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"So, yeah, you're Drew's new PA, right? Greta?" Betty asked, standing to lead Gracie into the open-plan office. Most of the space was taken up with a bank of desks. Laura was settling down to work at one of the desks, she didn't look up as Gracie walked past her.
“That’s ri -”
“He hasn’t had one before,” Betty said, coming to stop by a small desk just in front of a frosted glass door. “That’s Drew’s office. This is your desk, we had to move it from storage.”
She cast Gracie an accusing look. "Thank you," Gracie said slowly. It was important to get on with everyone because information could come from any source, but Betty gave her an unimpressed look.
“It was really heavy…anyway, Drew phoned earlier and said he’s gonna be late in today. He got mugged last night.”
“Wow, that’s awful. Is he ok?”
“I guess so, he’s still coming in later, so it couldn’t’ve been that bad. Ok, let me know if there’s anything else you need,” Betty said, already turned away. It wasn’t entirely clear to Gracie what Betty would do if she told her there was anything she needed.
Gracie settled down to her new desk. The company had provided her with a laptop, but until Chesney arrived there wasn’t anything for her to do. She found herself wishing she’d brought in the coffee that Klarov had given her. She’d only taken a few sips of it on the drive over.
Instead, she got out her phone and angrily texted Klarov:
Your stupid taser got confiscated by security!
He texted back immediately:
Seriously? You put it in your handbag?? You owe me a new taser.
Gracie made a low noise of annoyance. One text from Klarov was enough to rile her up. Her phone beeped with a second text from him.
Those aren’t cheap you know
Gracie snorted
“Hey, new girl, keep it down!” someone yelled. Gracie looked up quickly and saw a hipster man wearing a bowtie and cloth cap, strolling toward her desk.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you,” Gracie said, trying to hold back the sarcasm.
“Yeah, well you did.”
Gracie sat back in her seat. Her first morning was not going well at all.
Five minutes before noon,Betty sidled over to Gracie’s desk.
“How’s it going?”
Gracie shrugged. “Kinda boring, but I’ll probably miss it when Andrew gets here and I actually have to do some work.”
Betty smirked. “I heard Gussie was snippy with you.”
“Gussie?” Gracie asked, suspecting she already knew who Betty meant.
Betty nodded her head toward the hipster man from earlier, who was sitting at his desk, engrossed in his work.
“Yeah, I think I was breathing too loudly.”
Betty giggled. “His full name is August. He yelled at me this morning too.” She came around Gracie’s desk and perched on the edge before continuing in a lowered voice, “All the journalists think they’re better than us. Gussie is extra-pissy today. He just had his latest article spiked.”
“Spiked?”
Betty’s eyes lit up with all the joy of a gossip who’s found a new person to tell the latest rumor.
“Ooh, don’t you know about this?” Betty said, before excitedly telling Gracie about the recent leaks of unpublished articles from the magazine.
