Chapter Four
Jaimie
I spent the rest of the evening panicking over the Florida trip. It wasn’t just that I hated flying; although that was part of it.
“I’m not saying he wants into your pants,” said Rennie as we sat talking in the shadowy tattoo parlor after hours. “But when a boss invites a subordinate of the opposite sex on a business trip, he’s usually got one thing on his mind.”
I blanched at the thought. If only someone else was going with us, I wouldn’t have worried so much. But we would be traveling alone, and I didn’t relish having to tell him that I wanted separate rooms.
Rennie could see the fear on my face. “If you’re really that worried about it, then you ought to let him know. Put your foot down.”
But we both knew how unlikely this was. I had trouble standing up to my own mother, let alone the president of a company who also happened to be my boss.
“What am I going to say, exactly? ‘No, I don’t want to sleep with you?’”
“Yeah, why not?”
“What if he fires me on the spot, and I have to find my own way back to Colorado? He holds all the power in this relationship.”
“Yes, but you have the power to say no. And if he’s a good man, he’ll respect that. And if not, you can find yourself a new boss.”
Ren was so used to getting her own way that sometimes she had trouble understanding the struggles of the less assertive. “Not everyone can just walk into a place of business and demand to be hired. You have some kind of superpower that us mortals can only gawk at.”
“We,” said Ren, smiling. “We mortals.”
“Right. I just wish he was still married because then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“But on some level, you must enjoy the attention, no? It’s flattering to be liked by your boss.”
“Maybe to some people. I’m just there to do my job. And I’m not even sure why he’s taking me on this trip because you don’t need an accountant to help pick out a new fighter.”
“He definitely likes you,” said Ren. She stood in front of the mirror applying eyeliner. “You have no business being there, and yet he invited you because he likes your company. That’s an obvious tell.”
“So what do I do?” I exclaimed.
Ren shrugged. “You’ll just have to wait and see what he does. I suppose there are worse things than sleeping with one’s boss.” Seeing the horrified look on my face, she added, “I’m kidding! Please don’t sleep with him.”
“I’m not planning to!”
“Anyway,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a tube of lip gloss, “at least you’ll have something to write about when you get home on Monday. Isn’t that what you wanted: material for your books?”
“I don’t think I should have to walk into the lion’s den to get material for my books. I should just be able to sit at home and come up with stuff like you do. How do you do that, anyway?”
Ren shrugged as if she wasn’t entirely sure herself. “I just sit around a lot and do a lot of thinking. Also, I limit my computer time and go on a walk every day, and I leave my phone at home.”
“Brilliant,” I said, incredulous.
“It helps. If he starts hitting on you too bad, just call me, and I’ll fly down there and put the fear of God into him.” She punched a hand into her fist menacingly.
“I think you could just call him and it would put the fear of God into him,” I pointed out. “Don’t you remember how you spoke to the cashier this morning? He looked terrified.”
“I don’t know if I would say ‘terrified,’” said Ren, smiling at herself in the mirror, “but he didn’t argue. That’s how you’ve got to be with Randy.”
“Don’t argue with him?”
“No, you’ve got to be tough! You’ve got to make him wish he had never tried to hit on you.”
***
But for most of the trip, Randy sat quietly beside me eating peanuts out of a paper bag and reading an informative brochure on Disney World. His legs were slightly too long for the seat in which we were sitting, so he sat with his knees pressed against the seat in front of him, much to the discomfort of an older woman in a straw hat.
“This is just marvelous,” he murmured in awe as we flew over Arkansas. “Apparently Disney World is the largest single-site employer in the United States, with over 50,000 employees. And you don’t even see them, for the most part. How do they do that?”
“I think they have an underground tunnel system where most of the workers hang out.”
“Yeah, I was just getting to that part.” He turned over a page or two, marveling at the colorful pictures and reminding me of a little boy reading a book about dinosaurs. “Here’s something I bet you probably didn’t know: in terms of square acreage, Disney World is roughly the size of Boston and twice the size of Manhattan.”
“You’re right; I didn’t know that.”
“It’s just incredible. It’s just—how did they do that? It says here Disney World owns the third-largest bus system in the state of Florida.”
“I’m surprised it’s not the first.”
“I know, right?” He chuckled to himself. “The whole place is just so big!”
I sat back in my seat and released the breath I had been holding in. It was hard to feel panicked when he was feeling so cheerful. Though it did raise a question. “Randy?” I asked.
“What’s up?”
“Are we actually going to Disney World?”
