Breene, K F - Growing Pains 01 (19 page)

“I was thinking some kind of book?”

“Hmmm.” Marcus bent over a sticky
note. He scribbled something then offered it to her. “Take that to Phyllis in
Art. She’ll hook you up. Now scoot, I’m a busy little boy.”

He turned back to his computer as
Krista hurried out. Then went straight to Tommy for directions—he wasn’t there.

“Merde!”

“Hey baby cakes, what’d’ya need?”
It was some young hipster art person Krista had never seen before. She had
black, holey skinny jeans, wild, spiky hair, tattoos everywhere, and bright
pink lipstick.

“Uh…Phyllis? In Art?”

“Oh right, sure. You from IT?”

“No, um, Research?”

The girl’s eyes lit up. “Oh wow,
Research, huh? You seem normal, though.” She laughed as she led the way. “I
heard everyone from Research was a whack-job.”

“They are, but you didn’t hear it
from me. I’m working on Sean McAdams’ thing so I was able to get out for a
brief time.”

“Oh! You’re Krista Marshall!” The
girl looked at her again. “Right. Marcus talks about you all the time. He’s
excited to see what you can do. Not often someone from Research works so closely
with one of our own!”

“It hasn’t been easy, I can assure
you. My brain is wired differently. But we’re making do. I think we have some
good stuff.”

“Well cool. I hope to see it some
time. There’s Phyllis, right through there…” She pointed through a doorway into
a land of paper and machines.

“Oh great, thanks,” Krista said,
not wanting to go through into more chaos. And probably gossip.

She got a pat on the back and
laughter as her tour guide wandered away. She seemed friendly. Krista should
have gotten her name.

Phyllis had a desk that made up a
quad, two people side-by-side, facing the other two. It was hard to decipher
whose work was what. Where one desk ended and the other began it was completely
covered in a mass of color and art supplies.

As Krista reached the quad, she
looked down at the post-it. Marcus had written, “This is Geek Girl. Help her.
Luv U. M”

If she’d any doubt she had been
talked about, she didn’t anymore.

Krista walked up slowly to
Phyllis’s desk, sticky clutched in her hand like a hall pass. Phyllis was a
thirty-something woman with a haircut that looked like she went through a wind
storm and cut it without combing it out first. As Krista reached the desk and
slowed further, feeling a little like a creep, Phyllis and the three others all
looked up.

Krista froze, like a rabbit in the
middle of a wolf pack. “Phyllis?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yeah doll?”

Even though the two women had never
met, they had seen each other around plenty. Phyllis was a regular at the
watering hole.

“Uh, hi. Um, Marcus said to talk to
you?” She held out the note, seeing the others in the quad craning their necks
to try and see what it said.

“Oh right. ‘Course, yeah. What can
I help you with?”

Before Krista could answer, Phyllis
turned to her chums and said, “It’s not often we get a Research person this far
into the art department, you know? They’re usually all freaked out that we’ll
kidnap’em or somethin’!”

They all laughed uproariously.
Krista chuckled to be part of the group, but was secretly wondering if she would
make it out alive. Odds weren’t looking good.

When the laughter died down, Krista
said, “Well, Sean is calling a meeting and I need to get my material looking
good. I was thinking--”

“Oh-oo Sean!” one of the quad
interrupted. She was a portly girl with a high pony tail and a hooked beak for
a nose.

“I know!” Phyllis said with an
exaggerated hand movement half circling around her head. “I begged Marcus to
get me on that team! Begged him. I’m serious! Bu-egged.”

“I hear Sean picked his own crew.”
It was a twenty-something alternative-looking girl with dreads and a sleeve of
tattoos. She was loudly chewing and popping her gum. She couldn’t be more
irritating if she tried. And if Krista told her that, she would’ve tried.

“Well, I heard Sean beat out that
guy Ray for a promotion at an old company.” This from a young girl with large
glasses, limp, greasy hair and a splatter of freckles. “He’s doing the guy a
favor by getting him hired here. Kinda nice of Sean.”

