Like You Read About (2 page)

Rolling her eyes heavenward Cora grumbles, “Yes, I thought after the meeting today I’d say hello
and mention that everyone is going for drinks on Friday and since I’d never seen him there I was wondering if anyone had ever invited him.  That’s low pressure, right?  Inviting him to a group thing?” The final question comes out in a rush of breath and her insides start to twist again.

Kaelyn
smiles, wrapping her arm around Cora’s shoulder. “Can’t get any more low pressure than that, unless you got someone else to invite him.”

“No!” she says almost a little too loudly, “I don’t want someone else to do it, what if
one of the pharma-girls ask him and he decides to fall madly in love with one of them instead?  I’m not sure I could take that.”

“Cora, you need to put on your big girl panties and just do it already
. He always says hello to you and steals candy whenever he walks by your cube, you never seem to have to wait to get anything on your computer fixed. He isn’t that nice to everyone.” With an encouraging smile, Kaelyn gives Cora a squeeze and starts to walk away.  “Besides, the pharma-girls don’t slum it with people who actually work here, they date doctors, athletes and other demi-gods. I’m not sure any of them even know the names of anyone outside their department or the person who signs their paycheck and reimburses their expense reports.”

“
Actually he is that nice to everyone, Kay, that’s one of the reasons I like him, and probably the reason he got promoted.  Wait… I haven’t even seen him since we got back from the holiday break, is he even coming to the meeting?” she asks chewing on her thumbnail nervously.

“Nope, haven’t seen him, but he isn’t on the
out of office list today, so unless Mr. Jameson’s computer explodes and he won’t let one of the lackeys touch it. Daniel will be there.” With that, she turned on her heel and walks away whistling to herself, leaving Cora to her own internal monologue of insanity.

Kaelyn
is the only real friend Cora has here at Boston Pharmaceuticals, and the only one who knows that she dreams about Daniel.  They became friends and then partners in crime by accident almost, although friendly enough to most co-workers Cora usually stuck to herself.

Chapter 2

Two years ago…

She’d left a giant cinnamon roll on her desk as she went down to the kitchen to grab a refill on her coffee.  She’d made a batch of rolls from scratch this weekend and brought them in to share with everyone so she wouldn’t eat all twenty-four of them.  When she came back, there was a post-it next to the tasty pastry.  It simply read, “If you keep eating shit like this you’ll kill yourself.”

It was all Cora could do not to cry out loud and run from her cube, back to her car
, go home, hide under her covers and watch “Say Anything” while eating a pint of cookie dough ice cream.  It’s not like she didn’t know she was fat, if the fact that all her professional clothes came from Lane Bryant and the Women’s section of Macy’s hadn’t clued her in, the W behind every number in every item of clothing she owned screamed it loud and clear.  So she sniffled quietly, dried her eyes, thanking the gods she hadn’t worn make-up that day and took a deep breath.

It was as she was taking this breath and pitchin
g her tissue, that Kaelyn walked by. About her age, married with a toddler and another baby on its way Kaelyn was, as Cora liked to refer to her, pocket sized, barely five feet and slight even when six months pregnant she was what Cora always wanted to look like, but never would.  Even though she was only 5’2 the extra weight she carried made her feel like she dwarfed her cube-mate. 

One of the benefits of being the accounting manager was that she got one of the “better cubes”.  If you could
call one cube of the ant-colony, they all worked in better than any of the other cubes. It was in the back corner of a six-cube pod. The only way you would walk by Cora is if you were sneaking out the door to the back stairs; or you were part of maintenance or IT who used the stairwell instead of the elevator or main open-air staircase to transport their various tools of the trade.

And that was what
Kaelyn was doing, she was sneaking out the back door headed to procure her one allotted cup of caffeine for the day, her OB said it was okay, and anyone who looked at her funny for having a cup of regular coffee while she was pregnant could suck it.  However, the soft sniff grabbed her attention.

She waddled into the cube and sat down in the guest chair.  “Why so glum chum?”

