Ten grand. Boom. Filed.
Just then, Robert yelled something from inside his office and I understood he was calling for his senior editor.
I popped my head above my desk’s dividers like a mole peeking out of its hole and called out over the plain of cubicles. “Dillinger! Robert wants you.”
Everyone on our floor addressed one another by their last names, Longhorns football style. It was a habit nobody who worked outside of a male-dominated office could really understand.
Dillinger, whose first name was Jason, rushed to Robert’s office and closed the door behind him. When I returned to my seat, I noticed the lower right-hand corner of my computer screen had come alive.
Lunch today?
Kevin Handsome was g-chatting. By “lunch” he meant heading down to the cafeteria at the same time to buy our lunches, and then riding the elevator back upstairs together to eat separately at our respective desks. In all it was a ten-minute date, five minutes tops of uninterrupted conversation. A minimum of three minutes of palm sweats and me obsessing. What does this guy want from me?
Kevin wasn’t called Kevin Handsome for nothing. Genetics had been good to him. He had a mop of dark hair and round brown eyes in an all-American style. He was tall and fit with just enough dork mixed in to make him approachable. I sometimes imagined him jogging or boating, or playing touch football with his brothers à la the Kennedys.
A guy like Kevin could only be this nice to me because I was Robert Barlow’s assistant. It had happened before with other guys, albeit less attractive ones. Eventually the flirtatious male would ask for some favor—a slot on Robert’s calendar or an invitation to some event. But manipulation or not, he was cute.
I agreed to lunch. It’s build-your-own-burger day, I replied, to emphasize that I was in it solely for the red meat and unlimited fixings, not Kevin’s company. See you down there.
I should mention that the Titan cafeteria wasn’t really a cafeteria. It was more of a food service Pangaea, connecting all imaginable menu options together in one space. There was a grill station, a soup station, an international station that changed according to obscure holidays and days of observance no one’s heard of, and—a crowd favorite—the “action station,” in which a line of chefs cooked up your meal in fast-action. Of course there was also sushi, pizza, specialty sandwiches, a salad bar, and a celebrity chef’s table. Don’t even get me started on snack time, which ran from three to four p.m. and encompassed more dessert options than the Viennese hour at the last Italian wedding you attended. But the pinnacle of all, to me, was build-your-own-burger day. I loved build-your-own-burger day so much that each month when it rolled around, I’d enter it onto my Outlook calendar ahead of time. Once, in my excitement, I accidentally entered it onto Robert’s calendar instead of mine—with the requisite triple exclamation points and all. (This is why no one person should ever oversee more than one calendar, but such is the assistant’s burden.) The exclamatory note sat there for about a week before I discovered the error, but Robert never mentioned it.
Kevin was already on line at the burger station when I arrived. I admired the fact that he wasn’t looking at his phone, like everyone else on the line. He just waited, with his hands in the pockets of his gray suit pants, soaking up the atmosphere, as they say. His eyes brightened when I made my approach.
“I saved you a spot,” he said, letting me cut in front of him.
I knew the woman behind us wouldn’t complain about my cutting because Kevin had that soothing effect on people. People, mainly women, yearned to do him favors.
“How’s Wiles today?” I asked.
Glen Wiles was the head of Titan’s legal department, and Kevin’s boss. He was also the only man at Titan more feared than Robert—not because he had more power, but because he was by far the bigger asshole.
“At the moment, Wiles is turning the office thermostat all the way down to make his assistant’s endowment perk up. You know . . .” He gestured toward his own pectoral nipples. “So business as usual, really.”
“Yeah, Robert would never do that to me,” I said, looking down at my non-tits beneath my sweater.
Kevin cleared his throat and politely looked away. Fortunately, it was our turn to build our burgers.
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