We chatted some more about her travel plans, with me occasionally going into fake professional-speak when someone walked by, or putting her on hold when someone came up with an issue that actually fell in my job description.
Meanwhile I occupied my hands by sketching some new designs, mostly things I was toying with for Lacey’s trousseau. I didn’t usually work with leather, but I know Lacey had a thing for the spy team of Steed and Mrs. Peel, and I thought I could put together a sort of homage to one of Mrs. Peel’s kinky leather catsuits. The trick would be to find leather that had been tanned and cured until it was soft as velvet—maybe I could line it with real velvet as well…I would have to cut it just right, so that it gripped and defined without chafing…
An instant message popped up, from a lingerie client, an actress named Maura. SAT OK 4 U? LOVED IT LAST TIME. SO HOT!!!
“Ahem.”
I looked up, automatically closing the message as I did so, though I wasn’t sure if the speaker had already seen it. Her face didn’t give me any clue either. It was my manager Sarah, a middle-aged woman whose expression always suggested that she was sucking on a lemon while trying desperately not to let on how much she wanted to spit it out. There were two HR flunkies behind her; I hoped they didn’t have two different requests, or I could be stuck helping them for awhile.
“Yes?” I asked. “Can I help you with something?”
“Just come with me,” she said. Her voice sounded a little nervous, the way a rookie cop’s might as he collared his first suspect. What the what?
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ll have to call you back,” I said in my I’m-definitely-talking-to-a-real-client-and-not-tying-up-a-work-line-to-gossip-with-my-BFF voice. “Have a pleasant day, and thank you for doing business with Devlin Media Corp.!” I looked back up at Sarah again, who was fidgeting like someone had relocated an entire anthill to her pants. “Seriously, what’s up? Is it performance review time again? ‘Cause I have to say, I think you have been doing an excellent job.”
Usually I can get a smile out of anyone, even my bosses, with the way I rattle on, though okay, Sarah’s smile usually looks a little nervous, like she thinks the thought police are going to rappel down from the ceiling and disappear her for having fun at work. This time, though, she didn’t smile at all. Neither did the HR flunkies. Wait, were they all together? Like, as a group? For me?
“Let’s just go have a discussion in my office, Kate,” Sarah said.
“Uh, sure,” I replied. “But I’m supposed to be manning the phones, and—”
“Lisa will do that,” Sarah said, gesturing to a mousy little intern so short and unassuming that I’d dismissed her as Sarah’s shadow. “If you’re not in the middle of anything—”
Oh, just wasting company time talking to my best friend and setting up appointments for my side business, I didn’t say.
Instead I stood up and held out my wrists like a suspect being collared. “You got me, copper!”
Sarah’s lips thinned. “Please, Kate, try to be professional.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I could feel the eyes of the lobby on me—I probably shouldn’t have pulled that stunt with the fake handcuffs. When was I going to learn how far was too far to push a joke? I followed her, the HR flunkies hanging back a second before swooping in behind me, like security detail at the parade.
#
I sat down in the folding chair in Sarah’s office, which was really a glorified cubicle, since she only ranked about a head higher than me on the corporate totem pole. Peeling inspirational posters peered down at me from the walls, and the fluorescent light over her computer hissed and spat, blinking on and off so rapidly it looked like it might be in Morse code. Sarah sat down at the desk and nervously shuffled some papers, while the HR cronies took up positions flanking her like bodyguards. I waited for her to say something.
And waited.
And waited.
Damn, those pieces of paper were getting really thoroughly shuffled.
“Look,” I said when I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer—I am terrible at movies, don’t ever take me—“What is this about? Is it about that coffee spill on Dan from Accounting? Because first of all, that was an accident, and second of all he was harassing me and he had it coming—”
Sarah cut me off with a wave of her hand, and hemmed before finally beginning to speak.
“As you know, we regularly monitor company internet use—”
“What?” I blurted, too startled to keep from interrupting her. “I didn’t know that!”
Sarah heaved a sigh, and settled back into her chair, seeming more comfortable. Ah, the familiar old ground of having to explain something to me. “It was in your employment contract.”
“Oh. Right.” So sue me, I hadn’t read the employment contract. Yeah, yeah, I knew that wasn’t smart, but give me a break, the thing was as thick as seven Bibles and didn’t have half the human interest. I’d figured I could pick up most of it as I went along, and so far, I’d been right.
“As I was saying, we monitor company internet use, and, well. There’s no easy way to say this.” Sarah took a deep breath like she was about to plunge into a deep and roiling ocean. “Kate,” she said in the kind of portentous tone used by mystical prophets in cheesy movies with bad CGI, “we know.” She took another deep breath. “We know about the porn.”
What?
“Oh good,” I snarked, “I was worried I was going to have to explain the birds and the bees to you, and believe me, that is not a conversation I would be comfortable having with my boss.” Then something about her previous sentence jangled wrong in my brain.
Sarah said primly, and a touch frostily, “I was referring to a specific instance of pornography, or rather several specific instances, namely those that you have been viewing on your computer.”
“What?” I exclaimed indignantly. “I have never watched porn in my life!”
“Oh, no?” Sarah said, fingering one of the pieces of paper in front of her.