Phyllis and tattoo girl started
laughing at her.

“Are you still hung up on him?”
Phyllis asked.

“Sean talked to her at the
Christmas party last year,” Tattoo girl yelled across the tables, “and she’s
been into him ever since!”

“Shut up!” Glasses said. “I just
think he gets a bad rap is all. He was a gentleman to me!”

“He was just trying to get in your
pants. He ain’t no gentleman,” tattoo girl spat vehemently.

Phyllis got up and waved them away.
“C’mon doll. Let’s see what you need.”

As they left the group arguing
amongst themselves, Phyllis said, “Jodi went home with him after one of the
events. Or wait...” Phyllis stopped walking and tilted her head. “No, I have
that wrong.” She started walking again. She put a hand on Krista’s arm to steer
her around some crazy-looking machine with a bunch of arms. It looked like
something out of a Tim Burton movie.

“He went home to her house. He was
half tossed. She won’t admit it, but she was sober as a judge. I have a feeling
she lured him, but that’s neither here nor there. The next morning he
apparently got up at the crack of dawn and left. No goodbye or nothing! Not
that I completely believe that. I’m sure he said something. He probably had to
saw his arm off to leave.” Phyllis laughed, steering Krista around a corner.

“Anyway, she’s hated him ever
since. I mean, really, that man could get any girl. Why would he waste his time
with her, right?” They turned another corner, getting closer to the mouth of
the art department the whole time.

Just as Krista was about to nod, to
go with the flow, she realized that question was a trap. Phyllis was stating
the obvious, yes, but if Krista agreed she would all but sprint back to tattoo
girl—Jodi—and say Krista called her ugly. Also that Sean was too good for her.

Krista almost inadvertently made
her first enemy. No good! Phyllis was a dirty snake.

Instead of taking the bait, Krista
said, “Well, it’s never a good thing when a guy leaves really early, that’s for
sure. But I haven’t heard anything about it.”

“Well, it was big drama down here!
People down here either love him or hate him. Half the floor are trying to bed
him, half want nothing to do with him. Guys included, and Sean ain’t g*y. Far
as I know...”

“No idea. I’ve really only talked
to him about this team thing that Marcus is on.”

Phyllis deflated. Krista wasn’t
winning any points with her, for which she was thankful.

“Okay, doll, what did you have in
mind?”

They stopped in front of some art
station. It had different types of paper strewn across all available surface,
and teemed with supplies, small machines, and a bunch of crap Krista couldn’t
even identify.

She had a wild impulse to start
cleaning. How anyone could work in this mayhem was disturbing.

“Um. Well, I have all this
information in stacks of paper and I was wondering if I can put it in a book?
Or something.”

“Hmmm. That’s possible, um hum. Why
don’t you run and get your stuff and I’ll set the machine up.”

Krista nodded and tore outta there.
Her brain was a whirl of how she wanted everything to look. She was at her desk
and back in record time, gingerly holding all her stacks to keep them in order.
They were in binders, but if she dropped one, or God forbid the whole lot, they
burst open… Krista did not need her stuff looking like the desks in the art
department.

As she appeared behind the station,
Phyllis gave a small jump. “Didn’t see you comin’!” She twittered as she
finished moving things around and flipping switches.

“Okay,” she said, turning to look
at Krista’s stuff. “Oh my. You’ve been busy. Okay, let me show you how this
works.”

“How—uh, how the machine works?”

“Well, yes. You didn’t think I was
going to do it all for you, did you? I got a million things to do!”

“Oh right, of course. Sorry, I just
thought someone did this normally. I don’t really know how the art department
works.”

She laughed and patted Krista’s
shoulder. “Of course not. I’m surprised you haven’t run out screaming by now.
Every once in a while a Research person has to spend time in here and they
always leave with scowls!”

