I. O. U.

Breakfast Meetings

It's 7am and the polite tinkling of my alarm sounds remarkably passive aggressive, though that might be the wine from last night still soaking my sponge of a brain. It's fucking Friday! I don't have class! Why on God's green earth did I set an alarm for 7am? Ain't nobody gettin' down or gotta get shit done on Friday this fucking early. My eyes hurt and my brain is wobbly...

I'm hung over. Why am I hung over? Oh shit, yeah. I was taken to dinner by fucking Magnus fucking Axton last night because... because I work as his assistant now. Plus, I want to fucking have him inside me...

Not important! I'm an assistant and I have no idea what the means. That's why I set a 7am alarm! It's studyin' time. Turn on some Holst coz I am hitting the Google. Inside my head I slip on sexy nerd glasses, do my hair in a messy bun and enter a beatific study montage, nodding my head and enthusiastically taking notes. Outside my head, in what some people call reality, I use university WiFi to google "what does an assistant do" without changing out of last night's undies. One Wikipedia article later it turns out my ideas yesterday weren't wrong. I guess I should read that folder of documents next. I do owe the guy quite a bit of money after all. 

I devour the documents with all the zeal of a student studying for exams. That is to say I pack the information into my brain with a morbid hope it might prove useful in the future. My responsibilities seem to revolve around checking emails and forwarding important ones to Magnus, fetching him coffee at very specific hours of the day, answering phone calls, setting meetings, greeting clients and doing his laundry. I'm like a helicopter parent with admin skills.

 My upper thigh tingles and I retrieve my phone from underneath my butt. It's 10am. How time flies when the last vestiges of fun seem to have fled from your life leaving only unadulterated millennial apathy. The grey bureaucratic cloud lifts slightly when I realise the message on my phone is from Sequoia.

"Heeeeeeeey, my stomach beast is telling me eat. Wanna come with?"

 She must've come down from her semi-permanent high long enough to get hungry. A sudden aggressive growl reminds me that I also have a stomach and despite being thoroughly spoiled last night it wants attention.

Thumbs like lightning, I answer:

"Sure thing! Usual place - I'll be there in 20."

I take ten minutes to dress. I button my one other nice shirt and pull the black skirt on over the top. Ignoring the more practical flats, I give into temptation and put on the strappy shoes from last night. A quick mirror check reveals that my hair needs some fixing but the make-up from yesterday seems to have stuck around so I leave it be. I toss everything for the office into my shoulder bag plus a toothbrush and toothpaste for after brunch. I probably shouldn't greet clients with breath that would make an onion blush. 

~~~

I open the door to the hippest of hipster cafés, greeted by the smell of of ground coffee and the atmosphere of an Ikea masquerading as an antiques store. The lady behind the counter looks like she has artistically refused to bathe this week, but fuck me, this place does a mean blueberry  and poppy seed bagel. They lather it with a cream cheese schmere and then layer thiccccc slices of chorizo. Boy, do I love me a mouth full of meat and cheese. 

I order and pay, then find Sequoia sitting next to the window. She's stroking the leaves of a plant in a way that suggests she either wants to mother it or take it home and do unspeakable things with it. I'm not sure how one has sex with a plant but if anyone can manage it, it'll be Sequoia.

"Mornin', bitch - how's it goin'?" I give our standard pack greeting.

"Hey, gurl! You know, it's been fine. If you ignore that we're slowly burning and pillaging the earth and the whole, y'know, 'soon our home will be destroyed' shebang-bang-boom."