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1
THEO
The party starts in ten minutes, and it’s already a disaster because the centerpieces just arrived and they are bright canary yellow.
That may not sound like a catastrophe of epic proportions, but trust me, in the eyes of my boss, this is a blunder on the scale of the Hindenburg.
Angushatesyellow. He hates it with a passion that might make you think he was once married to yellow before yellow cheated on him with his best friend.
Nobody who works for Galactic is allowed to wear yellow. No yellow can be brought into the corporate offices. And most of all, no yellow is allowed at parties.
I have picked yellow Skittles out of candy dishes. I have informed our secretary that she can’t park her yellow Beetle in the company lot. I’ve even thrown a mustard bottle into the lake at a company picnic.
At this point, I might hate yellow almost as much as my boss does.
But none of that is going to help me transform these fluorescent flowers into the nice, calming shade of cream that I ordered.
“How did this happen?” I ask Martinique.
“I don’t know!” She gnaws at her thumbnail.
Martinique is my assistant. The assistant to the assistant because after I caught pneumonia over Christmas, Angus finally agreed that my eighty-hour work weeks weren’t sustainable.
Since then, she’s also become my best friend. And the only person who keeps me sane while my boss slowly tries to drive me mad.
She’s been working here long enough to know what a calamity this is. Martinique used to have lovely, manicured nails. She used to weigh twenty pounds more. She used to have a social life.
But she’s been chewed up by the meat grinder that is Galactic just as badly as I have.
“Where can we get more flowers?” she moans.
“We can’t. There isn’t time.”
Martinique lets out a wail at the volume of a whisper because she knows that the only thing worse than these yellow flowers is Angusseeingthese yellow flowers before I can get rid of them.
“What can wedo?”
A thousand mad ideas whip through my head, including scavenging the planter boxes around the hotel.
Even if I ran out there with a pair of scissors, I don’t have time to arrange centerpieces for twenty tables.
I grab Martinique’s hands and pull them out of her mouth before she bites her nails to bleeding.
“Can you get me a can of spray paint?”
Exactly eight minutes later,Martinique sprints back to the party with two cans of spray paint in a plastic bag.
I’m waiting out back by the dumpsters, where I spray the centerpieces silver, every leaf and bloom.
When I’m done, they look spiky and inorganic, like they might actually be made of metal. It’s weird but also kind of cool. Or at least, I hope that’s what my boss will think.
Now I’m sweaty and dusty, and I reek of spray paint. I’ve also managed to ruin my one and only nice pair of heels—those little silver flecks across the toes are never coming off.
This should work, as long as nobody touches the centerpieces. They’re going to take a minute to dry.
The smell will dissipate out on the open rooftop. The party’s already filling up with guests, everybody chattering excitedly about Angus’ Big Announcement. He’s been teasing it for weeks.
I don’t even know what it is. Angus loves to hoard his secrets.
