to give notice, but Evil Mimi persuaded me otherwise.”

  Marcia came into the room, wearing her bathrobe, her hair still in curlers. “What other job?”

  I launched into the story I’d concocted about Rod getting back in touch with me and apologizing. “So it turned out it was for real, and it was a good opportunity,” I concluded.

  “That’s why you called in sick yesterday!” Marcia said, sounding like Sherlock Holmes when he’s just solved the case. “You were out interviewing. But why didn’t you say anything?”

  Fortunately, I had a story ready for that, too. “It was a decision I had to make for myself.” Even as I said it, I realized it was the truth. “I lean too heavily on you guys to help me figure out what I should do, and I needed to figure this out on my own.”

  “Well, congratulations,” Gemma said. “Now, hurry and get dressed. You’re going to be late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Our big blind date.”

  My heart sank. “Oh, that.” I supposed it was too late to call it off, but I was so drained that all I wanted to do was curl up on the sofa with some ice cream and watch an old movie. But if I’d managed to tell off my boss and stalk out of the office, I could face a blind date. “What should I wear?”

  Apparently, I’d said the magic words. Okay, so it wasn’t real magic, but it worked almost as well as anything Owen had demonstrated. Gemma was off the couch in a heartbeat. “I’ve already got something picked out for you.”

  We met Connie and Jim at a cozy Italian restaurant in the Village. With Jim were three uncomfortable-looking guys. I wondered if he’d had to bribe his friends to show up. He’d shown time and again that he was willing to do just about anything for Connie, so I wouldn’t put it past him.

  Jim made the awkward introductions as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Marcia’s date, introduced as Ethan Wainwright, was tall and lanky, with wavy brown hair and glasses that hid his eyes. He not only looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there, he looked like he wasn’t entirely there. Maybe he really was invisible and only I could tell that his physical form wasn’t entirely solid. Gemma’s date, Will Ericson, basically looked like the male version of Gemma—sleek and elegant. It looked like Jim had done a good job with that match. My date was named Pat, and I forgot his last name almost as soon as Jim said it. Not only was my mind mostly elsewhere, but he wasn’t a very memorable person. He looked like he didn’t want to be there, and when we were introduced, he didn’t even try to fake interest in me. Jim must have managed to get Yankees playoff tickets to get him to come tonight. Was I so hard to match up that the best he could do was a fairly blank man?

  We all went into the restaurant, where they had a long table set up for us. Connie took care of the seating arrangements, putting us in boy-girl order with each of us sitting across from our date for the evening. I was on the end, with Pat across from me and Ethan to my left. This was going to be a long evening.

  Once Jim had ordered a bottle of wine for the table, I put on a smile and attempted to make conversation with Pat. “So, Pat,” I began, “what do you do?”

  “I work in finance.” Wow, a complete sentence. Then again, that was better than Owen had managed in our first attempt at conversation.

  “Really? You work with Jim, then.”

  “Yes.”

  One-word
answers weren’t especially helpful for keeping the conversation flowing, but I plugged on. “Are you from New York originally?”

  “No.”

  “There don’t seem to be many people who are,” I said with an attempt at a laugh. “I guess all the natives move away, and they’re replaced by the newcomers.”

  No response. Gee, would it kill him to ask me a question or two? I felt like I was running an interrogation. I’d have to break out the lead pipes to get him to talk. In desperation, I turned toward Marcia and Ethan, hoping I could flow into their conversation. That might bring Pat out of his shell. What was it with me and shy guys lately? Except there was a big difference between someone who was shy like Owen and someone who just plain didn’t want to communicate.

  Marcia was already arguing with Ethan. Apparently, they hadn’t even made it to the “What do you do?” part of the conversation before he made a statement that she challenged, and then he questioned her facts, setting off a good debate. It was hard to tell whether that was a good sign. Marcia didn’t mind a good argument, but she had issues about having to be the smartest one in the room. Gemma should try setting her up with a himbo sometime. That would probably work better than the brainy types people usually picked for Marcia.

  On the other side of Ethan and Marcia, Jim and Connie gazed at each other adoringly across the table, seemingly oblivious to the chaos caused by their matchmaking. At the end of the table, Gemma seemed to have fallen in lust at first sight with Will. That wasn’t unusual. She liked all men who had an appropriate level of admiration for her.

  With a sigh, I turned back to Pat. “What do you enjoy when you’re not at work?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I watch sports.” Bingo. Jim had definitely bribed him with tickets to some big event.

  The argument next to me died down as Marcia and Ethan studied their menus. I glanced at my own menu and decided to order lasagna. It was the easiest of the pasta dishes to eat because it didn’t involve twirling spaghetti around on a fork and then trying to get it all in your mouth at once, something that’s just asking for a disaster on a date.

  As I closed my menu, Marcia put on her best fake smile and asked, “So, Ethan, what do you do?”

  He frowned at his menu, then looked up at her. “I’m an intellectual property attorney.”

  Her fake smile remained in place. “Oh. Interesting.”

  Desperate for conversation, I asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “A lot of what I do involves employment cases and patent infringement.”

  “Employment? Are you saying that people are considered intellectual property?”

  He shook his head, and for once he looked solid, like he was really there. “No, but some of what people have in their heads is considered company property.” He picked up the saltshaker in front of him. “Say you’ve got this employee here. His job is inventing a gizmo for company A. But then company B offers him a job.” He moved the saltshaker from the candle to the floral arrangement. “Then he invents a newer, better version of the gizmo for company B—based on what he invented for company A. That could be considered a theft of intellectual property because he took work he’d done for one company and essentially gave it to another company.”

