by Jody Wallace
“I’m not much of one for running,” I said to Lou. “As for the fifty pounds, you’re in better shape than half the people I know.” She wasn’t small, but she wasn’t obese, either. Lou was a tank with a modern day bee-hive.
She capped her perfume bottle and eyed me with familiar shrewdness. “My trainer could fit you into her schedule. You should call her.”
When Samantha laughed, I changed the subject. “Lunch tomorrow, Lou?”
“What are we having?” Samantha asked.
“Stuff from home. I’m sure you’d prefer to go out.” I should eat lunch with different people every day since talk loosened up at meals—the things you learn over pastrami on rye—but Lou was working her way through a bunch of casseroles left over from a Lampey reunion at her family farm, and I was helping.
It was the least I could do for my best source of company gossip. The woman had a mind like a steel trap. As an eraser, which Lou had assured me was more harmless than it sounded, it was only natural she herself could remember everything.
“You didn’t tell me about your weekend, Cleo,” Samantha said. “Did it go as planned?”
She hadn’t put two and two together when John had given her the stink eye? Surely he had. They’d spent the past several days on assignment together.
“Go away, Samantha.” I half-turned, aware Lou was listening to our confrontation.
“I thought you had to work this week-end,” Lou said. “That’s why you couldn’t come to church Sunday.”
“I did have to work.” I hadn’t shared my crush on John with Lou or everyone at YuriCorp would have known within the hour. Hell, she might have blasted a mass email. Her unique version of honesty meant telling everyone everything that crossed her mind. She loved two and only two things more than the sweeping drama of YuriCorp: her family and her stance on supra politics.
Lou squirted White Shoulders lotion on her hands, layering her signature scent. “The way they work you, you’ll never get down to the beach house. Several of us are going in a couple weeks. I got a new bathing suit.”
“All work and no waves,” I agreed. “By the way, I went by your nephews’ apartment, and they weren’t there. I’m beginning to think your relatives don’t exist.”
Except for Herman. I’d taken him a couple of John’s brownies and told him they were pie, when in fact they were a bribe for him to turn his television down.
The bribe hadn’t worked. Herman didn’t care for “pie” without a crust.
“The twins’ job takes them out of town a lot,” Lou said with a little smile.
“Aren’t they with the PI agency?”
Lou nodded. I wished the agency would take Uncle Herman out of town a lot so I could get a good night’s sleep for a change.
Samantha butted in. “Lou, ask Cleo about her new bed.”
Lou was about to when I cut her off. “Look at the time. If I’m late again, Beau will pitch a fit. Gotta go.”
Samantha chased me out of the reception area. “You can’t leave me hanging like this.”
I didn’t want to air my grievances in public. Aside from being labeled a nosy slacker, which was bad enough, my name hadn’t been tossed into the YuriCorp gossip pool yet, and I’d prefer to stay dry as long as possible. I’d prefer my coworkers accept me as long as possible. If Yuri had his way—and he would, because he was the boss—everyone might despise me soon enough, even if I saved them from an ugly encounter with a saboteur.
“What you did Saturday was unethical,” I said quietly. “I’ve asked you not to do that.”
“I just wanted to help.” She tried to catch up, but her legs were shorter than mine. “There was no other way you’d get what you were after.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Even with her shove, I hadn’t begun a torrid affair with John. Now I never would.
“Trust me, Cleo, it’s true. Slow down.”
We reached my cubicle, and I slammed my purse into the desk drawer. Was I truly worried Samantha might be YuriCorp’s leak or was I pissed by her interference?
“You don’t do anybody any favors,” I said, repeating what John had told me.
“I thought you’d be pleased.” Samantha blocked my exit from the cubicle by grabbing each side of the opening. “You know who acted like nothing had happened.”
True. So John hadn’t given her the stink eye.
“I won’t do it again,” she said.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, suddenly tired. The tossing and turning I’d done last night and the fact I’d had only two coffee breaks today didn’t help. “It’s exhausting.”
Our chase down cubicle alley had alerted our nearest coworkers that something exciting was afoot. Next thing you know, we’d be fighting over a man—or in a lover’s quarrel ourselves.
Samantha lowered her voice. “I’ll try not to do it again. It can be instinctive for me. I don’t always think about it.”
I switched my computer on, hoping the whir and hum of start up would dissuade eavesdroppers. “You told me I could thank you later. That’s premeditated. Well, no thanks.”
“Okay, Saturday wasn’t instinct.” She flipped her hair back. “I promise not to do that type of thing again, unless you ask me to.”
That, she meant.
“I’d never ask for that.” If I quit hanging out with Samantha during my smidgen of free time, I’d get lonely. Dan was a five hour drive away, Pavarti’s visiting hours were limited, and Ursula was usually out of town. I might break down and go to Lou’s church. Worse, I might agree to meet her at the gym.
Samantha was the only person I could be myself with.
The only one ever.
I should have more sympathy. She kept influencing me with her nasty little hands and asking for forgiveness. Kept calling me, kept pursuing me for what must pass as friendship in her world. Most YuriCorpers avoided her despite her relationship with the boss man, just like they’d avoid me if they found out what I could do.
