“I hated working with her in groups,” Jasmine declared.
“That’s only because she made you work harder,” Kate reflected, apparently forgetting entirely about Sean.
“Yeah because she made me work harder! I was happy as a B student.”
“I stuck to her butt like glue! She did more work and I still got an A. Win-win!”
“User.”
“Pusher.”
“How am I a pusher?”
“What are you girls arguing about?” Krista said, showing up on scene.
Sean hadn’t seen her approach, what with the bickering going on with her two friends. They were a trip. Fun, down-to-earth, and brazen.
He caught Krista’s eye as she came around the bar. And held it, trapping her within it. Or being trapped, it was hard to say. “They were just telling me …”
Kate shot Sean a warning look.
“Oh, giving him cheat sheets to make me work harder?” Krista asked with a smirk, sitting down.
Sean inhaled Krista’s scent; fresh and clean and woman. He loved the way she swished her hair unconsciously when she was nervous. It was one of her biggest tells.
“I have to run,” Sean said, wanting to get away before her friends got out their pitchforks and started chasing him.
“Okay,” Krista said, smiling. “See you Monday.”
Sean nodded, gobbling down that gaze, wanting to stay, or wanting her to go with him. He risked a glance to her two friends, realized either of those options were impossible, said good-bye, and was off.
~*~*~*~
Kate and Jasmine stared after him.
“Steer f**king clear, Krista,” Kate warned. “That one is way, way too good at the game. He plays it in his sleep.”
“Yup.” It was all Krista needed to say.
“But my-oh-my,” Jasmine’s eyes had followed his progress out of the bar, “I get why you keep getting sucked in. He’s hot!” Jasmine said the last word in a sing-song voice.
“Yeah. He’s probably the devil,” Kate reflected somberly.
“Yup.”
Chapter Twelve
By the end of the next week Krista had everything researched, organized, graphed, cataloged, compartmentalized, and stuffed in every nook and cranny she could find. There was a method to her stockpile, but she was worried it would only be decipherable to her. There was nothing for it, though, she had to move on. She had a crap load more work to do and no idea when it was due.
Note to self: in future, ask for a specific deadline.
She had not seen hide nor hair of anyone from her team, which included her handsome and fearless leader. She would’ve liked to know how she was doing so far, but worried he’d tell her she hadn’t done enough, and she had most of the list still to do.
She had to move on.
Next up on the grudge-list, A.K.A. Number Two, was asking Marcus for new research ideas. She took that to mean new directions in which to get numbers. Or maybe the viability of the new ideas? Sean had been a little vague, which, in his book, meant he thought it obvious.
Hopefully after meeting Marcus she would find it equally so.
As she walked into the art department, she looked around for Tommy. Since he worked near the entrance, she spotted him immediately and went over. He was hunched over his computer, deep in concentration.
“Hey, Tommy.”
He jumped about a foot. When he saw who it was he sat back and smiled, followed by rubbing his eyes. “Hi, Krista. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah, I am a floor up now.”
“I heard. New office!”
“I know!” She giggled happily. “I’m so excited! Been working my ass off, though.”
“You’re not being mistreated are you?” Tommy asked seriously.
She knew he was talking about Sean, and therefore didn’t mean much of anything besides being hit on or similar, but she didn’t like the way he asked. She didn’t like what those words had meant a couple short years ago.
“Well,” she said, trying to brush it off, “if you count that I have so much work it is nearly giving me hives, then yes, definitely mistreatment!”
Tommy laughed. “Yeah, I hear McAdams is a grueling boss.”
“You got that right. Speaking of, do you know where Marcus sits? I am now supposed to pick his brain. I think. I’m not really sure.”
She got directions deep into the art department, where not many Research people went. For a reason. As she walked, clutching her pen and paper, she entered into a chaos against which her brain tried to rebel.
People were everywhere, talking and laughing and yelling. Paper was strewn all over desks of all different colors and sizes. Some desks had paper over their keyboards, crawling up their screens. One person was singing at the top of her lungs. When she finished, three other people clapped. It might as well have been a theater production of “Cats”. Krista wanted to turn around and run.
Keeping composure, barely, she noticed people looking her way. A couple people made eye contact and smiled a welcome, which she returned nervously as she continued to make her way to the back where Marcus sat.
This better not be a joke Tommy thinks is hilarious. Marcus had better be sitting way back here!
As she rounded a makeshift green wall of fake plants, she heard his voice chatting on the phone about the kind of dog food his Lab ate. Krista let the wave of irritation flow past her at his lack of diligence—just because she was an over-achieving work horse didn’t mean everyone else had to be.
She smoothed over her scowl and replaced it with a half-smile as she neared. The last thing she needed was people to have proof she was a typical Research a-hole.
She got to his desk and noticed the similar state of chaos as the rest of the department. There were pictures strewn about of rings, necklaces and various other pieces of jewelry. The pictures ranged from the early ’60s to present day. There were sapphires mixed in, and she knew this must be the same type of thing she was working on. That at least made her feel better. She knew now that she didn’t get any more work than anyone else on the team. She just worked harder at finishing it.
