“Are you coming to the show tonight, Maya?” he said as he looked over at me with pleading eyes. He made himself look like he was begging even with just his eyes.
I had forgotten about his show. Damn. James had a drag act that he had been working on for months. It would be one more thing I would just have to cram into my schedule. I had promised him I would attend. I feel like I break enough promises in my life so I couldn’t say no. “Of course I’ll be there. What time is it?”
“You forgot about my show, didn’t you?” He huffed with a touch of anger in his voice.
I grabbed my keys and sighed deeply. He was able to sense when I was lying. I confessed the truth. “I’m sorry, James. I promise I’ll be there though. Where is…”
“Jinx’s down the road. 1846 Blazer Street” he interrupted and pushed out his tongue to make a nasty face at me.
That kind of pissed me off. I don’t have many pet peeves, but I don’t like when people treat me like a kid, or like I’m a moron. “I know where it is!” I protested as I extended my middle finger at him.
I said goodbye and slammed our door shut. At least the weather was nice. It felt like it was about seventy degrees with a slight breeze. I clicked myself along quickly because I was already late. I knew my boss would probably throw a fit, but I would deal with it when I got to work.
When I got out to my car and started it, I heard the familiar squeaking and squealing under the hood. I didn’t know what it was. I knew it wasn’t great, but the car still seemed to be running, and I didn’t have the money to take it to the mechanic.
I shifted my car into reverse and slammed on the brakes as I saw James right behind my car. “What the hell are you doing?! I almost ran you over” I shouted at him. I felt my face get a little flushed with anger and embarrassment.
“You forgot something” he muttered as he slowly handed over my cellphone. God, I forget that thing all the time.
“Thank you, James” I said to him as I cocked a half-smile. I was grateful he was nice enough to do that for me. That’s for sure.
I put it in drive, and my car puttered and stalled. “Mary, mother of God. I’ll never get to work” I panted with a half-whine that was a cross between angry and desperate.
James walked up to the rear of the car and finally approached the driver’s side. His parted and greasy hair showed up when he bent over to talk to me. His skin was oily, too. His eyes weren’t bloodshot like mine, though. He always made sure that he got enough sleep.
I could tell that the little jerk was holding back laughs. I could both see his face and sense it. His lips were tightened and he stood tall and still. “Do you want to just borrow my car?” he finally asked me.
Well, how could I say no? My employer probably didn’t want to hear excuses about why I was late – very late – because I always gave them excuses. I overslept because I didn’t set my alarm right. I was late because of a traffic jam. I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way. I lost track of how many excuses I had given them – and my employer probably did, too.
“Well, if I borrow your car, how are you going to get to the show tonight?” I asked him as I made eye contact with him.
He pushed out a groan and tightly shut his eyes while holding his head. “The show is not until 6 p.m., and you get out at 5 p.m. If you ever paid attention or tried to remember what is important to me, you would know that.”
I angrily got out of my now-dead car and slammed the door closed. I pointed my bony and nimble index finger at him and gave him a piece of my mind. “Hey, don’t be an asshole. I’m just stressed because I’m late for work. I just want to be sensitive and make sure that you have enough time to perform your Shaquille act. Okay?”
“Shakira” he scoffed and burst out a few roaring laughs.
I was done talking to him and playing games. I just needed to get to work and do my job. Even though it was early in the morning, I already had a full ‘James dosage’ until at least tonight at the show. “Thank you for letting me use your car. I just need to go. Where are your keys?”
He pointed back to our front door and turned to walk in that direction. While he was pacing himself into a powerwalk, he replied: “They are inside. I didn’t expect I would need to bring them out.”
I looked at my recently-retrieved phone and saw that I was already going to be five minutes late – and that was if the driving was smooth with all green lights, which I knew wasn’t likely. I irrationally cursed the clock on my phone, and started walking over to Jeff’s car.
I stood by the driver door and looked inside. It was mint, from a tidiness standpoint. He’s always been a particular and clean guy. I guess that’s no surprise from a guy who gets up early every day, always has clean clothes, and is always punctual. I’ll never admit it to him, but I do envy him sometimes.
He came out less than two minutes later and started jogging over to me. ‘Even the way he jogs in loafers is smooth. I hate that guy’ I said quietly to myself.
He took a deep inhale as he approached me, and handed over the keys with his soft, well-manicured hands. In that respect, he was still female. “Here are the keys. You’re going to need gas though. There’s a rewards tag on my keychain, so you can save four cents a gallon. Just a tip, but it’s your call.”
I hugged him quickly and thanked him for his kindness. As much as he got on my nerves at times, he still had a big heart and always found a way to help me out. I guess there are worse roommates in the world.
I put the car in drive, and zoomed off. The car was fast, too. It was a Mercury Grand Marquis and it accelerated with no struggle. I’m not sure what it has for an engine, but it’s probably a big one that can move.
What happened at the first traffic light? It was red. I tried to remember that I was at least on the road and making my way to work. That was a major improvement from just five minutes ago – when I was stuck in the parking lot with a dead car.