You couldn’t always trust your reactions around Sam, but you didn’t get to have secrets around me, not for long. Unsurprisingly, it was easier to feel sorry for myself than the beautiful and self-possessed Ms. Graves.
“One more chance,” I conceded, giving up my revenge fantasy, which may or may not have included unearthing her as the saboteur. I’d be too busy with my mole hunt and my consulting debut to inflict proper payback, anyway.
Samantha reached out as if hug me. I flinched back and glared at her.
“Old habits,” she said with a shrug.
The question wasn’t whether Samantha would push me again. The question was how embarrassing or painful it would be next time.
Chapter 12
My Adventures in People Skills
With some trepidation, I received my first official assignment for a corporate merger at an investment firm outside Atlanta. A larger corporation had bought a smaller one and wanted us to assess staff capabilities and make recommendations as to who was working up to their potential, whose jobs were redundant, and so on.
Basically who to fire and who to keep.
“I hate this type of assignment.” John closed another manila folder and leaned back in his chair, stretching.
John and I, at a decorous distance of several yards, had been poring over documents about both companies prepared by the downtownies all week. My brain felt so swollen by knowledge I’d considered applying cocoa butter to my skull for the stretch marks.
“I thought merger assessments were one of the easiest next to motivational seminars.” The project had been assigned with my specific talents—or lack thereof—in mind. It was going to be tricky to explain my insights in the field to Beau, but I’d figure something out.
“It’s not the difficulty. The point of kaizen is to improve performance and preserve jobs.”
“What if people aren’t doing crap?” Many people took advantage of their employers and had the work ethic of hyenas. I should know. “They deserve to lose their jobs.”
&nbs
p; “Management should help employees maximize their potential.”
“Some people don’t have much potential.” I’d always been powerless to use my knowledge to ensure people got their comeuppance. I couldn’t even guarantee I was protected from their lameness. In a sick fashion, I was looking forward to giving idlers the thumbs down.
John frowned and returned to the documents. “We should finish these.”
I was a cynic, with good reason. John wasn’t. I guess he had reasons as well. We were different at the core, John and I, and he’d made his preferences plain the night of the bed moving. I’d tried to accept it, but he was smart and handsome and smelled nice, which figured, since he had to smell himself all the time with that magic nose of his. Interoffice dating wasn’t discouraged. Or intraoffice dating. Or any combination of supra hook-up one could imagine. His unwillingness to get involved with a coworker didn’t wash.
My guess was, John wasn’t interested because he knew what I could do and didn’t want to be any closer. Who would? You’d have to be honest about everything, always, and that was hard.
Or maybe it was my sunny disposition.
“Don’t forget Al’s new security protocol,” John said. He indicated a blue binder.
“I won’t.” Since receiving the assignment, I’d been so busy cramming that I’d put aside any personal worries about the firestarter on the loose. Pavarti’s specialists thought she’d regain some physical mobility but not her suprasenses. Adam Donning’s situation was even less certain. The burnouts were big water cooler buzz.
Bigger buzz, though, was who’d be next to quit. Several at-risk individuals had hightailed it to other companies after the news about Adam had trickled down to the staff.
“It’s important,” John said somberly. His sense of humor, or lack thereof, was not one of his attractive features. “We need to take extra precautions on assignments now.”
“Our downtownies have known about this merger assignment for a month. I don’t know why Yuri ruled them out,” I whispered. We had no blanket in here, but two consultants talking about safety measures on the job wouldn’t be suspicious.
“They don’t know who’s going or when,” John said. “We’ve restricted scheduling details.”
All our consultants did have one thing in common. “Everyone with suprasenses is affected by amp, right?”
John flipped the page he was reading. “It varies. Most of us are.”
“Who’s to say the bad guys haven’t found something like amp? They could spring it on any of us at any time.” While it wouldn’t be as painful for me to live like a norm as it would someone else, that didn’t mean I wanted anyone mucking with my synapses. One thing I’d come to appreciate while working here—the way my brain spazzed was part of what made me, me.
Moreover, the threat of a debilitating stroke couldn’t be ignored. While the YuriCorpers believed to have been attacked hadn’t all suffered strokes, it seemed to be a new pattern.
“None of the victims have had traces of unexpected chemicals in their blood work, their skin, their hair follicles—anywhere.”
What if it wasn’t a chemical? Norms suffered strokes due to a variety of conditions. “I had this idea—”
A sharp, impatient rap swung the half-open door the rest of the way open. I turned too quickly, splattering a stack of employee files to the ground. Beau. “What are you doing out of your cave?”
He arced an eyebrow. Now there was a man as cynical as I was who still didn’t appreciate my wit and viewpoint on life. “I need you in the lab.”
“She’s busy here.” John pointed at the files on the floor. “You need to go over these, too.”
For two guys who had no interest in me as a romantic partner, John and Beau had begun an unsubtle feud over how I was going to spend my time. Consultant training or chameleon training? Because Beau was a jerk, he won more battles, and I got to see firsthand what John was like when he was annoyed with someone other than me or Samantha.
Terse to the point of silence.
