Cocktail Hour (5 page)

Behind Chelsea's docile facade, her mind was working wildly. She was sitting next to one of the senior account executives, the company hotshot, Travis. Travis was not only hot in the sense of being one of the top sales execs in the company; he was hot in the looks department, too - tall, dark
and
handsome.
And
single
. And
gave her "the look" from time to time, so she knew he'd noticed her, too.

She had secured this prime piece of real estate in the conference room by walking by his office prior to the meeting and opening a filing cabinet just outside his door, placing the notepad and pen she'd need at the meeting on top of it. Then she started looking among the files. Of course, there was nothing she needed from the file cabinet other than its handy proximity to Travis's office, but she gave a good show. While tickling the files, she listened to him finish his telephone conversation and hang up. She heard him mutter, "Shit," and then there was the sound of his chair rolling back on its plastic mat followed by the rattle of the chair as he stood. Now. She prepared to pounce.

Just as she closed the filing cabinet drawer, pen and pad in her other hand, he appeared in his office door. She smiled brightly at him and tossed her hair back. "Going to the meeting?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah."

"Come on, the torture's just about to begin," he said, shrugging one shoulder at her and starting down the hall.

She ran to catch up with him in the tiny steps her ultra-high heels confined her to until he noticed her jogging behind him and slowed down to walk with her, asking her how she could walk in "those things" and gesturing at her feet. She giggled and said she couldn't even walk in flats she was so used to heels. She saw him take in her shape appreciatively. Good, he definitely liked curvy girls.

She followed him into the conference room and boldly sat next to him. Taking advantage of the lull after they sat, she said, "Can you believe they're calling another one of these? We just had one, like, two weeks ago."

He groaned and rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me. That was the one where they compared us to rabbits and said we were all in the same burrow, right?"

"More like we're all lemmings and we're supposed to jump off a cliff and die together."

He let out a little chuckle. "Good one."

"You know what TMB stands for, right?"

"It's the letters of the last names of three guys who started this company. I think it's...Thomas Moore and Bailey? Or is it Thomas Morehead and Bartleby?"

"No, TMB stands for Too Much Bullshit."

Travis laughed outright. "Awesome! I'll have to use that." He looked her over again. "Didn't know you had a sense of humor."

"You should see me when I really get going."

"Really?" he said, his eyes raking over her again, his smile wolfish.

He started to say something else and she leaned forward, waiting for it: the invitation to get together she'd been waiting for desperately. It was the invitation she prepared herself for every day by taking special care with the selection of what she wore to work, reapplying her makeup regularly to make sure she was always perfect and date-ready, checking her teeth to make sure nothing was wedged between them, and never eating garlic or onions or tuna fish at lunch.

Just then the lights were turned down for the presentation. Travis turned away to face the front of the room. The bubble of excitement rising in Chelsea's chest deflated. Damn! She started to slump and then remembered her posture and straightened up.

Now she sat, eyes glazed over and unseeing while trying to figure out her next gambit. Nothing was coming. Her brain was frozen over or something. Maybe she should pay attention to the presentation. Then she could comment on that, restarting their conversation as they walked out of the conference room together.

There was an organizational chart on the screen showing the updated restructuring of the company. It was the third go-round in the last three years. It seemed that whenever members of management celebrated New Year's Eve on December thirty-first, their unanimous resolution was to rearrange the organization and throw it into the usual tumult of hirings and firings and hissy fits behind closed doors. It was as if they enjoyed the accompanying drama and loss of momentum in productivity and sales.

No matter how they rearranged the positions on the chart, though, Chelsea remained firmly at the bottom: marketing department administrative assistant. It was one of the benefits of her job - no need to jockey for position or impress people, leaving her with plenty of time and energy to pursue her real mission in life: love and marriage. Not just love, but LOVE, all-caps blow-you-away soul-mate romance and magic and hearts and flowers and unicorns and rainbows. Everything she adored all piled in one big basket and topped with a big sparkly diamond ring. She knew she was destined for it, felt it every time the boy got the girl in a movie or a book and she burst into satisfying tears.

 That she hadn't found it yet, already thirty-three, disturbed her. But she kept her chin up, kept her eye on the prize. And currently, a potential prize - she wasn't one hundred percent sure about Travis, just had a feeling - was sitting right next to her in the shadowy room. As if answering her prayer, the presenter started to wind down with the usual final words about how TMB need their help to make the transition and that supervisors would be calling team meetings over the next few days; that it was paramount that everyone attend with a proactive team-centric mindset.

 Chelsea rolled her eyes - blah-blah-blah - and recapped her pen, the notepad in her lap note-free as usual, it being a point-grabbing prop rather than a tool. The room's lights flickered on and Chelsea stood, about to comment to Travis about the fact that he would now be heading up a completely different team, when a voice boomed behind her.

"Chelsea! There you are," Kevin Fitch, her boss and an all-around-jerk, yelled. He was the COO, one of the top execs in the entire company, yet he screamed rather than spoke, as if he needed to continually prove that he was top dog.

Chelsea startled and turned. "Oh! Yes?"