My luck started to get a little better, though. Not a lot, but a little. I went through five more traffic lights, and the only red one I got was the first one. I glanced over at the gas gauge and saw what James meant – the car looked like it had about one eighth of a tank.
I chanced it, and I made it to work. I pulled into a parking space and closed the door – a little more gently this time. I wasn’t angry, so much. I was more desperate and worried about what I might get from my employer.
I walked briskly, but didn’t run. Running isn’t a good idea when wearing high heels like I had on. I put my proximity key up to the door and it chimed as the door unlocked.
I let myself in, and darted my eyes up to a wall clock in the room. I was pleasantly surprised to notice that I was only four minutes late. After a dash into our makeshift meeting room, I grabbed a seat on the steel, foldable chair that was closest to the door.
“You’re late!” said Alessandra, my Brazilian coworker. She appointed herself as the princess of punctuality. That wasn’t the only thing she had to offer, though. She is a person who just happens to be blessed with a gorgeous appearance. She looked a little like a real Barbie. Her hair is perfect. Her skin is perfect. Hell, her entire body is perfect.
I used to hate her for a few different reasons. First of all, I had (and still have) a deep-seeded jealously about how beautiful she is. It’s not fair. Most women don’t just get born with that type of body. She did. Lucky thing…
I also hated her because she was always a hard-nosed person who came across as condescending. In the three years I have spent working for my company – Nova Designs – I concluded that she treated everyone that way.
I initially thought that her condescending comments might have come from the fact that I’m the youngest employee, with only three years of experience. Granted, there are only three of us that work for the company.
Then I thought she might be looking down on me because I’m the person low on the totem pole. I’m an assistant, and not a corporate entrepreneur.
Bottom
line – she talked like that to everyone. She talked like that to her coworkers, and even her romantic partners – all of which didn’t last long. I’m not surprised they didn’t last long, because a lot of men like a submissive woman who is sweet and polite. Bless her heart, but Alessandra is not that type of woman.
Needless to say, I don’t hate her anymore. That’s not to say that I like her. That would be a major overstatement. Her imagination and creativity for creating awesome designs for our interior design company has always been breathtaking. When all is said and done, she pulls through and gets results. That’s obviously important in the business world.
After I took a few seconds to catch my breath, I looked over and saw Franca enter. She is the ‘head honcho’ and founded our company. She’s got the traditional, storybook account of starting a business and building it into glory.
She started by running the business out of her loft apartment – which was converted from a warehouse. It doesn’t look like a warehouse, which I guess makes sense. Why would an interior design company work in a place that looks ordinary and ugly? That would arguably be hypocritical.
This ‘warehouse’ is where we still work. If it was me, I would get a place a little classier, but Franca and I don’t always see eye-to-eye. She’s stingy. She’s the type of person that would drive an extra five miles just to save a dollar on a box of staples.
Despite the fact that the business is doing well and that we keep getting wealthy clients from places like Bellevue, nothing has changed from an infrastructure standpoint. Franca’s model is simple – if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. She quips that the government will take something that isn’t broken, and will fix it until it’s broken. Then they nod with approval and walk away.
That’s another thing that’s interesting about her – her language and how she talks. She’s a native German and has a thick accent, but speaks very clear English. Many Germans – including her – really pride themselves on being clean and orderly. Our office would pass the ‘white glove’ test. My home wouldn’t pass the ‘brown glove’ test. Ha!
Sometimes she makes me skittish because she’s a highly opinionated woman who is blunt and strong-headed. When she’s wrong about something, she doesn’t have the humility to admit it. Naturally, not many people with her type of personality have that asset.
“Good morning ladies. We’ve got a lot of important stuff to talk about, so I’ll try to get through the bullet points efficiently” she began her speech with a bit of hoarseness. She took a sip of coffee and had a small cough.
I remember that she once told me that she normally drinks between three to five cups of coffee every day. I think that’s a lot. Sometimes I wonder if she has any problems with her ticker. I never bothered to ask because it’s really none of my business anyway.
I politely raised my hand because I had a question. The first meeting I had with her, I just spoke and asked a question. She scolded me and informed me that nobody talks during one of her meetings without asking permission first. I never again made that mistake.
She half-smiled and then called on me to see what I had to ask. “Question, Maya?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and asked. “I just want to take accurate notes as I listen. Is this about the hotel project that we discussed previously?”
She flipped over a large sheet of white paper on her speech presentation board. “Yes. This will be our largest project yet, so I need you to pay close attention, okay?”
“Okay” I said and followed my answer with a smile. I’m a person who gets easily confused, so I just needed to make sure that I was on the ‘same page’ – both literally and figuratively. That’s yet another mistake that I learned from in my time that I had spent working for the company.
I clicked my pen and readied myself to do a lot of scribing. I was tired and just hoped that I didn’t miss any key facts. I crossed my legs and kept my eyesight directed to the front of the room. It was game time.
