The Risk of Falling

Chapter Two: The Danger of Strangers

“Why in the world do you look like a soggy dinner roll that’s been dunked into a soup and left at the bottom of the bowl?”

I stared up at the ceiling and counted mentally from one to ten so that I didn’t smack Theodora for that unnecessarily obvious, excessively insensitive comment. 

Theodora was a marketing associate and the witch was unfortunate to have been given as slave to.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked most almost everyone I’ve met and worked with in the company but the one person I didn’t and the same one who nursed some secret hatred for me, it would seem, had to be my direct supervisor.

Usually, nothing she said could get under my skin. Becoming unflappable had been a precious skill to learn quickly once one was put under Theodora’s command but today was not a great day and my composure was already in shreds. 

After a fifteen-minute wait for the next bus, a nasty encounter with some lewd stranger inside it who was eyeing my white blouse like a hungry rat, a mad dash up the front steps of the massive Hedenby building and a resulting contact with the ground after my heel twisted and catapulted me into mid-air, I was in no shape or form, mentally and physically, to put up with Theodora’s crappy attitude.

“You could say I’ve had a rough start to my morning,” I attempted in an even voice as I settled into my chair and slipped off my wet sling backs. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be presentable again.”

“You don’t have ten minutes because the general meeting with the CEO is in five and I don’t want you wading in there, dripping all over the floor and making me look bad so stay here and get decent,” she scolded as she straightened her impeccable gray suit and skirt ensemble.

I hated her more for being so perfectly pressed, she looked fresh from under a steam iron.

Theodora was actually an attractive woman in her early thirties but her mean streak took away whatever softness she was capable of.

“I’ll stay in here if that’s better for everyone,” I said with a sigh.

I had actually wanted to attend the general meeting with the CEO. It was my first one since I started working in the company because Luke Hedenby had been in New York working out a deal in the last couple of months and had just returned to announce the partnership between his company and a major international airline. But as much as I’d like to be there, I didn’t really want to be called out for mistaking the meeting as a wet t-shirt contest.

“While you’re here, you might as well get some things done,” Theodora said, gesturing to a folder on top of her desk. “I need ten copies of that proposal by nine, all bound, labelled and circulated to the list I included with it. And make sure to remind me to give you some extra tasks later on the extra fifteen minutes you’ll be spending after your shift to make up for your tardiness this morning.”

I opened my mouth to say yes and tell her to go away or she’ll be late for her precious meeting but she held up a hand to stop me, her flinty gray eyes narrowing at me.

“I must say I’m really disappointed in your, Maxine. Your performance is at best meeting expectations and then you go ahead and add this to your improvement opportunities. We’ll have to talk about this when I have the time. For now, get to work and give it your hundred percent,” she finished with an indignant thrust of her chin before striding away.

Wow.

I was late for the first time ever and she was blowing my ear off.

And at best meeting expectations? I worked with the efficiency of a robot I could predict the second she would take her next breath. Puh-lease.