Crap! She was about to be lumped in
with the rest of the stuffy people from her department!

Thinking quick she said, “Oh, hah
hah, it’s not that bad. Big machines, though. Well, we’ll see what happens. I
just hope I don’t completely screw the pooch.” She inched forward, trying to
look like she was eager to learn.

Phyllis laughed again, then began
going through how to work the machine. She pointed out levers, talked about
buttons, gave one example, then patted Krista on the back and walked away.

Krista stared at the machine for a
long moment. She probably should have written something down…

There was only one thing to do. She
fished out her phone and dialed without thinking.

“Hello? Krista?” Ben’s voice was a
barely contained frenzy.

“Hi Ben, yeah it’s me. Tell me I
haven’t interrupted anything.”

“Freaking Muni dumped me off in no-man’s-land
and said the bus was out of service. Damn it!”

Ben saying “freaking” and “damn”
meant he was really riled up. It took a lot for that guy to get on edge. But
then, Muni could give Mother Theresa something to swear about.

“Do you have a second?”

“I have a million seconds. I have
to wait with a bus load of people for the next full bus to come along and try
to squeeze onto that bus. I had a seat, too.” He let out an exasperated and
enraged sigh.

“Well then, good timing, as it
were.”

“I guess. What’s up?”

“Okay, I am standing in front of
some binding machine. Some giant art book machine...thing. It has levers and
buttons and I am completely lost. Tell me you have worked on one of these.”

“You are in luck. I worked on a
binding machine for a time last year. It was an extra course I dropped halfway
through. I thought it would be fun but it turned out just a lot of work. We
mostly worked on a printing press, which was neat because--”

“Ben. Focus.”

“Oh right, sorry. Okay, tell me
what you are looking at and maybe I can help.”

She did. She tried to tell him as
much as she remembered about the levers and buttons. She told him the model and
what it looked like. It turned out this machine was a low quality model. Being
that he had worked on a top quality model at the expensive art school he went
to, he had to dumb himself down to help out, but he knew enough to get her
going. He then had to go because a bus was coming and he needed to shove his
way on. He didn’t want to be late for his class.

She’d written stuff down that time,
but she was about as good at machinery as she had been at wood shop. Not. A.
Clue.

She very nearly gave up. The only
thing that kept her going, that convinced her that binders wouldn’t cut it, was
having a department full of crazy, smirking art people thinking they were
better than Research. She’d be damned if some messy-desked morons were gonna
show her up!

Plus, she didn’t give two rats
about this department’s budget. If they thought leaving someone unattended on
their machine was acceptable, then Krista would waste a bunch of their
expensive paper without feeling bad.

So there!

She hit some buttons, pulled some
levers, and half expected a gum drop to fall out of the chute. Instead, it was
a marred piece of purple paper. She gave a couple more tries, almost figured it
out, and then decided she might as well give it a try. Sean would have to
forgive her.

Plus, she had it all in soft
copy—she’d just hand him the flash drive if this all went pear-shaped.

After an hour and a lot of ruined,
expensive paper, she had her first binding done and it looked really good!
Totally better than binders! The second binding looked even better, and the
third had her owning that machine with a smirk that the art department could
draw then frame.

Suck it!

She worked late into that night,
trying to get everything done and looking good. It wasn’t just about the
material, it was about presentation. She wanted to wow everyone. She wanted
them to realize that she deserved a spot on the team, and even though she didn’t
have much experience, she learned fast.

She hoped that’s what she would
portray anyway. Otherwise she would hand in a pile of useless, expensive
garbage that was overkill in the wrong way.

That would really, really ruin her
day.

As she made her way out of the dark
art department, she noticed a light on from the dark hub. It looked like Marcus
was cramming for the meeting tomorrow. At least she wasn’t alone.

It was Friday morning and a horrid
thought struck Krista as she swung her bag under her desk. What if Sean
expected me to be through all my steps by now?

