Daisy
“Where are we on the Santa Monica property?” Thomas Grey asks the speaker in the center of the conference table. His demanding voice is a routine staple of our company start-the-week-right phone calls—which, yes, do occasionally occur on Tuesdays if Monday is too busy, and no, the irony isn’t lost on me—but I’m usually on the other end of them, making big, dramatic eyes at Damien while he pantomimes his jokes.
I’ll admit, sitting next to serious Thomas while my new East Coast coworker Tara Insley shoots eye lasers at me from across the table isn’t quite the same good time.
“Daisy, what’s your timeline on getting Frederick in there for listing photos?” Thomas asks me since I’m the one who did all the planning for the staging on the property before I left LA.
“About three days,” I answer, even though I know Thomas doesn’t like to get any answer other than one that would involve a time traveler. “The setup is there, but Frederick doesn’t have any availability before that,” I clarify with a gulp.
Thomas holds my eyes dangerously, and I hold my breath under his scrutiny. I mean, I know I’ll have to take in some fresh air soon if I don’t want to pass out, but if it takes him that long to tell me if three days is okay or not, I’d probably rather be unconscious anyway.
Luckily, though, he doesn’t question my timeline, instead agreeing with a brusque nod before moving on and passing the pulpit to Damien to do his cross-checks. Tara’s foot knocks into mine under the table—accidentally, I’m sure—and she smirks a fake apology.
I hope you nick your ankles to all hell the next time you shave, I hex in my head. It might seem a bit over the top to be mentally passing out hexes toward your coworker, but Tara Insley hasn’t been anything but a passive-aggressive, evil shrew to me since I arrived in New York.
“Tom, what is your team’s ETA for the Miami and Vegas properties that just came under contract?” Damien asks, switching the focus to the Grey team of EllisGrey. “I’d like to see us capitalize on the spring market and get those listed within the month.”
A few agents from Thomas’s team speak up, giving the rundown on where they’re at in the process, and my brain begins to zone out when the legal side of real estate starts getting discussed.
It’s not that I don’t want to understand the legal side of things; it’s just that I can’t understand it. At all. You know? Just give me properties to use my interior design skills in, and I’m happy.
This is a perfect example of why, if I ever go out on my own and make Daisy Designs its own brand name, it will revolve solely around the design side of things. No contracts, no listings, just interior design for homeowners and staging work for real estate firms.
Ultimately, that is my big dream. To run my own company.
Which explains why my pride is somewhere down around my knees with this whole immigration thing. That big dream is far easier achieved in the United States than Canada. Don’t get me wrong, I love Canada. Always have and always will. But the market in the States holds far more opportunity.
I need that green card like I need my next meal.
“Daisy,” Thomas calls, grabbing my attention again and making me sit up straight.
“Yes?”
“You’ll be working with Tara on Damien’s new Greenwich Village property. Time is of the essence with getting it out there, so I need the two of you to pool all your connections to make it happen.”
Of course. Why wouldn’t I be assigned to direct teamwork with Cruella’s spawn?
“You got it, Tom.”
“Good. Then get out of here. You two don’t need to hang out for the rest of the call. Just get started.”
Tara and I both nod dutifully, pushing back in our chairs and climbing to our feet in the conference room. Tara rounds the table, and I hold open the glass door like we haven’t spent the last week of work together solidifying our opposing positions in a lifelike game of Mortal Kombat.
Dirty looks, underhanded trick questions in front of Thomas, giving me wrong times and addresses for properties and vendor appointments, “accidentally” squishing my food in the back of the break room fridge, and telling the entire office she saw me drying my blouse under the hand dryer in the bathroom—thanks to an unfortunate coffee spillage event—because I apparently have some sort of glandular problem, are just the tip of the iceberg of her full-frontal assault, and this is only my fifth official day.
Now that we’ve been assigned to work together, I might have to invest in a bodyguard. My vote is, of course, for Kevin Costner, but I’m not sure he makes people who try to defraud the government a priority in his schedule.
I step outside the door behind Tara and follow her swaying hips down the hallway to her office. So far, she hasn’t even acknowledged my presence.
She steps inside, rounds her desk, and takes a seat in her chair. I lean into the doorway, keeping the jamb in front of me as a shield of defense.
“Uh, hey, Tara?” I question, making her head pop up almost violently.
“What?”
“I thought maybe we should get a plan together—”
“I don’t have time right now. I have a lunch engagement.” Technically, so do I, with Winnie and Sophie, but I figured, given Thomas’s urgency, I’d reschedule. “I’ll email you the details I have from my vendors, and we can go from there.”
Right. Okay, then. I guess I’ll go to lunch with Winnie and Sophie after all.
I turn to leave, but Tara calls me back. “Oh, and Daisy?”
“Yes?”
“You have something in your teeth…” She points to her own mouth in example. “Right there.”
What a bitch, waiting to tell me until the meeting was over, when we were in the conference room alone for five minutes before it started. I hope she gets on a local train on the way home instead of the express and hits every goddamn stop.
I sure hope lunch is filled with friendlier waters. I’m not sure how much more I can take today without going psycho Daisy Mae on someone’s ass.
Bilbow Gardens is an adorably over-the-top restaurant with cascading florals all over the ceiling and walls, neon signs behind every booth, and pink dimpled leather on the seats. According to Winnie, her husband Wes knows the owner. And I’m thinking that’s probably how she managed to get us a cozy booth in the back corner of the place, away from the hustle and bustle of the kitchen and lunchtime rush.
“So, Daisy, you have to tell us what Flynn is like as a husband,” Sophie says through a big smile on her side of the booth. “I’m dying to know. I’ve spent a lot of time picturing Jude as a husband—my husband—you know, but it can’t be at all what Flynn is like. Is he serious all the time? Does he wear socks to bed? I have to know!”