Chapter 3 - Maya
The one-hour presentation provided by Franca and Alessandra was nothing but a primer. It was crazy how much training and preparation was put into place for this project. Franca and Alessandra had been rehearsing and training themselves for a month.
I watched and overheard Franca on a few occasions when she was training. It was actually pretty brilliant about how she did it. She took out flash cards and wrote down what she thought would be the common questions, then fired back potent and easily-understandable answers. It was both concise and creative.
Despite all the many hours and weeks of training, everything would come down to just fifteen minutes. We secured that presentation window to begin at 2:30 p.m. Honestly, I think we were invited to the conference because the project for the hotel would be big.
In fact, it would be our biggest project yet. The revenue from just this one project would end up being six figures – perhaps even several six figures. Naturally, that would depend on what our customers wanted, and what we had the capability to deliver.
In general, business picked up for us and the office stayed pretty busy. The phone seemed to be ringing off the hook. Not surprisingly, there were some time-wasters that I had to deal with. We had our share of potential clients who wanted us to take on projects at prices so low we wouldn’t be making a profit. Then, we had people who couldn’t make up their minds about what they wanted. Stuff like that had saturated my time and overloaded me.
That was only part of what I did, though. I was often a ‘sound board’ for what to do on projects. Here’s the funny part about this big hotel deal – it just ended up falling on my desk by fluke luck. All I did was send out a general solicitation email, and we got a response. One thing led to another, and here we are.
One of the annoying things that ended up in my ledger, was to do photo editing and make draft presentations. Sometimes I want to lose my mind because Franca and Alessandra would change theirs after I spent an hour putting a presentation together.
The real aggravation for me, was how and why they changed their minds. I would get done drafting a presentation, and Franca would walk in the room, look at it, and offer a lukewarm response. She would say things like: “This looks good, but we need to change the appearance of what we can offer them.”
So, naturally, I would obey her wishes (she is my boss, after all) and change the design. Alessandra would then look it over and give her spiel. “I like how you did this part, but we need to focus less on appearance, and more on price.”
I would then explain that Franca told me to draft the opposite approach, and she promised to have a meeting with Franca to discuss it. I don’t think the meetings ever took place, because the contradictory feedback and advice continued to spread like the Black Plague.
At least the photo editing was easy. It was just a matter of making some mouse clicks, cropping, and adding some special effects to make the photos look sharp. I didn’t have to take the pictures at all. I just had to process them and make them look great. In turn, it made our business look great.
The work schedule wasn’t too bad, either. If I needed to get up and leave my desk to take a break, nobody ever complained. Besides, it’s not like I would leave for hours and stick them with my leftover tasks.
Other times, I would do something like play a nerdy game of solitaire on my computer. It was boring, but it relaxed the brain a little bit. Sometimes, it would give me a distraction from my tough coworkers. That was nice, too.
I think the best thing I like about my job, is that I can go home at the end of the day and totally disconnect. My work would be done until tomorrow. I wouldn’t get emergency phone calls from my employer, or anything dramatic. They would let me go home, and I could chill out and relax.
Not only is my emotional health important to me, but my physical health is a top priority. On that note, I pulled out my cellphone and looked at it. It was 11 a.m. and I decided to take my normal early lunch break.
Out of courtesy to Franca, I called her e
xtension to let her know that I would be out of the office. That was yet another thing I learned to do. On one occasion, she couldn’t figure out where I was and got really upset that I didn’t mention to her that I had left.
I picked up my Cisco desk phone and dialed her extension. The phone rang five times, and went to voicemail. The ‘no answer’ became a routine that seemed to always happen. Apparently, it was wrong for me to take off without notice, but it was okay for her to do that whenever she wanted.
“Franca, I just wanted to let you know that it’s 11 a.m. and I’m going to be taking an early lunch. I’ll make sure I have my cell if you need to call” I said before I clicked the phone back into the holster.
I grabbed my LL Bean jacket and softly closed the office door behind me. When I was walking out of the office/warehouse, I saw some loose leaves flying around.
It reminded me of my childhood. When I was a girl, my parents had a property that had several oak trees on it. Now, oak trees are beautiful, but they are a real bitch in the autumn. I guess it was okay because I was able to stay active, and help my dad rake the leaves, but it got old after a while.
I started the car, and zoomed off. Maybe next time I’ll buy a Mercury Grand Marquis. It’s an ‘old person car’, but I still love it. James’ car had tons of room, leather seats, and was clean. Admittedly, mine almost certainly wouldn’t be as clean, but it would be comfortable and fun.
After about ten minutes, I arrived at one of my favorite places – Whole Foods. I’m a vegetarian, too. I have a hard time eating animals that were killed for the purpose of feeding me. Besides, a vegetarian diet is usually healthier – as long as the carbs are avoided.
I walked to the front of the store and the large, glass door zoomed open. When I walked in, I got the normal whiff that made everything smell delicious. What I really love is that the aroma would change depending on where a person went – but it always smelled delicious.
A Fake: A Pretend Girlfriend Billionaire Romance Page 2