In a panic, she called Marcus.

“Geek girl! All set for the big
meeting? I hear even Monica is going to be at this one.”

The loudest sound in the quiet
office was her gulping. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about. How far along
are you on your list from Sean?”

“Geek girl, are you stressed out?
You sound stressed out. Just relax, honey.” He drew out “relax” like the
caterpillar in
Alice
in Wonderland.

“I know, but it’s just that… what
if I misunderstood something? And I only got through step two on the list. I
mean, we’ve had a month, so I probably should be further along, you know?”

“I think most everyone else is
still on the first couple as well, so you have nothing to worry about. We are
just doing preliminary stuff. Hell, we don’t even have the account yet. None of
this matters yet. Relax.” Again with the caterpillar.

She forgot about the account part.
That was certainly true. She let her muscles ease a fraction.

“Let’s go for a drink, calm you
down,” Marcus suggested.

“No way. I need a clear head for
all this stuff. Art people think better buzzed, not math people. After maybe.”

“It’s a date. See you at the
meeting.”

Click.

Krista took the piece of black
plastic away from her ear and looked at it like it was a piece of abstract art.

Did I just agree to meet up with
him?

She had. She had just agreed to
meet for drinks with the biggest gossip in the company. Granted, he wasn’t a
vindictive A-hole like Cindy, but still, he seemed to know everything about
everyone. If he was trying to glean information, drinks were a sure way to do
so.

Although, if she made friends with
him he might help her sabotage Cindy.

Hmmm, that has possibilities.

She would have to disappoint the
girls. No way did she want work and personal life merging yet, if ever.

She spent the next few hours making
sure she knew every inch of her material. If there were questions, she needed
to be ready with a viable and, most importantly, correct answer. Guessing on
her own information would make her look dopey.

When she was ready she stacked all
her bound information together and headed to Conference Room B. It was time to
meet her doom.

As she walked through the door she
saw Judy, the Art Manager, first since she was sitting in the middle of the
long, oblong table. Ray was on the other side on the left. Krista was the third
person to walk in.

Deciding that the Marketing
department was too close to the Art department in tasks, and she’d had just
about enough of Art department people, she sat on the other side of Ray. He had
always made her comfortable, except when he was looking at her worriedly, and
after hearing Sean talk about him she had a new respect for him. Plus, he
wasn’t from the Art department. Enough said.

She put her materials off to the
side, away from the rest of the table, in a thick pile. It was a sizable stack.
Nearly an entire rainforest went into making the thing. The amount of rivers
that got polluted just to make the pages eggshell white was probably suicide-inspiring
for Green people. All Krista knew was that she was left to her own devices, and
her stuff looked good. She’d deal with earth karma when the time came.

Next in: none other than the
relaxed, and currently strolling, Marcus. He might have stayed late, but if he
was nervous about last minute jobs, he didn’t show it. All he carried was a few
pieces of paper. He was the idea guy, though, so Krista wasn’t alarmed she’d
gone way overboard. Not yet.

He scanned the room when he walked
in, winked at Ray and gave Krista a smile as he settled next to Judy. It made
her feel marginally better…until she saw Sean approach.

In a fog of sudden fear she
wouldn’t live up to his expectations, she watched his graceful walk bring him
through the glass doors, his large shoulders swaying opposite his purposeful
stride. He was wearing a crisp white shirt with the outline of a wife-beater
underneath. His dirty blond hair was in a styled messy look that completely set
off his strong jaw. He was in a pair of tan Dockers that showed off his shapely
thighs.

It had been a month. One month. How
the hell had she forgotten how oh-my-God hot this guy was? How was that
possible? How did the bastard look so good?

Just…what the hell? What had she
done to God that He had to punish her with eye-candy this hot that she couldn’t
touch? And why the hell was God so good at holding a grudge?