Cora simply could not speak, if she opened her mouth she was going to lose it, she just peeled the post-it off her desk as if it were coated in anthrax and held it between the tips of two fingers while she handed it over to Kaelyn.  While Kaelyn was reading, and then re-reading the cruel missive delivered on cheerful purple paper Cora picked up her pastry and dropped it in the trash.

Kaelyn
looked up at Cora blinking, “Who left this?” 

Cora shrugged, “Don’t know, don’t recognize the handwriting, and after Tracy’s monumental office supply ordering debacle everyone is using up the pastel purple post-its until we run out.  OfficeMart wouldn’t exchange them and
Mr. J is too cheap to throw out $300 worth of post-its.  Ten years from now when people pull files, they’ll know actions taken in 2008 just by the color of the post-it. ”

Pulling herself out of her chair
Kaelyn grabbed her sweater, thrust it at her and said, “You’re coming with me.”

Instead of heading to the café
, they walked two blocks and sat on a park bench, where Cora began to cry, which turned into sobbing, which turned into her looking like a puffy pink mess.  When the noise subsided, Kaelyn gave her a big hug and then sat back rubbing her belly while she thought.

“Not sure who in the office is that much of a douchebag, who would be so cruel
. Sure there’s the perma-tanned pharma-girl mafia in sales but they’re on the sixth floor, they rarely deign to come to our neck of the woods and someone would have noticed one of them going to your cube, you’re kinda out of the way.  Plus, they send their intern to do their dirty work, you know, like the actual work they are supposed to be doing.”

“I know, a
nd that’s the way I like it.  That way people only need to look at me when I’m at meetings, or need to sneak out the back exit, otherwise I can hide out all I want, so I don’t have to see the pity or disgust in people’s eyes when they look at me lumbering past creating a seismic event,” she sighed.

“Ow!  What the hell was that for?”

Kaelyn shook out her fist as if she had actually hurt herself more than she’d hurt Cora when she punched her in the arm. “For being an idiot, you aren’t disgusting, you aren’t a walking earthquake, you’re Cora, accounting whiz extraordinaire, nice to stray kittens and a trivia master.  I will not allow you to talk shit about yourself.”

“It’s true though, if I keep eating crap like that I’m going to die young
. Hell, my dad didn’t live past fifty and as for my mom, I have no idea.” She twisted her fingers in her lap, refusing to look up.  “But nothing I’ve ever tried worked.  I know it’s why Sam left me, he said I wasn’t the person he fell in love with, and that I loved food more than him.  It’s why the only dates I’ve had in the last five years have been with people who have a fetish for fat women, and while I’m equal opportunity when it comes to what a person does behind closed doors, I don’t want you behind my door because you only want dimpled thighs, I want you there because you want me.”

“Ow! What the hell was
that
for?”

“
You will not use the f-word in front of my baby’s delicate ears,” pouted Kaelyn.

“Seriously, does it even have ears yet?”
Cora flinched as she saw the tiny fist winding up again. “Okay, okay, your baby is a perfectly form specimen of humanity, but it doesn’t make me any less fat.”

“Al
l right, since punching isn’t going to work I’m going to try some tough love.  I worry about you, not that you’ll die, but because you’re lonely.”

They sat and talked for almost an hour, Cora made some tough decisions about what she wanted and what she needed
. Kaelyn got her coffee and they went back to their office, and apparently, no one had even missed them.

“Whatever you do I’m here to be a cheerleader, my uniform may not fit
again for a few more months but I’ve still got my pom-poms.” And with a stern nod of her head, Kaelyn waddled back to her cube rubbing her back, death-grip on her Starbucks. God help the person who tried to steal it from her.

Logging back
onto her computer, Cora started research, not on actual work or accounting.  By the end of the day, she had an account with Weightwatchers, a grocery list, a new group of friends from a message board and a plan for the week.

Present day

Tap, tap, tap, tap… then interrupting her staccato of pen drumming was the *ping* of her calendar alarm, it was 12:55, time to gather up her copies and head to the conference room.

