~~~~
Kate’s predictions had been pretty spot on, as she quickly came to find out. She had barely finished hanging up her coat in her cubicle when her neighboring coworker popped her head in. Janet was a middle aged woman who Kate often ate lunch with or chatted with over the water cooler. The conversation was always about Janet’s children and all the different activities and achievements. Janet rarely, if ever, inquired about Kate’s life mostly because she was just more interested in talking about herself. Kate had no problem with that though, she had never wanted to be in the spotlight and so she was completely fine focusing on other people. She never had much to tell about her own life anyways.
Until now, she thought ironically.
“Kate! How are you doing!? This place has been just falling apart without you, dear!” Janet said kindly, even though Kate knew that was not the case. She sold office furniture to industrial companies. Her job could literally be done by an online shopping search engine.
Her Uncle Lenny owned the company and had gifted her the job when she got out of college and had been unable to find employment due to the rough economy at the time. However, as the years went by, Kate just became comfortable and stayed. Don’t confuse comfortable with happy, because Kate was certainly never happy with her job. Sometimes she wondered how she didn’t just fall asleep at her desk or snap at a customer on the phone and tell them just to go shop online.
But it was a job and a paycheck and the current economic state made just having a job a prize in itself. The honest truth was that Kate didn’t really know what it was that she wanted to do. Even with a bachelors degree in psychology and a desire to help people, she didn’t know how to translate that into a career or what direction she wanted to go. Selling office furniture was not going to be her career, at least she hoped it wouldn’t be. For now, though, it was a good place holder and allowed her time to contemplate life’s choices.
She was always grateful to her Uncle Lenny for everything he had done for her, even though he wasn’t technically related to him, so she tried to do her best at the job. It wasn’t easy though because he ran the company in an old school way that didn’t include a lot of today’s technology and so the business was starting to dwindle as online shopping became more and more popular. After she finished settling her things into her desk and hanging up her coat, she wandered down the hall to find Lenny and say hello.
She had asked him to keep a distance as she had most people over the last two weeks because she didn’t want everyone to see her looking so vulnerable. She still didn’t feel particularly shielded now but at least her heavy make up job covered most of the bruises and only some of the healing lacerations showed on her face. She rounded the corner and walked up to her uncle’s assistant, Frank Bild.
Frank was sitting at a desk, busily tapping away on an ancient computer. He wasn’t particularly tall or handsome, but he wasn’t ugly either. He just wasn’t very noticeable and you could probably meet him ten times and still not recognize him. That is until he opened his mouth.
Every office has that one jerk that no one can stand and Frank had signed, sealed, and displayed that title all over himself from the first day he arrived. Lenny was the only one who seemed oblivious to Frank’s lack of charms. Kate didn’t care very much because she rarely had to interact with Frank. He was more an annoyance than anything else.
“Hey Frank, is Lenny in?” Kate asked, gesturing to the closed door near Frank’s desk that had Lenny’s name on it in gold plating. Frank just glanced up at her for a brief moment, then looked back at his computer and continued typing.
“You look horrible.” He said simply. Not an insult, not a compliment, he just stated it like he was stating a fact that he couldn’t care less about. Kate sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Thanks.” She sarcastically responded then pointed back to her uncle’s office door, waiting for him to answer her question. He didn’t look back up or say anything to her until he finished typing a moment later, then he turned his full body to face her and folded his arms across his chest.
“What do you want with him?” Frank narrowed his eyes and looked at her with disdain, as if he couldn’t understand why someone like her would have anything of value to say to his boss.