What A Girl Wants (18 page)

“And now we get to the crux of the issue,” Suz said. “Like I said, if it weren't for Grant, you'd be freaking out about the job.”

“I don't think that's true.” Hayley crossed her arms over her chest.

“I think Hayley has the right positive attitude,” Diane said. “Aside from what you
don't
have in terms of satisfying employment, what you
do
have is a physically appealing man who is, at a minimum, interested in sex for some reasonable time span which, when you look at it objectively, is nothing to scoff at if one is coming off an unwanted eighteen-month dry spell, which you are.”

“Exactly,” Hayley said, although at this point she was hoping that more than sex was involved.

Diane gestured to Audra and Suz. “And two out of three agree that the guy is harder to come by than the job in this town. So if you can really get the guy part nailed, I think the hard part's over.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Hayley smiled at Diane and uncrossed her arms.

“That statement had double entendre written all over it. Anyone want it?” Suz asked.

Audra shot a warning glance at Suz. “Leave it alone, Suzy.” She turned to Hayley.

“You're absolutely right. It doesn't all have to happen at once, and you don't have to stay there forever. I'm not a proponent of job hopping, but it's not going to affect me in the slightest if you don't stay long. I just thought it would give you some level of comfort, you know, so that you could relax a little more and get your bearings.”

“I think she's plenty relaxed,” Suz said, and snorted.

She tried to whisper something in Diane's ear but Diane pushed her away and said, “Yeah, Hayley, you take the job, and then start looking for what you really want to do—while employed.”

“And that's exactly my plan.” Hayley sighed. “There is the fact that I haven't addressed what it is I really want to do. But frankly, I'm just not even equipped to deal with that at the moment. I've got other things on my mind.” She paused. “Grant
will
call . . . right?”

T
he first day of work wasn't so bad. Nobody actually expected you to get anything done, and there was a certain novelty to everything.

It helped that Hayley was still basking in the delicious glow of His Royal Grantness, and spent most of Monday in the supply closet pretending to get stocked up. In reality, she just stood there practicing the lighthearted tone she planned to use when Grant called her on Tuesday.

By rotating between the supply closet and the employee kitchen, Hayley figured people would just assume she was in training. The only downside to that strategy was that by Tuesday morning, people really did seem to think she knew what she was doing.

Not that anything had actually been explained to her by anyone, but Hayley figured that was pretty much par for the course. In fact, no one had even come by to deal with the desk situation, and she hadn't been issued a computer yet, so she put two chairs together and stuck her personal laptop on the one and sat in the other.

On Tuesday afternoon Eileen finally called Hayley with her first assignment. It was hard to concentrate, because every time the phone rang Hayley would jump, thinking it was Grant.

It wasn't until Tuesday night that it occurred to Hayley that something was wrong. She was eating a frozen pizza at her kitchen table with the telephone sitting in the spot she would otherwise have put Grant's table setting when the question popped into her head: Had they all miscalculated?

Was it possible? It couldn't be. All three girls agreed that if he were interested, Tuesday would be the most likely day he'd call in this particular situation. The weekend plus one working day.

Hayley didn't fall asleep for a while that night, the terrible sinking inside stronger with each passing hour that the phone failed to ring.

Wednesday was brutal.

Ring!

“ 'Lo, this is Hayley speaking.”

“It's me.”

Suz. Hayley's heart dropped. “Hey, Suz. No, he hasn't called yet.”

“Bummer. Well, I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. Maybe you gave him such a workout he can't lift the phone.” She laughed but stopped abruptly when Hayley didn't join in. “I'm sure he's on an out-of-state case or something.”

“Well, that's entirely possible. I appreciate the call, Suz.”

Ring!

“ 'Lo, this is Hayley speaking.”

“Hello, it's Audra.”

Hayley's heart dropped. “Hey, Audra. No, he hasn't called yet.”

“Oh, dear. You know, I'm quite sure there's a plausible
explanation. Have you heard about the Fisherman's Wharf Strangler? I'd be willing to bet he's been assigned to that case. They're on victim number three now. Must be keeping him very busy.”

“You've got a point there. I'd actually not heard of the Fisherman's Wharf Strangler. That's good to know. Thanks for calling.”

Ring!

“ 'Lo, this is Hayley speaking.”

“Hey, it's Diane.”