She followed the herd down the hall into the room with the giant table that easily sat
thirty people taking her usual seat beside Kaelyn and across from Dan, whose seat was currently empty.  There weren’t assigned seats but even corporate drones, especially corporate drones, are creatures of habit, and no one would dare sit in someone else’s seat, ever, it just didn’t happen.  Once again, kinda like middle school.

The large clock on the wall struck
one and the meeting started.  Mr. Jameson goes on and on about the activities of the second quarter, and still no Dan. She started doodling again. Where was he? She hadn’t seen him in a week—so odd. With the holiday thrown in, it had been three weeks, anything could have happened. He could have been in a tragic car accident, broken a leg skiing, gotten married to his hot blonde girlfriend on a whim in Vegas.  At five after one the door to the conference room opened, Dan slipped in, made hushed apologies, and took his seat. Cora felt him before she saw him, and as she looked up she almost gasped. Over their holiday break, he’d gone all mountain man and grown a beard, with that and the plaid flannel shirt he was wearing her heart stopped.  If she thought he was her cup of tea before, he was every one of her favorite things to drink now.  At just about 5’10, he had dark brown hair and whiskey brown eyes, was on the stocky side and that’s just how Cora liked him, this new development just made him all the more enticing.

“Cora…
Ms. O’Malley, are you with us today,” a voice broke through the fog in her brain. It was Jameson, crap.

“I’m sorry
, Mr. Jameson, what was that?” a small chuckle sprouted from Kaelyn’s mouth as Cora kicked her under the table.

“I was just asking if you were ready to talk about the suggestions f
or budgetary increases for the third and fourth quarters. The first half of the year created significantly more revenue than expected I was hoping you’d had time to prepare something for the rest of the department heads to review, since we’re here and all.”  Sean Jameson had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, growing up in Southie, he worked hard and ended up with a scholarship to Harvard and then business school after that for his MBA.  He knew jack shit about researching and developing new drugs; but he knew how to run a company and find the right people and with a couple of his buddies growing up who did turn out to know about research and making drugs. He built this company from a rented space in Fall River to a company with over five hundred employees and was one of the more successful small drug firms.

“Sorry, I was just thinking about h
ow many days were left until spring training started, and whether or not we actually had another chance this year.”  Cora new talking Red Sox got you out of just about every jam you could get yourself in to, opening day was a religious holiday here at Boston Pharma and Mr. J probably had two dozen different Red Sox neckties, the only kind of tie he wore, ever.

“There are
thirty-six days left until pitchers and catchers report and of course we have a chance. We’ve reversed the curse and Tito knows how to manage the boys.”  He sat down ceding the floor to Cora and looked as if his mind had already fled to baseball season.

Clearing her throat, she stood up and passed the stack of reports to her right, and handed a stack across to
Daniel to pass down his side of the conference island, as she liked to think of it, their fingers brushed and she almost lost all rational thought again.

“Well
, as you can see from the summary on the first page, and then the requests and spreadsheets following the three areas of greatest need in the firm are HR, employee health benefits contribution and IT,” she snuck a small glance over at Daniel before continuing.  “During package negotiations in the fall, our vendor informed us that the cost of the healthcare package we currently supply all our employees will be increasing. We could maintain the cost if we took on a lesser package but that would double almost every co-pay our employees make. I think that with the current budget surplus and some long term adjusting in other areas of potential waste or duplication, we can find the money to cover that internally and not pass the costs on to our workforce.  Our HR system is outdated, I’m pretty sure the program that Jim and his team use had code written by Copernicus. In their request for funding, HR let us know that the vendor who originally sold us the software we use for all HR functions and payroll is being sun-setted this spring.  We quite simply cannot afford to be in a position where we cannot issue payroll checks or other documents our employees need. If the system decided to crap out after June first, we are SOL, sorry Mr. J,” blushing she hurriedly continues, “and then there is IT.”