“I remember. Good luck,” she said before walking away.
I swiveled in my chair and watched her retreating back in shock. Maybe she’d mellowed.
Unable to concentrate, I headed to the bathroom, running into Lucy on her way out. Although very bookish during the day, Lucy was a work-hard play-hard gal who knew how to let her thin blond hair down from its usual bun at sunset. I first experienced this at the farewell party the firm threw for Nicholas at a karaoke bar when, after downing several apple martinis, a tipsy Lucy belted out an enthusiastic, albeit off-key, rendition of “It’s Raining Men.” Since getting serious with Nicholas, I had enjoyed the company of what he called “Bad Lucy” many times.
“I love your outfit, Kim.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking down at my current uniform: a pink wool skirt paired with a gingham top and black pumps.
Lucy glanced down at her stodgy brown skirt and white button-down. “I really need to upgrade my daytime style.”
I agreed she was overdue for a shopping spree, but I reserved brutal honesty for my close friends. “When you’re on a budget like mine, the key is to keep the distinction between daytime and nighttime style to a minimum, and make sure all outfits can easily transfer from work to play.”
“Good point. Thanks, Kim,” Lucy said, before removing the pen from her bun and scribbling on her legal pad.
In the same day, I had dished helpful advice to both David and Lucy. I hoped karma in the nature of an offer for agent representation was in my near future.
After using the bathroom, I returned to my desk, happy for the validation provided by Lucy that I was aptly dressed. I wondered what Hannah wore on her first meeting with Felicia. As if reading my mind, my phone pinged the arrival of a message on Facebook from Hannah.
Felicia told me about your little meet and greet this evening. Bonne Chance. Don’t make me sorry I referred you.
I chuckled. Coming from Hannah, this was the sincerest expression of good luck I could expect, and I wasn’t expecting any. I would tell Bridget about it, but she would roll her eyes and rattle off all of the ways Hannah was brainwashing me.
I had now received good-luck messages from my parents, Bridget, Hannah, and even Jonathan—all of the important people in my life except Caroline and Nicholas. But I couldn’t blame Caroline. She was on a different continent, unlike Nicholas, who slept next to me in bed last night. I tried to find the humor in receiving encouragement from Hannah—the girl who used every trick in the Mean Girl manual to trash my self-esteem back in high school—but not Nicholas—the man who professed to love me. But instead of making me laugh, the thought threatened to make my eyes tear. Despite anger quietly brewing deep in my belly, I would forgive his lack of forethought on the assumption he was slammed at work again. Giving him an opportunity to provide positive reinforcement, I sent him a text: “T-1:30 before I meet with Felicia. Wish me luck!” I placed my cell phone back in my purse as my office phone rang—Daneen. I answered it with a tentative, “Hello.”
“Can you please meet me in the conference room on this floor?”
“Um…” What if she concocted some evil plan to make me work overtime? I was not above doing overtime on occasion—it was par for the course in the law-firm environment—but I would sooner pay a temp out of my own pocket than miss my appointment with the first agent to take genuine interest in A Blogger’s Life.
As if reading my mind, Daneen said, “It won’t take long.”
“Be right there.” With shaky legs, I walked around the corner and knocked on the closed door of the conference room.
“Come in.”
When I opened the door, I was met with Daneen standing at the foot of the table with three stacks of documents. “I need your help with something.” She pointed at the papers. “These documents were sent by the other side as part of discovery on a case. Unfortunately, the pagination is all off and it’s impossible to make sense of them out of order.” She shook her head in disgust. “I’m not entirely sure opposing counsel didn’t do it on purpose. I need your help getting them in page order.”
I glanced down at the documents. I figured there had to be anywhere between 150 and 300 pages in total. “You’re going to help me?” Between the two of us, it might not take that long.
Daneen cackled. “I can’t possibly bill for this at my four hundred dollar an hour rate.”
My voice trembled as I asked, “Do you think David might be able to assist? Or one of the other secretaries?” I licked my lips. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, but I—” What if I couldn’t finish before I was supposed to leave to meet Felicia?
“Don’t worry. I know you have your appointment. It shouldn’t take long.” She smiled at me. “I really appreciate your help.” Then she closed the door behind her.
I breathed in and out through my nose and regarded the documents from a distance again. The sooner I got started, the quicker I’d be finished. I’d left my phone in my purse and wasn’t wearing my watch but it couldn’t be later than three thirty. Maybe only portions of the pages were out of order and it wouldn’t take me long. How bad could it be?
It only took a few minutes to discover the answer to that question was very, very bad. From what I could tell, there were no two consecutive pages in any of the three stacks—page two was right before page ninety-six which was right before page one hundred and twenty-three—which meant I had to start from scratch. My plan was to make piles for every twenty pages—one through twenty, twenty through forty, and so on—and put them all together at the end. I only hoped the conference table was large enough to fit all of the piles because I was afraid changing my number system would be too complicated for my math-challenged brain.