Hayley's heart dropped. “Hey, Diane. No, he hasn't called yet.”

“Oh. Well, there's got to be some kind of explanation. I'm thinking it has something to do with sexual politics. He may be expressing some kind of need for power by waiting one day longer than normal before calling you. But he'll call real soon, I'm sure.”

“That's an excellent theory. You're probably right. Gotta run, though. Thanks for checking in.”

Hayley hung up and went to the employee kitchen for a candy bar. She didn't want to take the chance of missing Grant's call while she was out at lunch.

Turned out she should have gone to lunch.

By late afternoon, the animosity toward the job itself that had been building up in Hayley's soul since the interview was at peak level.

This general animosity, on top of the residual disgust from her last job, combined with a very specific animosity toward men resulting from what she was beginning to think of as the Grant Debacle, had begun to manifest itself in disturbing ways. Most notable was her all-consuming desire to bash in George Bassum's head repeatedly with his miniature Japanese rock water fountain.

The fountain may have been providing George with minute-to-minute Zen, but the trickling sound made Hayley have to pee
constantly. And as Amy had insinuated, the unisex bathroom experience was not at all as seen on TV.

And that wasn't the end of it. At this point all of Hayley's five senses had become hyperaware of her surroundings. The mere sound of George Bassum's three-times-daily Cheerios snack scraping against the side of a Dixie cup, and the accompanying sounds of his very thorough mastication, served as a kind of never-ending reminder of the hell she'd gotten herself into. This was no laughing matter.

Chew, crunch, swallow . . . smack, chomp, chomp, chomp. Slurrrp.

Hayley snarled at the wall separating her cube from George's cube.
Feng shui,
this,
asshole!
She turned back to the computer screen and stared loathingly at the cursor that had been twitching on line fifteen for the last twenty minutes.

Yep, there was George Bassum, and then there was this assignment.

The last thing Hayley wanted was to be thinking about sex. Because thinking about sex made her think about Grant. And thinking about Grant made her very upset, as the likelihood of his calling became less and less probable.

But as fate would have it, her first assignment was to catch up on a bunch of articles sorely neglected from the Food & Sexuality special feature.

She'd already spent the greater part of her morning trying to boil down “Ten Ways to Get Sexual Satisfaction from Ordinary Kitchen Tools” into a snarky two- or three-word headline.

Hayley took a deep breath and tried to clear her thoughts.
Okay. “Tantric Tooltime”? No, too specific and too esoteric for the mainstream readers.

“Come in the Kitchen”? Probably can't use “come.”

How about a play on words invoking the turkey baster? “Cock-a-doodle-doo”?
Hayley couldn't help giggling, even though she didn't want to.

Or perhaps the more direct call to action, “Lick My Spoon”?

George popped his head up over the cube wall. “Uh, Hayley, I need that headline for the kitchen tools article now.”

Crap
. “Right. Okay. Uh, I'm going to go with, ‘G-spot, Gee whiz!' With an exclamation point at the end. It's extremely general, but it has the right playful attitude. Kind of a playful . . . fifties-housewife sensibility. I think it will go nicely with the retro illustration of the egg beater.”

“ ‘G-spot, Gee whiz!' I like it,” he said cheerily, and disappeared into his cube again.

Fuck cheerful people.
Hayley rolled her eyes and looked down at her notes for the next assignment. Eileen had described it as a series on recipes from history's most famous prostitutes.

The first installment featured English muffins baked by Sally Salisbury, a popular nineteenth-century whore from a tiny village in northern England.

“I cannot believe what I'm doing for a living,” Hayley muttered.

Is this what I've come to? This is pathetic. I'm sitting here in a job I never wanted, waiting for a guy to call. The fact that this jerk hasn't called me is literally consuming me to the point where I can't concentrate on the job I never wanted.

Is this all something I should be getting upset about? Is this what my life is supposed to be about?

What is the meaning of life? What's to become of me? Hmm . . . How about “Guilty Pleasures” . . . ? No, not snarky enough.

You're born, you live, you die. And that's it. And somehow, while we're here on earth, we're supposed to do what we can to pass the time in the best way we know how. Be the best, the happiest person we can be.

“Strumpet Crumpets!” That works. . . .

I just need some traction. I just want . . . I want. . . .

“Hayley. How's it going?”

