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"No, baby," she said, pulling Felix's hand away from a package of Gummi Bears dangling from the shelf. Pauline swore they put those things at kid level just so their parents would be bullied into buying them. She had seen more than one mother relent to a screaming kid just so he'd shut up. Pauline didn't play that game, and Felix knew it. If he tried anything, she would snatch him up and leave the store, even if that meant abandoning a half-filled shopping cart.
She turned down the bakery aisle, nearly smacking into a grocery cart. The man behind the buggy laughed good-naturedly, and Pauline managed a smile.
"Have a good day," he said.
"You too," she returned.
That, she thought, was the last time she was going to be nice to anybody this morning. She'd tossed and turned all night, then gotten up at three so she could run on the treadmill, put her face on, fix breakfast for Felix and get him ready for school. Long gone were her single days when she could spend all night partying, go home with whoever looked good, then roll out of bed the next morning twenty minutes before it was time to get to work.
Pauline ruffled Felix's hair, thinking she didn't miss it a bit. Though getting laid every now and then would've been a damn gift from heaven.
"Cupcakes," she said, relieved to find several stacks lined up along the front of the bakery counter. Her relief quickly left when she saw that every single one was pastel with Easter bunnies and multicolored eggs on top. The note she'd gotten from the school had specified nondenominational cupcakes, but Pauline wasn't sure what that meant, other than Felix's extremely expensive private school was brimming with politically correct bullshit. They wouldn't even call it an Easter Party—it was a Spring Party that just happened to fall a few days before Easter Sunday. What religion didn't celebrate Easter? She knew the Jews didn't get Christmas, but for the love of God, Easter was all about them. Even the Pagans got the bunny.
"All right," Pauline said, handing Felix her purse. He slung it over his shoulder the same way she did, and Pauline felt a pang of angst. She worked in interior design. Just about every man in her life was a flaming mo. She'd have to make an effort to meet some straight men soon for both their sakes.
There were six cupcakes in each box, so Pauline scooped up five boxes, thinking the teachers would want some. She couldn't stand most of the faculty at the school, but they loved Felix, and Pauline loved her son, so what was an extra four seventy-five to feed the fat cows who took care of her baby?
She carried the boxes to the front of the store, the smell making her feel hungry and nauseated at the same time, like she could eat every one of them until it made her sick enough to spend the next hour in the toilet. It was too early to smell anything with frosting, that was for sure. She turned around and checked on Felix, who was dragging his feet behind her. He was exhausted, and it was her fault. She contemplated getting him the bag of Gummi Bears he'd wanted, but her cell phone started ringing as soon as she put the cupcakes on the checkout belt and all was forgotten when she recognized the number.
"Yeah?" she asked, watching the boxes slowly make their way down the belt toward the slope-shouldered cashier. The woman was so large that her hands barely met in the middle, like a T. Rex or a baby seal.
"Paulie." Morgan, her boss, sounded frantic. "Can you believe this meeting?"
He was acting like he was on her side, but she knew he'd stab her in the back the minute she let her guard down. She'd enjoy watching him pack up his office after she produced the email at the meeting. "I know," she commiserated. "It's horrible."
"Are you at the grocery store?"
He must have heard the beeps from the scanner. The T. Rex was ringing up each box individually, even though they were all the same. If Pauline hadn't been on the phone, she would have jumped over the counter and scanned them herself. She moved to the end of the checkout and grabbed a couple of plastic bags to expedite the operation. Cradling her phone between her ear and shoulder, she asked, "What do you think's gonna happen?"
"Well, it's clearly not your fault," he said, but she would've bet her right one that the bastard had told his boss that very thing.
"It's not yours, either," she countered, though Morgan had recommended the upholsterer in the first place, probably because the guy looked thirteen and waxed his gym-toned legs to shiny perfection. She knew the little tart was working the gay connection with Morgan, but he was dead wrong if he thought Pauline was going to be the odd girl out. It had taken her sixteen years to work her way up from secretary to assistant to designer. She'd spent endless nights at the Atlanta School of Art and Design getting her degree, dragging into work every morning so she could pay the rent, finally getting to a position where she could breathe a little, could afford to bring a kid into the world the right way—and then some. Felix had all the right clothes, all the good toys, and he went to one of the most expensive schools in the city. Pauline hadn't stopped with her boy, either. She'd gotten her teeth fixed and laser-corrected her eyes. Every week she got a massage, every other week she got a facial, and there wasn't a damn root in her hair that showed anything but sassy brown thanks to the girl she saw in Peachtree Hills every month and a half. There was no way in hell she was giving up any of that. Not by a long shot.
It would serve Morgan well to remember where Pauline had started. She'd worked the secretarial pool back before wire transfers and online banking, when they kept all the checks in a wall safe until they could be deposited at the end of the day. After the last office remodel, Pauline had taken a smaller office just so the safe would end up in her space. Just in case, she'd even had a locksmith come in after hours to reset the combination, and she was the only one who knew it. It drove Morgan crazy that he didn't know the combination, and it was a damn good thing he didn't, because the copy of the email covering her ass was locked behind that steel door. For days, she had conjured countless scenarios of herself opening the safe with a flourish, shoving the email in Morgan's face, shaming him in front of their boss and the client.
"What a mess," Morgan sighed, going for the dramatic. "I just can't believe—"
Pauline took her purse from Felix and dug around for her wallet. He stared longingly at the candy bars as she slid her debit card through the reader and went through the motions. "Uh-huh," she said as Morgan yapped in her ear about what a bastard the client was, how he wouldn't stand by while Pauline's good name was dragged through the mud. If anyone had been around to appreciate it, she would've feigned gagging herself.
"Come on, baby," she said, gently pushing Felix toward the door. She cradled the phone to her ear as she took the bags by the handles, then wondered why she had bothered to bag the boxes in the first place. Plastic boxes, plastic bags; the women at Felix's school would be horrified on behalf of the environment. Pauline stacked the cupcakes back together, pressing against the top box with her chin. She dropped the empty bags in the trash, and used her free hand to dig into her purse for her car keys as she walked through the sliding doors.
"This is absolutely the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my career," Morgan groaned. Despite the crick in her neck, Pauline had forgotten she was still on the phone.
