by Molly Harper
I had no one to blame for this but myself. Why hadn’t I joined a book club? Tried online dating? Joined a gym? Was it laziness or a stubborn belief that I didn’t need anything else?
Probably laziness.
“I could have the guys look into his background,” Kelsey offered.
I grinned at the mention of the lovable band of software programmers who lived two doors down in Kelsey’s apartment building—Aaron, Cyrus, Wally, and Bud. They lived much as they had when they roomed together in college, two to a bedroom, with scheduled game nights and Pizza Tuesdays. When Kelsey first approached them, they seemed to think she had some sort of ulterior motive, like stealing their lunch money. But Kelsey, whose passion for sci-fi and fantasy TV knew no bounds, fit right in as their den mother. She cooked for them on occasion and made sure they left the house for fresh air. In exchange, they secured bootleg copies of obscure British TV shows and fixed her computer when her boneheaded boyfriend downloaded multiple viruses while surfing for porn.
If Kelsey asked them to, her nerd-herd neighbors would get me Josh Vaughn’s credit report, bank balances, college transcripts, prescription history, and probably a hair sample if I asked really nicely. I smirked, rubbing my hands together in a gleeful parody of a Bond villain. “Make it so.”
• • •
I will admit I wallowed.
I held it together for the rest of the drive home, but as soon as Kelsey dropped me off I flopped facedown on my couch and sobbed like a reality TV star on confessional day. I retreated into my failure bunker and avoided contact with the outside world. I loved the one-story duplex I shared with a retiree, Mr. Leavitt, whose doting attention kept the front yard from looking like something from The Addams Family. The décor was sentimental rather than stylish. Kelsey and I had spent hours searching for the perfect shade of soft buttery yellow paint, one that matched the walls of my childhood bedroom at my grandparents’ house. It served as a bright, airy backdrop to my grandmother’s collection of Candlewick glass and my own locally made Bybee pottery.
I turned off the phone. I watched John Hughes movies. I even made a Derby pie, which was sort of a Hail Mary pass in terms of trying to cheer myself up. Custard, dark chocolate, and pecans in a pie shell could replace every antidepressant on the market if I could figure out how to shove it into a tiny gelatin capsule.
But come Monday morning, I rolled out of bed and made coffee so strong it was practically chewy. My GETTIN’ LUCKY IN KENTUCKY mug would never be the same. I put on my black cashmere cardigan over a white camisole and gray slacks that fit my ass like a particularly flattering second skin. A mess on the inside was no excuse for a mess on the outside, as Gran used to say. I paid extra-careful attention to my under-eye concealer, because there was considerable baggage there.
I hadn’t done any permanent damage at the McBride party. I could turn this around. I would make my displeasure known, but I would be professional. I would come up with fantastic ideas that would blow Vaughn’s butt right out of the water and prove to Commissioner Bidwell that he was wrong not to promote me. I would be an ice queen, I told myself.
That lasted all of about five minutes.
For a state capital, Frankfort was a surprisingly small town, surrounded by heavily wooded hills and valleys. The gently winding Kentucky River flows right through the center of town. It divides the town into sections: the somewhat cramped downtown area and a mix of new industrial government buildings and gingerbread historic darlings arranged in a mind-boggling maze of one-way streets that always seem to be under construction.
Across the river, the Kentucky Commission on Tourism was contained in a complex of annexed government buildings near Bellepoint. Our office was home to ten employees, including myself, plus Michael and Jordie, the Goofus and Gallant of office interns. (Michael, a senior from the University of Kentucky, cemented his Goofus status the day he fell asleep at his desk with a copy of Maxim over his face.) While our building was plain and unassuming on the outside, when you stepped inside you saw how Ray strived to create a family atmosphere from the requisite pale gray carpet and off-white walls. In addition to comfy waiting-room chairs and a colorful area rug that had been wrangled at an estate sale, Ray had added large, artfully framed photos Kelsey had taken of staff at different events around the state. There was a shot of our historian, Bonnie Turkle, wearing full Daniel Boone regalia while she detailed the explorer’s earliest expeditions to elementary school kids; another of Melody and me smiling from the dunking booth at the annual Hunter’s Moon Festival near Buford; and one of the entire office staff huddled at the finish line at the Great Outhouse 300 Race in Lebanon, Kentucky. (Our team lost because the other team opened their crescent-moon-embellished door and edged us out just before we crossed the finish line.)
