Someone had taken Marlette’s query letter. Was it Jude? He was told to toss the flowers into the trash. But why would he do that today when Marlette had shown up month after month with a letter that no one had cared about?
Makayla was staring at me, hands on her narrow hips. “Girl! Are you gonna tell me what is going on at the crazy place you work? Here I am, fixing espressos and serving muffins, when I look out my window to see a body bag being loaded into an ambulance.” She stopped speaking and scrutinized my face. “Talk about a tough first day! Are you doing okay?”
I nodded and gave her a succinct account of this morning’s events. It already seemed like months ago that I’d first boarded the Inspiration Express. Maybe I should have stayed on the train. I could have feasted on a frosted cinnamon twist and sipped a cup of rich decaf as the industrial parks of Dunston were left behind and the locomotive burst through a tunnel into the lush, green paradise that was Inspiration Valley. I could have been lulled to sleep by the train’s gentle rocking and remained onboard when everyone else disembarked. But I hadn’t. I’d wanted an adventure, and now I was right smack in the middle of one.
“Well, you might feel fine, but you don’t smell fine.” Makayla wrinkled her nose in distaste.
She was right. “‘There’s small choice in rotten apples,’” I murmured unhappily, quoting Shakespeare’s Hortensio. I possess an uncanny ability, which I’ve had since childhood, to recall random lines of text from my favorite literary works. In moments of intense emotion, I turn to the words of familiar authors to help me express my own feelings.
Makayla, instead of being impressed by tribute to the Bard, ignored my mutterings. “I’m gonna have to spray you with the deodorizer in the bathroom. Smells like a lemon ammonia cocktail, but it’s better than a mighty powerful whiff of rotten cheese Danish and brown bananas.”
Makayla wasn’t kidding. She literally opened fire on me with an aluminum can of room deodorizer. She got my clothes, my shoes, my hair. I examined my reflection in the mirror and was pleased to find that I didn’t have bits of trash stuck to my shoulder-length nut brown hair. I swiveled this way and that, thinking that I needed to wear a longer blouse over my pencil skirt in the future, for even though I was tall, I was curvy. Perhaps too curvy for such a snug skirt. No wonder men I didn’t know were flirting with me! But now that I smelled like eau de Lysol, I doubted that even my coffee-colored eyes or Rubenesque figure would attract too many admirers. Heading back upstairs, I felt like a freshly disinfected hospital ward.
“Come find me at the end of the day, Ms. Pine-Sol!” Makayla called after me. “I’ll fix you something special to make you feel better.”
I paused on the landing. “Thank you, but I’m going to want something much stronger than coffee by the time this day is finally over.”
Returning to my sad little desk and the stack of query letters, I half expected one of the other agents to rush into the lobby, demanding why I’d been absent for so long, but the office was eerily quiet.
I noticed the relaxing guitar music that had been playing earlier in the day had been turned off, but I was able to remedy the problem by flicking a wall switch located just inside the door of the electrical closet. A lovely melody ebbed from the overhead speakers, and the soothing harmonies created by flutes and cellos allowed me to concentrate on my work once more.
I read through thirty query letters, placed them all in the rejection folder, and then heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. For some reason, I felt compelled to hide the single flower I’d brought back with me. As my desk had no drawers and the tiny, delicate petals would be crushed in my purse, I slipped the bloom in between the pages of the first book I pulled from the shelves containing the works of Novel Idea clients. It was called Can’t Take the Heat.
Luella Ardor strode into the lobby as though she were on a catwalk in Milan. Pausing at my desk, she flipped a strand of glossy hair over one shoulder and smiled at me. “That’s by Calliope Sinclair, one of my most prolific authors. Borrow that book if you want, but be warned: You will not want to sleep alone after you’ve had a taste. Chapter three contains the most erotic sex scene I’ve ever come across. The heroine is in an elevator with two firemen and—”