Her boss's square face and close-set brown eyes reminded her of a cartoon. Except he wasn't funny, not even a little bit. Well, except when she laughed at him behind his back with the other admins. He said, "Glad I caught you. I need you to send out invites, get the meetings set up this afternoon. We're going to dive right in on this."

Chelsea tried to keep her face very still. But cocktails with the girls. Tonight. Thursday. At Ibiza. The hottest night at the hottest bar with the hottest men…and potentially Mr. Right.  "But, it's already four-thirty. I mean, don't you-"

He waved his fat hand in her face. "These people know what their priorities are. Just get back to your desk and send them out ASAP so we can catch everyone before they leave. Have the first one at 5:30, each a half hour."

She nodded, a mixture of despair and aggravation filling her.

He jerked his head. “Okay? Now?”

“Okay,” she squeaked and turned around to see that the conference room had emptied out and Travis was long gone. She jogged away on her high heels, feeling her boss’s eyes on her, watching her go. The worst thing about working for Kevin? He had the hots for her. Married, old, and mean - and he lusted after her. Even though he was completely subtle and P.C. about it, even though she only barely caught him staring before he sheepishly looked away, it was still disgusting.

Back in her cubicle, Chelsea hit send on the final Outlook Calendar meeting invitation that went out to each of the six teams Kevin managed. The meetings would keep employees there, depending on their team's meeting time, until eight-thirty that night. She heard Kevin approaching her cubicle, talking on his cell, and she leaned forward and stared at the computer screen, tensed for the next request, but he kept walking and went into his office and shut the door. She blew out a ragged sigh and fell back in her chair, forgetting her promise to herself to sit up straight and stop slouching. It looked terrible, being hunched over like Quasimodo. Plus, it made her look fat rather than voluptuous.

She had to figure out if she needed to stay for the meetings, or if she could get away with slipping out and still be able to meet her friends. Lucie was lucky she didn’t work at TMB anymore and have to put up with all the crap that was dished out daily by the management of the company, lucky to be launching a new business of her very own. Chelsea was happy for her friend, but she keenly missed her at moments like this. She could talk to Lucie tonight at Ibiza, assuming she got away, but she needed advice now and there was only one other straight-shooting no-BS woman in the office she could count on: Sharon. A market analyst who’d been with TMB for over ten years, Sharon had job security courtesy of being outstanding at what she did and having a boss with clout who valued her.

Chelsea jumped up and walked down the hall with her fingers crossed, hoping Sharon, too, hadn’t been called into meetings. Happily, she found Sharon in her interior office typing madly away on her computer and muttering to herself while clenching a pencil between her teeth, her words muffled by the chewed-up yellow graphite-filled stick the analyst adored gnawing on.

“Hey,” Chelsea said, stopping just outside Sharon’s door.

Sharon looked up, blinking, and then pulled the pencil out of her mouth. “Hey. What’s up?” She glanced at her computer screen and the time displayed in the corner of it. “It’s past five. You always bolt around now. What are you still doing here? Helping fix someone's computer again?” Sharon asked, referring to Chelsea's knack for computers and programming, a geeky and unattractive skill set that Chelsea did her best to downplay.

“No, the big meeting? Didn’t you go?”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “No. What a waste of time. Alan told me not to bother. If there’s trouble - which there probably will be - he’ll handle it.”

Chelsea sagged against the door frame. “I love Alan. You’re so lucky.”

“Ah, don’t let Kevin get to you. He’s all hot air.”

“Easy for you to say. You know how I wanted you to come out with us tonight? To Ibiza? Well, now even I can’t go. Kevin just scheduled meetings until eight-thirty.”

“What? He’s such a jerk. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by Kevin Fitch.”

“What am I going to do?” Chelsea wailed, resisting the urge to wring her hands. She loved being dramatic, but she’d been told to stop multiple times by Sharon and didn’t want to piss off her friend right when she needed her most.

“You’re going to go. Just go. You don’t have to take notes or anything, right?”

“No, but he’ll get mad.”

“What? That’s idiotic.”

“No, really.”

Sharon leaned back in her chair, putting the tip of her pencil in her mouth thoughtfully and nibbling on it.

“That’s so dangerous,” Chelsea couldn’t help saying.

“No, it's not. That's from the old days, when they had lead in them. And, besides, my pencil helps me think. Let’s see. You have to leave. How could you be helping me off-site?” Sharon said, leaning all the way back in her chair. Then she shot forward, flipping the pencil out of her mouth. “I know….we’re going to Kinkos! I’ve got to get the reports ready for a client for tomorrow and you’re going to help me because Angela already left for the day.”

It was true, Chelsea had just passed Angela's desk which was pin-neat and shadowy without the overhead light and the administrative assistant's chair had been pushed in. “But…there are printers here.”

“These reports are four-color.”

Chelsea shook her head. “We’ve got a color printer, the Lanier.”

Sharon smiled. “And it’s all out of toner, so we can’t finish the job here.”

“Candice never lets us run out. She’s, like, the superwoman of office managers.”

Sharon shrugged her shoulders and said, “Ever hear of Hide and Seek?”

“What?”

“Trust me.”