by Molly Harper
“Hey, Kelsey, could you help me set this up?” She nodded toward the twelve-seater table we’d moved near the fireplace for meals. “Everybody gets a binder, a folder, and this now-ironic ‘Warm Memories Are Made in Kentucky’ travel mug.”
“Yeesh.” I staggered under the weight of the heavy bin as I wrestled it away from her. “Good Lord, you’re stronger than you look.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Sadie winked at me and retreated to the kitchen. She came back with carafes full of campfire coffee and more hot chocolate, plus a tray of soft-baked chocolate cookies from the pantry. The potential for additional body-warming beverages and treats attracted the attention of our coworkers, who came sidling up to the table, their noses twitching like nervous bunnies’.
Carefully removing the lid to the carafe so the delicious coffee smell would hit our colleagues at maximum velocity, Sadie called, “Okay, everybody, have a seat and we’ll get started! We didn’t have our intro meeting last night as planned, so we need to catch up.”
“You’re going to try to hold the retreat?” asked Tom. “Seriously?”
“Well, what else are we going to do?” Sadie asked, handing Tom his special IT issues folder and a cookie.
He shrugged his rounded shoulders. “Try to stay warm, find food. Basic survival stuff?”
“Which we’ve already done, for the most part. Hunting and gathering can only take up so many hours of the day,” Sadie insisted. “And we still have to do the work we planned. We can’t go back without a strategic plan for the summer.”
The staff seemed to hold their collective breath, as if they were waiting for Sadie’s punch line. When she didn’t laugh, they all grimaced at once and headed for their “conference” table chairs, which Sadie had assigned with special place cards she’d bejeweled all to hell.
So. Many. Sparkles.
I turned on Josh, who was already seated. “You let her craft after midnight again, didn’t you? You know she makes bad rhinestone decisions when she’s sleep deprived!”
“I swear, I thought I took away the BeDazzler.” He sighed, shaking his head. “She must have a backup somewhere in the house.”
“They are a little shiny,” Sadie admitted, hanging a blank poster board on one of the blanketed frames. “But now they match our Winter Wonderland theme.”
“Oh, man, she’s serious about this,” Dorie Ann said, her dark hair falling in a tangle over her face as she shook her head. “I’ll go get my sketchpad. This situation is just weird enough for Sadie to have her best idea ever.”
“That’s the spirit!” Sadie exclaimed, clapping our reluctant graphic designer on the back. She slapped her hand against the blank poster board. “Okay, people, this is our suggestion board. For every day we are trapped here, someone will suggest a new campaign theme. We will keep doing this until we hit the right idea. The person who comes up with that right idea will get a special prize.”
“An iPad?” Gina guessed.
“A paid day off?” Tom suggested.
Jacob raised his hand. “The last ration of food before we all turn to cannibalism?”
Sadie looked more than a little aghast. “I was going to say bragging rights, but clearly I’m going to have to up my game.”
With the office team seated, Will seemed unsure of himself as he took the chair next to Bonnie. This would be very different from the sort of meeting he was used to. Bonnie said the Mud Creek town council had lost their meeting facility when the municipal building was destroyed a few years ago, so they mostly met in a diner and had pie while discussing city budget issues and potholes. Still, Will was the sort of guy who relaxed once he was able to talk a little bit. And I had salted Sadie’s talking points with subjects that would appeal to him. He would relax into his role on this little panel by the end of the day.
“So, who has an idea for this summer’s campaign?” Sadie asked, Sharpie marker at the ready.
Jacob raised his hand and Sadie practically beamed at him. Jacob rarely participated in our brainstorming sessions, preferring to hang back until our plans were concrete and then put them into action. “Jacob! Great! What’s your idea?”
“I’m going to grow a beard while we’re here,” he said.
Sadie frowned. “Well, great, but that’s not really what I had in mind.”
“I’ve always wanted to try it, but we have the dress code requirements about not looking scruffy. And now it would be downright dangerous for me to shave in a dark bathroom, right?”
