But the door was open.
There was an empty Herman Miller corner cubicle that someone had sort of shoved in front of the door that, I supposed, was meant to create a reception desk, and so I went there and sat down in front of it.
And then nothing happened. I had imagined that there would be a surge of interest in my arrival, but this did not prove to be the case. Not only was there no interest, but also there was no anything. No one.
I was wearing makeup and a scarf, however, and I was not about to let this all go to waste. I ventured deeper into the offices and found, at another Herman Miller cubicle creation, a guy in a white dress shirt fast asleep.
“Hello?” I said.
“I’m awake!” said the man, his head shooting up with such a start that he could possibly get whiplash. Although, keep in mind, this is concussed Dahlia here, so head injury is on my brain.
“Hi there,” I said. “I’m Dahlia Moss—the new receptionist.”
He just looked me. He was black, bald—with a good head for it—and wearing round gold-rimmed Harry Potter glasses. Those, eventually, would suit him too, but at the moment they had left little marks on his skin where his face had been pressed against his desk.
“Who are you?” he asked, despite the fact we had just gone over this.
“Dahlia Moss,” I told him. “I’m the new receptionist.”
“What happened to Cynthia?”
“I have no idea,” I said, and handed him a cinnamon stick. “Can I get you some coffee?”
To be clear, I don’t think it’s the receptionist’s job to go around fetching people coffee, but if there ever was a guy who needed coffee, this was it.
“Oh my God, yes,” said the guy. “Please.”
He still hadn’t introduced himself, which was fine. We’d come to it.
“Where’s the coffee maker?”
“The back left corner,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
I slipped back there and observed, along the way, that there was another cubicle that adjoined his, where there was another man, also sleeping. It was hard to tell much about this sleeper except that he was white, with ginger hair and either a large beard or a very disgusting pillow. I didn’t wake him up and made my way to the coffee maker.
They were out of coffee, which I could see would be a problem. I searched through the shelves until I found some candy-cane-flavored coffee from Archer Farms that had probably been sitting there since last Christmas. I was betting there was a coffee mother lode somewhere, but I wasn’t going to wake up anyone to find it, and so candy-cane coffee it was. I didn’t know how Harry Potter took his coffee, and so I made it the way I would drink it, with lots of cream and no sugar.
“Coffee, good sir,” I said. “I’m Dahlia Moss. I’m not sure you caught that the first time.”
“Dahlia,” he said, putting the coffee to his mouth the way a lamprey would ingest blood. “Thank you. Fuck, is there peppermint in this?”
“Flavored coffee was the best I could find. You’re not allergic to peppermint, are you?”
“It just brings up bad memories,” said the guy. “I’m sorry, I’m Quintrell King. Nice to meet you.”
I really wanted to ask about the bad peppermint memories, which I would generally attribute to an office Christmas party gone horribly wrong, but I decided that was a little too personal. Besides which, the guy had just woken up.
“Dahlia Moss,” I said, for like the fourteenth time now. “Why is everyone asleep?”
“Most people stayed here overnight,” said Quintrell. “We’re a little under the eight ball here. Do you have my clothes?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“My clothes. You’re filling in for Cynthia, right?”
“I guess so, yes,” I said, feeling less certain than when I came in. “She’s the receptionist, right?”
“Yep. So you should have my clothes. Maybe check under her desk.”
This invited a number of follow-up questions, such as why would Cynthia have Black Harry Potter’s clothes under her desk (was Cynthia Ginny?), but I did not feel that it was my place to ask them.
I made my way back to the Herman Miller cubicle station that was the receptionist’s desk and found an enormous clear bag filled with clothing. The bag looked like it had been professionally cleaned—everything had been carefully and fastidiously folded. It resembled my clean laundry in the same way that Metropolis resembles Gotham City. One of these things is perfect, and the other a nightmarish dystopia. At any rate, if they expected me to fold laundry this well, the folks at Cahaba were about to be grievously disappointed.
I brought the bag over to Quintrell, still not quite able to work out what was going on, precisely. There was also a teal ikat-patterned dress in the bag, and so I figured that this was probably more than just his laundry. That or Harry Potter had a kinky side.
“Mine is a gray dress shirt,” said Quintrell. “Looks just like this,” he said, pointing to the dress shirt he was wearing, before adding: “but gray.”
Quintrell King apparently expected that I was going to go through all of this laundry to pick out his shirt.
He was wrong.
“You can find it,” I said, going for a kindly, helpful tone while simultaneously dumping the bag on the table.
The ginger-bearded dude suddenly popped up. He really did have a long pointed beard and looked like a really haggard Christmas elf. He was older than Quintrell, probably in his midforties, although his lack of sleep couldn’t be doing him any favors.
“How long was I out for?” said the ugliest elf.
“Two hours,” said Quintrell.
Elf guy looked around wildly and seemed surprised, and maybe even a little frightened, to find me standing there.
“Who’s the scarf?” he asked.
I was feeling a little overdressed now. Receptionists were supposed to look nice, I thought. I mean, that’s one of the whole goals of the job, right? Best face forward and all of that. But I was starting to feel a little bit foolish compared to these guys, who were dressed like badly rumpled clowns. Well, they had dress shirts, but they were definitely clowns. No question.
