Мишель Роуэн - Bitten & Smitten

“Do you have a compact on you?” I asked.

Amy plunged a hand into the pocket of her pink jacket and produced a Cover Girl pressed powder. “Here.”

I opened it up and tentatively peered at the tiny mirror. For a very long time. She was right. I did look like crap, with dark circles under my eyes and everything. But the fact that there was a reflection, however crappy, eased my paranoid mind. It was just a dream, after all. Officially.

“Oh, no. Bitch from hell just arrived.” Amy snatched the compact away from me and, without another word, scurried back to her desk on the far side of the cubicle-filled room and disappeared behind her computer. My boss had been at her Friday-morning breakfast meeting with whatever client was most important that week. Anne Saunders. But you can call her Ms. Saunders. Not Miss, not Mrs. Ms. She eyed me as she exited the elevator and passed my desk, but said nothing, not even a curt good morning. I could tell she was on the “Sarah looks like crap today” train. I wasn’t one to normally let her lack of people skills get to me. Doing Ms. Saunders’s odd jobs, sending her e-mails, picking up her dry cleaning… it would have to do until I figured out what I was supposed to be doing with the rest of my life. Or won the lottery. And that was going to happen any day now. At least I had my fabulous trip to Mexico to look forward to. It would be the first time I’d ever been out of Canada in all my twenty-eight years of life. Unless you counted shopping over the border in Buffalo. My passport photo made me look a bit like my aunt Mildred, but I couldn’t complain. Pi?a coladas and a nice dark tan would be coming my way ASAP. Dark tan. For some reason the phrase “Midnight Eclipse” popped into my head. Oh, right, the tanning-salon business card Thierry gave to me in my dream. Vampires and tanning salons ? I shook my head at the thought. Sure, that made loads of sense. I headed to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and realized I hadn’t even had my morning caffeine fix yet. Weird. It was usually the first thing I thought about when I got to work. I must have been more out of it than I thought.

Then I went back to work. Well, back to my current game of solitaire, anyhow. A couple of minutes later my phone buzzed.

“Sarah, I’d like to see you in my office. Stat.” Ms. Saunders’s words were brisk. Then she hung up.

Stat ? What is this—ER? I quit my game of solitaire, pushed back from my desk, and made my way through the maze of cubicles, which contained everyone from graphic designers to copywriters to administration schmoes like me. I opened the door to my boss’s fancy, glassed-in office and peered inside, squinting as the light from her windows glared angrily in my eyes.

She looked up from her phone call and beckoned me inside with a curl of her finger. I entered the impossibly bright office and stood there feeling uncomfortable and hungover. After a moment she slammed the phone down with a “Get it done or don’t do it at all!” Yup, she was a real charmer.

She looked at me. “Sarah, please have a seat.”

Her voice was immediately calm and controlled. I’d seen her make this transition before. One moment yelling at an employee, the next being as sweet as pie to a walk-in client. She met my gaze directly, without blinking, a habit of hers that was unnerving to say the least. Those not able to compete in these staring contests rarely lasted long in her company. I was usually a champ, but my headache from hell was making things a little more difficult than normal. I looked away and rubbed my temples.

“Something wrong, dear?” she asked, beaming a perfect—almost too perfect—smile of expensive porcelain veneers.

“No.” I sat down in the chair across from her desk. “Late night.”

“You mustn’t miss out on your beauty sleep. A woman’s looks are one of her greatest assets in the business world, you know.”

My smile held, but I did glance at her desk calendar to make sure we hadn’t just time- traveled back fifty years.

She shuffled through a stack of mail and some papers on her desk. “Sarah, I know I’ve been unforgivably late with your review this year.”

Oh, crap . That’s what this was about? I was going to have an impromptu job review with zero time to prepare? Just super.

She noted my look of dismay. “Don’t worry, I’ll make it as pain-free as possible for you. I think you’re doing a stellar job. Normally, you also look top-notch. I’ll overlook today since it’s the only time I remember seeing you look less than”—she eyed my outfit—“pulled together.”

I’d procrastinated on my laundry a few extra days this week, and because I’d woken up so late I absently reached down to smooth out the navy blue skirt I’d found balled up in the corner of my bedroom. Hey, it smelled clean enough.

“My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I’m changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations.”

Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me.

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous.”

“You’re quite welcome.” Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail. I turned to leave. Didn’t want to outstay my welcome.

“Damn it!” she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she’d dropped to her desktop. “Damn thing slipped. I’m probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?”

She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk. I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy. I blinked. When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders’s imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly… and sucking noisily on her fingertip.

I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me.

She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide-eyed, with a mixture of shock and disgust.

I scrambled to my feet and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

What in the holy hell just happened?

“I… I… uh… I’m so sorry,” I managed. “I don’t know what… I wouldn’t normally do something… I just…”

Ms. Saunders pulled her hand close to her chest, perhaps to protect it from further abuse.

“Get out,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, I’ll get back to work. Again, I’m so, so sorry. Would you like me to bring you a cup of coffee?”

“No, not to your desk,” she said evenly, but her volume increased with every word. “Get out of here, you freak. I don’t care what you’ve heard, I’m not into women. You’re fired. Now get out of here before I call security.”

“But… my job review—”

“Get out!” she yelled.

I took a step toward her, wanting to try to rationalize what just happened, but she rolled backward in her chair as if she were afraid of me. I held up my hands.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. I just want to explain.”

She grabbed her phone without taking her eyes off me and hit a number. “Security, this is the fifth floor…”

That was all I needed to hear. I ran out of her office and back through the maze of cubicles. What had just happened? What would possess me to do something so disgusting? And was there really a rumor that Ms. Saunders liked chicks? Because that would explain a lot. But there wasn’t any time to think about what had just happened. I was relying on pure instinct to see me through this. And my instinct was telling me that I’d better get the hell out of there as fast as possible if I didn’t want to be unceremoniously escorted out of the building by two security guards. Back at my desk I grabbed my pink-haired troll doll that was suction-cupped to the top of my computer. Then I opened my top drawer to retrieve the little box of Godiva truffles I kept there for my daily three o’clock chocolate fix. Was I forgetting anything else?