Marcus saw her and raised his eyebrows in surprise. He finished up his conversation with, “I gotta go, babe, ciao.”
When he hung up the phone he leaned forward on his desk and smiled a welcome. “Well, if it isn’t our team geek! How are you faring?”
If said with disdain, Krista would’ve immediately taken offense. The way he greeted her, however, was kind and inclusive. It was easy and friendly. Krista relaxed as much as she possibly could through her desperate need to organize his desk.
“Hey Marcus, how are you?”
“I’m great, mama. Good as can be. How are you doing with the tidal wave of work that young stud has dumped on us?”
It suddenly occurred to her that Marcus might be g*y. He didn’t affect the g*y speech so common in San Francisco, he wasn’t in any way effeminate, and he didn’t have that “swish” of movement that she had seen so frequently among g*y men. All the same, her g*y-dar went off. It was quiet, but it was there.
She didn’t dare ask. She’d offered to hook someone up once, only to get a mean scowl. Some men were affronted by that question.
“I am through step one,” Krista shook her head and huffed. He laughed in commissary.
“So what brings you to the Dark Hub?” He leaned back and gestured around him. This guy was the most relaxed guy she had ever met. Ever! She relaxed that much more, itching to sweep the paper in front of her into a pile.
“Well, you, sir, are step two.” She lightly brushed a page toward another that looked similar. Obviously they belonged together; she just had to help Marcus see it.
“Am I?” Marcus said in surprise, easily ignoring her hint.
She tried to concentrate on him instead of his desk. “You are indeed. I did a bunch of research on everything jewelry, and now I am to report to you about new directions to travel.”
“Well then,
I shall whirl you around like Dorothy and send you down the yellow brick road.” He turned to his computer and pulled up some spreadsheets.
Cue: avalanche.
The next half hour was her taking quick and fierce notes as he rattled on about this market and that niche, this idea and that scheme. He talked with his hands and stared out at distance ideas. It didn’t seem like he intended to be taken seriously, so he was spouting off anything that came to his head, realistic or not.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to get our little fingers in here and do this?” He’d ask whimsically.
Krista assumed that meant she was supposed to find out if it was statistically plausible, so she tried to outline that idea as quickly as possible before he went on to the next, “I wish we could…” or “Wouldn’t it be nice…” or “I was thinking…”
After his creative genius was expired for the first pass, Krista stiffly straightened from her crouch and returned his pen. He looked at her like he forgot she was there.
“Now what do you do, geek girl?” he asked, leaning forward again with a pleasant smile.
It occurred to her that no one knew what Research did—besides frown and say weird things.
She smiled. “Now I turn your gum-drop dreams into reality, Prince Marcus.”
He laughed. “What? A sense of humor? No wonder that young stud loves you!”
An explosion went off in Krista’s mid-section. She squelched it immediately. The last thing she needed was to get lovesick over a womanizing playboy in front of the biggest gossip in the company. She was not looking for career suicide.
“Well, I’ve always wanted my personal fairy Godmother.” He waved an imaginary magic wand and did something akin to giving her pixie dust. His phone rang during her dusting and he stopped to pick it up with a “Marcus at your service.”
Krista gratefully took that as her cue to get out of the weird world of overly creative people, and hustled back toward her desk. On the way out she got some odd looks, and realized she had probably mussed her hair while thinking about Marcus’s unreasonable whims. That, or she had ink on her face. Or both. It was a bad habit, but running her fingers through her hair, or holding her chin, made her feel like she was getting the brain juice flowing. She always walked away with a plan and in need of a comb.
Back at her office she put her desk into order, even though it didn’t need it, and then put her notes into some sort of order so she could look them over. She typed them up, adding all the detail she could remember, then stared at the screen.
Her music was some fast beats, and she thought they might be distracting her, so she changed it to soft sounds. It didn’t help.
The list was worse than Sean’s because it was so abstract. The ideas were just short of genius, but way too deep in the land of creativity for her to turn into something she could research. The barrier was just too high.
Crap.
An hour later she was still staring at her computer screen. She had shaken her head a couple times, did a couple doodles of ideas that didn’t pan out, but largely she hadn’t so much as changed position. She had no idea how she was going to accomplish this.
But she knew achieving those ideas was the key to their breaking ground and possibly making the marketing hall of fame with whatever elusive client they were chasing. She had to fulfill her end of the Marcus/Krista team. She just wished she was smarter.
Fuck!
In a blind panic, she printed out all the notes and headed home. On the train she continued to stare. Then walking to her house. Then sitting at the table. It was like trying to decipher Sanskrit.
Finally Ben tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up and met a confused expression.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“What? Why? What are you talking about?” She looked at her extremities for blood.
“Well, your hair looks like you just woke up, you have ink all over your face, and you might as well be drooling while staring at white paper. This isn’t like you.”
“Oh. I am trying to find a way into the creative genius of a guy at work so I can do some field research on his ideas. His ideas are just so out there that I can’t find a logical basis to take off from.”
