What Stays in Vegas (6 page)

A knock at the door startled me from my thoughts.  I turned around to find a pretty woman, who I guessed to be in her fifties, wearing a peach blouse, white pants, and a smoking hot pair of gold stilettos.  She smiled and introduced herself as Sharon Bloom, head of Human Resources.  Margaret Sherman she was not.  When Margaret Sherman’s sour face walks into a room you want to jump out the window, but Sharon practically lit the place up.  She spent the next hour showing me around the office and introducing me to about three thousand people whose names I immediately forgot.  We zigzagged our way through all three floors, meeting engineers, draftsmen, secretaries, accountants, human resources reps, and countless other people, who, in all honesty, I would probably never see again for the duration of my three months in Vegas.

"Oh," said Sharon after we had arrived back outside my office, "I almost forgot to introduce you to Chris and Dan.  You'll be working quite a bit with those two, come on."

I followed Sharon into the office immediately next to mine and suddenly felt like I was back in college.  Their office was at least twice the size of my own but resembled a dorm room more than a workspace.  It was divided down the middle by two video game chairs positioned in front of a flat screen television.  A trophy on top of the mini-fridge read
Flamhauser-Geist Ping-Pong Champions - 2008,
and a row of empty beer cans lined the windowsill behind the television.  Seated in the game chairs were the two cute guys I had smiled at by the water cooler. 

"Tessa, this is Chris Brewer and Dan Bryant," said Sharon.  "Dan is the one annihilating aliens at the moment."

"Nice to meet you," said Chris.  He jumped up to shake my hand.  "We were just taking a little, uh, break."  He glanced at his watch, seeming to remember that it wasn't anywhere close to lunch time.   "Kendra got us the video games as sort of a stress reliever." 

"Oh, please," I said.  "No need to explain to me!"  I smiled when I noticed a familiar emblem on the front of his polo shirt - a pink kitten caught mid-spin around a stripper pole.  "Classy shirt, by the way." 

"Yeah?  I've got about six more at home," said Chris.  "Dan and I work on The Jiggly Kitty account with Kendra, so we're always getting free goodies."

“So what’s the Kitty like back in Massachusetts?” asked Dan over his shoulder.

“It's okay, I guess.  Relatively speaking."  I shrugged.   "I've only been to one of them, and just one time.  I don’t really have much to compare it to."

“Really?”  said Dan.  “Chris and I go there for lunch everyday.  We design the parking lot, and they give us free access to the buffet.  It’s a sweet little deal we have worked out.”

“He’s joking,” said Chris, turning slightly pink.  “I wouldn’t eat lunch at a strip club if my life depended on it.”

“But dinner you’re cool with?” I asked.

“And what kind of situation would lead to your life depending on eating lunch at a strip club?”  asked Dan. 

“Okay, okay,” interrupted Sharon.  “You’ve officially met Chris and Dan, shall we move on?  She rolled her eyes and gently pulled me by the elbow as a signal that it was time to move on to meet much less interesting people. 

“You know,” I said, as we turned to leave, “it’s much colder in Massachusetts.  So I think the strippers just wear more clothes.”

***

As soon as I had settled back into my office, Chris appeared with a legal pad full of  handwritten scribbles that needed to be typed.

“I hate to do this to you on your first day,” he said.

“Whatever,” I told him, “I’m a secretary, typing is my sole purpose in life.” 

“Cool, thanks.”  He dropped the papers in front of me, along with a snack sized Butterfinger bar. “And also, that’s a little sad.”

I laughed.  “Well, someday I hope to find another purpose.  Perhaps photocopying.”

“It’s good to have goals,” he said.  He lingered in my doorway a bit and then motioned to the candy.  “Dan and I have stock in Nestle, so um, come by whenever you want."  His cheeks turned pink for the second time since I'd met him, and he adjusted his glasses.   He smiled sheepishly at me and then quickly disappeared from my doorway.

