Plum Girl (Romance)

  "So, are you guys about done?" Lonnie asked, looking around.

  "I didn't mean to make you nervous," he said, and winked again. Then he paused and added, "Actually, the little red head was a lot friendlier." He walked back to the bookshelf, and the significance of his words hit her. Little redhead. She thought for a moment. He had to be talking about Ann Lee, Lunther Bell's assistant. At four-eleven, Ann definitely qualified as little, and her frizzy, shoulder-length coif was the only red head of hair in the firm.

  Now she was thinking about Ann's bizarre disappearance. Maybe disappearance was too strong a word, but no one from Twit & Bell had seen or heard from her in over two weeks. At least that was the official story. One day Ann hadn't shown up for work, which led to another, and then another, and nobody was saying much about it. That alone was Lonnie's first indication that someone had to know something.

  She figured Lunther had to have some clue where Ann was—if for no other reason than he seemed completely unfazed by her absence. When people asked about Ann, Lunther would just smile and say, "A good secretary's hard to find."

  Hmm...

  * * *

  "Okay, come on, Leeza! Staff meeting. Look alive!"

  Beauregard Twit whizzed past Lonnie's desk, making only millisecond-long eye contact before waddling on to the large conference room. Lonnie jerked to attention. She had been typing up some of Twit's notes while simultaneously having an erotic fantasy, and she'd just unzipped Dominick's fly when Twit's voice broke in.

  She had totally forgotten the Tuesday ten o'clock staff meeting.

  Qualitatively speaking, however, it wasn't that implausible that Lonnie would forget, because the Tuesday meeting rarely amounted to more than an hour-long ego war. There would always be awkward attempts at chitchat first. Human resource specialist Bette Linsey would brag about her rich husband, Reginald, and their perfect little blond-haired daughters, Burberry and Skylar-Blaise. B.J. Flynn would tell a self-aggrandizing story about his life, while Matt Fetchug would snort in disbelief.

  Then Twit would take over, which primarily entailed standing on his soapbox and trying to manifest his disingenuous image as the aloof embodiment of legal brilliance. And while he would try his best to grandstand, demoralize, and inspire awe all at the same time, Lunther would inevitably barge in late, loud, and blustery. He'd talk over everyone with some obnoxious blabbering, and audibly plop all two hundred eighty pounds of himself into a chair. Twit would act nonchalant, of course, but still get that tic under his eye that betrayed his anxiety.

  In other words, just business as usual at Twit & Bell.

  Lonnie shuffled into the conference room, behind B.J. and his so-called assistant, Delia Smucker. She could've sworn she noticed Delia slipping B.J. a dirty look behind his back as the young, pint-size associate swaggered over to the conference table.

  Unintentionally, Lonnie took the seat directly across from Bette Linsey. Shoot. It was too late; she'd already made eye contact. "That's an interesting dress you've got on," Bette said in her nasal, supercilious, own special way. Lonnie knew it couldn't be a genuine compliment, since that would be very un-Bette, and glanced quickly down at her olive green dress with navy swirls defining its pattern. Like most of Lonnie's dresses, it was long-sleeved and went just past the knee, so Bette couldn't have been implying it was indecent in any way. Probably it just wasn't conventional enough for her. Bette Linsey's wardrobe, on the other hand, made two basic statements: there are three colors in the rainbow—white, black, and khaki—and Ann Taylor is God.

  "Oh, thanks," Lonnie said.

  "Yes, how unique," Bette said, touching a French-manicured hand to her cropped cut. She fingered a few of the sleek, pointed locks that framed her conservatively made-up, middle-aged face. "I swear, I have no patience when it comes to selecting clothes. That's why I have Juliet do all of my shopping for me. It's just not worth the trouble!"

  Juliet Duveaux was Bette's au pair, and anybody who worked at Twit & Bell for more than ten minutes would know it. Nearly every day Bette talked on her cell phone to Juliet, and at top volume the conversations were hard to miss. She would go from her office to the kitchen, refill her "I [heart] Saks" mug, circle the long way around, and go back to her office, the whole time loudly crooning things like: "Oh, Juliet, did Burberry really get the highest scores in class again?" Or: "Now, Juliet, I don't know how they do things in Pahrlhee, but you just tell Skylar-Blaise no crème brûlée until she finishes her dejeuner."