“I want to try one, too,” Tom said. “My wife hates them, says they’re too scratchy against her face. But what about me? It’s my face. I want to see what I look like with a beard. So I’m going to do it.”
Jacob scoffed. “Yeah, right, because I’m growing a beard. I don’t need a facial hair twin. Lame.”
“Please.” Tom snorted. “I’ll be in full Duck Dynasty mode by the time you manage a little peach fuzz.”
“You wanna bet?”
“That I’ll grow a fuller, more manly beard than you by the time we get out of here?” Tom sneered. “Yes.”
“Look, I’m loving the enthusiasm,” Sadie interjected. “I really think we should focus on campaign-related—”
“I’ll take that bet.” Jacob laughed. “If you lose, I get to put that Eagles reunion CD you listen to on repeat in the shredder, you freaking hippie.”
“That’s not really what this is about.” Sadie sighed.
Tom countered, “And if I win, I get to roast marshmallows over those stupid motivational posters you have hanging all over your cubicle. ‘Teamwork,’ ‘Achievement,’ ‘Positive Thinking’—I get to burn all of them. Particularly ‘Positive Thinking;’ that smiling kitty-cat in the bow tie annoys the hell out of me.”
“I’ll take that bet.” Jacob stretched out his hand for a manly shake. “Because I am positive I can grow a better beard than you in just a few days.”
“By Friday?” Tom pumped Jacob’s hand, sealing the bargain. “You’re on.”
This conversation was eerily reminiscent of the wager that Josh and Sadie had made when Josh was first hired, over who would come up with the better marketing campaign for the state fair, and that resulted in poor Josh having to work all day in a University of Louisville cheerleader uniform. A female cheerleader’s uniform, complete with pigtails in little red bows.
This could lead nowhere good.
“Could we please focus on the work we’re actually being paid for, instead of your facial hair?” Sadie yelled in a voice so shrill even Tom and Jacob looked chagrined. They settled into their seats and opened their retreat binders, pretending to be good little boys.
I hid my smile behind my own binder. Since I’d helped Sadie design her presentations for this weekend, I knew this morning’s opening session was just an intro and a review of the previous summer’s activities. But still, I pulled out my trusty organizer and legal pad for notes. I never knew when Sadie was going to get an idea. I was arranging my index cards, Post-it notes, and highlighters in their special alignment around my space when someone slumped into the chair next to mine.
The familiar green-tea-and-spice fragrance rolled toward my seat. I looked over to see Charlie seated next to me, reviewing his meeting materials. I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised. Sadie had marked his seat with her special sparkly cards, after all. But he acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be sitting next to me. I mean, it would have been, before, but now that I knew how his hand molded itself around my ass? I couldn’t breathe for a second. I felt my heart flutter. There were actual flutterings near my aorta.
And I was still staring at him.
Right. That was weird.
My eyes darted back down to my binder. Sadie was in full meeting mode, though a slightly more prehistoric version of meeting mode. As the already weak winter afternoon sun filtered through the windo
ws, Sadie had to use the Coleman lanterns to provide enough light to read by. She kept reaching back to point where the Smart Board we normally used to display meeting notes would be. And she seemed to resent having to jot her thoughts on index cards instead of her iPad. Clearly she had not adjusted to running a meeting without electricity.
But, still, she spoke with enthusiasm. She waxed poetic about the moment of anticipation as the horses trot up to the starting gate at the Derby, that moment your teeth break through the crisp shell of a funnel cake at the state fair, that moment a middle-aged man runs his fingers along the body of a coveted classic sports car at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green.
“Just imagine the poor bastards out there who have never come near Kentucky’s borders,” she said. “They have no idea what we have here, no clue what they’re missing out on. So we have to save them. We have to save them from their fourth trip to the same old theme park. We have to save them from the same bed-and-breakfast where they have tried to recapture the magic of their early married days over and over and it’s never quite worked out. We have to save them from the same old boring beach vacation that they’ve already taken ten times, the same restaurants, the same museums, the same lame mini-golf courses that they forget each year how much they hate until they get stuck behind another family that can’t get their balls into the elephant’s trunk. These people need our help. So, please, give me something, give me an idea, the hint of an idea, a brain spasm that might lead to a campaign that will rescue them from traumatic vacations.”
