I take a deep breath as I walk out of the interview room. I can’t believe that went so well. Even though I should believe it because I set it all up for it to go that way. I spent the whole night preparing for this interview. And I do mean preparing.
I have to do what it takes to get anywhere thanks to my past. I have the brains but not the qualifications on paper. I’m not the type of person who does well in school. Or at life in general.
The lawyers like that I set up a filing system and a calendaring system. I’m good at solving everyone’s problems but my own. Except for now, I’m getting better at it.
When I get to the floater’s computer I see that my tasks for the day include filing. Oh, great. At least it beats babysitting Mr. Mack again.
I expect to see Katie in the filing room, but she isn’t there. A few hours later I break for lunch and see her in the cafeteria. There’s a legal pad in front of her that she’s pretending to flip through but she’s also glaring at the associates she had mentioned to me the other day.
“How goes it?” I ask her.
“Fine,” she says, while writing something on the legal pad. “I’m just reviewing notes from a meeting held earlier today.
She slides the pad over to me so I can see what she’s written.
Sucky. Temporarily assigned to the Barbies while Jim’s still in court.
“Let me write down some advice I learned about note taking,” I tell her.
That makes no sense at all, but the Barbies and the guy who is with them don’t seem to notice or care what we’re talking about.
“She just flounces around here like she owns the place just because Asher chose her to be his associate,” one of them whispers.
No wonder Katie knows so much office gossip, if she’s often assigned to have to assist these gossipers. It’s clear they’re talking about Madilyn and Asher.
Poor you, I write back. But at least you get to make up creative nicknames for them.
She scribbles some more on the pad and then hands it back to me.
That’s actually Madilyn’s nickname for them. The guy that follows them around with his tail between his legs, she calls their Ken. I heard her talking to Asher about it once when I was called in to help them prep for a big case. She thought I had left but I was still in the hallway. The nickname is great, so it stuck with me. She’s a pretty cool chick once you get to know her.
Except she obviously doesn’t have the best taste in men, I write back.
I’m sure she would disagree with you, Katie writes.
I’m just kidding. I’d already thought that Madilyn was cool from the interview I’d had with her, and I feel a little guilty about lying about some things. I feel especially guilty that she’d passed on the misinformation to Cameron.
But a lot of that stuff came from my original application back from before I’d even known Cameron at all. And if I hadn’t used it I wouldn’t have gotten this job, let alone the chance to be promoted to his secretary.
For me, life has been a series of difficult decisions and sometimes I’ve had to choose the lesser of two evils. Not that I’ve always made the right choice, but I really have been trying lately to turn things around. It’s just hard to run from a bad past, especially when it’s always right there taunting you and threatening to catch up with you.
How’d the interview go? Katie writes.
Better than I thought, I respond.
I feel like we’re passing notes back and forth in school, before there was such a thing as texting or instant messaging. But my joy at our old school form of communication is cut short when Kate finishes her last note and stands up.
“I gotta go,” says Katie. “I have a lot of dictation to do.”
Her note says: I hate to be caught dead walking around the halls with the Barbies and Ken. I like to beat them back to the office. Plus, I need to smoke out first just to be able to spend time near them.
It takes everything within me to suppress my laughter. Katie takes the notepad and removes the piece of paper we’ve been writing on. She jams it into the paper shredder next to the trash can before she leaves the cafeteria.
I suppose it’s time to get back to the floater’s desk myself. As I walk out, I can hear one of the Barbies say, “She’s not even hot. I, like, totes don’t get it.”
I refrain from laughing yet again. I think Madilyn is way prettier than any of them are and I also think she has a better personality. So, I “like, totes get” what Asher sees in her.
And I’m glad they’re happy together, even if the match is a bit odd. Who am I to judge? I’m the one who wants to sleep with Cameron. Or let him do anything else he wants to do to me for that matter.