  Lonnie wouldn't have believed it herself if she hadn't witnessed it so many times. Bette pulled in a nice salary at the firm, but certainly nothing that would explain her lavish lifestyle. The only thing that did explain it was her marriage to "fabulously successful" Reginald Linsey, who sold mutual funds.

  "I mean, I feel just terrible about it," Bette was saying, and Lonnie broke out of her distracted trance, feeling almost embarrassed that she had missed whatever led up to it. Almost. "But what can I do? Reggie just insists on taking the girls to Cabo this coming week, and I simply have too much work to get through. But I told him he can make it up to me with a cruise of my choosing." Lonnie forced herself to nod with feigned interest as her head bobbed up and down and her teeth felt cemented in a Cheshire grin.

  "Okay, everyone, let's get started," Beauregard said as he gave his papers one final shuffle. "We're going to have to make this meeting fairly quick because Lunther and I have to be in Chicago for a business litigation conference by late this afternoon."

  "Where is Lunther anyway?" Bette asked, glancing around the airy conference room.

  Beauregard looked uncomfortable, and his words betrayed a certain defensiveness when he replied, "Uh, Lunther had certain vital matters to attend to this morning, as did I, of course. However, I think it's important to touch base at these weekly meetings and—"

  " 'Scuse me, 'scuse me, folks!" Lunther's voice boomed as his beefy body surged through the doorway. "Don't mind me, everyone, just let Beau keep inspiring the troops, and I'll just plop myself down here in a nice chair, and I won't say another word. Go on, Beau. Don't pay me no never mind." Then he chuckled in his own consciously folksy way, and pounced down on a comfy, leather-backed chair.

  Beauregard's eye started twitching. "Ahem, yes, now as I was saying—"

  "Where's Macey?" Bette asked.

  "Macey?" Beauregard repeated. "Yes, well, I believe she had some briefs to tend to... and, as I said, this is going to be a quick meeting." Undoubtedly, Lonnie was the only one palpably disappointed by Macey's absence. In general, the staff didn't seem to like Macey very much. It wasn't that they disliked her, either, but they always appeared uncomfortably intimidated around her. But for some reason, Lonnie had a particularly good rapport with her. And even though she was temping as Beauregard Twit's assistant, she offered Macey help whenever she could.

  Now Lonnie's attention drifted back to the meeting in progress, realizing that Beauregard was addressing the conference table, and doing his best impression of a leader. "Now, as I mentioned, Lunther and I will be in Chicago until Thursday—"

  "Go, Bears!" Lunther blurted, and then chuckled.

  "Uh, yes, anyway," Beauregard said, struggling to keep his tone even, while his eye tic danced wildly, "Clara and Mel aren't here right now, but I'm assuming their cases are progressing nicely and their caseload is being managed according to the normal, uh, administrative procedures." Lonnie sighed to herself. This meeting was getting more pointless with each absentee.

  Beauregard turned his attention to Clara and Mel's assistant, June, and asked, "Do you have any updates or points of interest we should be made aware of at this juncture?" Huh?

  June must have wondered the same thing: she was visibly taken off guard by Twit's question. "Oh, uh, no," June said. "Everything's on schedule with Clara and Mel. In terms of their caseloads, that is."

  Beauregard nodded dramatically. "Yes, very good. Now—"

  "Bette, wasn't your assistant supposed to get bagels for this meeting?" Lunth
er interrupted.

  "Yeah, that's what I thought, too," B.J. added immediately. "I skipped breakfast thinking we were getting fed this morning. What's up with that?" Delia rolled her eyes.

  "Where is your assistant?" Lunther asked.

  "People—" Beauregard began.

  "I had him courier some items over to the post office," Bette explained. "Although, I expected him back by now."

  "Did he drive or take the T?" Matt asked, a glimmer of mischief in his eyes. Lonnie wondered if anyone else noticed it. She knew Matt didn't care about Bette's assistant or his errands, or anything else at Twit & Bell except his own casework. If she had to guess, then, she'd say that Matt just liked prolonging Beauregard's tortured displacement as leader of the meeting.