Jacob raised his hand. Sadie pointed at him. “Jake, I swear by Colonel Sanders’s floppy black tie, if you bring up facial hair, I will make you sleep outside.”
Jacob smirked, but he was smart enough to school his features into the appearance of embarrassment. “How about, ‘Kentucky: Save Yourself from the Same Old Vacation?’ ”
“Well, that’s more of a regurgitation of my impassioned speech, but I’ll take it,” Sadie said, writing the proposed theme in neat block letters on the idea board. She rummaged in her magic tote box and threw him an iTunes gift card. “Congratulations, Jacob, you get the gift of music . . . which you will be able to enjoy once the electricity comes back on. Now, who has another idea? One that isn’t based on something I said?”
And with that mild bribe, Sadie’s enthusiasm was contagious. While our colleagues may have grumbled when Sadie started the meeting, they were now gamely applying themselves to the info packets she’d provided, raising their hands, making suggestions, punning as if their lives depended on it. You just couldn’t help but get pulled in when Sadie got on a roll. (She knew about the staff’s weakness for legal downloads.)
This was part of Sadie’s evil management voodoo. Yes, she was demanding, exacting, and sometimes just a little nuts, but she also knew how to encourage people. She knew how to keep them motivated, even if it was with something as simple as caffeine, carbs, and classic rock.
One day, I would learn her ways, and I would rule the world.
While several of my colleagues chose napping in front of the fireplace as Sadie’s scheduled afternoon “free time” activity, I chose to explore the lodge and forage for potential supplies. My plan was to build up stock for the black market operation I would open up as my coworkers became more desperate for luxury items like chocolate, toothpaste, and dry socks.
Or I would just hoard all the chocolate and socks for myself. Either way.
I carried a large duffel bag as I wandered around the guest floors, picking up random items like extra toilet paper rolls and towels from the janitorial closet. I felt like a postapocalyptic scavenger, or at the very least one of those crazy ladies who smuggle out hotel linens in their suitcases. But I figured it didn’t count as looting as long as the KCT paid its bill. I eventually meandered to the third floor, where I found a large rec room stocked with pool tables and Ping-Pong equipment. There were several large, comfortable couches and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the lake. The view of the vast white lake would have been beautiful if the room hadn’t been so freaking cold. I opened a storage closet and found a veritable jackpot of snowed-in activities. Scrabble, Rook, the Game of Life, Boggle, and Monopoly. There was more than enough stuff here to keep my coworkers happily occupied.
Stuffing the game boxes into my bag, I scanned the room for any other useful items. But unless we found a way to hand-crank a flat-screen TV, we were probably out of luck. It was a shame, really, that we wouldn’t be able to make use of this beautiful space. But the windows let a crazy amount of cold leak into the room, and this happened to be one of the few communal spaces that didn’t have a fireplace.
I frowned as I walked into the hall and closed the door behind me. Maybe I could come back to this room next year, I thought, assuming that we all survived this ordeal and Sadie was allowed to take us more than ten feet outside the office.
Finding your way around in a darkened hotel is more challenging than it sounds. As the light outside faded and I couldn’t even count on the ambient light from exterior windows, I started to get a little panicky. I made jokes about scary movies, but deep down I knew there were no drifters or creepy ghost twins lurking in the hallways. Still, it was spooky to walk around these quiet, abandoned halls, unsure of what would greet you when you turned a corner.
My bag was getting heavy, the strap wearing a groove into my shoulder. I made stupid mistakes, doubled back, changed floors. The hotel didn’t even have that complicated of a floor plan. I just kept thinking that any minute now, I would step through the double doors and find the main floor hallway leading to the lobby. Any minute.
Wait, was I on the first floor?
“Kelsey?” a concerned male voice called. “You okay?”