“John’s right, I’m busy.” I wished John would fight harder for me. I had more than enough surly bastard in the morning. Why must I be cursed with Beau in the afternoon too?
“The results of Cleo’s DNA test finally came back from the Registry lab, and I want to run a few specialized scans.”
“What do you mean, finally came back?” I asked, to cover my twitch. “I figured you lost them in your rat’s nest.”
“Paperwork snafu,” Beau said. “So they tell me. Why am I not surprised even your test results are a pain in my ass?”
Yuri had had to do some fancy footwork to keep my full analysis out of Beau’s hands. Out of anyone’s, for that matter. Clearly, the dance was over.
I glanced at John to see how he’d handle it. I’d suggested we bring Beau into the loop because there was no way he was going to tell—you don’t share secrets with people when you hated them all. Yuri had refused.
John, still in terse mode, said nothing as he scribbled on an organizational chart.
“Why do I need more tests?” I didn’t have any spare time, what with the studying and memorizing and worrying and mole hunting.
“There were anomalies,” Beau said.
“Maybe you should reread it with your glasses on.”
“Maybe you should get your ass to the lab.”
“We all have anomalies,” I told Beau, my voice pitched higher than I liked. “You’re the one who told me that. Everyone’s different.”
“This goes beyond different. I have to run the tests. Arlin, tell her. It’s policy.”
John sighed and finally locked horns with Beau. “You can’t screw up Cleo’s schedule a couple days before we go on site.”
“Quit fighting over me, I’m not the remote,” I said, disappointed by John’s showing.
Beau rolled his eyes. “That’s not what we’re doing. I need to take a blood sample before you go on site. The anomalies could explain why you’ve been so slow to...adapt.”
“It’s my teacher.” His mask told me he took my failure to thrive as a personal insult to his training abilities. I was not loathe to allow him to continue to feel that way as long as possible.
Hell, it might be him. I’d tried harder to fade lately and hadn’t experienced a corresponding leap in chameleoning.
Beau leaned against the doorjamb, settled in for a drawn-out bickering session. “I showed Jolene the charts, and she agrees.”
“You actually consulted someone else?”
“Jolene’s got my back,” he said. “Now come on. We have work to do.”
John craned around to focus on Beau without giving him the courtesy of a chair swivel. “Save it for after Atlanta, Walker.”
Oooh, John had resorted to last name calling. I dropped to the floor and started reconstructing the personnel files I’d demolished. John knew as well as I did it was a bad idea if our resident geneticist dug into my DNA.
“She’s not ready,” Beau said. “This is a terrible time to start somebody untrained.”
“She’ll be ready.” In a rare display, a mask of fibbing hovered around John’s face.
I rubbed my eyes, but the lie was still there. Even knowing what I could do, John didn’t think I was up to this.
“One day won’t make a difference,” Beau said. “I don’t see why Yuri has so much confidence in an underachieving chameleon.”
Beau’s mask was equally weak. He wasn’t telling a one hundred percent truth, but combined with John’s uncertainty, my ego smarted like a knee that’s been scraped when you fell on the stairs while carrying a bed you should have had the sense to hire someone else to move. Their misgivings about me grew deeper the more time they spent with me. Yuri had put me on notice, and Samantha thought she could lie to me and get away with it.
I’d thought what I could do was special. Maybe it, maybe I, wasn’t, if I was such a ditz I couldn’t do anything with it.
I refused to let them see how much their lack of co
nfidence hurt my wee, girly feelings. “I know I’m green, but I’ll have you both there to help me. Philosophy and research are nothing compared to experience, and this is the only way I can get any experience. I’ll fade into the background and watch you work.”
A foolish choice of words.
Beau snorted. “You, fade into the background? That’ll be the day.”
“Don’t be ugly,” I snapped. Conversations with Beau were like flirting, in Opposite Land. “John, I keep asking Beau, and he won’t tell me—is there a supra ability of being nasty?”
“No,” John said. “He’s just that way.”
“It’s a byproduct of knowing too much about too many people.” Beau looked down at me with something like pity in his gaze. “One day you’ll understand.”
I pinched back a response. I understood, all right, but it hadn’t turned every word that came out of my mouth as sour as sourcakes.
Not every single word.
“Cleo will be fine,” John repeated, and added, somewhat darkly, “She’s better off with YuriCorp than she would be anywhere else.”
Beau responded with that patronizing shrug he’d perfected. There must be a nonverbal communication class where he’d excelled in the “how to annoy people without speaking” unit.
I gathered the scattered files and fumed. My stunted growth frustrated me, too. I worried about that. I worried about the saboteur. I worried about YuriCorp’s fiscal health. I worried about how to explain my performance to Beau since he knew my fade wasn’t up to par. My life overall was unsettled. Was my uncertainty hindering my evolution as a chameleon?
Or maybe I stunk. Not everyone who had the relevant connections in the brain could do anything with them.
I’d almost finished stacking the toppled folders when I noticed a sheet of yellow legal paper that had fluttered free. Conscious of John and Beau’s growing impatience, I crawled under the table and shoved it into a random portfolio. I’d sort everything later.
I rose and thunked the paperwork onto the table. “I need coffee. John, do you want anything?”