  "Ahem!" Twit nearly yelped. "Now, a final point of query: the status of the new stationary supplies we ordered from Paper Depot last week. Lisa?" His eyes went to Lonnie.

  She pulled herself upright and answered, "Uh, they're scheduled to arrive by the end of the week." I told you that three times already.

  "Ah, well"—Beauregard paused, as if considering this—"that sounds acceptable." As if you had a choice. "Were you able to get the specifications that I wanted for my letterhead?"

  "Well, they said at the standard price, they could only increase the size of your name to eighteen-point font. Any larger than that, you'd have to pay for graphics."

  "Hmph." Twit was visibly disappointed; "Very well, I'll take the eighteen." He finished, "And, Linda, don't forget to water the plant on my desk while I'm in Chicago."

  It's a cactus. "Sure, no problem."

  "And I just want to give everyone a reminder," B.J. announced. "Happy hour at Whiskey's this Friday night. I expect to see more people this week, especially my fellow twenty-somethings over here," he said, looking right at Lonnie and Matt. B.J. and Matt were both her age, but she didn't have the heart to tell them that she all but lived like a sixty-year-old anyway.

  "Hey!" Delia squealed in mock-annoyance-that-was-really-real-annoyance. "Many of us are young at heart, you know." Lonnie noticed her slip a sly glance at Lunther. What was that about? Lunther and Twit had met in law school, and now were both in their late forties. Delia, on the other hand, just recently celebrated her thirty-fourth birthday. Lonnie knew that because Twit had put her in charge of getting Delia a cake with her favorite flavors. Of course, per Twit's instructions, the cake had to be a surprise, so she couldn't ask Delia what her favorite flavors were in the first place. In the end, all of Lonnie's sleuthing had landed her back at chocolate, and no one had saved her a piece.

  B.J. went on, "I want to know why Lonnie never goes to happy hour. Lonnie, do you have a husband and five kids stashed somewhere we should know about?" He cracked up at his own suggestion.

  Great, now everyone was looking at her for some kind of reaction. She knew B.J. didn't mean any harm, but still, she didn't love being put on the spot. He was beaming at her with his quintessential trying-too-hard smile, and her heart turned over. She wasn't made of stone, after all. So she just smiled and said, "I'm going to get there one of these days, I'm telling you."

  "I don't know, Lonnie," Matt drawled. "You've said that before." His eyes were gleaming again, and his mouth quirked into a mischievous grin. He was just a troublemaker, that's all there was to it, but she couldn't help finding him entertaining sometimes.

  She returned Matt's smirk and announced to the room, "I'll go to happy hour this week, okay?"

  "I'm going to hold you to it this time," B.J. pronounced, and shifted his short, skinny leg to cross perpendicularly over the other.

  "I'd go, too," Bette offered with what Lonnie assessed as pseudo-regret. "But Reggie and I like to spend Friday nights having 'family time' with Skylar-Blaise and Burberry. It's just so utterly special, I couldn't miss a second of it."

  "Well, in conclusion, then—" Beauregard started.

  "Meeting adjourned!" Lunther exclaimed. Beauregard's mouth dropped into an awkward O... as if the words had literally been stolen right from him.

  Lonnie quickened her pace back to her desk when she heard her phone ring. She sprawled over the expanse of the desk, with her stomach settling against the layers of scattered papers, and grabbed it on the third ring. "Twit and Bell; Beauregard Twit's office," she squeaked out, her voice strained by her position.

  "Hey." It was Peach.

  "Hey! What's up? How's your day going?" She was careful not to pull the phone off the desk while she walked around and sat down in her chair.

  "Pretty good," Peach replied. "Iris is gone all day so it's just me and Cheryl. I had a few errands to run earlier, but now I'm just sort of killing time."

  "Cheryl doesn't work?" Lonnie asked, listening to Peach pop two bubbles before she answered.

  "Well, she's sort of into phone sales. She works out of her home. Out of her room, to be more precise."

  "What does she sell?" Lonnie asked. "Wait, is she agoraphobic or something?" she added, while simultaneously reading the message on her computer screen.

  NEW MAIL.

  "I don't think so. She just has no confidence. Iris hasn't been around much this week, so I've ended up spending more time with her, and she's actually not as lame as I originally thought." Lonnie mmm-hmmed and clicked on her inbox to get her new mail.