After a rough start, I got into a nice rhythm and the piles were coming along nicely. At first, I pulled one paper at a time, but I was now grabbing three at once and circling the table to insert them in their rightful piles before going back for three more. I thought I was making good progress, but I really wished I knew what time it was. I’d only gone through one pile and worried it was almost five o’clock. Worst case scenario, I wouldn’t have time to freshen up first. Felicia was judging my writing skills, not whether my makeup application was stale. On the flip side, presentation spoke volumes as to how serious I was about my writing career. What if I was a sweaty mess from running around the table and my lipstick cakey from lack of hydration and Felicia assumed I didn’t care enough to make a good impression?
My stomach quaked in anxiety and I made an impulsive decision to quicken my pace by filing more pages at a time. I grabbed a thicker stack from the second pile and yelped in pain from a stinging sensation in my right index finger. It felt like a paper cut, but there was no blood. Thank God. I stared down at my finger and chanted, “Please don’t bleed. Please don’t bleed” until a tiny dot of blood formed that, within two seconds, grew bigger. I held my finger away from my body to avoid staining my outfit and darted my eyes around the room in a panic. I needed a bandage. The receptionist kept a stash in her desk, but there was no time. A piece of paper would work for applying pressure to the cut, but Daneen would kill me if I used one of the documents.
I pressed my thumb hard against the cut hoping to stop the bleeding while I searched the room for something I could use. What would MacGyver do? When I saw the stack of yellow notepads, I jumped up and down in glee. I grabbed a couple and wrapped them around my finger using the adhesive strips to keep them in place. Once I was confident the bleeding had stopped, I wiped my thumb on the table, vowing to clean the blood off later, continued my filing and prayed I hadn’t wasted too much time.
The door opened and Daneen said, “How’s it going in here, Kimberly?”
I winced. When Daneen first started at the firm, she insisted on calling me Kimberly after I told her I preferred Kim. She’d smirk each time she went against my request and didn’t stop until I hinted
about knowing her embarrassing secret from her college days. She must have realized I didn’t have it in me to actually use the dirt against her and was back to her old tricks. It was annoying, but I had bigger problems right now.
I motioned toward the many piles on the table. “I’m making progress. Do you know what time it is?”
Daneen glanced at her watch. “It’s four o’clock. You’re very efficient when you put your mind to it.” She walked out and closed the door behind her again.
Too busy to respond to her condescending “compliment,” I resumed my steady pace, careful not to cut myself again. When I was down to one more stack of pages, I felt a burst of pride. Almost finished.
The next time Daneen came in, instead of asking me how things were going, she circled the table and silently studied my progress. “Interesting system,” she said.
“It gets the job done,” I said with more energy than I felt. “What time is it now?”
“Four fifteen.”
I beamed. “Great. I should be able to finish with plenty of time to get to my meeting.” I might even have a few minutes to replenish my lip gloss and run a brush through my hair. Maybe spritz some perfume. If paper had a scent, I’d be drenched in it by now.
“You can take your sweet time at this point.” She chuckled, turned on her heel, and walked out.
Even though it wasn’t taking as long to complete the assignment as I’d feared, I didn’t think it was wise to dilly dally. I would continue at the same frantic speed so I could head to the Ace Hotel at a leisurely pace. A moment later, the door creaked back open. I assumed it was Daneen, but it was Rob.
His eyes bugged out and he looked at his watch. “Shouldn’t you have left for your meeting?”
“I’m almost finished,” I said, pointing to the remaining very short stack of unsorted documents. “It’s only four fifteen and I don’t have to leave until ten minutes of five.”
Rob’s mouth dropped open. “You need to reset your watch, kiddo. It’s ten after five.”
The paper I was holding fell out of my shaking hand. “What?” I could feel the color drain from my face. I was already ten minutes late.
“Leave this. Just go.”
My breath was ragged as I jogged uptown, zigzagging through the crowd of commuters, toward 29th Street where Ace Hotel was located between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. My heavy purse banged against my side with each step, but the only pain I experienced was the ache of watching my publishing dream fray like paper through a shredder. Thank God Rob had come in when he did or I’d still be on Daneen’s time under the false assumption I was early enough to make myself pretty and still arrive five minutes early. Instead, after Rob set me straight, I sprinted to my cubicle, where I grabbed my purse and my jacket and bolted out the door without bothering to shut down my computer. I didn’t even have a chance to warn Rob about the blood stain I’d left on the table. While the elevator made its descent to the lobby, I searched through my emails to find Felicia’s phone number, but I couldn’t locate it fast enough and decided it was better to go directly to the hotel than waste more time searching.
What if I’d blown my one chance at the big time? At the next stoplight, I reached into my bag and called Nicholas. When his voicemail picked up, I choked back a sob. “It’s me. I’m so scared. I’m on my way to meet Felicia, but I’m really late. Daneen gave me an assignment and told me it was only a little after four when it was really five so I’m racing to the hotel now.” I stared at the street light, willing it to turn red so pedestrians would have the right of way. I was tempted to run through the traffic, but death from being hit by a car would guarantee I missed my meeting with Felicia even if Daneen’s evil plan didn’t. “Light changed,” I shouted into the phone while racing across the street. “Please cross your fingers she’s still there. I don’t know what I’ll do if I screwed this up. Oh, God, Nicholas, I’m terrified. Okay, bye.” I hung up and tossed the phone back in my bag, and speed walked across the street to the hotel.
