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Day Fourteen since the Dominocolypse, the dawn of Lamewood’s takeover.
Little by little, things were changing. It started when Lonnie got fired last week. He’d apparently been a serial violator of the no slacking policy. From the sounds of it, Dominic had caught him working on some weird blog about cat training several times and let him go. Lonnie had been our graphic design guy. His work was neverexactlymy cup of tea, but I still felt an instinctive negative reaction to Dominic making changes.
Lonnie’s replacement had showed up the following day. Her name was Pollie. She was in her early twenties, offensively pretty with bouncy blonde curls and ridiculously seductive, slitted blue eyes. My first thought was that she couldn’t possibly design anything because her boobs were too big to see the keyboard, but the damn woman didn’t even need tolookwhen she used the keys. Worse, her first revamps of some of our designs were actually good.Really good.And even more frustrating, she was super nice, too.
You get credit for making a good business decision just this once, asshole,I’d thought.
Then he fired Alek, who had been one of my favorites. He wrote a kind of silly crime piece every week that was a fan favorite. It was usually more bullshit than truth, but that wasn’t the point. It was a fun piece that I was going to miss, and he’d brought in some slick guy in his forties who was a political science major. Apparently, he’d be working with Farhad on the new politics section.
But the message was clear. The magazine was changing, and we were all on notice.
Still, it was at least something that he’d agreed to read my pitch. That was yesterday, and I was still trying to remember to play as nice as I possibly could so I didn’t piss him off before he got a chance.
Farhad swung by my desk as he was heading out for the evening. “Hey, we’re grabbing drinks atThe Otter’s Rock. You coming?”
“Who’s going?” I asked.
“The usual suspects. But Grace can’t make it so I asked Pollie if she wanted to come.”
“Ugh, you did?”
“You can bring that date of yours. Did it work out?”
I gave him a sour face. “One drunken dating app decision.One,” I said, jabbing a finger at him. “Can we let it die in peace like it deserves?” The date had been completely forgettable. Not only was the guy creepy and overconfident, I’d been unable to stop thinking of Dominic the whole time. I told myself it was kind of like what happened when I watched scary movies and couldn’t stop freaking myself out. It was abadobsession. That was Dominic. He was my recurring nightmare, even if he sometimes invaded my dreams and did horrible, dirty things to me.
“Sure, but, uh, I forgot my wallet.” Farhad pulled a face, clearly trying to impersonate my bad date. “Do you happen to–”
I slapped him on the chest, grinning. “Shut up.” I had given Farhad and Elizabeth a full run-down of the disaster of my date. Aside from not clicking with him, my date was also a borderline conman when it came to getting free meals. The conversation had been single syllables from his end and long rants about my career and father from mine. I left feeling emptied out and unheard. He left with a free steak dinner and a few beers. Then I’d made the mistake of telling my friends about it, and now they couldn’t stop giving me shit.
* * *
Ever since thehangover from hell followed me into a day of working for Dominic, I decided I was going to be a one drink girl for the foreseeable future. I ordered something fruity and girly with a little umbrella and sipped it at the bar while listening to Elizabeth rant about how some survival show she watched was pissing her off.
“Seriously, it’s obnoxious. Like she claims she has a sort of British accent because she ‘grew up’ in the UK. But she was born in the US and didn’t move to the UK until she was way older. Like twenty or something. You don’t just get an accent like that.”
“I’m pretty sure I heard it’s seven years old,” Pollie said. “Like if you live somewhere under the age of seven, you’re more likely to develop a permanent accent. But after seven it’s not really likely.”
“See?” Elizabeth said, jabbing a finger at Pollie. “Science has my back on this. The lady is full of shit. One second it’s bollocks this and rubbish and the next she sounds like she’s straight out of the midwest. I’m going to lose my mind if she’s not off the show soon.”
“You could try watching something with substance instead,” Farhad suggested.
“Ew,” Elizabeth curled her lip at him. “Like what, nature documentaries where monkeys hump each other?”
Farhad shook his head. “Believe it or not, there’s a pretty wide range of content out there between reality TV with accent confused women and monkey humping. Explore it sometime. You may find something you like.”
“Why do we bring him again?” Elizabeth asked me. “And that’s not a rhetorical question, Darcy. You’re being too quiet tonight. Please, make a case for Farhad’s continued existence in our friend group. If you fail, he’ll be immediately exiled.”
I rolled my eyes but pushed my drink back and took a breath, thinking hard. “Okay, well… Farhad doesn’t hit on any of us, but he’s great to have around when creeps try to flirt and we want them to get lost. So he’s basically a portable pretend boyfriend. He also–”
“Really?” he asked. “You’re going to lead with that as my best quality?”
“Hey, you have to know your audience when debating,” I said. “I’m just focusing on the things Elizabeth will appreciate most.”
He sighed. “Fair.”
“He’s also pretty good at telling us if our outfits suck or if they’re cute. Uhh,” I put my finger to my chin, pretending I couldn’t think of anything else. I winced and gave him an apologetic shrug.
Everyone laughed and Farhad shook his head at me, grinning.
