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“Mr. Carlyle has given me some work to get started with, so I should probably get started with it,” she smiled placatingly. “I want to make a good impression.”
Ellen’s milky gaze travelled down the length of Sophie’s body, finding her wanting all along the way before finally settling at her toes with an expression of what might very well have been actual disgust.
“Then you might not have chosen heels that wouldn’t be out of place in a red lit window in Amsterdam.”
Sophie couldn't believe she was being spoken to so rudely.
“Do you have a problem with me, Ellen?”
“I have a problem with girls who show up late, dressed as if they’re about to entertain a bachelor party.”
Sophie looked down at herself. Her skirt was above the knee, but only just, and the heels were white pumps with two inch heels. Okay. Maybe a little fancy, but she had wanted to make a good impression.
“If my boss has a problem with how I dress, I’m sure he’ll let me know.”
“Mr. Carlyle wouldn't lower himself to speak to you about such things. That's my job.”
“It’s the office manager’s job to slut-shame new employees?”
Sophie heard Sandy gasp with laughter.
Her first day was turning into an absolute mess, but what was new. Sophie’s life was always a mess in one way or another. Why would that change just because she finally had what other people would call a ‘good job’?
“I’m reporting you to HR, young lady.”
“That’s convenient. Then, when they see me, I’ll ask them for a form to report you to HR too. Or do you have those forms, seeing as you’re the office manager?”
Ellen’s eyes narrowed past the point that they would have been useful for seeing almost anything. Her lips pursed tighter than a canine’s sphincter. She turned, spun on her half-inch sensible heel, and walked away.
“Oh my god,” Sandy let out a gasp of laughter. “I’ve literally never seen anybody talk to her like that before. You just made an enemy.”
“Seemed to me that we were enemies the moment I walked in the door. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing.”
“No. You look hot!”
Sandy wittingly, or perhaps unwittingly played into the whole hooker theme. Sophie was no longer sure that she was actually dressed appropriately, even though she’d checked the outfit three times in the mirror before leaving her apartment, and taken one thing off as Coco Chanel famously suggested. Probably shouldn't have been her panties, but who was she to question a fashion great?
“I wasn’t really trying to look hot. I was trying to look professional.”
“Ellen wouldn’t be happy unless you had a lace collar and a Victorian bustle. Don’t worry about it.”
Sophie was worried about it. She’d pissed off two people in the first half-hour. One of them was very important, and the other thought she was.
“I better get to work," she said. “There's a lot to do here, looks like.”
“The policy manuals are in binders along the back wall, or searchable through the intranet,” Sandy offered helpfully. “Mr. Carlyle should assign someone to mentor you. There’s a lot involved. The last environmental compliance manager…”
“What?” Sophie asked as Sandy trailed off.
“You're not supposed to talk this way anymore, but he went crazy. Showed up to work one day shirtless with nipple tassels and told us he was going to Aruba.”
“Ellen wouldn't have liked that.”
“She did not,” Sandy confirmed.
“I’ll try to stay sane. No promises though,” Sophie said. All of the nerves she had felt before coming into the building now felt completely justified. Apex was a strange company.
It was supposed to be boring. Cubicles. Fluorescent lighting. Hard-wearing, high-traffic carpeting. Places like these were where dreams came to die. That had been her main source of anxiety when she took the job, that she'd made a mistake, sold her soul for a 401k and benefits with dental. But hell, a soul wasn’t worth much if you didn’t have benefits and dental. This was the real world. This was what she had worked her way through school for. She was not going to freak out and have some existential crisis now. Like Carlyle said, there wasn’t time.
Chapter 3
“How was the first day of your new job?”
Amanda, Sophie’s therapist, was always poised and elegant. She wore her client’s fees on her sleeve. And her shirt. And her skirt. And her shoes. Sophie had spent so many sessions staring at various pairs of shoes and mentally working out how many hours of whining about her life it would take to pay for some of those, and wondering if maybe she should quit therapy and just buy fancy shoes instead. And maybe some wigs. Amanda wore wigs. Today she was wearing a sleek blonde bob, and rimmed glasses with no lenses in them.
There was no way Sophie could ever have afforded a therapist like Amanda on her own. But she’d lucked into a very generous sliding scale program while she was doing her MBA. She only had to pay twenty-five dollars a session, which was pretty good, all things considered. When she graduated, she’d expected Amanda to hike the price, but Amanda hadn’t brought it up, and at this point, Sophie wasn’t going to bring it up either.