  "Actually," Peach continued, "she's really into cooking. That's what she sells—her recipes. But it's all mail order, so she doesn't have to deal with people much."

  Lonnie's stomach sank in disappointment. Two emails from Terry and one from Macey Green. None from Dominick. The two from Terry had the subject heading "fwd" so Lonnie knew to disregard them immediately. What she didn't know was why he kept sending her forwards when she'd told him how annoying they were. Nine times out of ten they were stupid chain letters that promised you eternal misery if you didn't pass them on to twenty of your closest friends.

  She clicked on Macey's message. It was brief and cordial, but she still felt a rush of hero worship: Hi. Can you come see me about a research project if/when you get a free moment? Thanks so much, MG.

  "So she's not agoraphobic, she just avoids people and the outside world?" Lonnie asked. Against her better judgment, she scanned the forwarded messages from Terry. One was a chain letter, and the other a list of jokes about rabbits. She was about to delete them when she got another mail message. It was from Terry, too, but it was a sweet message telling her that he couldn't wait to see her on Saturday. She appeased her guilt about Dominick by not deleting the forwards.

  "I don't know," Peach said. "I think she's just shy. But don't worry, I'm gonna work on her."

  "Uh-huh, you want to hear a joke? Wait, you're gonna what?"

  "I'm going to work on her."

  Lonnie let out a small sigh. "Peach, maybe you should just let things be."

  "Why? Its not like Cheryl's happy this way, hiding in the house all the time. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if she's never even been on a date. I'm gonna find out."

  "Wait a minute. You're not going ask her?"

  "Please, Lonnie, I think I know how to be subtle," she scoffed mildly.

  "Look, just don't try to be some kind of miracle worker with this woman. She's obviously been living this life for thirty-five years already, and..." Lonnie grappled for an overall point. "Just don't fix it if it's not broke, as they say."

  "Oh, good. One of your ever-inspiring trite platitudes."

  "Hey, I just don't want this to blow up in your face. I know you. You'll say you just want to help her with her shyness, and suddenly she's performing at a karaoke bar wearing a shirt that says 'Coed Naked Limbo.' "

  Peach laughed. "Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Now, what's the joke?"

  Lonnie said, "Wait, seriously, do you understand what I'm trying to say? This woman could have deep psychological problems you know nothing about. Don't unleash Norman Bates and then get fired; that's all I'm saying."

  "Lon, let me worry about Cheryl Mew. Please. You're forgetti
ng I was a psych major for almost six months. Now, what's the joke?"

  Lonnie gave up, deciding it was easier just to run with her sister's latest enterprise. She read the first joke on her screen, "Okay, what kind of jewelry do rabbits like?"

  "Oh, God. What?" Peach asked, her voice weary with dread for the impending punchline.

  "Fourteen-carrot-gold jewelry," Lonnie read, confused. Then she got it. "Oh. Carrot."

  "Good-bye."

  "Wait—"

  "From Terry?"

  "Yeah, but it was a forwa—"

  "Uh-huh. No comment."

  Lonnie giggled. "It's not like he wrote it!" she protested. "He doesn't use this in his act or anything, jeez."

  Peach laughed. "Okay, okay. Look, I gotta go anyway. But before I forget, Mom said she wants us to come over for dinner tomorrow night since she and Dad are going to be in New Hampshire this weekend."

  Lonnie had forgotten that her parents were visiting some longtime friends for the weekend. "Oh, I forgot! All right, I'll go if you're going."

  " 'Kay. Later."

  "Bye." After Lonnie hung up, she got another alert: new mail. She clicked on the icon, and felt more than a little disappointed to see a message from Twit asking if any faxes had come for him. Since Lonnie's email address was preset in the system as [email protected] it didn't help Twit when it came to addressing her correctly. His message read: Libby—any faxes? If there are, I've already asked you to bring them to me ASAP. She rolled her eyes; her boss knew how to make an employee feel like excremental waste. Lonnie felt like typing back Don't call me, I'll call you, Twit-head, halitosis-breath! But it hardly seemed professional, so Nothing yet; I'll let you know ended up on the screen instead. She pressed send and leaned back in her chair to contemplate her next course of action with Dominick.