With a sigh, I shook the crumbs out of my sandwich bag, folded it up, and put it back in my paper lunch sack, which I then folded neatly and stuck in my purse. I dropped my apple core in a garbage can as I passed it and headed back to my office with a heavy heart. Every time I went out for lunch, it grew more and more difficult to force myself back inside. That was yet another reason I usually ate at my desk.
Mimi must not have found a group to go out to lunch with, for she was already back in the office when I returned. "Where have you been?" she shrieked, loud enough for the whole floor to hear. Dogs in Battery Park City whimpered and put their paws over their ears.
"At lunch," I said as calmly as I could. Getting mad back at Mimi only escalated the situation.
"I thought you said you weren't going to lunch," she accused.
"I said I'd brought my lunch. I just took it out of my office to eat it."
By now people were staring, heads peeping up over the top of cubicle walls like prairie dogs peering out of their holes. "You should tell me when you're leaving the office."
"You were at lunch." I frowned in fake concern and tried to keep my voice from shaking. "Am I supposed to get permission to take a lunch break? I wasn't aware of that policy."
There wasn't anything she could say to that, not with so many witnesses. She'd never get a reprimand about daring to leave the office for lunch while she herself was gone to stick. Unfortunately, she knew she was powerless, and she hated that more than anything. "I needed the draft of that news release from PR before I could go to the executive meeting," she snapped. "I tried calling you from the executive conference room to bring it to me, but you weren't at your desk."
"I put it in your in-box this morning, as soon as I got it from Leah."
Now she was really angry. Most bosses would be glad to find that their employees were competent, but not Mimi. Competent employees made her look bad and took away all of her excuses. She must have shown up at the executive meeting without the release, then tried to blame me, saying I hadn't given it to her. With glaring, bugging Evil Mimi eyes, she whirled back to her office, snatched the release out of her in-box and stalked off toward the elevators. Her body language said, "I'm not through with you yet, missy."
I was almost in tears as I slunk into my cubicle, fell into my desk chair, and changed back into my office shoes. She made me so angry, and since I couldn't do anything about her, my frustration came out in tears. The last thing I wanted was for her to think she'd made me cry, so I sat blinking furiously in my cubicle.
My hands shook as I raised them to my computer keyboard and hit a key to bring the screen back to life. The message-waiting indicator was blinking, and there at the top of my e-mail in-box was a message from Rodney Gwaltney. I opened it. It was the usual stuff talking about what a great opportunity he had for me.
I knew it had to be a scam, but I couldn't take much more of this job, so I had to either find another one or admit defeat and go back home. Maybe a nice Texas girl like me wasn't cut out for life in the big city. But before I gave up, I thought I ought to give it one more shot. I'd have to do whatever it took to find another job.
Before I realized what I was doing, I'd hit Reply and typed out, "When would you like to meet? My schedule is pretty busy, so it will have to be at lunchtime or after work." No matter what he was offering me, it had to be better than this. Then, before I could change my mind, I hit Send.
three
As soon as I sent the message, I regretted it. What had I gotten myself into? I knew they only opened the firewall to let e-mail come and go every few minutes, so there was still a chance that I could call IT and ask them to kill it, but that would mean admitting I'd responded to a job offer. I was sure the computer guys wouldn't tell on me. They'd sympathize, since they had to help an ungrateful Mimi with one kind of computer problem or another on a daily basis. The longer I hesitated, the lower my chances were of taking it back.
But I couldn't bring myself to make that call. Worst-case scenario, aside from the sex slavery possibility, was that Rodney might leave me alone if I met with him and still turned him down. There was always the possibility that the offer was everything he said it was, but I knew that really good things usually came with a catch.
I forced myself to concentrate on my work instead of thinking about the job, but every time I heard the ding that announced new mail, I quickly clicked over. They were pretty much all from people needing to get on Mimi's calendar or asking if she'd yet looked at something that she had asked for last week and said was urgent.