The toile scarf was overselling it.
“I am Dahlia Moss,” I told the elf. “Who’s the rumpled pants?”
Christmas Elf seemed to recognize that I did not appreciate his attempt at metonymy, and answered: “My name’s Gary. I shouldn’t have called you a scarf, I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
Maybe I should have been more irritated, but Gary and Quintrell really did look like they had been through a sleep-deprived hell, and so I asked:
“Did you guys both just sleep here?”
“Yes,” said Gary.
“That’s why we need clothes,” said Quintrell.
“Are you both homeless?” I asked.
“We might as well be. No one here ever leaves.”
“This is the doomed Flying Dutchman of software development,” said Gary. Then he started singing. “Keep the boys spinning in their only little world, Whoa-oh-whoa! Whoa-oh-whoa!”
Usually when people break into song, it’s out of a sort of musical optimism. But Gary managed to approach the task with equal parts of depression and delirium.
Quintrell actually looked like he was crying a little. Not sadness crying, just eye-pain crying. “I’m so tired,” he said softly.
Gary continued to sing. “Tie them up, so they won’t say a word. Whoa-oh-whoa. Whoa!”
Quintrell dug through the bag and found his shirt, which was indeed exactly like his other shirt. He also found a pair of khakis, a pair of orange Hawaiian-print boxers, and some brown dress socks. Then he took the pile of clothes and headed into a bathroom.
“What fresh hell awaits today?” said Quintrell.
Gary also looked like he might be close to crying and seemed to be having a lot more trouble with the bag.
“I don’t even remember what clothes are mine anymore. Cynthia would label them for us.”
; “Well, I’m not Cynthia,” I told him. This sounded a little harsher than I wanted, and so I handed him a sticky bun. “And I can’t label anything because I don’t even know who works here.”
“Where is Cynthia?” asked Gary. “We can’t go on without her, you know. She’s the figurehead that holds this whole thing together.”
“I don’t know where Cynthia is,” I told him. Although, if she had any sense, I would have guessed very, very far from here.
“Figurehead like on a pirate ship,” said Gary. “Like a mermaid.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“I’m just continuing to develop my ‘doomed ghost ship’ metaphor.”
“Well, I’m your new mermaid,” I told him. “Although, I think of myself as more of a hydra.”
“Cynthia was just here last night,” said Gary. “It’s very strange.”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I wasn’t about to dispute the strangeness with him. This place was strange. Strangeness was seeping from the walls, like blood in a haunted mansion.
Gary went through the bag and eventually came up with an ensemble of what he hoped were his clothes.
“As Quintrell is monopolizing the men’s room, and I have no intention of using the ladies’, I plan to change right here. I would suggest leaving my cubicle, for fear of seeing my sad, tired, sagging, and pale body.”
I did not think that this plan of his was ethical (hello, Human Resources!) or for that matter, sanitary, but I don’t fight every battle. At worst, these were plans to be dealt with after I had been given some sort of orientation.
I went back to my desk and searched to see if there was perhaps some sort of documentation that Cynthia, errant mermaid, had left for me. I couldn’t find anything, and I even searched on the computer, like a real goddamned secretary. There was nothing, not even a welcome and good luck. And more curiously, there were signs that Cynthia hadn’t planned on leaving at all. There was a half can of Diet Sprite on the desk, for example. A cartoonishly floral gauze scarf. And there was a signed picture of Mark Harmon in her work space. None of it was stuff that I would value, but they were probably all things that Cynthia would want back, give or take the Sprite.
I shouldn’t go out seeking mysteries at every turn, especially since they seemed to be good at finding me regardless, but I couldn’t help but wonder: Why wasn’t Cynthia here? Had Emily bribed her into leaving to make a spot for me?
She could be on vacation, perhaps, but Gary didn’t seem to expect that she was leaving.
And people didn’t usually take vacations on the Flying Dutchman.
They walked the plank.
I hadn’t worked up much more of a theory than that when a small, catlike woman came up behind me and said, “You must be Cynthia Two.”
She was very small—just over five feet—and black, with an extremely short and chic Afro. She was definitely more assembled than the men had been—she was wearing a jade top with navy pants—and even had on some makeup, but she definitely still looked rumpled and tired.
“How much sleep did you get?” I asked her.
“I don’t like to count,” said the woman. “It just upsets me. Vanetta Jones,” she said, not bothering to extend a hand to me. “I run all of this.”
Vanetta made a grand gesture toward the sad nexus of cubicles, and from the back I heard Gary fall over, apparently tripping as he got into his pants. I didn’t know her well enough to tell if this gesture was meant to be ironic or if she was actually proud. Or delusional, which is certainly a possibility at low levels of sleep. So I answered very cautiously:
“Software development must be very exciting.”
I had described Vanettta Jones as catlike, but I want to make clear that I don’t mean a little tabby with a name like “Gumpkin” or “Miss Onyx.” I’m thinking of a puma, with a name like “what the fuck do you care you’re about to be clawed by a puma.” Because she sort of growled her answer at me.
“You have No. Idea.”
