The Next Best Thing (24 page)

The Monday following my father's birthday party, I received an interesting phone message.

“Sophie wants you to go ahead and take another two weeks of vacation; just to make sure that you're well enough to come back to work.” That was the voice mail Erin left on my cell phone.

“Well enough?” I didn't like the sound of that. At all.

What am I? Unstable and deranged, now? I wanted answers, and since I repeatedly kept getting Sophie's voice mail, I decided to stop by Erin's apartment in North Kansas City, to get the lowdown on the happenings in the office.

 

Erin opened the door with flour in her hair, and explained that she was in the middle of cooking her first soul-food dinner. Roasted chicken, macaroni and cheese, and candied yams was the order Erin's new boyfriend, Lee, had placed for dinner.

I tried not to laugh at her too much, but it was hilarious because the poor thing didn't have a
clue
as to what the hell she was doing.

“So, how are things at work?” I asked Erin, adding more milk and butter to her overly sticky macaroni and cheese.

“Everything's going pretty well,” she said, adding way too much nutmeg to the yams. “Sophie is working on the Dawn McKinney sweet sixteen, and she also put me in charge of E-Money's album release party.”

I reeled back, feeling like I had just been sucker punched by Mike Tyson. Sophie obviously had gone out of her way to convince Vincent and E-Money to give SWE another chance. Which does not look good on my track record.

“And I hope you don't mind,” Erin said, “but I have temporarily set up shop in your office, just until you get back to work, of course.”

My
office? Oh, no she didn't!

Why do I always see these things in hindsight? Why couldn't I have figured out before now that Erin's aww-shucks-I'm-just-a-naïve-small-town-hick routine was just that. A routine.

“Good luck pulling off the E-Money event with just a ten-thousand-dollar budget,” I snickered.

“Well actually, Hennessey has stepped in to sponsor the party and they've put up seventy-five thousand dollars towards the budget,” Erin said with a condescending smile.

I suddenly felt as though I was onboard a sinking ship.

That's fifteen-thousand dollars in commission that slipped through my fingers, and right into the hands of a still-wet-behind-the-ears rookie who learned everything she knows about the business from me. In fact, Erin was a royal fuck-up the whole two years she interned for us. Just a nitwit to the Nth degree, and she only just recently got to the point where she didn't have to be micromanaged all day long.

I would have expected this disloyalty from anyone else in the office, but not Erin, my little protégée. I thought we were tight. Solid. She was to me, what I thought I was to Sophie.

“So you're heading up your first event,” I smiled, even though I was seething inside. “Congratulations, Erin.”

“Thank you!” she gushed. “I'm just so excited! And I don't know what I'm going to do with all that money; I've never had that much at one time before.”

“Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out,” I said sweetly, while discreetly over-salting the chicken.

Choke on that, bitch.

Ironically, E-Money's rap song was playing on KPRS when I jumped in my Navigator after leaving Erin's apartment.

“Make ya mama and daddy proud, and POP dat boo-tee! POP dat boo-tee! POP dat boo-tee!”

“Pop Dat Boo-Tee” is the first single off E-Money's debut album and has been getting tons of airplay lately. The single is already platinum, and the album hasn't even come out yet. Just more salt in the wounds. But who knew? I sure as hell didn't. Because had I known, I would have taken that little ten-thousand dollars, bought a party-in-a-box, and called it a day.

Now Erin has a seventy-five thousand dollar budget to work with. If she does everything right, the party should be a smash and she will be on her way to blowing up, right along with E-Money.

In the immortal words of Whodini, “It was done so sweet it had to be a plan.”

See, this is exactly why I don't like taking time off. Out of sight is out of mind, and your absence leaves the door wide open for someone else to step in and steal your shine. And apparently your fucking office too.

Tori out—Erin in. That's not so hard to conceive, especially in light of the fact that Erin is Sophie's niece.

Maybe I'm reading too much into the situation, but I'm going to get some answers, first thing tomorrow morning.

 

Since Sophie took away my electronic passkey on the day she sent me on “vacation,” I had to use trickery in order to get upstairs to SWE's suite of offices.

“Jose!” I said, greeting the security guard stationed in the lobby. “Long time no see, buddy.”

“Good to see you again, Ms. Carter,” Jose said. “Are you enjoying your time off?”

“Oh, it was lovely,” I said. “But now it's back to the grindstone.”

Jose looked confused. “I was told you wouldn't be back for at least another two weeks.”

“Well, that was the plan, but I talked to Sophie last night and we agreed it was best for me to cut my vacation short and come on back to work,” I said.

Jose looked unsure. He was reaching for the phone to call upstairs for verification, when I slid a Krispy Kreme box across the reception desk.

“It's a full dozen,” I smiled. “I know how you love the strawberry glazed.”

Jose opened the box, and in his eyes, those doughnuts gleamed like polished diamonds. He handed me a passkey. “Thank you, Ms. Carter,” he said, practically inhaling a doughnut. “Welcome back, and you have a nice day, now!”

I took the elevator up to the sixty-eighth floor, where I slid the electronic passkey across the black security box until the light turned green. The lock to the glass door clicked, and I was in. I made sure to show up halfway through the morning, which is usually around the time Sophie decides to make it to the office.