Hayley slowly turned to face the cube doorway. It was Amy. She still wasn't too sure about Amy. “Uh, hi. It's, uh, well, it's coming along. You know how it is, first few days and all. Heh.”

She should just say everything was great. That was what people wanted to hear. “How's it going?” was really not a question. It was a statement. A statement that could be loosely translated to mean, “I don't actually want to know how you're doing, but I don't want you to think that I'm an uncaring bastard, because you'll probably end up doing my peer review when it's time for promotions.”

“I certainly do.” Amy paused and looked around the inside of Hayley's cube. “I was wondering if you'd like to take a coffee break with me. Maybe I could help you out with any questions you have.”

“Sure.” Hayley saved her document and walked back with Amy to the employee kitchen. “So what are you working on?”

Amy grimaced. “It's pretty bad. I just got a new assignment, and I'll be on it for, like, twelve weeks. It's some sort of endless on-line miniseries featuring the autopsy reports of dead Hollywood celebrities.”

Hayley perked up. It sounded a hell of a lot better than what
she
was doing. “Really? Tell me more.”

Amy shrugged. “Well, it gets to the heart of those important questions. Was there really a gallon of cum found in Summer Sazinki's stomach? Did Mama Cass really choke on a ham sandwich?” She sighed. “It's real hard to come up with creative, snarky blurb copy about dead bodies. You don't want to swap, do you?”

Amy was joking about a trade, obviously under the assumption that nothing could be worse than corpse subject matter, but
Hayley knew a good opportunity when she had one staring her in the face.

“Absolutely,” she said quickly. “I will absolutely switch with you. You take Food and Sexuality. I'll take Celebrity Autopsies.”

“Thanks! I owe you one.” Amy's eyes got all round, like all this really mattered or something. It made Hayley feel old and jaded.

“No problem at all. Say, Amy, how long does it take before someone comes around and builds my desk? I've been sitting on one chair and operating my laptop on the seat of the other.” Hayley laughed. “I was kind of hoping it would be sooner rather than later. But I don't want to complain or anything, since I just started. Know what I mean?”

Amy looked at her strangely. “When I saw your desk wasn't up yet, I was wondering. You're supposed to build your own desk. Didn't you know that? It's kind of a team-bonding thing.”

Excuse me?
“I'm supposed to build my own desk? As a team-bonding ‘thing'?”

“Well, yeah. Like I said, the money's an issue right now, so we've all got to pitch in.” Amy's voice became incrementally tight. “You
are
a team player, aren't you?”

“Absolutely. I'm absolutely a team player. So, uh, heh, where's the team that's going to help me build my desk?” Then in a chirpy voice she hoped did not sound as fake as it really was, she added, “This will be fun. I can't wait to get started.”

Amy's eyes narrowed, and Hayley instantly knew she'd made a terrible mistake. There were always two groups of people at these companies: the ones who bought in and spent their lunch hours kissing up to the managers, and the ones who spent their lunch hours talking trash about the ones who bought in. Amy bought in.

“I thought you'd been in Silicon Valley for a while, Hayley,” Amy said snidely. “There is no ‘team' that builds desks.”

She might as well have added, “you raving imbecile,” because that was what her tone implied.

“The team part of it is that everyone's done it. It's like an initiation, if you will.” Amy's voice softened and she added almost reverently, “This might sound crazy, but you can't imagine just how creatively satisfying it is to get down on your hands and knees in your cube and really become one with nature. You know, handling wood. Really, you can't imagine.”

You're right. I can't imagine.

Amy came up close to Hayley and spoke softly in her ear. “I don't mean to scare you or anything, but just remember that the first two weeks are like probation. You're here on spec. And the CEO doesn't look kindly upon employees who haven't built their desks within a week of starting.”

Hayley swallowed and resisted the urge to back up. “It's already been three days.”

“Yeah, I'd get on that if I were you. Oh, and by the way, you did check the list, didn't you?” Amy pointed to a piece of notebook paper tacked up on the bulletin board by the refrigerator.

Hayley squinted at the paper. “No, I didn't, actually. What's the list for?”

“It's the reception floater chart. You're on today. Don't worry, you can take the calls in your cube and transfer them. Just grab a headset from the supply closet and you can multitask!”

“Just grab a headset and you can multitask! How fabulous! It's so easy! You just add water!” Hayley mimicked in a baby voice after Amy left the kitchen.