I jumped and turned, whipping my flashlight beam toward the voice. Well, my palms were sweaty, so I actually whipped my flashlight toward the voice. Fortunately Luke ducked out of the way before it could hit him in the head.
“Luke?” I exclaimed, clapping my hand over my mouth. Because laughing seemed very inappropriate.
Luke, however, seemed to see the humor in it, chuckling as my Maglite rolled down the hallway. “You’ve been gone awhile. Are you all right?”
I held up my bag and made the contents clink. “Just liberating your supplies. Don’t worry. I’m keeping a list of what we’re taking so we can add it to the bill.”
Luke scoffed as he took the heavy bag from me. “Eh, it’s an emergency situation. The lodge isn’t going to begrudge you toilet paper. As long as there’s no damage, I will escape from this situation with a positive performance review.”
Luke’s voice was more whiskey than chocolate sex. His thick accent was unexpectedly attractive. But part of me did wonder whether he had cousins named Bo and Daisy lurking around somewhere. He grinned and brushed my hair back behind my ear with the tips of his fingers.
Clearly my flirtation skills were off, because it had taken me an embarrassing amount of time to recognize that he was coming on to me.
“So what’s the story with you and the Professor?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he doesn’t seem to like me talking to you, and I saw that the two of you are, uh, close. Is he your boyfriend? Your protective older brother? A cousin with an inappropriate interest in you?”
“He’s just a friend. Sort of. Not really. I guess.”
“Well, thank you, that clears it right up,” he said, laughing so loudly it echoed down the hall.
“I know.” I giggled. “It’s kind of a mess. I’ve been into him for a really long time, but I don’t know. And I just gave him some pretty major news and he didn’t really respond. . . in a verbal way . . . so yeah, I don’t know how he feels about me.”
“Well, given the way he looks at you and talks about you, I don’t think not liking you is the problem.”
Charlie talked about me? To Luke? “I can o
nly respond to that with a resounding ‘hmph.’ ”
“I like you,” Luke told me. “And I’ll tell you that flat out. I don’t like games. I don’t like miscommunication. What you see is what you get. So if you’re interested, let me know.”
My mouth hung open. “That was very straightforward.”
“It’s all part of the ‘no games’ package.”
“Something I will consider,” I promised. “So why’d you come looking for me?”
“Well, if you don’t know why, clearly my flirting skills aren’t what they should be.”
I tilted my head and gave him a smile of pure delight. It had been a long time since I’d received honest, open interest from a man, attention that wasn’t mixed with emotionally confusing doublespeak. A very long time. “You’re flirting with me?”
“Man, I must be worse at this than I thought.”
“No, no, you are exactly the right mix of disarming forthrightness and subtle naughtiness,” I swore. “Points for style.”
“You’re forthright and subtly naughty,” he shot back while his cheeks went pleasantly pink in the flashlight glow.
“Hey, I have a question for you,” I said, nudging at the sleeve of his ranger’s jacket with my hand. “You’re a desk clerk at the hotel, but your name tag says ‘Ranger’ and you are wearing what looks to be a park ranger’s uniform. So either you are really good at cosplay or you have a very strange division of responsibilities.”
Luke grinned at me, leading me down a stairwell marked TO LOBBY. Oh, sure, it was easy to find your way around this place when you worked here. “Well, technically I work for the state park system in either position. I was a park ranger full-time for a while, and it was great.”
“But then your partner was eaten by a rampaging bear and you just couldn’t stand the survivor’s guilt?” I suggested, stumbling a bit when my boot missed a step. Luke caught my elbow and righted me without comment.
“No, I got engaged,” he said. “Jennifer, my fiancée, didn’t like the idea of living out in the ass end of nowhere just so we could be near a ranger station, or, God forbid, have to live in one. She searched through the job openings at the park system until she found this nice cushy position at Lake Lockwood, complete with a cabin on-site and privileges at the gift shop. All I had to do was be willing to fill in as an off-season desk clerk while continuing my winter duties.”