Molly O'Keefe - Pencil Him In

Jennifer sat back in her seat, her brown eyes looked tired but still sharp. “It’s about time you noticed that,” she said. “You can fire me—”

“Jen, I am not going to fire you.”

“But, I have got to say, you have the worst case of tunnel vision I have ever seen.”

Anna smiled—nothing wrong with a little tunnel vision. “Well, it certainly paid off today didn’t it?”

Jen grinned back, albeit a little weakly and Anna felt a serious tug of appreciation for her. “Let’s go get some drinks,” she said, surprising herself. “Celebration drinks.” They could have those Cosmopolitans everyone loved. Anna would bet Jen loved Cosmopolitans. The two of them had never done that, gone to happy hour together after work. Well, Anna had never done that, perhaps Jennifer did.

“Drinks?” Jen asked.

“Sure.” Anna nodded her head definitively. Though as soon as the words had come out of her mouth she began thinking of the amount of work she needed to do. But if Jen wanted drinks; drinks it would be.

“You…ah…you and me?” Anna read horror all over the girl’s face and remembered why she never went to happy hour. Anna wasn’t the most popular person around Arsenal. “Uh…”

“Never mind.” Anna saved Jennifer the trouble of coming up with some lie to avoid socializing with her. “Go home and I’ll see you Monday.”

“You should go home, Anna,” Jennifer said softly.

Anna nodded, having no intention of doing that, and shut her office door behind her. She leaned back against it. She wasn’t bothered by Jennifer not wanting to go to a bar with her, but Anna deserved some drinks.

After what happened in that boardroom I deserve a parade, she thought.

She closed her eyes and for a moment just felt blank. Empty. And very, very tired. But then, from deep in the pit of her gut there was something cheering. She pushed away her mental to-do list and let herself savor the delicious sensation of victory.

“Anna Simmons,” she murmured through her smile. “Top of the world.”

Part of her wanted to dance around and cheer. She wanted to kick off her heels and leap around on the dark leather furniture. She had done it. She had pulled it together. Again. Goddess Sportswear had just agreed to pay Arsenal Advertising a fortune for the fall campaign.

But she was exhausted. Dancing and cheering would have to wait until she had had six straight hours of sleep. She did, however, manage a little jump and a little wiggle on her way over to her mahogany desk. Humming ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” under her breath she sat down at her desk. The chair rolled around a little on the hardwood floor and she turned it into a spin as she opened the bottom drawer and took out the family size bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups she kept stashed there for just these sorts of occasions.

She swivelled in her chair and faced her floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over San Francisco Bay. She kicked off her shoes and put her feet up on the printer table to survey her kingdom. Lights were beginning to illuminate the fading day. The houses on the hills of Sausalito were glowing with their pastel colors like Easter eggs and the Golden Gate Bridge was bloody red in the last bright rays of the sun.

A chuckle of contentment bubbled up from her chest.

Anna liked the birds the best. They looked like hundreds of bright white handkerchiefs blowing in the breeze. She watched them, ate her chocolate and knew that nothing could ruin her tremendous good mood.

There was a knock on her door and she turned toward it as Camilla Lockhart, her boss, mentor and friend, poked her head in.

“Camilla,” Anna said expansively. “Come in.” Thrilled that Camilla had stopped by to congratulate her, she held out her bag of chocolate. “Can I interest you in a peanut butter cup? In celebration?” The idea of drinks, those Cosmopolitans came back to her. “Wait!” She stood up. “Let’s go get a drink. It’s Wednesday but, Lord knows, we deserve it.”

“You sure do,” Camilla smiled broadly and walked farther into Anna’s office. She put her briefcase down on the couch. “But I came in for a chat.” Camilla sat down in one of the deep green wing chairs facing Anna’s desk and crossed her long thin legs at the knee. Anna looked at her and marveled at how absolutely gorgeous Camilla was. She had long silver hair and eyes as sharp and blue as the sky outside the window. Camilla was in her sixties and she looked like a woman twenty years younger.

“All right.” Anna sat back down and smoothed the wrinkled hem of her best black suit. Anna had spent the past five hours in the boardroom in heavy negotiations and she looked like she had crawled out of a trench. Camilla had been in and out of the room—coming in like some kind of fairy godmother when Anna had needed her most—and she looked as fresh and unscathed as she had first thing this morning. She was a marvel that woman.

Anna touched her black hair, relieved it was still pulled back in the bun she had fashioned twelve hours earlier. Of course, considering the serious engineering system of bobby pins and hair spray, having the bun actually fall out would take an act of God.

Anna’s good mood was far too strong to be daunted by something like Camilla’s unwrinkled suit. She dug back into her candy. “Let’s chat about how unbelievably well today went.”

Let’s chat about how I kicked major ass! She thought but didn’t say.

Camilla tilted her head, “I have to hand it to you, you were right about Goddess.”

“Goddess just needed to be refocused,” Anna said about the women’s sportswear line. It had taken a few years to get Aurora Milan and her company to this place, but the effort was worth it. Goddess was about to explode all over the nation, Anna was sure of it. It wasn’t the biggest deal in Arsenal history, but Anna was sure that it was the most important. “It’s a great product with a great philosophy. It just needed some help getting out there.”

“And that’s where you come in.” Camilla smiled.

Anna shook her head. “That’s where Arsenal comes in.”

“You did a great job,” Camilla said, her eyes and smile warm. “I was very proud of you.”

Anna nodded, uncomfortable, and tried not to show how outrageously pleased she was by Camilla’s praise. There was this bubble in her chest, like a laugh trapped in her rib cage. “Well,” she said, nodding, “I just did exactly what you taught me.”

Camilla chuckled wryly, “Honey, in my best days I couldn’t have pulled off that deal—”

“Not true,” Anna interrupted, shaking her head. She knew all of Camilla’s victories. Sitting at the woman’s right hand in that boardroom all these years had been the best education she could have wished for. “Norway Vodka,” she said the name of one of their biggest clients who, long ago, had paid an unprecedented amount for Arsenal’s advertising magic. Camilla had taken an almost unknown product and made it the most exclusive and high-end vodka in the world.

“Well.” Camilla smiled and flicked imaginary lint off the hem of her red power suit. “That was a good one.”

“See, Camilla—” Anna sat back and put her arms out expansively “—I just learned from the master. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Jennifer worked her tail off for the last week.”

“Yes, she did.” Camilla brushed back a lock of silver hair and took a breath. “But, Anna, no one else has spent the past two weeks sleeping on that couch.” Camilla tilted her head toward the couch along the wall of Anna’s office.

“Tell me about it,” Anna said with a laugh. “It might be the most uncomfortable couch on the planet.”

Camilla looked at Anna for a long second and Anna suddenly felt something else in the air. This was a time for laughs and pats on the back. Camilla didn’t look much like laughing.