Krista was starting to get teary-eyed, which was the first sign of defeat. She hated failure. No, not hated; she was terrified of it. In school she rarely ever got less than an A-. She worked her ass off to make sure she did well. Overachiever didn’t even begin to describe it, it was a complex.
But no matter how hard she worked, every once in a while there was something she just couldn’t grasp. In school it had been woodworking. No matter what she did, she just couldn’t get it. Every time she went to that class she felt like one of the dumb kids.
For a change of pace, actually, it was the dumb kids from her academic classes who were the ones excelling. The tables were solidly turned. She’d been glad she helped them when they needed it in academics, because when she hit woodworking, her fellow book-smart students all failed miserably where she had mountains of much-needed, reciprocated aid.
Ben’s face turned to one of desperation as he saw her close to tears. Like all men she knew, Ben could not handle when a woman cried. He quickly sat down next to her and looked at the paper she was stewing over.
“Hmmm, I don’t know much about marketing, and I know nothing about jewelry, but maybe I can help you bridge the gap between art brain and logic brain?”
“But you have art brain.”
“I’ve learned to work with business types like you. I just imagine I am the most boring, white-and-black person on earth, and try to condense my thoughts appropriately.” He smiled, trying to cheer her up. She really wished it was working.
“What do you mean ‘white-and-black’?”
“Devoid of all gray matter,” Ben said with a mousy smile.
She really did love this guy. He was so sweet and good. So opposite of her.
“Okay,” she agreed weakly.
“Okay.” Ben pulled his chair closer so they could look at the notes together. “Why don’t you take me through these notes?”
“Well, maybe it would be better if I take you through the notes that actually came from his mouth?”
“Oh yes, that would be much better, yes. The horse’s mouth, as it were.”
Krista pulled her scribbled notes from her handbag and laid them out in front of Ben.
Ben squinted, eyes scanning the pages. “Well, maybe you should read them out loud so we can both look over them?”
“In other words, my writing looks like something a five-year-old would do?”
Ben just smiled encouragingly, which meant that it was exactly what he was thinking but too nice to say.
With their heads together, the two spent the next two hours going over the notes from Marcus, then what Krista thought they meant. It turned out she had it all wrong. From the first word out of Marcus’s mouth, she was not on his wavelength. Her brain was too organized and logical. Marcus was too haphazard and creative.
Ben was the perfect combination of both, thank freaking God! He literally spent two hours saving her ass. She had no idea how she was going to thank him, but she would, and it would be spectacular. Possibly expensive.
The next day she showed up to work early to get started on Marcus’s real ideas; the ideas Ben translated. It was totally doable once she had the decoder ring in place.
She flew through the company databases and that of the library both. She even took to the streets looking for newspapers, magazines, and sometimes crowd watching for a new take on data collecting. Real stat style!
She needed a TV show about this stuff!
Once she had a good start, she catalogued, organized, graphed and once again stuffed data into nooks and crannies. She kept a stockpile of things that still didn’t make sense, and just chugged away at the new onslaught of data that did.
Finally hitting a roadblock, she headed back down to the land of the Dark Hub. Marcus was at his desk, talking on
the phone once again, this time to someone about this new style of shoe that was making a comeback in today’s market. It sounded legit and work-related until he said that that was a perfect reason for him to own a pair. Making a comeback meant he would be the forerunner in fashion!
Half of her wanted to roll her eyes. That was the half that was working. The half that was female, with a life, wanted to listen in. It was a great idea. She might need a pair.
As before, he saw her and said he would talk to the person on the phone another time.
“My favorite geek girl! How is it going in the land of Nod?”
“It’s going. Slowly, steadily, but grindingly going.”
“I hear they got you out of that stuffy math hole and put you in your own office?”
Apparently, this marketing genius had been checking up on her. That was probably bad news.
“Yeah. I went from a bunch of anti-social people to no one at all. I’m not sure which is better.”
“On your own, darling, of course. At least now you can sing and talk to yourself in peace.”
The record screeched off the track in her head. Firstly, had she been singing and talking to herself?
Judge’s ruling? Yes, she probably had.
Next question: Was he spying, or was someone else checking up on her? She hadn’t seen Jacob in a while. That was a sobering thought.
Or was he getting the information from his old Research chums? Which meant she was loud enough that they all heard her at the other end of their department. All good questions. All also very daunting.
Rather than ask about it, she played it cool. No reason to get worked up that her embarrassing little quirk was common knowledge. If she let on that she was disturbed, then she would look guilty or paranoid. Which she was, but that was a secret.
“Definitely, but it was always nice to get a good chorus going. Now I have to carry it all myself!” She feigned being put out.
Marcus laughed in glee. “Girl, you just bring it down here and I’ll give you a little bass when you need it!”
Okay, business time; Krista was getting antsy. She still had a mound of work to get to. The problem was, talking shop seemed so taboo when dealing with Marcus that Krista thought she better ease into it with a little “Office Space” humor.
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