Gina, who hadn’t liked me since a particularly ugly White Elephant Christmas gift exchange incident involving a Sephora gift card, worked in a separate part of the building, outside Commissioner Bidwell’s oft-unoccupied office. She saw the scathing glare I sent her as I came down the hallway, and she scurried away. I passed Melody, our sweet-faced front-desk receptionist, and dropped a small brown bag containing her favorite cranberry muffins from Sweet Eats on her desk. This ensured the delivery of my mail and faxes for at least a week. Kelsey was at her desk, ruthlessly sorting through Ray’s e-mails and typing the important notices into her usual Monday morning memo. As I went to get some office coffee, I saw The Interloper, Thief of Promotions, through the conference-room windows. Watching him pore over our materials with an amused smirk on his face made me want to smash the window with a chair. He must have caught my glowering vibe because he turned toward me and gave me one of those megawatt smiles that was supposed to turn me into lady jelly.
“Sadie,” he called. “Would you mind coming in and having a seat? I asked Ray to lead me through some of your, uh, work, so I would know where I need to start.”
The tone of his voice implied that my work was some catastrophic knot of media relations that had to be undone before he could even start thinking about his duties. That stung a bit. But rather than make excuses or jump to explain myself, I arched an imperious brow and gave careful consideration to his rather fabulous gray pinstripe suit and light blue shirt. Clearly someone had told him that wearing blue brought out the color of his eyes, because he seemed awfully partial to it. Between that and the hair, he looked like a model selling cologne for upwardly mobile, emotionally unavailable men.
Still, he was completely out of his element, overdressed and uptight. He was the new guy. He had no idea how things worked around here. I had the home-field advantage. He didn’t know how to work within the mind-melting bureaucratic maze that was state government. And he was too damn fancy for his own good.
I smiled beatifically . . . because making the rude gesture my hand seemed to be forming on its own would surely merit a reprimand in my personnel file. I slid into the seat across from him with my special mug, a Christmas gift from Kelsey that read BENHAM, THE TOWN THAT INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER, COAL MINERS, AND THEIR FAMILIES BUILT. After Kelsey gave it to me for Christmas, I made her a custom mug that read BENHAM, HOME OF THE LONGEST TOWN SLOGAN IN THE WORLD.
This was one of many mugs I kept in the office emblazoned with city slogans and pictures of odd attractions. I had BOWLING GREEN—CORVETTE CITY, USA; PATTI’S 1880S SETTLEMENT—HOME OF THE MILE-HIGH MERINGUE PIE, and a mug that displayed the many ways to pronounce Louisville (LOUIE-VILLE, LUH-VUL, LEWIS-VILLE, etc.). I tried collecting shot glasses at first, but Ray objected, saying it wasn’t professional to keep them around the office. I even tried describing them as tiny educational juice glasses, but he wouldn’t budge.
I sipped from my mug and behaved as if this were any other meeting on any other Monday, which would not involve leaping across the table and throttling the new guy. I was not going to rise to the bait, I told myself. I would not respond to the way he re
ferred to my samples with implied air-quotes around the word “work.” I would get through the morning with grace and dignity. I would paste on the sort of guileless smile Gran said would get me through any situation, even if I felt like committing a felony. And I would not refer to Josh as “Lord Gel-demort.”
To his face.
“Did you have any questions for me?” I asked, as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.