Chris was kind of hot in a Clark Kent sort of way, and he was already nicer than ninety percent of the people I worked with back home.  A quick scan of his hand had revealed no wedding ring. 

"Get a grip
,
Tessa.  You have a perfectly nice married man waiting for you back home."  I shook the thought from my head and dove into my first assignment.

***

I had a meeting with Kendra before lunch, as she wanted to give me the rundown on Jiggly Kitty President, and Flamhauser-Geist VIP client, Rob Dorfman, before he came in for his weekly status meeting the next day.  The term “VIP client” refers to someone whose butt must be kissed on a regular basis, regardless of how much you despise their personality, and Rob Dorfman’s personality ranked right up there with dog shit and rocks.  You would think that somebody whose entire life and business was focused around beautiful naked women would have something to smile about, but this was not the case.  I think that when Rob Dorfman looks at a stripper all he sees is dollar signs, and they tend to get in the way of the important parts.  He is not a pleasant man to say the least, and back in Massachusetts I was lucky enough to only deal with him over the telephone.  But since The Jiggly Kitty is headquartered here in Las Vegas, my luck was about to run out.

While Kendra rifled through one of her desk drawers I wandered around her office looking at the paintings on the walls.  They were quite good.  An old man and a little boy, three girls on a bench.  They were mostly of people doing everyday things, and I couldn’t help but notice that the colors of each painting accented the office decor perfectly, as if they had been painted to match.  I was surprised to see the initials KS painted lightly in the corner, and was about to ask Kendra if she had painted them herself, when her desk drawer slammed shut.

“This,” she said, holding up an 8 x10 photograph, “is Rob Dorfman.” 

She actually had a picture of the guy in her desk.  Four smiling people were giving a thumbs up in front of a glass door sporting The Jiggly Kitty logo.  The photo had been taken at the grand opening of the latest Jiggly Kitty project, and from the smiles on their faces you would think they had found a cure for cancer.  The two men on the outside I did not recognize, but there was Kendra in the middle, and next to her, she pointed out, was Rob Dorfman.  I busted out laughing.  He was rosy cheeked and about four inches shorter than her.  His suit probably cost more than I make in a year, but he was practically swimming in it. 

Son of a bitch,
I thought,
he looks like a kid at his Bar Mitzvah.

“No way!” I said looking up at Kendra.  “How the heck old is he?”  All the years that I had spent bowing down to the little slime ball, calling him "Sir," and
this
is what he looked like?  I suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“Twenty-six,” she said.  “Didn’t you know?”
“No!” I said.  “I always assumed he was in his forties!”

“Nope.  He started the Kitty right out of college.  His dad gave him a handful of millions to start up his own business, and that’s what he came up with.  The little freak.”

I handed Kendra back the photograph and fell into her white leather couch.  I could not believe that I had actually called somebody two years younger than me “Sir.”

“You should hear the way he speaks to
me
,” she said.  “But Dad tells me that his wish is my command, so what choice do I have?”  She plopped down on the couch next to me and continued to explain that we had six projects in the works for Jiggly Kitty’s throughout Nevada and Arizona, and that every Tuesday morning Rob came by the office to check on their progress. 

Arrangements had to be made each week before his big arrival.  First off, Rob refused to drink Flamhauser-Geist brewed coffee, yet he also refused to bring his own, so it was my responsibility to fetch him a Venti low-fat, no whip, mocha from Starbucks.  Even worse, I must time the coffee purchase perfectly, because if it was not piping hot I would be in for a verbal assault.  Second, the two potted palm trees in the conference room must be relocated due to a severe allergic reaction he had in Hawaii when he was four.  Finally, all pages over the office intercom must cease because Rob cannot stand the sound of Roberta Mallard's voice.  I will admit that the last rule made me giggle.  Kendra went through about fifteen other rules and requirements, when I put my hand up and stopped her.

“What about the men’s room?”  I asked.  “Don’t tell me that he uses the same facilities as the rest of us plebeians?”