And this sounded extremely ominous.
“So,” I said, “what exactly should I be doing right now?”
Vanetta looked at me, and I have to stop with the cat metaphor, but I do think that she was considering eating me.
“I was told you wouldn’t need any training.”
“Well,” I said, feeling like I was in junior high, “obviously I don’t need training. I mean, I know how to secretary.”
Vanetta narrowed her eyes at me.
“Good,” she said.
“Yes, good,” I told her. “Very good. Here, have a sticky bun.”
I took a sticky bun out of my basket of pastries, and Vanetta looked at it. Then she looked at me. I had expected, given this reception, that she would reject my goodwill offering. She sort of did, actually, but that was only because she took the entire basket of baked goods and left me holding the bun.
She tore into an éclair.
“Right,” I said, still holding the bun. “So, keeping in mind that I don’t need training, what is it that you would like for me to do? Precisely. Right now.”
The éclair actually seemed to do a lot of good toward Vanetta’s mood, because her face relaxed. “Food is good,” said Vanetta. “Food. Good.”
“It’s been popular in Europe for years,” I told her.
“Answer the phones. Get everyone clean clothes. Food is good. Maybe some pizza. The most important thing is probably to keep up morale.”
“Keep up morale,” I repeated dumbly. I put down the sticky bun next to Mark Harmon. “How is morale?” I asked.
“Morale is low,” said Vanetta. “Very, very low,” she said, shoving more éclair into her than was probably wise. “Keeping it up isn’t even the right word. It’s not up to keep. You’re trying to stop the last drops of morale from seeping away.”
“I see,” I said.
“You might have to actually plunge the morale up.”
“You should get some more sleep,” I told Vanetta.
“Can’t sleep,” she said. “There’s too much work to be done. But thanks for the éclair. And let everyone know there’s a staff meeting in a half hour. You’ll probably have to rouse Archie yourself.”
Vanetta then took her clothes—the ikat dress and more navy slacks—and walked, with a surprising amount of dignity for someone wearing no shoes, toward the bathroom.
And it struck me that it was not going to take a first-class industrial spy to suss out the secrets of Cahaba Apps. It was going to be hemorrhaging its secrets without me doing much at all.
CHAPTER THREE
In lieu of any proper orientation, I thought maybe I would sort through these clothes. Now that I understood that this wasn’t some sort of “she has girl parts, let’s make her do our laundry” situation, I figured what the heck. Besides which, I wasn’t even sure how many people worked here, and sorting through the clothes would give me an idea.
There were only two things left in the bag, and it was exceptionally easy to figure out which garments matched each other.
First off, there was a floral dashiki. Everyone else’s clothing had been business professional, but here we were with a floral dashiki. It was somewhat subdued, as much as a floral dashiki can be, with slate-blue flowers on indigo—and it was decidedly masculine. But certainly more outré than everyone else’s clothes. Clearly, this went with the yellow, vinyl parachute pants, because once you’ve decided you’re wearing a dashiki to work, why bother with professional pants?
The only remaining outfit was a suit with matching dress pants. Blue plaid, zingy as hell, from Burberry. The people these outfits went to were both stylish, that was clear. But one of them was also rich, and it was certainly not parachute man.
It got trickier when it came to the unmentionables, which I will naturally mention. The socks were easy, because one pair looked very expensive, and one pair was ratty. But the underwear was tricky, because there was only one pair. I was inclined to guess that dashiki dude was the most likely to go comma
ndo, given his relative laxness in attire, but there was something about the banana-print briefs that just seemed to fit into the whole aesthetic.
I took the clothes, briefs and all, and brought them to Quintrell.
“Who wears a blue dashiki?”
“Archie Bakis,” said Quintrell. “He’s our art director.”
“And his office is where?”
Quintrell looked frozen, as if he had been trapped in a lie.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Quintrell, sounding like something was wrong.
“So where is Archie’s office again?”
“It’s around the corner,” said Quintrell. “Over on the south side of the building, but you probably won’t find him there.”
I had mountains upon mountains of sleep compared to these goons, but I still didn’t have endless patience.
“Okay,” I said. “So tell me where he is.”
“I don’t want to,” said Quintrell. He sounded more frightened than belligerent, and so I said:
“You have nothing to fear from me. I just want to get these clothes taken care of.”
Quintrell answered slowly and cautiously, like a gerbil surrounded by a wall of cats.
“You might check the floor in Vanetta’s office.”
“Why would he be on the floor in Vanetta’s office?”
“I don’t ask.”
It was clear, however, what Archie Bakis was doing on the floor in Vanetta’s office. He was sleeping, with three sofa cushions pushed against the wall, with curtains draped only somewhat over his nether regions.
He was shirtless and drooling, and this is rarely a look that I would describe as sexy—spit pooling on the pillow in front of you, but, Jesus, was Archie Bakis a fine-looking man. He looked like the sleeping, drooling star of a telenovela, his curly black hair the sort of thing that you just wanted to go over and ruffle.
“Sticky bun?” I asked him.
Sexy or not, Archie continued to sleep. He rolled over, though, and I saw the full brunt of his abs, which was something.
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss Page 2