I look at the cursive scrawl he’s pointing to.
Stephanie Brewer.
Now instead of palpitations, my heart feels as if it’s exploding.
How could this be happening? And on the day my new boss is arriving?
I follow the men pushing the cart through the door to find Pete sitting at the security desk, on the interoffice phone. He puts his hand over the mouthpiece and asks, “Where have you been? Do you have any idea what’s been going on here? Do you know who’s in your office?”
“I think I can guess,” I assure him sarcastically. A gray plastic cart piled high with accessories from Urban Outfitters rolls by. “Where are they taking all this stuff?” I ask him.
“Upstairs,” he says, with a shrug.
“The penthouse?” I can’t imagine what Eleanor Allington is going to want with a lava lamp.
“All I know is upstairs,” he says. He seems supremely unconcerned. “Magda says hi.” He indicates the phone. He and Magda, my best friend from Dining Services, have become a pretty hot item in recent months, but lately their flirting has to be carried out via telephone because Magda has been transferred over to the Pansy Café while the Fischer Hall cafeteria, where she normally works, is being renovated.
“Tell her hi back,” I call vaguely over my shoulder as I begin wandering toward my office. I have to duck when I encounter Carl, the chief building engineer, striding down the hallway carrying an eight-foot ladder on his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says cheerfully. “Look where you’re going. What d’ya want, another body?”
“Not funny,” I say to him. “What’s going on here?”
“Don’t know,” he says. “Got a call from Facilities that I’m supposed to go up to the seventeenth floor to change all the lightbulbs in the vanity mirrors above the bathroom sinks to sixty-watt bulbs from the forty-watt energy-efficients that are in there. So that’s what I’m doing.”
I’m perplexed by this information. “We have sixty-watt regular lightbulbs?”
He snorts. “Been hoarding them for years. I saw this energy-saving bulb thing coming a decade ago. I knew it wouldn’t go over well with you women. You like your lighting bright in the bathroom so you can see to put your makeup on.”
I blink at this, not sure how to react.
“Oh,” I say. “Well, good. I guess.”
I walk away shaking my head. What is going on?
Then I round the corner into the hall director’s office and find Stan Jessup standing there. Beside him is a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt who I’ve never seen before; Muffy Fowler, the head of the college’s media relations department; Sarah; and Stephanie Brewer from Cartwright Records Television.
I freeze in the doorway, feeling all the sweat that dried up during the nice cool cab ride begin to prickle my skin again.
“W-what’s happening?” I stammer, dumbfounded.
“Well, hey there,” Muffy Fowler says in her southern accent. As usual, she’s dressed to the nines, in white high-heeled pumps, a cream-colored linen pencil skirt, and a polka-dotted silk blouse. “So nice of you to join us. Can’t believe you went for such a long lunch and didn’t invite me. I thought we were friends.”
I want to melt into a puddle on the floor.
“I didn’t,” I say. “I wasn’t. I was at Disbursements.”
“I’m just kidding,” Muffy says, bursting into loud guffaws. “Would ya’ll look at her face? Bless her heart. Heather, I think you’ve met Stephanie. She says you two had a little run-in the other night.”
“I wouldn’t call it a run-in,” I say quickly, coming into the office.
“More like we had the pleasure of meeting,” Stephanie says, reaching out to shake my hand. She looks a lot more pleasant than she did the last time I saw her. Her face is wreathed in smiles. She’s wearing a light-gray business suit and clutching a designer tote that probably cost more than I make in a month. “So nice to see you again, Heather. I was just telling everyone how accommodating you were. Tania hasn’t been able to stop raving about you.”
I’m confused. “She what?”
“Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, stepping forward. If I’m hot, he must be even more so, having surely walked all the way across the park from the Housing Office in that dark charcoal suit he’s wearing, even though Sarah’s set the office air conditioner on full blast. I can see a telltale sheen around the edges of his still-thick head of dark hair, peppered at the temples with gray. “We have some great news. So great I had to deliver it personally.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says from her desk over by the photocopier. She’s wearing her everyday uniform of black T-shirt and overalls, but she’s blown her usual mass of frizzy curls dry against the New York humidity and actually put on a bit of eyeliner. Sarah used to leave her face untouched by anything remotely resembling makeup, thinking it was a violation of feminist ethics to enhance what the Mother Goddess gave us, until I pointed out to her that if the Mother Goddess didn’t want us to wear makeup, she would not have given some of us eyelashes so blond they are practically invisible, making us resemble white rabbits without our mascara on. “Wait until you hear this news, Heather. It couldn’t be more great. It’s truly great.”
It’s clear from Sarah’s tone that she doesn’t think the news is great at all. Unless you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn’t pick up on the sarcasm.
“Fantastic,” I say. “I’m so excited to hear this great news. Do I need to sit down?”
“Probably,” Sarah says. “I would. Because this news is so great, you’re going to want to be sitting down when you hear it or you might pass out from excitement.”
I go around the side of my desk and sit down, glaring at her. She’s pushing it a little far.
“Anyone else?” I ask, indicating the couch across from my desk, as well as the other chairs I rescued from the cafeteria before they began painting in there.
“Thanks,” says the girl I don’t recognize. “Don’t mind if I do. My dogs are barking.” She sits. I notice Sarah glaring at her. I don’t know if it’s because of the “my dogs are barking” remark (which admittedly was odd, but possibly as sarcastic as Sarah’s “you might pass out from excitement”), or because they’ve had some kind of disagreement before I got here. They appear to be the same age and are dressed in a similarly slovenly style—though I realize I’m not one to talk—so I can’t imagine what they could have found to disagree on, though the visitor’s hair is definitely more neatly styled.