Hawthorne:Stay on your good behavior, little bro!
Salinger:I don’t want any more shit from you.
Salinger:I better not get a negative report.
Fitz:Uh oh, widdle bro is in trouble!
Hawthorne:Guess McCarthy did not in fact make Salinger suck his dick.
Whitman:Yeah, Mandy would kill him.
McCarthy:Mandy likes me.
Faulkner:Mandy likes everyone.
Fitz:But you’re not her favorite.
McCarthy:Fuck all of you.
Fitz:LANGUAGE!
Jingling makes me look up.
“Do you want the box or the dog?”
I glower down at the bright-pink box and the growling dachshund in Jenna’s arms. The dog’s wedged against her unnecessarily large Stanley cup.
“We need to move on to the next activity.” She waves the box at me.
“Such a waste of time.”
I choose the dog.
Truman is barking his head off at the pudgy corgis that languish on the bench in front of the window display like seals in the sun. I slam the café door open.
“Yum! Carbs.”
The paper sack rustles as she offers me a treat.
“You don’t want your strawberry cupcake, McCarthy?”
“I want you to get in the car so we can end this nightmare,Cupcake.”
Jenna stops short when I open the car door for her.
My teeth grind together.
She fusses with her bag while my irritation grows.
“And the PR princess has no concept of how much money it costs me to stand here, while she does her little dance: ‘How am I ever going to get in the car? Am I going to try and jump, even though I’m wearing ridiculously high heels and an inappropriate skirt? Will I look up at the sky helplessly and sigh then pretend like I have something important to do on my phone while I come up with no solutions whatsoever to a problem I alone have created?’”
“Hey!” Jenna snaps, cheeks flushed. “It’s hard being a woman in the corporate world. We have to do everything a man does except in a pencil skirt and high heels.”
“You don’t have to dress like that for me, Cupcake.” I lean on the car door. “I have several software engineers who show up for work in stained animal-themed onesies.”
“Oh, really? That’s interesting in a defense company.” She makes a thoughtful hum, then she’s reaching into her enormous bottomless pit of a purse that would put Mary Poppins to shame.
“We’re going to be here forever while she tries to fish out her pen and a notebook.” I sigh. “The car, Cupcake.”
