I step out of the town car at 7:30 sharp, a full hour before the rest of the office generally arrives. At Basiqué, regular hours aren't a thing. I never know when I'll be leaving for the night. Depending on when mockups come in, it could be 10:30. But that's only if Sandra's done for the day. She has an eight-year-old son and his schedule has as much sway over my life as hers does. But that’s irrelevant now—now is when I set up for the day. And my setup needs to be perfect, and perfectly on time.
“Thanks, Mark," I call back into the interior of the car and a wild urge bubbles up in my chest. I could get back into the car right now and tell Mark to drive me all the way back to the Midwest, back to the sleepy little town I grew up in, back to the second bedroom on the right on the upper floor of my parents’ house. The room's not quite the same. My mom gave it a fresh coat of paint and a new bed and packed all my things into the basement. But if I went there she wouldn't care if I slept for two days straight. Maybe three.
I shake my head and press the car door shut, straightening my spine. The last thing I need to do is take a vacation. I haven't taken a vacation in a year. With every day that goes by, it seems less and less likely that I'll have the time. This just isn't that kind of job.
The empty elevator whisks me up to the sixth floor, where Basiqué has its headquarters. The building takes up most of the block, so it's a labyrinth. Now, at 7:30, most of the lights are still off, but as I stride down the center aisle of the cubicles in the bullpen, the sharp points of my high heels muffled by the carpet, it's clear that I'm not the only one taking advantage of the only slow period of the morning. I can't see who's here—probably at least two people from editorial, they're always up against deadlines—but their fingers whirr against keyboards, making changes, coming up with new copy, all with the goal of pleasing Sandra.
I miss working in Editorial. The deadlines were tough, but this job…
Sandra rules Basiqué with an iron fist, and I am her right hand. Sounds like some shit out of Game of Thrones, doesn't it? What they don't tell you is that fashion is cutthroat in a way that that show doesn't touch. Someday, when I’m in charge of my own offices—a publishing company, if my wildest dreams are going to come true—it won’t be like that.
Sandra's office suite is at the far end of the building. I hang a right around the meeting rooms. My heart beats harder as I approach the double glass doors that lead into her office. It hasn't happened recently, but when I was first starting out at Basiqué, there were a couple of occasions where she got here before me.
Disaster.
I pull open the door and the quality of the air, the silence of it, tells me she's not here.
Relief trickles down my spine, but the feeling only lasts a hot second before it's replaced by an adrenaline-fueled focus. I do this job at a high goddamn level, so high that I've outlasted ten other assistants over the past year. Sandra usually has two, but the last girls have been so ineffective—so easily broken by the job—that right now there's just me.
I prefer it that way. The more control I have over Sandra's schedule and everything else that comes across my desk, the less chance of error. She hates errors, so I hate errors.
Stowing my bag in the closet behind my desk, I turn to survey the office. Sandra's desk is beyond another set of doors, usually left open. The morning light coming through the picture window behind her desk bathes everything in a warm summer glow.
Outside the doors is a pair of desks facing one another. I have the larger one, and though the smaller one sits empty, I dust it off every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sandra never notices. If she did, there would be a problem.
First things first. I gather Sandra's daily magazines and stack them on her desk in her preferred order, and then I call down to the coffee shop on the ground floor. She likes her coffee black and at a drinkable temperature, which I've found is best achieved by adding exactly one ice cube to a fresh cup. Manuel, the guy who works the morning shift, is one of my favorite people. He knows this shit is no laughing matter and never lets me down.
"Hey, Cate," he says, the noise of the espresso grinder loud behind him. "The usual?"
I drink skinny lattes, extra hot. I used to get them flavored, but about four months ago I woke up one morning completely unable to stand the sickly aftertaste of the vanilla flavoring. Same goes for chocolate. I've always loved sweets, but who has time to dwell on that kind of thing? Tastes change. The most important part is the caffeine. Obviously.
Since it's Monday, I pull out the feather duster and run it over Sandra's modern glass desk and computer screen, paying special attention to the keyboard, and then I do the same for my desk and the empty one. Manuel will be up shortly with the coffees, which leaves me forty minutes to start working through my email and confirming appointments for the day. It doesn't matter that Sandra might cancel them all the moment she walks through the door. God help me if they're not confirmed, double-checked, in advance.