As he neared the table he glanced
around the room and met Krista’s eyes. It was like a candle left unattended in
the Art department. Her body ignited fast and hot, tingling heat through her
nerves and limbs, spreading from end-to-end as if the paper was sprinkled with
gasoline. Her face flushed and her pupils dilated. She wanted to look away but
couldn’t.

She also wanted to scale the table
and take a running leap onto his body.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Sean
said as he pulled his eyes away from Krista and gave everyone else a scan.

Krista noticed the slight red hue
in Sean’s cheeks two seconds before she could see Ray looking at her out of the
corner of her eye. It was a quiet glance, but he was trying to read her, and
disconcerting her in the process. She sobered immediately.

Krista reeled in her urges as if
they were fishing line, strapped on her chastity belt, and finally noticed that
Sean had not walked in alone. Not at all. He’d come in, arm brushing arm, with
Monica.

Well, if that doesn’t ruin my
mood...

Jealousy reared its ugly head,
before she turned away and focused on her material. Sean was off-limits, and
Monica was welcome to him. Krista did not need boy-drama at work. In fact, she
didn’t need boy-drama ever again.

She just wished her body would be
in line with her brain on that one!

Sean sat across from Ray. Monica
sat next to Sean, angled toward Marcus and Judy, trying to put her back to
Krista. Krista was, again, the furthest away from everyone else at the table.

“Thanks for joining us,” Sean
started, looking to Ray. “We have some great things in the works.” Ray slid him
a leather portfolio, which Sean opened and scanned. It must have had the notes
for the meeting.

“First, does everyone remember the
team members?” Sean looked around the table, avoiding Krista’s eyes.

“Who is the…ah, Research girl
again?” Monica asked in a loud, clear voice. She looked at Krista with a
composed face. This call out was girl code for, “I know you, but you aren’t
important enough to care about.”

Krista glanced at Marcus, who
rolled his eyes and smiled while leaning back and crossing one leg over the
other.

“For those who don’t remember our
first meeting, when she was a participant,” Sean said, apparently having missed
the obvious scorn she’d used, “Krista is handling our research for this
project. We haven’t had a chance to see what she’s been able to uncover for us,
but I have all the faith she has found some great things. We’ll check into that
a little later.”

Fear spread its ugly claws through
Krista’s body and started raking across her midsection. She hated this
suspense—especially when it really mattered. It was like the time when she had
to get a B average in a course just to advance to the next course. There were
huge stakes, not to mention money, invested, and she struggled the whole time.

Granted, she’d gotten the highest
grade in the class, but that was school. This was work. Work didn’t have an
outline and sample tests.

“First let’s talk to Monica,” Sean
was saying. “We don’t want to take up too much of her valuable time.” Sean
turned his eyes to her, the shade of green so vibrant and pure Krista was sure
she’d never seen a pair as stunning. He had a flirty smile playing around those
full, luscious lips.

Monica laughed a flirty laugh and
looked around the room, avoiding Krista and Ray. “The time spent is worth it.”
She gave a quick glance to Sean. Wasn’t hard to catch that double meaning. “We
are getting our first chance to mingle with our hopeful client. It will be a
fundraiser. I am organizing a dinner party held at a prominent winery in
Napa
.
It will be fancy, though not black tie, and feature food and wine. There will
be ample time to mingle so our star salesman has a chance to meet and impress
some of the representatives of our target company.”

Krista rolled her eyes at the
obvious flattery.

“I’ve been working with Monica on
the details, and this party is shaping up to be a stately affair,” Sean said as
he looked intently at Monica. Her eyes twinkled and she tried a pretty giggle
that didn’t work to her benefit. “Remember, it is a fundraiser, so our
executives will be there to represent our company. My team, however, will be
there, also. Getting in with the client is goal number one.”

Everyone nodded mutely.

“Ray,” Sean went on, “you are in
charge of transportation. We won’t be inviting dates in order to leave
ourselves completely open. If someone asks why you didn’t bring someone, make
up something reasonable. I don’t care what.

