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Siobhan was leaning against the edge of my cube. She rested her head on her arm, and the freefall of clacking vintage Bakelite bracelets followed her movements.
“Are you as tragically hungover as the rest of us?” she asked.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
She yawned. “Killer evening.”
“Indeed.”
“Anyway—” She paused for dramatic effect. Siobhan was themasterof dramatic effect. It was almost as if she purposefully put the ellipses in when she was speaking. “Checking in to make sure that you’re still the number two for the film channel launch on New Year’s Eve?”
“I am.”
“I’ve seen all the plans, and it’s going to be a great night, but I’m a bit worried from a staffing resource POV.”
Siobhan was always undermining the actual project manager by talking to the “second in command.” She often pitted Beth and me against each other for no other reason than needing something to do. As if she was trying to plant seeds of doubt in our heads about the one part of the party, launch, or stunt that might go wrong or where we might eventually fail, so that she could swoop in at the last moment and tell the higher-ups how she saved the day. Office politics are the absolute worst.
“We’re good. Beth has enlisted some former interns to help—we have at least a dozen confirmed—and I’ve got a rough draft of the event schedule in front of me. The whole party is in great shape.”
“Glad I can always count on you two. What would I do without you?” Siobhan clacked away, leaving a mist of trendy celebrity perfume behind.
In typical Siobhan fashion, she had taken a half-baked brainstorm idea—to launch our new film channel on New Year’s with an exclusive gold invitation-only party—and turned it into a giant project that should have been run at her director level. But because she was very good at ideas but not so much at execution, all the heavy lifting for this marquee event landed on Beth’s shoulders.
I rolled my head to stretch out the back of my neck; everything ached, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
A cabinet opened and shut next door to me. And I knew it was the most dreaded, most irritating moment of my workday: my co-worker Marianne’s break to do aerobicsin her cubicle. Starting off with some simple jumping jacks, she then did a routine of kicks, squats, and burpees before finally cooling down with some low-key running on the spot. It was loud and highly annoying. Her oddly pitched grunts and quasi groans made it impossible to concentrate on whatever you might be doing. The sound of her workout even bled over if you were on the phone. Both Beth and I tried to surreptitiously complain to Siobhan, but Marianne was also good at her job, and our director’s advice was to take a break and let her be.
Still, Marianne’s healthy outlook and sunny disposition were enraging. I could appreciate her intentions, but it was obnoxious of her to subject her co-workers to fifteen minutes of puffing and moaning “Come on, you can do it!” before emerging, red faced and self-satisfied, to grab a glass of water. If anyone unfamiliar with the routine dared ask what the hell she was doing, she would spout platitudes about oxygenating her brain. Our cubicles had no walls—they were just metal frames with hideous, gray-patterned fabric stretched across, so there was no way for me not to hear her, and she knew it. Deep down, I think she did it to annoy me. Whenever she opened her drawer to grab her sneakers, that was my cue to put my phone on Do Not Disturb and escape to the dingy office kitchen on our floor for a cup of the disastrous coffee. In my world, “healthy” equaled skipping the second or third spoonful of sugar.
I shouldn’t drink so much coffee, but listen, if Marianne piped up once more with the refrain, “Oh, Kels, you should really switch to a cup or two of green tea—so much healthier, but with the same bite! Who doesn’t need a little hit of antioxidant midmorning?” then I might try kickboxing to give my day that little jump-start. If Marianne was addicted to exercise, then I was equally addicted to caffeine; no compromise would have brought either of us to the other side of the line. And I hated being called Kels. In fact, I hate all nicknames. Kelly is a nice, plain name; there’s no need to shorten it.
The day already felt like that long stretch of the 401 between Toronto and Kingston, the part right at the end of the drive where you’re about to turn off and have to hang on to your eyeballs so that you don’t fall asleep before you get there. I was saving my other work-avoidance tactics for later in the day: the bathroom break where I rested my head against the stall and closed my eyes, even if only for a moment; the cleaning out of my inbox, which took very little brain power; the visit to all my co-workers on the floor to see if they needed anything.
Whenever my workday slowed down, like this one had, I felt like the character from the other truly great Hugh Grant movie,About a Boy. That whole monologue where he explains how he breaks up his day into half-hour blocks—his islands, he calls them. A half hour for bad television. A half hour for shopping. A half hour for lunch. I’m constantly doing that to my days. A half hour for email. A half hour for returning some phone calls. A half hour for writing a media release. But today it was impossible to concentrate on anything for even a half hour. The slow, sluggish air made it hard to stay awake. It was as if our entire office was already signed off for the break.
The company holiday party had been predictably ridiculous. No expense was spared; we were on top of the world right then in terms of healthy revenue, so the idea was “Let’s spend some of that movie money by getting down with amazingly bad but refreshingly hip ’80s dance music and an open bar!” Judging from how chipper Marianne sounded, she had barely touched a drop of the free booze. And I sort of remembered her saying good night to me a full five hours before I stumbled home myself. Marianne was counting down her squats instead of counting up.Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, you got this girl. Instead of screaming “What are you trying to prove,” I pulled myself out of my insanely comfortable office chair and stomped over to the kitchenette.
Beth, who sat on the other side of Marianne, was already there. “Every freaking day without fail,” she said. “Like we’re back in grade eight gym class. You remember that time of year when they’d make you climb up the rope, do sit-ups, and then run around the track or something. What was that called?”
“Canada Fitness. What kind of person doesn’t drink coffee or eat sugar, and then bounces around every day to perk up?”
“She’s bonkers.” Beth yawned. “Every year I camethisclose to failing that thing. The one year I managed a bronze badge, my father was dumfounded when I brought it home. Even my parents—and you know my parents—understood my physical limitations.”
I stretched across the filthy counter next to the coffee machine to rest my head. It smelled faintly of old bleach and mold. “I loved that test. What happened to me? Now I find a set of stairs challenging. I loved doing sit-ups. I could do hundreds and not even break a sweat. Multiple cups of coffee can’t even keep me upright today. How am I going to manage until six?”
“You need to soak up the alcohol in your system like I did with that muffin. I splurged and went to the breakfast place in the underground instead of the cafeteria. The ‘muffins’ where they must be deep-fried—the ones that are totally crunchy on top and raw in the middle. If you thought your stomach was upset before—”
“Oh, stop, stop! I’ll hurl, I will.”
The high-tech machine with the mediocre brew was bubbling black liquid into my mug. Having a dry, pasty mouth was never a good sign. When Rob had helped me crawl into bed at half-past four this morning, the events of the evening had tumbled back into my memory. Had we actually ended up at a strip club? Was that even possible?
“Oh, mygod, Kelly, I don’t know why they don’t give us the day off.”
“Seriously.”
“It’s not like we’re going to get anything done.” Beth sighed. “It’s all Christmas specials and weak news.”
“And no one even readsTV Guideanymore, anyway. How is it still in business?”
