Shanna Swendson - Enchanted, Inc

Then I got my sack lunch, changed into my walking shoes, and headed out to Battery Park. There was something about looking at the water, with the Statue of Liberty looming not too far in the distance, that helped calm me down.

Plenty of other people were out enjoying the gorgeous early fall day. There were a couple of busloads of tourists toting cameras, a few classes of schoolkids waiting for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and a lot of lower Manhattan business types enjoying the same kind of office escape I was.

A guy roller-skated past me, and I wouldn't have given him a second thought if it weren't for the elf ears he wore. I watched as he skated down the sidewalk and met up with a girl wearing fairy wings. I wasn't sure if it was the same Miss Airy Fairy I'd seen the day before or if I was wrong about those things not being a fashion trend.

The elf and the fairy gave each other an enthusiastic kiss. Nobody else in the park seemed to notice them.

Then I wondered what I found so weird about the situation. It wasn't like there really was a roller-skating elf kissing a fairy, given that neither elves nor fairies actually existed. It was just two people in costume, and that shouldn't faze me at all. I'd known people in college who'd gone to class for weeks in their live-action role-playing game costumes when they were in the middle of a major campaign, and that wasn't even in the weirdness of New York.

I turned my head and noticed a man in silver skin paint and a metallic jumpsuit doing robot mime for a crowd of tourists. I didn't think that was particularly strange, so why did all this other stuff bother me so much? I guess I wasn't as sophisticated as I wanted to be.

With a sigh, I shook the crumbs out of my sandwich bag, folded it up, and put it back in my paper lunch sack, which I then folded neatly and stuck in my purse. I dropped my apple core in a garbage can as I passed it and headed back to my office with a heavy heart. Every time I went out for lunch, it grew more and more difficult to force myself back inside. That was yet another reason I usually ate at my desk.

Mimi must not have found a group to go out to lunch with, for she was already back in the office when I returned. "Where have you been?" she shrieked, loud enough for the whole floor to hear. Dogs in Battery Park City whimpered and put their paws over their ears.

"At lunch," I said as calmly as I could. Getting mad back at Mimi only escalated the situation.

"I thought you said you weren't going to lunch," she accused.

"I said I'd brought my lunch. I just took it out of my office to eat it."

By now people were staring, heads peeping up over the top of cubicle walls like prairie dogs peering out of their holes. "You should tell me when you're leaving the office."

"You were at lunch." I frowned in fake concern and tried to keep my voice from shaking. "Am I supposed to get permission to take a lunch break? I wasn't aware of that policy."

There wasn't anything she could say to that, not with so many witnesses. She'd never get a reprimand about daring to leave the office for lunch while she herself was gone to stick. Unfortunately, she knew she was powerless, and she hated that more than anything. "I needed the draft of that news release from PR before I could go to the executive meeting," she snapped. "I tried calling you from the executive conference room to bring it to me, but you weren't at your desk."

"I put it in your in-box this morning, as soon as I got it from Leah."

Now she was really angry. Most bosses would be glad to find that their employees were competent, but not Mimi. Competent employees made her look bad and took away all of her excuses. She must have shown up at the executive meeting without the release, then tried to blame me, saying I hadn't given it to her. With glaring, bugging Evil Mimi eyes, she whirled back to her office, snatched the release out of her in-box and stalked off toward the elevators. Her body language said, "I'm not through with you yet, missy."

I was almost in tears as I slunk into my cubicle, fell into my desk chair, and changed back into my office shoes. She made me so angry, and since I couldn't do anything about her, my frustration came out in tears. The last thing I wanted was for her to think she'd made me cry, so I sat blinking furiously in my cubicle.

My hands shook as I raised them to my computer keyboard and hit a key to bring the screen back to life. The message-waiting indicator was blinking, and there at the top of my e-mail in-box was a message from Rodney Gwaltney. I opened it. It was the usual stuff talking about what a great opportunity he had for me.

I knew it had to be a scam, but I couldn't take much more of this job, so I had to either find another one or admit defeat and go back home. Maybe a nice Texas girl like me wasn't cut out for life in the big city. But before I gave up, I thought I ought to give it one more shot. I'd have to do whatever it took to find another job.

Before I realized what I was doing, I'd hit Reply and typed out, "When would you like to meet? My schedule is pretty busy, so it will have to be at lunchtime or after work." No matter what he was offering me, it had to be better than this. Then, before I could change my mind, I hit Send.

three

As soon as I sent the message, I regretted it. What had I gotten myself into? I knew they only opened the firewall to let e-mail come and go every few minutes, so there was still a chance that I could call IT and ask them to kill it, but that would mean admitting I'd responded to a job offer. I was sure the computer guys wouldn't tell on me. They'd sympathize, since they had to help an ungrateful Mimi with one kind of computer problem or another on a daily basis. The longer I hesitated, the lower my chances were of taking it back.

But I couldn't bring myself to make that call. Worst-case scenario, aside from the sex slavery possibility, was that Rodney might leave me alone if I met with him and still turned him down. There was always the possibility that the offer was everything he said it was, but I knew that really good things usually came with a catch.

I forced myself to concentrate on my work instead of thinking about the job, but every time I heard the ding that announced new mail, I quickly clicked over. They were pretty much all from people needing to get on Mimi's calendar or asking if she'd yet looked at something that she had asked for last week and said was urgent.

Maybe Rodney hadn't been serious after all. It was just a game he played with innocent young women on the subway. In addition to doing whatever he did to make women drool over him like they did, he also liked to pretend he had power over their lives. But that still didn't answer the question of how he knew who I was and how to find me to send the job offer. I really shouldn't have responded.

Then there was an e-mail ding, and Rodney's reply appeared in my in-box. It took me two tries to open it, for my hands were shaking so much that I couldn't hold the mouse steady. "I'm glad you decided to hear us out, Katie," the message read. "Five fifteen today, the coffee shop on Broadway near Rector. You won't regret it."

I wrote the information in my planner, replied that I would meet him at the designated place and time, then deleted the e-mail. Out of sheer paranoia, I went into my sent items folder and deleted both my initial response and my confirmation. I knew Mimi wasn't nearly computer literate enough to know there even was a sent items folder, but I wasn't taking any chances. I wanted the next job firmly lined up before I left this one, willingly or otherwise.

After her outburst earlier in the afternoon, Mimi was strangely quiet the rest of the day. That only made me nervous, for it was likely just the calm before the storm. She was probably in her office plotting ways to make me look bad without making herself look stupid. I kept my fingers crossed most of the day, hoping she didn't pull one of her "Oh, before you leave today" routines of dropping something on my desk at five minutes to five.