“Oh, I have lots of them,” Josh promised me, his eyes lingering on the neckline of my camisole even as he shuffled through some papers. I crossed my arms over my chest and returned his stare. I would not be intimidated by a well-coiffed boob ogler. Grace and dignity, I told myself, at any cost. Even if that cost was an awkward, prolonged silence.
Just as Josh managed to open his mouth again, there was a light knock on the door frame.
“Sadie, I processed those new reports you asked for,” a smooth voice sounded from the doorway. “It turns out that closed bridge in Marshall County might have actually increased the number of campers in the Kentucky Dam area last summer . . . Oh, I’m interrupting. I’m sorry.”
Dr. Charlie Bennett, our resident genius, stood in the doorway, giving Vaughn a confused stare. Charlie was some sort of Beautiful Mind math prodigy, with several doctorates from perfectly respectable schools but without the sinister imaginary roommates. And for some reason, he had eschewed legitimate academia to design, distribute, and decipher surveys for our department, determining customer satisfaction levels with various state park facilities, events, and attractions. He could break down his survey results by age group, profession, and preference for Coke or Pepsi if we asked him.
Aside from his big sexy brain, Charlie was lean and sleek with a refined bone structure and curly dark hair. Unfortunately, without a large billboard directly outside his bedroom window, Charlie would not recognize that Kelsey was not-too-secretly in love with him. And Kelsey just didn’t have room for a billboard in her budget.
Even socially inept Charlie seemed to recognize that he was walking into a time bomb of a room (one possible clue being my making big air-traffic-control motions toward the door).
“Never mind,” he said, turning on his heel and walking away from the conference room as quickly as he could. Oh, how I envied him.
“I’m assuming that was Dr. Bennett?” Vaughn said, looking over what appeared to be a staff list. “How exactly can we afford our own statistician?”
“His position is grant-funded,” I told him, a bit defensive. “Securing the federal money was one of the first things I did when I took over the assistant director position.”
Vaughn seemed almost impressed with this, but schooled his surprised expression back into one of bland disinterest. “Dr. Bennett is not our only grant-funded employee, correct? We also have a Bonnie Turkle on staff.”
I nodded. “Bonnie is our multimedia historian.”
“What exactly does a multimedia historian do?”
I chewed my lip. Bonnie looked like Snow White and spoke like a preschool teacher, which was handy given her school speaking engagements. But Vaughn didn’t need to know about Bonnie’s obsession with collages and positive reinforcement via smiley-face stickers. With state budgets constricting every year, we had to work twice as hard to produce the same results. The last thing I needed was for the new guy to come in and decide that Bonnie’s position was expendable or could be construed as wasteful spending. So I presented her in the best possible light. “Bonnie is sort of a one-woman anthropology team. She travels to remote locations and goes through archives, library records, film strips, and oral histories and builds multimedia historical exhibits. She’s the one that set up the McBride Music Hall Museum.”
Vaughn’s face couldn’t have expressed less interest if he were trying. “I didn’t catch that one.”
I rounded the table and stood as close to him as I comfortably could. With a flourish, I tapped on my iPad and brought up images of Bonnie posing in front of huge display boards filled with pictures of blues and country-and-western legends. Bonnie had created a display explaining the history of a defunct dance hall, complete with detailed historical perspectives and mounted digital players from which emanated samples of the music. Two large flat-panel screens showed looping archival films. I sorted through several photo file folders to find the right shots. “When she’s not setting these displays up, she’s traveling to schools, speaking to students about state history.”
Vaughn stood, invading my personal space bubble as he took the tablet. It was absolutely unfair that an unrepentant jerk could smell so damn good, like summer grass and rosewood. But if I’d learned anything about him so far, it was that he was conscientious about grooming. Good cologne was just part of the basic “well-coiffed boob ogler ” package.
