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"All righty, then." Amanda grabbed the vase and carried them back to her cubicle. It was only Monday and she felt like she'd already worked a full week.
Amanda's work weeks stayed heavy after her interview with Mrs. Tonetti and Mr. Kolin. Some days were nearly back-to-back calls, and she had the feeling that if Kolin couldn't punish her with less work, he was going to try to drown her with more. The truth was that she'd never worked so hard in her life. She came in early to run through her scripts and stayed late to update her database.
She was also making a lot of money. Within the first two months at the Agency she paid off everything that she'd borrowed from Helen, and was beginning to get a start on her credit card debt. It was an enormous load off her mind.
After the quarterly calls she had several in-house calls with Forlanie. The participants got to know her and many of them greeted her by name as they checked into their conferences. Every time she did one of their calls she found herself hoping that Bill McConnell would be attending, though he never was.
The next time she spoke to Donnie Kingman he thanked her for her help. "Lansdale is a loose cannon. I'm sorry you had to take the heat for us." All the gruffness had left his voice.
"It got straightened out, so no harm done, sir. The flowers were a very thoughtful touch."
"Flowers?"
"The bouquet of mini roses with the thank you note."
There was a short silence, then Kingman said, "Oh, right, the roses. Glad you liked them."
"It absolutely wasn't necessary."
"We do like to show our appreciation," he told her. He sounded amused for some reason.
"In the future, how shall I handle Mr. Lansdale?"
"Can you arrange to have his meds adjusted?"
"I... uh..." She hadn't expected that from an executive.
"Don't worry, we deal with him on a call-by-call basis. Some days he's fine, some days I'll let you know that he needs to be deep-sixed, okay?"
"Okay."
"You're a smart gal, Amanda."
"Thank you, sir."
"What color were the roses?"
"Mauve."
"Mauve. Good. Carry on, then."
Amanda lasted eighteen months. In spite of Mrs. Tonetti’s help, Greg Kolin found ways to make Amanda’s life a nightmare. Finally she gave notice. She would do one more quarter of earnings calls and then she’d be leaving for good.
On her last call with Forlanie, she said good-bye to both Donnie Kingman and Bill McConnell. Both men expressed regrets and wished her well. She realized that she was going to miss them both, but especially Bill McConnell. They’d had some interesting conversations before and after the calls she handled for his company, and she’d started to think of him as a fatherly sort of friend she simply hadn’t met yet.
At the end of the last conference call, Donnie came on the line to thank her and said, “Amanda, do you have anything else lined up?”
“Not really. I have a couple of leads, but I’m still looking.”
“I would like to invite you to interview with Forlanie’s investor relations department. I always have room on my staff for smart, personable, hard-working people. Interested?”
She was so taken aback she hardly knew what to say. “I— If you think I’d be a good fit, yes, of course I’d be interested.”
“Great.” He gave her his assistant’s email address and told her to write and ask for an appointment. “Don’t forget to mention that I told you to do it. Claire is pretty ferocious.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Sure ‘nuff,” he said and clicked off.
