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"I knew there was a reason I keep you around."
Penny had the words stuck inside her head. Again. Her boss could be a funny guy, but he'd made that one joke a few too many times. You'd think such an accomplished ladies' man would get some new material.
Then again, if he did have new material, he wouldn't bother wasting it on her.
With an yank, Penny pulled the rubber band out of her long blond hair and let it cascade around her shoulders. It whipped in the wind as she strode down the crowded city sidewalk. She kept her hair pulled back for work, but now she needed to leave the office behind. It was Friday night, after all. She had more important things to do than stew about her boss.
"See, I knew there was a reason I keep you around."
What was it about those words of his that rankled? Maybe it was the assumption, just beneath the surface, that she had nowhere else to be.
Not that he'd ever bothered to ask her. Why should he? She was a temp. Correction: a long-term temp. The lowest rung on the corporate ladder, only a slight step up from the street vendors hawking coffee and donuts from their sidewalk carts outside her office building every morning. Why would he possibly ask somebody like her if she had any career plans of her own? He probably didn't even know she had a college degree. As far as David Powers was concerned, she was there because he kept her around. Plain and simple.
"Enough," Penny muttered to herself. She smoothed her fingers over her windblown hair as she made her way through the entrance of the packed bar.
The place had only been open for a few weeks, but she could already tell it was going to be a scene. It had already achieved an enviable clientele: the perfect mix of girls like her - twenty-something, after work, showing just a little bit of skin - surrounded as usual by Wall Street types in their white Oxford shirts and loosened ties. Purgatory, the place was called. Not that the name was displayed anywhere on the unmarked door outside. It looked like nothing more than a slightly sketchy Manhattan apartment building from the street. If you didn't know about the narrow staircase that led down into the plush subterranean space, you weren't hip enough to be seen here anyway.
Penny paused at the bottom of the stairs and swiveled her head, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim. After a moment, she caught sight of her friends, Lauren, Kristen, and Cora, waving her over.
"Hey! You're late!"
"Sorry," Penny said as she slid into the booth. She chucked her purse onto the seat beside her and met eyes with the girl on the other side of the table. "Working late," she explained.
Lauren merely snorted in response.
"What?" Penny asked. Her shoulders tensed automatically as she took in the skeptical look on Lauren's face.
