“Hey now, it wasn’t just us! He chewed through the best teams at SequoiaandGoodman-Palisade.”
“And now it’s Jenna’s time to shine.” Bethany taps her perfectly manicured nails on the desk.
Translation,now it is Jenna’s time to be thrown into the Colosseum for the McCarthy-sized gladiator to rip to pieces.
Arty mumbles something like “Good luck.”
“We’ve already been through an HR review. I am in no mood to rehash it. It’s bad for the baby.”
Having a mother like Bethany is bad for the baby.
“Go prepare for the RDC press conference.”
I am dismissed.
Hannah is waitingat my desk with two doughnuts.
“I grabbed them before Cameron could steal them all. I know he hides them in his backpack to take home.”
I take the chocolate-frosted one and shove half of it in my mouth.
Truman hops up onto my desk then up onto the shelf I use to hold errant papers.
“So, I’m assuming Berthy didn’t call you in there because she finally let hubby the cheater talk her into naming their baby Jenna?”
The rest of the doughnut disappears.
“At least she was too busy getting off thinking about how she’ll get to fire me soon and thus didn’t complete the tirade about how I seduced her husband and bewitched him and now all he talks about is how he hopes the baby has boobs like mine.”
“’Tis a seven-layer dip of awful.”
“I’m going to be fired.”
“Right now? Call an employment lawyer.”
“No. Bethany’s too sneaky. You know the big project that I was so excited about? Yeah, McCarthy is a freaking psycho. He punched a hole through the wall.”
“He what? Call the police. It’s a pattern of toxic behavior,” Hannah says, railing against the unfairness of it. “The only reason Prism PR was hired was because he literally body-slammed that HopeWorks director guy into a fountain and he got a concussion.”
“I don’t care about the punching. But he won’t listen to my ten-step plan, and I seriously doubt he read the briefing for the press conference. Bethany knows I’m going to fail. They didn’t give me this project because they thought I could do a good job. They did it to have an excuse to fire me.”
“Ain’t that just the way.” Hannah offers me the other doughnut, and I take it gratefully.
“Give a sure-to-fail project to a woman so they can point and say, ‘See? We know she couldn’t do it. After all, she has a period.’”
The sugar and fried carbs are kicking in. Things are looking up. Everything is possible with donuts.
“I’m going to prove them wrong. I’m going to do it. I’m going to bring McCarthy to heel!” I pump my fist.
Hannah grabs one of the icing-covered napkins from Truman before he can eat it.
“Throw me off of that glass cliff and I will fly! McCarthy is not going to cost me this job. I need this job. I’m not fully vested in my 401K, plus the transit pass discount is a critical component of my budget.”
“And health and pet insurance…”
“Yeah, that too. But the free food.” I pick icing out of my cleavage.
“Let’s still look for new jobs anyway—you know, just in case the universe and, I don’t know,gravityhave other plans.”