I barreled right past the dimly lit lobby, ignoring the many people sitting on wrap-around leather couches and working on laptops, and headed directly to the bar in the back where I was supposed to meet Felicia. I scanned the room, praying I’d see her sitting on one of the black upholstered couches, but she wasn’t there. My search of the bar yielded the same results and my chin quivered uncontrollably in the knowledge I was too late.
A torrent of tears threatening to be shed within seconds, I hurried to the ladies’ room. The sink area was empty and I kneeled on the ground and cried with my head between my legs. I heard the sound of someone using the bathroom and opened my eyes to see a pair of brown leather boots in one of the stalls. Sighing loudly, I raised myself to a standing position, leaned against the sink, and called Nicholas again, although I doubted he’d be able to understand my message through my tears. “She left, Nicholas. What am I going to do? Felicia only agreed to read my book because of Hannah and I blew it. Why did Daneen do this to me? Why didn’t I wear my watch to work today? Why is this happening to me? Where are you? Please call me. I need you.” I placed the phone on the edge of the sink and gazed at my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks were red, my eyes swollen from crying, and my hair was wet from perspiration and matted to my face.
The door to the occupied bathroom opened slowly and I grimaced wondering how much the woman had heard. When she emerged from the stall and I saw who it was, my mouth dropped open.
Chapter 19
I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. “Felicia?”
She took a step forward and nodded. “Kim, I presume?”
My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard, praying my voice wouldn’t crack or worse fail me completely. I nodded. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I thought it was only four fifteen and when my boss told me it was after five, I literally ran here from Twenty-seventh and Park. When I didn’t see you at the bar, I assumed you left. And you heard the rest. I’m so sorry.” Gesturing to my disheveled reflection in the mirror, I said, “I’m not usually a train wreck.”
Felicia patted my shoulder comfortingly. “I’d like to hear the whole story, but first let’s get you out of the bathroom.” She opened the door and held it for me to walk out.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice shaking. I followed her to an empty couch.
“Have a seat. Do you want a drink?”
The answer to her question was an unequivocal “hell yes,” but I didn’t know the proper protocol. Was it a trick question?
As if reading my mind, Felicia said, “You look like you need one.”
I smiled. “I kind of do.”
Felicia laughed. “I’ll get a glass of champagne for both of us. You catch your breath.”
Nodding like an obedient child, I said, “Okay.”
Even though I had seen pictures of Felicia during various stages of agent stalking, I discreetly checked her out as she ordered our drinks at the bar. With fifteen years’ experience, she was probably about forty, although she could easily pass for thirty-five. She was tall—at least compared to me—and thin with killer legs and warm brown eyes. Her chestnut brown hair was styled all one length except for bangs. She was pretty and so far seemed as kind as her appearance suggested. The fact that she didn’t chastise me for wasting her time and, instead, offered to buy me a drink made me kind of love her.
Returning from the bar, Felicia handed me a glass of champagne before sitting down next to me. Then she clinked her glass against mine. “Better?”
I took a small sip, determined to pace myself. “Much better,” I confessed.
Felicia placed her glass on the finished wood table in front of us. “Before we get down to business, I need to know why you thought it was only four fifteen.”
I shook my head in dismay. “Because one of the attorneys gave me an assignment knowing I had to leave early and then she lied to me about what time it
was. Twice.”
Felicia pulled a face. “Why would she lie about the time?”
“Because she hates me and wants my boyfriend.” I gulped. Too much formation.
“Classic chick lit material right there,” Felicia said with a laugh.
“Tell me about it,” I muttered before apologizing again.
“I did assume you were a no show and was going to head out after I used the facilities, but you’re here now. Do you still want to talk about A Blogger’s Life?”
Tears welled up behind my eyelids, but this time in relief. “Definitely. Thank you so much for reading it.” Anticipating the conversation about to take place, I felt a pulsing in my throat. I had made it to the meeting, but I still had to get through it.
Felicia picked up her glass and took a sip. “It was my pleasure. It’s a great story, Kim. You should be proud.”
Lifting my chin, I said, “Thank you.” So far so good.
“Although the market is flooded with bloggers-turned-authors, a novel from the perspective of a book blogger is fresh.” Tipping her head, she queried, “It is fiction, right?”
“Yes. I mean, I relied on my own experiences as a book blogger for authenticity, but the story itself, as well as the characters, are completely fictitious.”
Felicia nodded. “You’ve got talent, Kim, and I think the novel has a wide appeal for younger readers of chick lit, romantic comedy, and humorous women’s fiction. But…”
But. I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t say she couldn’t sell A Blogger’s Life in this market unless I was an established author. I didn’t think I could take hearing it again.
“I’m concerned with one angle of the story.”
Drawing on Jonathan’s advice, I kept my urge to be defensive at bay and took a deep breath. “Which angle?”
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