Randy hesitated for a moment. “I mean, I was thinking about it. Would you want to?”
“Maybe.” I hadn’t been since my sophomore year of high school. I remembered it being a magical place, and I was afraid of being disappointed if I went back now.
“We’ll see how we’re feeling when we land,” said Randy. “We’re both probably going to be tired and hungry, and I suspect we’ll want to take a nap before we mosey over there.”
This seemed like as good a time as any to broach the question that was foremost on my mind. “Did you book separate rooms?”
Randy sat frozen for a second as though not understanding the question. “Oh, of course!” A shock of understanding flashed over his face. “Did you really think—”
And he laughed so long and loud that the woman in front of us turned and glared at him.
“No, I wasn’t going to make you share a room with me!” The tone of his voice suggested that he found the idea preposterous. “Maybe if we were two guys and we were trying to cut down on expenses—but I figure a woman probably wants a room to herself. Unless—” He added in a lower voice, “Did you want to share a room?”
“No, I’m good!” I said quickly. “Two rooms are perfect.”
“And to be honest, we probably aren’t even going to be in our rooms a lot of the time. We’ve got this meeting at seven-thirty, but first I would like to get dinner and hit up the Magic Kingdom, maybe MGM… I’m curious to see how the Wizarding World is coming along since I’ve only seen pictures. Apparently, business is booming.”
“Yeah, somehow, even in this economy.”
“When I heard they were building one in Florida,” said Randy, “my first thought was, ‘why?’ I feel like a Harry Potter theme park should be built somewhere more northerly where it’s cold and snowy and gloomy. Having pristine blue Florida skies overhead totally takes me out of the illusion.”
“Yeah, a bit. But the butterbeer is excellent.” I felt so relieved I didn’t particularly care where we went or what we did. I hadn’t been looking forward to this trip until about three minutes before. Now there was a chance—even if it was just a small one—that I might enjoy my weekend.
***
Randy proved to be a funny and entertaining companion. He studied the Magic Kingdom with the eye of a businessman, marveling at the cut of the paving stones and the color of the paint on the buildings the way a twelve-year-old boy might marvel at Splash Mountain.
“Mansard roofs,” he said to me as we walked down Main Street in the warmth of a late April day. “Can you believe it?” At one point as we were walking through Adventureland, he paused in front of a row of flower planters standing outside the Skipper Canteen and started rattling off the names of the flowers: larkspur, lobelia, petunia. “Maybe if we had more of an eye for beauty,” he said, “we would draw more young people.”
I kept thinking about this statement later that evening as we watched grown men in tiny shirts clobber each other with their fists.
As soon as I reached my room that night, I tore off my sweaty shirt and called Rennie.
“Hey, girl.” Rennie had a mysterious ability to write while she was talking, and even now I could hear her clicking away. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, I am sitting alone in my room, on my bed, and there is no one else in the room.”
“Shame. Well, give him a few hours, and he may come knocking. Men do tend to get lonely when they go on vacation.”
“I’m not counting on it. Anyway, I think we’re both too exhausted.”
“Yeah? What did you do today?”
I told her about our trip to the Magic Kingdom, and how Randy had insisted on interviewing three of the 150 full-time gardeners who worked there, and how we had missed our chance to ride Pirates of the Caribbean because he kept walking down Main Street trying to remember the name of the song that was playing and couldn’t find anyone to ask. “He’s actually kind of adorable,” I said. “Like a demented grandpa or a weird uncle.”
“Sorry you didn’t get to ride any of the rides,” said Rennie. “If we ever go to Disney World, I’ll make sure you see the pirates.”
“It’s okay,” I said in a sarcastic tone. “Because you know what I did see? MMA fighters—and a lot of them.”
“Sounds thrilling,” she said in a voice that conveyed the opposite. “Did you find any ‘fresh talent’?”
I shook my head, although Rennie couldn’t see me. “No, the whole meeting was a bust. I got the sense Randy wasn’t too impressed, either. As we were getting back to the hotel, he told me we’ll have to look elsewhere because none of those guys was substantially better than what we’ve got.”
“Well, I hope you at least enjoyed the fights.”
“I did not.”
“I hope you at least enjoyed the Magic Kingdom.”
“I enjoyed Randy,” I said with a laugh. “He’s the most eccentric tour guide you could have asked for. They ought to hire him to lead the Jungle Cruise and make terrible dad jokes.”
“That would be the perfect job for him,” said Rennie, “but then he wouldn’t be your boss anymore!”
“I’d survive,” I replied in an uncertain tone. “Probably.”