  I nodded. Normally, I didn’t much like talking about work, but this was fairly interesting. Well, more interesting than Pat’s sullen silence. “But it’s usually more complicated than that,” Ethan continued. He was now talking directly to me, as Marcia had turned to chat with Jim and Connie. “What if the gizmo at company B isn’t based directly on the gizmo from company A, but the employee does use things he learned from inventing the gizmo for company A to invent the new gizmo, and because of that they can get a better gizmo to market sooner?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like you can wipe your employees’ brains when they leave a company. Everyone learns things at one job that they go on to use in the next job.” I had a mental image of Mimi with a giant vacuum cleaner, trying to suck out my brains, and I shuddered.

  Ethan’s eyes lit up, and I could see behind his glasses that they were a silvery gray. He was fairly cute, in a reserved, conservative way. “Exactly! That’s where it gets tricky. Where do you draw the line between using work you’ve done at one company in your next job, and merely applying the experience you’ve gained?”

  “But haven’t employers taken too strict an interpretation of that?” Marcia asked, her attention back to us now that her date was paying attention to me. I left them to their argument, glad that I had nothing of value to take from my last job. I’d only learned a lot about what not to do. Even though no one in New York was impressed with that particular item on my résumé, my lifetime of handling the business side of the feed-and-seed store was still the most valuable real-world experience I had. I wondered if my parents could accuse me of intellectual property theft.

  I’d run out of questions to ask Pat, and he hadn’t bothered asking me anything, which was probably for the best, given that I didn’t yet have a good explanation for my new job. Talking about work could get me in trouble. His eyes were focused on something in the distance behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a TV set mounted above the bar. Good. At least he’d be entertained. Meanwhile, I could enjoy my meal in peace and think about everything that had happened to me this week.

  By the time the salads came, Ethan and Marcia were debating something to do with the economy, and it wasn’t a foreplay debate loaded with sexual tension. They clearly weren’t hitting it off well and had given up trying to make a good impression on each other. Meanwhile, Gemma and Will would be on the floor under the table before we got to dessert, at the rate they were going. I ate my salad in silence as I tried to decide which was worse, a date who wouldn’t shut up or a date who wouldn’t talk at all.

  A group of women with wings came through the door. Out of habit, I turned to see if anyone else noticed them and saw that Ethan was frowning. For a second I thought he must have noticed the fairies, too, but then he took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on. Nothing more magical than a smudged lens, then. And I could tell from the foot that kept accidentally bumping against mine under the table that he was, indeed, solid and real. I decided his mind was just clearly elsewhere and that was what gave him such a vague look.

  It felt like we were going to break the New York record for longest dinner ever by the time we got dessert and coffee. I couldn’t take any more of Pat’s silence and retreated to the restroom while the others finished their dessert. Armed with fresh lipstick, I returned to the table just in time to hear Pat talking to Jim. “It’d be like dating my sister,” he said. It was a safe guess who he was talking about. I got that reaction from men all the time. I could understand it in a small town where most of the boys were my brothers’ friends, but how did it transfer to New York, where nobody even knew my family?

  Finally, everyone finished their coffee and we made our way out of the restaurant. I wasn’t at all surprised when Gemma and Will announced that they were going to hit a nearby jazz club. They invited the rest of us, but clearly didn’t want us to take them up on the offer. I didn’t expect Gemma to make it home tonight. The rest of us said insincere things about how nice it was to meet each other, then said good night for the evening without bothering to exchange contact information. You know your blind date hasn’t gone well when nobody even asks for a phone number.

  Jim and Connie hailed a cab, and Marcia linked her arm through mine. “Want to walk home?” she asked. “I need to work off that dinner.”

  I wasn’t wearing the best shoes for walking, and I’d already had two long walks that day, but walking through the Village at night is almost magical—but not in the real magic way, with spells and illusions and all that. Though come to think of it, I’d seen more than the expected amount of weirdness in the Village at night and written it off as just another New York thing. It would be interesting to see how much of it really was magical.

&nb
sp; Marcia and I headed off down Bleecker toward our side of the island. The whole time we walked, Marcia complained about her date. “Could you believe him? All he could talk about was work.”

  “Y’all talked about more than work. You were arguing a lot.”

  “About work. He questioned everything I said.”

  “He’s a lawyer. He’s used to having to analyze and interpret everything.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re defending him,” she said with a laugh.

  “No, not really. He was just more interesting than my date. At least he actually spoke.”

  “You do have a point there.”

  “And he didn’t think of you as an annoying little sister.”

  She winced. “So, you heard that.”

  “I came back from the bathroom at a very good time.”

  “If it makes you feel better, he did say you were okay, cute, even.”

  “But he’s just not interested in that way.” I couldn’t fight back a sigh. Was it too much to ask to make a man’s heart beat faster, just once?

  She gave my arm a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. Your time will come. You just have to meet the right guy who appreciates you for what you are.”

  “Marce, I’m your age, remember. You don’t have to treat me like your kid sister.”

  “Sorry about that. But look on the bright side. A few years from now you’ll be glad for people to think you’re younger. And like I said, you have to find the right guy. You’re the kind of girl men go for when they’re ready to settle down.”

  “So I’m not the kind of girl they want to go out with when they want a good time?”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “I don’t know.” To be honest with myself, I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good-time girl. I was the kind of woman who made people think of things like apple pie and picket fences. That didn’t make me very popular in a place like New York, where people came to get away from picket fences.