“Believe it or not, he actually does poop with the commoners.”  She cleared her throat and looked down at her lap.  “But there is one tiny detail.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s your job to wipe.”

- 8 -

Okay, okay, so it wasn't
really
my job to wipe, but everything else Kendra had told me was true.  It was 10:25 a.m. on Tuesday, and I nervously checked the clock on my computer for the millionth time.  The two potted palm trees had been dragged into the storage room, Roberta had been told to keep her mouth shut, and in five minutes I would be leaving for Starbucks.  God willing, I would be back a few minutes before Rob’s arrival toting a Venti low-fat no whip mocha.  If there is one thing I have learned from being an administrative assistant, it is that
you are always to blame
.   Let’s say that for some odd reason Starbucks is unable to make mochas today.  I would fully expect Rob to berate me in front of my coworkers for being such a stupid idiot that I didn’t have the foresight to go to a Starbucks that had mocha-making capabilities.  Keeping that in mind, I mapped out the locations of two other local Starbucks just in case anything went wrong.

This is my fucking life
, I thought as I closed out of Google Maps.

While blaming the assistant comes naturally for a person like Rob Dorfman - all managers, clients, and other assorted higher-ups are guilty of it as well.  Take Fed Ex for example.  Once a package of precious engineering plans has been properly labeled and deposited into a drop box, one would think that full responsibility is then transferred to Federal Express.  That is not quite true.  The assistant's responsibility does not end until that package arrives safely on the desk of whom it was intended. 

If the Fed Ex truck breaks down, or the plane crashes, or the delivery man drops dead, those things are all your fault.  Of course they won’t say it explicitly.  Your boss could never look you in the eye and say “Tessa, it is your fault that Joe Delivery man ate one too many blocks of cheese and had a heart attack en route to town hall,” because to say it is to sound ridiculous.  But the thought is in their head, even if it is on a subconscious level.  They need to blame somebody, and Federal Express is much too general of a concept when you, an idiot human being, are conveniently standing right there in front of them. 

Luckily, Starbucks was in perfect working order and I was back at the office five minutes before Rob’s red carpet arrival.  I said
hello to Charlene and stepped into the elevator.  Just as the doors were about to close a rosy cheeked tyke of a man came rushing through the front entrance and shouted at me to hold the elevator.

The lack of a "please" or "thank you," plus the fact that I had just seen his picture, confirmed that I was about to share an elevator with the dreaded Rob Dorfman himself. 

“Thirty-two,” he commanded, stepping in beside me.  He couldn’t even push his own floor button. 

“Thirty-two,” I repeated.  “Me too.” 

I smiled at him as I pushed the button, but he couldn't have possibly shown any less of an interest in me.  The floor numbers lit up one by one as we rode in silence.  I restrained myself from taking a sip of his coffee and letting out one of those sounds you make after drinking a Coca-Cola on a ninety degree day.  He exited the elevator ahead of me, not bothering to hold the office door open, and scurried straight to reception where I heard him exchange a few heated words with Roberta.  I wonder if she had the nerve to ask Rob Dorfman about his eating habits.  

I headed back to my office where I found Kendra dropping off a stack of documents for photocopying.

  “He’s here,” I said,  trading her the coffee for the documents.

“God help us.  Wish me luck!” She thanked me for the coffee then made the sign of the cross over her chest.  "And bring these into the conference room when you're done, please."

As she took off for the conference room, I heard voices coming from Chris and Dan’s office.  I stopped in on my way to the photocopier to see what they were up to.

“You’re smart, you’re funny, and people like you!”  said Dan.  He pointed a red pen in Chris's direction from behind his desk.

“So are you, buddy,” said Chris, pointing a blue pen right back.  “And don’t let anybody tell you differently.” 

“You know this is ridiculous,” I said.  “He’s just a man.  A tiny, childlike, little man.  Nobody should cause this kind of fear in other people.  Unless you’re a murderer or something.”