“Good morning!” I said enthusiastically to everyone who crossed my path. A few of my co-workers looked as astonished as they did my first day back after wedding-gate, but I did not stop for chitchat. I was on a mission.

Sophie's office was my goal, and once I reached the open door I saw Erin and Sophie quietly strategizing over an open file.

“Good morning, ladies,” I said, stepping into the office. “Did you miss me?”

Erin smiled weakly, looking like a fat kid caught with a mouth full of pie.

Sophie played it cool, though. She reminded me of the Meryl Streep character in
The Devil Wears Prada
. “Tori, what a surprise,” she murmured through those wafer-thin, nearly nonexistent lips of hers.

“I'm sure it is,” I said. “But I'm not going to stay long. I just came to have a quick face-to-face meeting with you, Sophie.”

Sophie nodded to Erin to get lost, and Erin ran from the room without making eye contact with me.

So it's true. The disloyal, opportunistic heifer!

I closed the door behind Erin, and lasered in on Sophie.

There was no sense in pussyfooting around, so I immediately cut right to the chase. “Do you still plan to make me President of SWE when you retire?” I asked.

Sophie looked taken aback by the question, but her voice was calm and controlled.

“Glad you brought that up, Tori, because truthfully some things have changed in regards to the future of the business after I retire.”

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“I have decided to keep SWE in the family.”

“Really, now?” I asked. “So where does that leave me?”

“Tori,” Sophie said, as if talking to a moron. “You helped build this company to what it is today, so of course you will always have a home and a career here.”

“That still doesn't answer the question,” I insisted.

“Will you be my successor? Unfortunately not,” Sophie said. “But SWE can always use good coordinators, and that you definitely are.”

Sophie's words were like a verbal slap in the face.

All these years of personal sacrifice and this is the thanks I get, a Blahnik heel right in the fucking back. Hell, I didn't even take sick days despite having the flu and temperatures of over 103 degrees, because that was how committed I was.

“So after all these years of telling me that I was your heir apparent, you suddenly decide to groom Erin for that position?” I asked.

“Well, she
is
family,” Sophie said without a trace of emotion or loyalty towards me. “I didn't bring her here from Omaha for nothing.”

“And just when were you planning to tell me all this?” I asked.

“Just as soon as you came back off of vacation,” Sophie said blithely.

“I don't believe you. If I hadn't put two-and-two together, you would have waited until the very day you retired to give me the news,” I said, amused at the precision with which Sophie had played me all these years. “What better way to keep a workhorse working than to dangle rewards and treats in front of it to keep it focused on the task at hand? In this case, it was
Work harder, Tori. It will all pay off in the long run. You're my heir apparent, you know!
”

“And I meant that at the time, but your recent screw-ups would have cost SWE in excess of two-hundred thousand dollars if I hadn't stepped in and cleaned up your mess. I don't play about my money, Tori. I told you that on day one.”

Ooh! Didn't I say she was greedy?

I had a few lapses in judgment after going through a personal crisis, and this coldhearted woman turned on me like a rabid pit bull.

“You know, Sophie, I really wish you would have told me all this at our last meeting here in your office, because if you had, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.”

“So what are you saying, Tori?”

“Find yourself another workhorse, Sophie, because I quit!”

“So you're just going to take your ball and go home, all because you won't be the boss around here when I retire? Not exactly what I would call a team player,” Sophie said in a condescending tone.

I opened my mouth to cuss her up one side and down the other, but I held back. We could sit here and play tit for tat all day long, and it still wouldn't change the bottom line, which is that Sophie will no longer be able to use and deceive me.

“Have a lovely fucking day” were the last words I said to Sophie as I left her office for the last time.

And that right there was my
Jerry Maguire
moment. While I cleaned out my office, I was so pumped up and proud of myself, thinking,
Yeah, I told that old bitch!

It was only after I had walked back out into the light of day that I realized what I had done.

 

By the time the sun had set, I was in a complete panic.

Hysteria had taken over, because my prospects for a job equal to what I had were nil.

“What the hell am I gonna do now?” I wailed, as Nelson massaged my neck and shoulders. I had called him over to discuss my plight, because at that point he was the only person I trusted to give me a neutral assessment of the situation.

“You're going to do the only thing you can do,” Nelson counseled, “which is pick up the pieces and move on.”

Easier said than done.

I had picked up a newspaper on the way home, and perused the want ads right there in the 7-Eleven parking lot.

And guess what? Nobody is looking for an event planner.

Sophie pretty much has Kansas City locked down, anyway. Well, except for David O'Brien Designs, which is SWE's fiercest competitor. A male version of Sophie, David has shamelessly wooed away many quality employees right out from under us over the years.

In fact, the last time David stole an assistant of mine, I picked up the phone and cursed him out so thoroughly that I almost felt bad for him when I was done.

Almost.

So in light of the bad blood between us, there is no way I'm tucking my tail between my legs and asking David for a job. No way.

“I spent the best years of my life busting my ass for someone else, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it,” I moaned, feeling a pity party coming on.

“That's not true, Tori,” Nelson said. “You have a good reputation, and a wealth of creativity and experience.”

“Whoopee!” I said sarcastically. “And that's going to pay a whole lot of bills, isn't it.”

“It could if you would stop being so shortsighted and look at the bigger picture here.”

“And what would that be?” I asked, wondering what picture he was looking at, because the one in front of me was pretty fucking bleak.