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I clench my jaw. “Gwen… let’s talk about the message you just took.”
I leave the annoying ‘CALL KATE!’ Post-it up for fear that if I remove it, she’ll replace it with another.
The minute she leaves, it will come down.
“I’m assuming that was Brian Campbell, my PI?” I scan the message she wrote, then read it aloud: “Brian—back from trip to Arizona. Saw his nieces, had a good visit. Great weather, so he took his nieces to the park to play pickleball a few times and they all had fun. Call him ASAP, please.”
Surely hearing it aloud will help her see the faults in it.
I wait for her to apologize.
She doesn’t.
So, I crumple it up to make a point.
“Hey!” she gasps.
I make a show of taking a three-point shot into the basketball hoop pinned to the wall. The paper tumbles into the trash can below. “Three points.”
“That had a message on it.”
“All you had to do is tell me he wants a call back. The stuff about his visit with family is clutter that I don’t need to be made aware of.”
“You could ask him about his nieces or something…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. It seemed relevant to me.”
“That’s because you’re too nice for your own good, Gwen.” I glance at the clock wall. “In ten minutes, I have my next call. Think you could get through a couple more business items, in that time? How did it go talking with Pete about those audio edits?”
“Well, he was up all night with Maria.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You do know he and his wife just had a little girl, right? Maria was born on Friday evening.”
“Okay, this isn’t working.” I push back from my desk and stride over to the chin-up bar I have mounted on the wall by the basketball hoop. Maybe it will make me feel better—less restless—if I get my muscles burning.
I grip the cool bar and hoist myself up.
My muscles protest.
I force them to work. Mind over matter.
I grunt with my chin resting on the bar and lower down so I can repeat.
“Should I…” she squeaks.
“Continue,” I say before heaving myself up for the third repetition.
“Okay… Well, this sure is different as far as meetings go… never had this before in Shipping. Well, guess I’ll do my best.”
She then rattles off a whole story about how Pete enjoys being a father but has been having difficulty getting through his editing jobs due to a lack of sleep.
“And, of course, that’s expected,” she adds, as if I should be very interested. “When Manuel—you know, Warehouse Ops, the big guy?—when he and Gabriella had baby number three, he had to take two full weeks off just so he’d be up for operating the forklift safely. I mean, Pete’s not operating heavy machinery, but still, those edits require attention to detail. Are you going to send him a gift?”
“A gift?” I grunt as I pull my weight up for a sixth time.
“Like a onesie or something. There are really cute ones these days, with print on demand. Maybe one with little headphones on the front since Pete’s a sound guy.”
“I will not be buying Pete a gift. I need him to edit the intro to this week’s podcast by tomorrow.”
“Oof. That’s going to be tough.”
“I don’t care if it’s tough. Life is tough.” I grunt as I touch my chin to the bar for the last time, then lower down until my sneakers touch the floor.