I moved to help as Vaughn fumbled at opening the files. Our hands brushed and I felt a jolt of tingling electricity travel up from my arm to my chest. His mouth popped open in surprise, but I ignored the sensation, even as it traveled down my spine and warmed my stomach. Later, I would rationalize this feeling away as the rare—but not completely unheard-of—five-second flu. I could feel Vaughn’s warm breath feathering over my neck as he bent to get a better look at the screen. I pulled my hand away abruptly to avoid another shock and his features twisted back into the characteristic frown.
The scrolling images showed the office staff at various events around the state—the Highland Festival in Glasgow, the American Quilt Society Show and Contest in Paducah, Tater Day in Benton. Josh the Job Bandit placed his finger on the screen, swiping through the pictures. He stopped on a shot of Bonnie and Melody laughing hysterically as Ray tried to land a rubber frog on a moving lily pad at the Tater Day carnival. My heart ached a bit at the images. This was why I had to stay with the commission, I reminded myself. The people here were more than mere coworkers. And I would never find another office atmosphere to match it. I would get through this. I would find something good about Josh Vaughn, focus on that, and find a way to work with him.
This new leaf lasted for a grand total of three minutes before Vaughn said, “You know, these pictures bring up an interesting point. I’ve noticed there’s an above average percentage of the travel budget devoted to the staff attending these little festivals and fairs around the state. But there’s no real reason for you to be there, right? The locals run these events themselves, or the state parks staff does. It seems like a waste of time and resources.”
“Most state marketing teams don’t go to so many events,” I admitted, moving back around the table and taking a seat. “But Commissioner Bidwell likes it when we make an appearance. Even if we’re not assisting in running the event, we can at least show our support. And nobody takes pictures like Kelsey. We use those pictures on our Web site and in our publications, which actually saves us the costs of hiring an outside photographer. Besides, it’s fun.”
Vaughn frowned and sat down across from me, but before he could grumble any further, Ray appeared at the conference room door, looking a bit harried. Vaughn’s posture went ramrod-straight and I half expected him to salute as Ray swept in with Kelsey hot on his heels. She slid quietly into the chair beside me, a pleased expression playing on her full lips. Ray dropped some files on the table and propped himself against it, as if he’d just finished running one of his marathons and couldn’t hold himself upright a moment longer.
“Okay, kids. I’ve thought about this a lot this weekend, and I’ve decided that this situation doesn’t sit well with me,” he said, making my stomach flutter with hope. Was I getting the promotion? Was Vaughn fired? Could Kelsey and I launch him out the front door with a catapult? “Josh, I have no problem with you or your work. Your portfolio is very impressive. You bring a fresh perspective and a stronger design background to the table. But as much as I appreciate the commissioner’s opinion, I don’t like being routed in my own office. I’m not retired yet and I
don’t appreciate my decisions being remade for me. Sadie has done some phenomenal work in this office and is ready to take on more responsibility. The staff looks up to her and she’s more familiar with the concerns of the state.
“So, I’ve spent most of the morning in discussions with Commissioner Bidwell and our decision is . . . neither of you will be serving as marketing director. For right now, both of you are considered interim assistant directors of marketing.”
Judging from the way he ground his teeth together, Josh hadn’t seen this coming, either. For a moment, it felt like we were in the same boat—a boat adrift on a sea of “What the hell?” Kelsey began scribbling furiously in her little notebook, making new-business-cards-and-stationery to-do lists now that Vaughn had a new title—again—as well as writing down all of the various moving-in chores she needed to complete. She gripped the ballpoint pen so fiercely it snapped, staining her sleeve with black ink. Grabbing a new pen, she continued to scribble around the giant splotch on her pad.
Kelsey taking out her frustrations on office supplies was not a good sign.
Ray continued, “You will each develop a comprehensive campaign for a statewide tourism promotion to run through the next year. Storyboards, posters, and other materials explaining your concept will be put on display at the state fair in August. At the fair, we will ask visitors which approach they prefer and the campaign with the most positive responses wins. The winner gets the promotion and we will use his or her campaign. Second place means staying in the assistant director position, as long as you’re still interested in working with us.”