worried

2

I've been an accountant at The Company for about three years now. That's five days a week, two hundred sixty days a year (I have never taken PTO... I am too nervous to ask my boss), totaling to almost eight hundred entire days on the premises. All that time, and still, if you ever happened upon my cubicle, you might believe it to be some abandoned relic –– a ghost of employees past that hasn't been inhabited in eons.

Adorning the laminate surface sits an ancient 2000s Dell computer, a corded telephone, and an organizer filled with Post-Its, Sharpies, and other various supplies. The only touch of decorum to the beige polyester panel walls are a few papers detailing important bills that have long since been paid as well as a calendar from the year I started which I haven't found the time to replace. As for personal flair, the space completely lacks any sign of it. That is, unless you count the many distorted paperclips I twist up when I'm nervous –– which now completely litter the desk space –– as flair.

It isn't that I don't want to feel at home here or anything, I just never got around to decorating. During my first few weeks it was on my to-do list to go shopping for a few trinkets, maybe a salt lamp or something, but then quarter close came up and I forgot all about it. Turns out, quarter close is an extremely busy time for accounting, since we need to make sure a million payments from the other departments are going out and processing and blah blah blah. There was no time anymore to stop at Home Goods or Staples on the way home –– all I had time for was crawling into bed and putting on an episode of Seinfeld or something mindless . Once we finally got out on the other side of the chaos, I'd grown so accustomed to my cube space, minimalistic as it was, that I decided, whatever. A space is a space. It wasn't worth the extra effort or money anymore.

Emma used to bring me Sticky Notes with drawings on them to spruce the place up. She had this recurring character she'd draw who looked like a cloud with an unnerving smile, and he'd always be doing office tasks like stapling papers or giving a presentation to a group of other clouds. I threw them all out one morning last year after she made a comment on how stripe-y my sweater was. There was this upswing in her voice at the end of the word, stripe-y, and for whatever reason it just devastated me. I needed any remnant of the old Emma to be gone.

There are no assistants in the accounting department, only accountants and junior accountants who make up their team. But if I'm honest, I'm not sure my boss realizes this, what with the amount of scheduling, booking, and various odd jobs he has me do for him on a daily basis. I singlehandedly coordinated his family's entire Christmas vacation to Italy last year. Gondola rentals and wine tours included.

Today, he is expecting me to play God. Specifically, Demeter.

"Hi!" I chirp into my headset, grossly saccharine. Customer service voice. "Do you happen to have any leis in stock?"

"Any what?"

"Leis. Like, tropical leis."

The other line pauses fo. There's the faint sound of rustling papers and murmuring. Then, "How many?"

"About ten to fifteen."

"Sure. When do you need them by?"

"Three PM?"

"Tomorrow?"
"Well, today, if possible."

Another pause. A much longer one, this time. I can almost feel the dubious stare through the phone.

After a whole minute, I ask, "Are you still there?"

"Ma'am. We typically need around twenty-four hours of notice on these kinds of requests at this time of year," the florist says. "We have to order the orchids."