“You’ll be sporadically placed in
tables. The seating is assigned at the event, so I’ll go over with each of you
who your target is. You are to engage them, but stay friendly and distant.
You’ll make an impression, but you will leave it at that. We don’t want to push
our luck. We want to stay completely under the radar here.”

Krista couldn’t help but thinking
it all sounded like some top-secret mission. Well, it sounded ridiculous was
how it sounded. But whatever, Krista was research, they wouldn’t put her with
anyone of note, so she could just enjoy the free food and wine. She’d never
been to
Napa
, any reason was a good
one as far as she was concerned.

Sean talked longer about things
they might bring up, things to shy away from, and on and on. Krista looked at
him because he was speaking and he was gorgeous, but she didn’t hear much of
the sermon.

I wonder if Ben plans to eat that
cream puff? I’m hungry.

Krista belatedly noticed Sean had
stopped talking. She realized this because he spared her a glance that begged
to know why she was staring at him.

She jumped like a hot poker stabbed
her and looked around. Monica was up and talking about decorations or something
with Marcus. Ray was talking to a distracted Sean about a limo. Judy was going
over some note, probably thinking about her end of the needed material.

Krista nearly stood up, wondering
if this was the end of the meeting. It would be prolonging the torture if it
was, but avoiding the judgment, too. It was hard to say which was worse.

Monica gave Sean a scorching look
across the office, before she said good-bye to everyone but Krista and Ray, and
made her way out of the office.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one
ignored anymore,” Krista muttered to herself.

She heard Ray, who had regained his
seat, snort.

“Alright everyone, let’s move on,”
Sean said in a voice that carried across the room. It wasn’t hard, the room was
small, but Krista had a feeling that was his theater voice.

She smirked.

He’d unfortunately chosen that
moment to glance at her, and seeing her expression, did a double-take. It took
him two seconds to place what she thought was funny, then he turned crimson for
the second time that afternoon.

“Okay, let’s go over where we are.
As you know, the client we have is happy with the art mock-ups, and is going
ahead with that. Judy has handled that side of things marvelously.

“As far as we know, their company
has been approached with a buy-out, but details are still being worked out. It
is looking good, though, so that means the work we do now will set us up
effectively. If we do a thorough enough job now, it will greatly minimize the
work to come. It will also put us in position for immediate campaign ideas. To
that end, I would like to benchmark where we all are now, and provide notes. Then
we’ll talk about the next steps. Judy, why don’t you lead us off?”

Judy passed around printed images
of art featuring jewelry and sapphires. As they reached Krista, she had the
distinct feeling of déjà vu. While these pictures weren’t in her material, she
was sure she’d seen them before. It took her a second to realize it had been
from Marcus’s desk, which meant either Judy had furnished these to him, or
they’d come from the same company catalog of art and marketing information.

As Judy talked about the various
pictures and what she was going for, Krista noticed Sean glancing at her. He
was obviously wondering where these had come from. He was looking at her
because it had been one of the items she had yet to get to!

The claw of fear did another pass.
It didn’t help that the air conditioning was too low and her body was on a
personal mission to sweat through her blouse.

Judy’s pictures done, Sean said a
few words about good work, as always, and moved on to Marcus. Marcus started
talking about marketing crap that made about as much sense as fog in summer in
California
.
A bunch of hogwash, Krista was sure.

To illustrate his points, he passed
around some art Judy helped him with. It was the same type of thing Judy had
passed around already. These two were trying to create new ideas from old crap,
and obviously working together so they could share the load.

Krista wondered if perhaps
cataloging all the old stuff wasn’t a hindrance more than a help. She also
wondered how Sean hoped to land a high-profile account with this type of
information to work off of. Krista couldn’t imagine it was near good enough,
and it was a shame, because Marcus seemed to have some pretty good ideas. Even
Ben thought so, and he didn’t know anything about nothing.